Let me preface this by saying I am 100%
certain others have noticed far more in the horror genre and had much more
important and cogent things to say about it. I just felt like stretching my
brain a bit after spending the Halloween season watching horror movies I had
never seen before. Looking out across all of the movies I watched for the first
time, I think I’m settling in on some thoughts on the “punish the sinner” trope
and the “final girl” aspects of the genre, especially as framed by my first
time ever viewing of the original Halloween, by John Carpenter and Debra Hill.
Avoiding the Ubiquitous
For the longest time, I had never seen Halloween, where a lot of 80s+ horror seemed to have borrowed their tropes. Having finally watched it, I am kind of curious about the degree to which the “transgressing teens” was intended as a broader theme. I fully realize that creators often don’t realize the themes they infuse into their work, but it also seems that a lot of later movies, like the Friday the 13th series, mimicked the elements of Halloween without brining in all of the context, and it kind of mutated the trope of transgressing teens into what it is today.
Avoiding the Ubiquitous
For the longest time, I had never seen Halloween, where a lot of 80s+ horror seemed to have borrowed their tropes. Having finally watched it, I am kind of curious about the degree to which the “transgressing teens” was intended as a broader theme. I fully realize that creators often don’t realize the themes they infuse into their work, but it also seems that a lot of later movies, like the Friday the 13th series, mimicked the elements of Halloween without brining in all of the context, and it kind of mutated the trope of transgressing teens into what it is today.
I say this because Laurie, in Halloween,
smokes pot and actually wants to have sex--she isn’t really being held up as a
moral example. Carpenter has said that the reason Laurie survived isn’t because
of virtue, but because she wasn’t busy doing other things when she got
attacked, which is more circumstance than moral lesson. All of that having been
said, since we spend more time with Laurie than with the other characters, she
feels more like a “real” character, and the other teenagers are reduced to
being defined by their actions in their brief appearances, which makes it easy
to see why copying over the circumstances of the movie creates the trope that
it does.
Death of the Author, and, er, the Director?
Carpenter’s point seemed to be that teenagers
be teenagers, but given that Michael Meyers is targeting teenagers because his
sister ditched him to be a teenager, it almost feels like there is a moral
judgement involved. In context, however, Halloween continually makes the point
that Michael is just . . . evil. He’s
not a virtuous force that is punishing others. He doesn’t talk or give his
point of view. He committed a murder as a child, then continues to murder
people that fit that template when he is an adult. Michael’s reasoning isn’t
even sympathetic. Yes, his sister ditched him to spend time with her boyfriend,
but we never get any indication that Michael is harmed because of her
inattention. He’s just mad because she didn’t take him trick or treating.
It may also be worth noting that while a lot
of critics of the day made a point to seize on the theme of “the movie is a
commentary on the decadence of modern teens,” Michael’s sister was killed in
1963. Sure, the movie could be making a commentary about the state of teen
morality in the modern era, starting in the 60s--but given that the bulk of the
movie is over a decade removed from the original scene, and the theme of
decadent teens is never actually mentioned in the movie, it feels more likely
that Carpenter and Debra Hill really were just writing from the perspective of
“teens be teens.”
Teen Themes
To some extent, there is almost more of a
commentary on the position that teenagers occupy in society. Parents in the
original Halloween show up as bookends to the horrors that are happening in the
movie. Rather than provide a framework for a moral path, you could view the
original Halloween as making a statement that teens are in a place in life
where they want to stand on their own, but are still tremendously vulnerable
without adult interaction.
Laurie manages to acquit herself very well
against Michael Myers all things considered, but it is the intervention of
Loomis that finally confirms Laurie’s safety at the end of the film. In some
sense, this can be reduced to the standard “damsel in distress” narrative, but
Laurie at this point has survived multiple assaults from an increasingly
inhuman seeming Meyers. It feels as is the film has really said “nobody could
have done better than Laurie without help,” not that Laurie really needed to be
saved because anything was lacking in her character.
If the transition of teens to adulthood really
is taken as a theme in the movie, it’s also worth noting that Laurie is
vulnerable because the parents of the various children aren’t available for
help, and the adult that provides aid is an unrelated adult. This is literally
the transition that most young people have to make as they enter adulthood and
have to forge bonds with more adults that are not part of their family or
community.
The Care and Feeding of Tropes
None of this is to say that the “bad teens
being punished” theme can’t be extrapolated from Halloween, just that it
appears more prominent with a shallow read of the movie’s events than from
viewing elements in context.
Additionally, I think you can make a case that
this trope developed in a partially unintentional manner. While there are
definitely films to use the “punish the sinner” narrative literally, in many
cases it’s actually a non-diegetic theme of the movies. Neither Freddy nor
Jason will literally spare someone that hasn’t transgressed the sacred slasher
commandments of “thou shalt not get high” or “thou shalt not hook up.” The
audience may pick up on the fact that the teens that go off in the woods to
spend some quality time together are going to die first, but most slasher
villains are no more likely to kill them expressly because they are having sex
or doing drugs than they are expressing killing off people of color expressly
for being people of color.
Side Note: If you can make the case that the
“punishing bad teens” theme developed from a tone deaf emulation of Halloween,
it may be worth noting that the trope of people of color dying in horror movies
seems to have sprung from Hollywood’s inability to consistently see people of
color as viable protagonists. This is also an unfortunate non-diegetic less on
that gets passed on that. Growing up in the 80s, I actually heard people defend
the morality play aspects of killing off the sexually active teens as a
positive way of promoting right behavior, but if that aspect of the story,
which often isn’t expressly stated in the movie, was okay to teach, what does
that say about using slasher movies to teach moral lessons when it comes to
empowering people of color in society?
Later movies, like the Scream franchise and
the Cabin in the Woods know exactly what tropes are at play and what they are
subverting, but it’s way beyond me to do a deep dive into at what point and in
what films the copied elements were copied without conscious thought about
overall theme, and at what point the genre tropes were embraced and
intentionally played up. It’s obvious from some of the reviews of Halloween
that critical analysis of that film included an explicit reading of the movie
as a morality play about teenage behavior, so almost immediately someone aware
of film criticism would have had access to that commentary. That said, it
feels, at least to me, that filmmakers in decades past seemed more likely to
disclaim any modern, proximate influence on their films.
Context
After all of this, watching the original
Halloween gave me a lot to think about, and I can see the clear influences it
had on 80s horror movies (in fact, if you take elements of Halloween and
elements of Phantasm, you have a lot of the recurring building blocks of 80s
horror movies in those two movies alone). I respect what the film did. I can
also see what Halloween did that later movies did not do.
While we often see the “Final Girl” receive a
lot of air time, it’s also after the strife in the film has begun. In Laurie’s
case, we have tension, as Michael is stalker her and her group of friends, but
the killings don’t start up until later in the film, after we’ve seen Laurie’s
typical day.
Once the killing starts, it’s the major focus
of the film, but because we don’t have a constant stream of killings and
bodies, even when characters panic or potentially make bad decisions, it feels
more natural, because they haven’t been in an escalating crisis for half the
movie, yet still making the same mistakes after hours of strife. Once the
characters find out there is a murderer on the loose, it’s new to them, and not
a normal thing, and each person reverts back to making an understandable closed
set of decisions based on an immediate fight or flight response. Laurie, being
the person that survives an initial encounter, begins to make plans and
decisions that fit the narrative of what has occurred previously in the movie.
That said, after everything I saw, and
everything I can respect in the original Halloween, I have to admit that
looking at John Carpenter and horror, The Thing is definitely more my speed.
But I’m going to wait to dissect that particular movie for another day.