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#182 - There Goes The Neighborhood (Patreon)

Published:
2020-10-31 03:23:58
Edited:
2020-11-29 20:02:49
Imported:
2024-06

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In this spooky Halloween episode, we consider the politics of horror by looking at the ultimate slasher film, John Carpenter's classic HALLOWEEN (1978). We discuss the way that the horror genre has traditionally served as an outlet for society's fears and traumas, and how this suburban horror story in particular articulated a certain post-'60s, pre-Reagan reactionary current in America. Don't worry, we like this movie, we promise we won't ruin it for you. PLUS: eve-of-the-election punditry and childhood Halloween memories.

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Comments

Maouriceltic

Ebert was close friends with James Toback...so there is that

Tony Mines

Obviously, the stated intention of the movie is to provide a cinematic account of an unmitigated evil, unencumbered by plot specifics or quantifying contexts, and I think it's still the best instance in movies of achieving that task. But inevitably whatever are John Carpenter's unconscious biases are going to come through, because of the limitations of authorship. I watched Assault on Precinct 13 the other day, which is sort of known as an incendiary film but which I think Carpenter only had modest entertainment ambitions for. He's pretty chill in interviews about admitting that the whole project is just cribbing on Romero, and the narrative itself is more interested in setting up the dynamics between various hardboiled charicatures than it is social commentary. None the less, on the journey towards setting up the premise it treads through the same reactionary landscape as the Death Wish movies; super-predators, cities as war zones, etc. It's a pretty ugly journey, and one bluntly at odds with They Live, where the guys outside the police station are the heroes and victims. Point being, as much as I love John Carpenter, I'm not always convinced that he thinks his shit through very hard? I know Big Trouble in Little China doesn't think it's a racist movie, but it is, too much so for me to even deal with as a little kid. I'm writing this from the house I grew up in (COVID reasons) in a neighbourhood I can only describe as Haddenfield as all fuck. Three doors down there is still a hedge that looks (to me) just like THAT hedge. From that vantage, I feel I have to addendum Luke's thesis that Michael Myers activities in the neighbourhood mirror Reaganite concerns (they do) with a question: are The Shape, and the neighbourhood, entirely separate entities? Is it stalking the neighbourhood, or is it in a symbiotic relationship with the neighbourhood, and is a manifestation of the neighbourhood itself punishing these teenagers? Complicit in their execution at turns, or failing to protect them at others? Only Dr Loomis, who is external to the neighbourhood, understands the extent of the danger, and the impotency of the local authorities to stop it. He also defines Michael as absolute evil. No room is provided in the diogesis for ambiguity that it might be a moral agent (like Jason Vorhees). It's left to the viewer to read a moral structure onto the killings through the gaps left by the elegant minimalism. Yet The Shape is very much OF the neighbourhood. It produced it. It is not from without. It isn't in the house; it IS the house. From that reading, which has always been my reading, it is a progressive horror. But again, I'm not convinced Carpenter always consciously spends too much time with this stuff.