Joyful Things from April & the Political Leanings of Monsters
A little update and some lighthearted musings on horror.
My little project seems to be hitting the character limit for a single email, so we’re breaking it into multiple parts!
If you’re curious about Joyful Things, skip ahead; but, first…
The Politics of Horror Villains
I stumbled on this post about the politics of fictional, British childhood protagonists and it made me think, “Who are my childhood heroes?”
Monsters. I love me some monsters.
When a monstrous villain rears their head and fights back against the ostensible heroes of a movie, what are they standing for?
And I’m not talking about what they represent, which can be part of it, but who are they casting ballots for come November?
These are the important questions.
Also, check your voter registration here or specifically check your registration for Arizona here.
The Living Dead (Night of the Living Dead, 1968; Dawn of the Dead, 1978; and so on)
Horror has always had a political bent, but Night of the Living Dead is an ur-political horror text. The shambling corpses are easy to sway, slow-moving, and insatiable. The hordes of mindless dead are a sort of meteorological force, often acting as a flood, alternating between dully benign and even amusing to life-threateningly dangerous depending on the infrastructure in place. While a rustic farmhouse collapses under their weight in Night, a shopping mall is an impregnable fortress in Dawn. The undead are often malleable to their circumstances (or political moment), these early undead represent a diverse group of fiscal conservatives, uninterested in particular social matters, and easily swayed by the canny politician or well-placed fresh meat. Expect them to be swayed at the ballot by however their microeconomics are leaning.
Papa Jupiter & Family (The Hills Have Eyes, 1977 & 2006)
While the two films share a lot of the same concept, and the Wes Craven original is excellent, the 2006 remake by Alexandre Aja is a gut-wrenching depiction of two families coming into conflict and quite literally tearing each other apart. (Somewhere out there, there may still be a LiveJournal post I wrote about seeing this movie and being struck by the brutality with a sharp sense of wit about it.) Papa Jupiter is the patriarch of a family raised in the shadow of and transformed by atomic tests, forever contrasted by the false idealism of the 1950s. Papa Jupiter stands as a horrific caricature of the conservative, smalltown working class father dedicated to bringing home the (human-flavored) bacon. In better economic times, Papa Jupiter was probably a union man, but without the steady work in his dusty hometown, he’s driven to a severe, frugal fiscal and social conservatism, making ends meet by making meat at road’s end. Expect a conservative voter, but the right stimulus package would probably turn his vote.
The Shape/Michael Myers (Halloween, 1978) & Jason Voorhees (Friday the 13th, 1980)
While of slightly different styles, these two silent stalkers stand for different strands of social conservatism. From Myers’s (credited as The Shape in the original Halloween) first kill of his teenage sister, to his obsession with his childhood home and the teens that surround it, it is obvious he has an overriding concern for the youths: Specifically for them to uphold traditional values… or else. Similarly, Voorhees’s original death/maiming (depending on the film) by negligent teen counselors and the persistent love of his domineering mother indicates Jason’s own sense of family values… or else. While fiscally undefined, it is clear these too are both voting for social conservative values, silently judging the lapsed morality of “kids these days.”
The Tall Man (Phantasm, 1979)
The Tall Man’s plans take psychedelic visions and several movies to outline, as well as rather peculiar turns of plot. However, his multitude of servants suggest a feudalistic or monarchical structure, with The Tall Man either a high servant to a greater power, or a monarch-like figure himself. Expect a vote for the far right from the Tall Man!
The Xenomorph(s) (Alien, 1979; Aliens 1986)
The Xenomorph of the original film demonstrates a libertarian self-starter attitude, making a home in the vastness of outer space using the resources at hand (the crew of the Nostromo). However, this libertarianism fades in the follow up with the introduction of the Queen Xenomorph, a monarchical tyrant controlling her vassals with pheromones and brutal screeching. The matriarch also prioritizes egg-laying and fights against the blue collar Ripley (a sci-fi incarnation of Rosie the Riveter who also centralizes bodily autonomy*), highlighting her lack of tolerance for competing or more modern political (or biological) attitudes. In addition, the humans of Hadley’s Hope are mere means to an end for her growing family. While libertarian on their own, the Xenomorphs are a family first, fiscal and social conservative force when in the presence of a queen.
*How does fan art of Ripley as Rosie not already exist on the internet?
Deadites (Evil Dead, 1981; Evil Dead II, 1987; etc.)
And here we see a shift in the politics of monsters (at least of this limited sampling). The Deadites are collectivist, scrapper bands of demon-possessed people, trees, and… parts of ourselves? They are chaotic and carnal, ready to feast and celebrate the flesh (and bones) of themselves and their victims, all in their dark desires to consume it. More than nearly any other monster, the Deadites stand for a sort of anarchic syndicalism, joined in an association around the desire to take from humanity all that it can, including the lives, flesh, and loves of the living. Expect politically organized Deadites to storm polls and leave no survivors! Though I think they’re social liberals at heart since they garner so much power from the diversity of their ranks.
The Thing (The Thing, 1982)
While The Thing (movie) riffs vaguely on the pod and vegetable people that came before it, the individualistic nature of the Thing (alien) embodied in the plasma test and Blair’s computer simulations make it both anarchic—each cell of it capable of acting individually—and collaborative—Things working in concert. Like the Deadites, the Thing (or Things) are deeply union and syndicalist in nature. Cells from one association (a mimic of one creature) could migrate to another mimic; meanwhile, just one part of a Thing seems capable of duplicating a whole other organism if given enough time. And the fears they instill! Just one dissenting, unionizing cell in the vastness of any of the crew of Outpost 31 and their whole body (read: factory) turns! Expect the Thing to vote for union power and the everyday worker! Or whatever vote is the least conspicuous for an alien creature masquerading as one or more humans, ultimately more concerned with survival than collective wellbeing.
See also The Things by Peter Watts.
Freddy Krueger (Nightmare on Elm Street, 1984)
Freddy was the first villain I thought of for this list. In life, Freddy was a working class bloke who also was a serial killer, specifically of children. When he was arrested, he was released on a technicality, before being subjected to fiery mob violence. His revenge is to torment the parents’ of Springwood, Ohio, by continuing to murder their children. Krueger’s personal experience of police ineffectiveness, mob violence, and proximity to the film industry in New Nightmare, combined with his irreverence and foul-mouthed humor, makes him a twisted caricature of an artistic leftist, standing against the family values (and lives) of his conventional suburban surroundings. This is emphasized all the more when he is pitted against Jason Voorhees in the non-canonical Freddy vs. Jason (2010).
Still to come we have :
Brundlefly (The Fly, 1986)
Pinhead/Lead Cenobite (Hellraiser, 1987)
Chucky (Child’s Play, 1988)
Pennywise (It, 1990/2017)
Hannibal Lecter (The Silence of the Lambs, 1991)
The Candyman (The Candyman, 1992)
Sutter Cane (In the Mouth of Madness, 1994)
Weir/The Ship (Event Horizon, 1997)
Crawler/Troglodytes (The Descent, 2005)
Other Mother/Beldam (Coraline, 2009)
The Monsters (Cabin in the Woods, 2011)
Joyful Things from April 2024
Letterboxd
I’ve jumped onto the movie watching, wishlisting, and reviewing website Letterboxd. I’m MacReadyNCheese if you’re interested in following and sharing the movies you’re watching. I’ve been on a horror movie binge lately, having checked out Talk To Me (more on that below), Late Night with the Devil, Infested (Vermines in its native French), Immaculate, The First Omen, and Abigail in the last month or so. I was losing track of the movies, so I thought Letterboxd would help me track this ongoing creepfest! it also gets namedropped on the podcast Blank Check. As for non-horror, I watched Die Hard: With a Vengeance this past month, too!
Level Up Advanced 5e: Dungeon Delver’s Guide
I just started reading Dungeon Delver’s Guide for the Level Up Advanced 5e ruleset, and it is excellent! The first chapter includes class options, ancestries, and cultures for new 5e-compatible character creation, but the second chapter is all about game mastering dungeons. It is getting into basics in a way I feel that the WOTC books entirely miss, giving guidance on bubble/pointcrawl style mapping, theater of the mind play, sketching, and more. Plus, it has abundant, playable examples to put its lessons to work! While this is more basics than advanced, if you’re interested in running dungeons and feel overwhelmed, unprepared, or just looking for extra guidance, this is worth your time. And, the tools are integrated into the a5e.tools online toolkit! (Seriously, you can access nearly all the text from the website!)
Talk To Me
Talk to Me has been on my radar since the first trailers. I tend toward the A24 fanboy, and this hits hard. Teenage Mia is still grieving the loss of her mother when she is brought into a new party game: Hold onto the hand, ask them to “talk to me,” and then… well, see what happens. The alternating terror, laughter, and elation are brought to life by the young, Australian cast. A less adept creator would cut this into a cleaner movie that was ultimately easier to walk away from; but directors Danny and Michael Philippou push again, and again, and again, leaving you with a story that lingers long after the story ends.