Slash and Hack: A Hack’s Look at the Politics of the Horror Genre

A Hack’s Look at the Politics of the Horror Genre Words by Caitlin Battye

The horror genre has been intensely political since its inception. A lot has already been written examining the political subtext in a lot of horror media, from xenophobia in Bram Stoker’s Dracula to Vietnam War readings of Texas Chain Saw Massacre through to the ‘good for her’ energy of Midsommar. However, there’s one question that has yet to be answered: Out of the many horror franchises out there, which is the most based?

To conduct this integral piece of research, it was important to ensure I was drawing on a variety of different kinds of horror franchises. These franchises will each be given a number on the ‘Based Scale’ between 1-10. These ratings don’t necessarily indicate the quality or entertainment value of a given film, but simply how based and left-wing-pilled it is.

FRIDAY THE 13TH

Friday the 13th is a conservative wet dream. You’ve got a disabled manturned-unstoppable-zombie-killer (because obviously disabled people gotta be mindless and bad) slaughtering a slew of unlikeable teens indulging in drug use and premarital sex.

The franchise’s conservativism shines in its portrayal of women, especially compared to the character of Tommy Jarvis. Tommy was the ‘Final Girl’ in the fourth, fifth, and sixth instalments. The ‘Final Girl’ in the slasher subgenre is the last (wo)man standing in the group, and is typically the woman who best embodies conservative values - the one most likely to have skipped all that drug use and premarital sex. In the fourth film, 12-yearold Tommy and his older sister Trish are ‘Final Boy’ and ‘Final Girl’. Trish is the typical conservative and ‘pure’ woman whereas Tommy is allowed to indulge in violent tendencies and voyeuristic sexual attraction. So while women survive based on how well they conform to conservative ideas of morality, Tommy evades the same level of judgement.

Plus…Tommy was in three films! Other slashers have recurring ‘Final Girls’, sure, but they’re typically introduced in the first film, not the fourth. It’s particularly glaring considering they had to keep reusing Tommy despite having to recast him every film. Meanwhile, if a female character reappears, she’s already dead by the opening credits.

Based Score: 2/10 Way too conservative. Squandered its chance to subvert its conservative archetype on a cishet white guy whose actor they couldn’t even keep for more than one film. Basically, if you’re wanting a subversion of the final girl archetype with a male lead in a classic slasher franchise, check out Nightmare on Elm Street 2 because that uses the subversion to depict a (subtextually) gay teen which is inherently cooler.

The first Saw film was released in 2004 back when American cinema goers were still reeling from 9/11 and the American government’s subsequent torture spree implementation of advanced interrogation methods. Much like the US government, the Jigsaw killer also likes to try employ an ‘ends justify the means’ approach to torture and is also a big surveillance fan. The franchise presents a grim, anguished look at a world which bears signs of a failing system. A lot of Jigsaw’s victims, across certain entries of the franchise, are in themselves both symptoms and causes of this failing system, such as in the sixth entry where Jigsaw targets predatory lenders. Other standout targets are corrupt cops and neo-Nazis.

This puts it in a strange yet interesting position, where it critiques the idea that torture is a justified means to an end (indeed, those who survive Jigsaw’s traps most often become his disciple, showing that Jigsaw’s methods only lead to more violence). Yet it also just so happens that the victims of Jigsaw shift from being ordinary people to members of the same groups who often, in the real world, are those whose interests the system best serves.

Based Score: 6/10 Would give it a higher score if not for how messy the franchise is overall, especially when deciding if Jigsaw is a symbol of a declining society using violence to justify its means, or if he’s a vigilante punishing those who truly deserve it. These are the drawbacks of a long-running convoluted film series that for some reason tries to maintain a timeline, I guess.

ALIEN

The Alien franchise is incredibly based, and when I say “the Alien franchise” I am mainly referring to the first three films because those three are cinematic masterpieces and the rest…well, they make for a pretty good drinking game. These films are absolutely amazing at covering everything from the dangers of rampant corporations, rape culture, bodily autonomy, and the prison system. Because I have a word count, I’ll only discuss the anti-capitalism aspects, but just know these films cover so damn much and deserve a whole article.

The main villain of the franchise isn’t the Xenomorph, but mega-corporation WeylandYutani, with entries always featuring an underclass being sent in to do the dirty work of the big corporation and then suffering the consequences of Weyland-Yutani’s decisions. The franchise is by this big company deciding its blue-collar space trucker workers were expendable and using them as bait to get a big killing machine they hoped to tame and sell as a weapon. This basically sets the tone for the franchise as a whole. Every facet of human life in Alien is tightly controlled by corporate interests - the company even assigns undercover androids to keep tabs on workers just doing their jobs, surveilling them constantly and also making sure to shill positive sentiments for the company wherever possible. It’s a scathing look at capitalism and the way it views workers as disposable on its path to profit.