Horror Films as a Synecdoche for Societal Morality

So last Sunday night I went to see Friday the 13th (which I would actually recommend. As far as horror movies these days go it was pretty good. It had some legitimately scary moments, especially when my cell phone vibrated at a moment of intense suspense. But I digress.) After the movie my friends and I were talking about it and speculating on how good of a chance we would have of surviving a horror movie. We figured it was a pretty good one because we would never, for example, enter and old abandoned cabin in the middle of the woods in the middle of the night. Whether that makes us smart or a bunch of pansies is irrelevant. The point is we would probably not die. But soon the discussion turned a little deeper. We started looking at who died and what they were doing when they died. We noticed a trend.

In horror films there is a trend that I believe is a metaphor for how society views the world, or at least morality. In horror films most of the people who die are the people who are drinking, doing drug/other illegal things and having pre-marital sex. Think about it. Look at who died in the last horror film you saw. Take Friday the 13th as an example. Four people die while or right after having pre-marital sex, 4 die while doing or looking for drugs and drinking alcohol, one dies while driving a bout he stole and another dies while wakeboarding (topless I might add, adding insult to injury) behind the stolen boat. Or look at the Saw movies. Jigsaw (the killer) targets people who are drug dealers, murderers and rapists for his twisted style of justice, and most of those he targets don’t survive. Now look at the people who survive horror films. It’s usually the person who spends the whole movie trying to help/protect others. It is the brother out day and night on his motorcycle looking for his missing sister or the girl who has spent the better part of the last few years caring for her sick mother. There is a definite trend through-out horror films regarding who lives and who dies.

And then it hit us. This is not a coincidence. There is a reason behind all the naked women (though never naked men…but I digress again, as that is for a whole other blog post) and the partying. There is deeper meaning and insight on society hidden behind all the gore. Though we tend to view society as a whole as ‘enlightened’, ‘tolerant’ and beyond what I will call ‘religious morals’ for lack of a better term, I think horror films show differently. Analyzing horror films shows us that we as a society have not really moved to far in what activities we think are moral/admirable and what activities we think are immoral. Clearly we have not really moved past these so called religious morals. Because the moral of these horror films seems to be ‘doing these immoral acts will bring bad things’. The ‘bad guy’ in a horror film—such as Jigsaw or Jason—can almost be seen as an almost god-like figure, albeit very loosely. Perhaps they are better likened to Satan in that they do not so much judge as punish those who have been judged. I guess it is kind of a mix of God and Satan. They become both judge and punisher.

This realization turns horror films into a kind of synecdoche. They are a smaller part of culture/society that represents the morals of society as a whole. The ‘bad guy’ and the graphic deaths are a metaphor for the coming judgment and punishment for people who do these immoral things. It is as if the makers of the films are saying “drink, do drugs and have pre-marital sex and doom is imminent.” So pay attention next time you watch a horror film. Watch who lives and who dies and think about how that shows societies true thoughts on morality, whatever the popular perception about our morals might be.