[For this year’s Halloween series, right before a particularly scary election, I thought I’d focus on some of the many horror films that remind us of the genre’s inescapable intersections with political issues. Add your nominations in comments, please!]
On
different visions of morality in horror films, and whether they matter.
There’s an
easy and somewhat stereotypical, although certainly not inaccurate, way to read
the morality or lessons of
horror films: to emphasize how they seem consistently to punish characters,
and especially female characters, who are too sexually promiscuous, drink or do
drugs, or otherwise act in immoral ways; and how they seem to reward
characters, especially
the “final girl,” who are not only tough and resourceful but
also virgins and otherwise resistant to such immoral temptations. Film scholar
Carol Clover reiterates but also to a degree challenges those interpretations
in her seminal Men, Women, and Chain Saws: Gender in the
Modern Horror Film (1992); Clover agrees with arguments about the “final girl,” but makes
the case that by asking viewers to identify with this female character, the
films are indeed pushing our communal perspectives on gender in provocative new
directions.
It’s
important to add, however, that whether conventional slasher films are
reiterating or challenging traditional moralities, they’re certainly not
prioritizing those moral purposes—jump scares and gory deaths are much higher
on the list of priorities. On the other hand, one of the most successful and
influential horror series of the last decade, the Saw films (which began with 2004’s Saw and continued annually through the 7th and supposedly
final installment, 2010’s Saw 3D), has
made its world’s and killer’s moral philosophy and objectives central to the
series’ purposes. The films’ villain, John Kramer,
generally known only as Jigsaw, has been called a
“deranged philanthropist,” as his puzzles and tortures are generally
designed to test, alter, and ultimately strengthen his victims’ identities and
beliefs (if they survive, of course). That is, not only is it possible to find
moral messages in both the films and which characters do and do not survive in
them, but deciphering and living up to that morality becomes the means by which
those characters can survive their tortures.
That’s the
films and the characters—but what about the audience? It’s long been assumed
(and I would generally agree) that audiences look to horror films not only to
be scared (a
universal human desire) but also to enjoy the unique and gory deaths
(a more
troubling argument, but again one I would generally support). So
it’d be fair, and important, to ask whether that remains the case for Saw’s audiences—whether, that is,
they’re in fact rooting not for characters to survive and grow, but instead to
fail and be killed in Jigsaw’s inventive ways. And if most or even many of them
are, whether that response—and its contribution to the series’ popularity and
box office success and thus its ability to continue across seven years and
movies—renders the films’ sense of morality irrelevant (it would certainly make
it ironic at the very least). To put it bluntly: it seems to make a big
difference whether we see the Saw
films as distinct in the inventiveness of their tortures/deaths or the morality
of their killer. As with any post and topic, I’d love to hear your thoughts!
Last
political horror tomorrow,
Ben
PS. What
do you think? Other horror films you’d analyze?
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