[For this year’s
installment
of my
annual Halloween series,
I’ll focus on 21st century pop culture villains. Share your favorite
villains, new or classic, in comments!]
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!
Next villain tomorrow,
Ben
PS. What do you
think? Other villains you’d highlight?
No comments:
Post a Comment