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.

Ideology and learnign that 'He's Just Not That Into You'

Last night I went to the new movie “He’s Just Not That Into you”. I won’t give away too much of the plot if you haven’t seen the movie, but I’ll give a general overview. The movie begins with a 5 year old girl named Gigi who is pushed and made fun of by a boy her age. To console her, Gigi’s mother tells her that line we’ve all heard before. He’s mean to you because he likes you. We’ve all heard it, seen it portrayed in movies and TV shows; we may even have believed or hoped it was true in our own lives. But years later Gigi has to come to terms with the fact that sometimes if a guy is mean to you, doesn’t call you back, or doesn’t seem to notice you, he’s just not interested. He’s not too intimidated, he doesn’t think you’re too good for him and he did not lose your number or get hit by a taxi. Yet we are all fed this line at one point or another, or ones like it. We are told things that make us feel better about ourselves, we hear stories that are the exception, but we take them to be the rule. Why? Why do we continue to listen to these types of idealistic sayings and stories that often never come true?
Think about it. All of those romance novels and chick flicks depict fairy tale like circumstances that have just the right amount of drama but always end the way everyone knows they should (and will). That is not real life. Most of the time relationships don’t work out as picture perfectly as movies and books depict. Yet we continue to read them and buy them and dream of our own prince charming who will come sweep us off our feet in the perfect way. Or look at music. Songs like Love Story by Taylor Swift, where the guy is super romantic and the girl is swept off her feet by the perfect worlds, teach us the same things about life. Things that are nice, and do sometimes happen, but are not the norm.
And it’s not just romance that is romanticized (ha!). Look at movies and books in general. Though the main characters may go through some rough patches and so on, the good guys almost always come out on top. But that is not how life always works. Sometimes the bad guy wins. Sometimes bad things happen to good people. Life does not always work the way we think it should.
As I was thinking about the movie (and other cultural influences) today I realized that that is what Jeff and Susan talk about in there chapter on Ideology in The Theory toolbox. In the chapter ideology is defined as “something that’s false or misleading because it’s mystifying.” It is an idea or thought or concept that sugar coats truth if you will. It tries to make whatever situation seem better or more positive. So if a guy doesn’t call you, he lost your number. If he’s mean to you, it’s because he likes you and wants to get your attention. We say these to our friends and ourselves because we want to believe them. They are much happier than the alternative option. But they are not (often) true.
But is this bad? Is it bad to be ideological? I don’t think so. To a point at least. At the risk of sounding like a broken record, I believe that it is about balance. I think it can be very harmful to live in a constant state of ideological thinking. It creates a delusional perception of reality that is probably not healthy to walk through life with. It seems like almost too far to fall from, and I believe a firm grasp on reality is healthy. As Fyodor Dostoevsky said, “For, after all, you do grow up, you do outgrow your ideals, which turn to dust and ashes, which are shattered into fragments; and if you have no other life, you just have to build one up out of these fragments. And all the time your soul is craving and longing for something else.” However what is wrong with seeing the best in people and the world and focusing on that. What is wrong with being hopeful, even if what you hope for is a long shot? There is nothing wrong with hoping. For as Emma Goldman once said, “Idealists...foolish enough to throw caution to the winds...have advanced mankind and have enriched the world.” We need a balance of reality and hopeful ideology, faith and reason, fear and courage in order to be truly successful.

Excpectation, interpretation and dance team

Yesterday I went to the Section 4AA Dance competition at Sauk Rapids High School. I was on my high schools dance team and they were competing to go to the State Tournament two weeks from now, so I went to cheer them on. After all the teams had danced both High Kick and Jazz/funk there is about a half an hour break while the judges tally the scores. During this break a lot of the parents asked me how I thought the scores were going to end up and who would place high enough to go to State (in our section the top 4 teams go in kick, top 3 in jazz. It’s different for every section, based on the number of teams in the section, and results in 12 teams competing in at State.). While I did give the parents that asked my prediction (1-Cathedral 2-Sartell 3-Apollo and 4-Roccori for kick, same for jazz minus Roccori [only the top 3 go in jazz, remember] in case you were curious) I also warned them that I was extremely biased in favor of Apollo because I danced for them. They were my team. In the end the scores ended up being 1-Cathedral 2-Sartell 3-Roccori and 4-Apollo for kick and 1-Sartell 2-Cathedral and 3-Sauk Rapids in Jazz.

As often happens when judging doesn’t go my way I was moderately frustrated that the judges didn’t see eye to eye with me. Couldn’t they see that though a girl fell in Cathedral’s jazz dance that it was still far stronger than Sartell’s and they still deserved first? Didn’t they understand that though Apollo and Roccori were almost neck in neck for kick skill and execution wise that Apollo’s dance was more difficult and more original? And why, in the name of all that is good in this world, couldn’t they see that Apollo’s Jazz was simply better than Sauk Rapids’?
And then I started thinking more deeply about it. Perhaps my bias was so strong in favor of Apollo that I couldn’t judge clearly. Maybe I expected Cathedral (last years State Champions) to be the best team simply because they always were. And what if I expected Apollo to beat Sauk rapids because they had been all year, not because they danced better this time? When I thought about the dances I could kind of see the bias and the influence of expectation. When I was watching Apollo or Cathedral dance I would almost turn a blind eye to any flaws. They were miniscule, not worth a second thought I told myself. They didn’t take enough away from my internal scoring probably because I didn’t want or expect them to. When I watched other teams compete, particularly one’s we had had big rivalries with when I was on the team or teams that provided a bigger threat to my teams chance to go to State I was a much harsher judge. If they had the same or similar flaws to the ones I had deemed unimportant for Apollo or Cathedral I now deemed them inexcusable and hoped and prayed the judges would think the same. My personal bias, expectation and fierce desire to see my team win made me an incredibly unfair judge.

As I was thinking this it reminded me of Stanly Fish’s essay. Fish made the argument that expectation and personal/societal bias play a large role in how we view a work. Fish’s example was the list of names that his poetry student’s read and interpreted as a religious poem because that’s what they expected it to be. Likewise I expected Cathedral to take first in both because they always had. I put Apollo ahead of Sauk Rapids because that had been the way the scores had gone all year, never mind the fact that this was a new day, a new competition, new judges and a new chance to shine or to fail, to have the best performance of the year or to fall or screw up somewhere you never had before. My expectations and hopes influenced how I watched each dance and how I believed the scores would add up.

In this regard I would have to agree with Fish. I think it is important to understand our own expectations, biases and hopes—our soul if you will; the part of us that makes us who we are—in order to truly read o work of writing, look at a painting, judge a film or even watch a dance competition. Though I think there are other aspects that go into how we view the world and works of art and do not think that we should overestimate the effects of expectation and bias, I also feel with absolute certainty that we can never underestimate them either. Again, it is all about balance.

The Role of an Author as Seen in 'Nim's Island'

For a long time I had absolutely no idea what to blog about. I have opinions on everything including the topics we’ve discussed this week, so writing is usually no problem for me, but how to tie the topic in with something in culture? Then out of the blue a movie came to mind. The 2008 film Nim’s Island has an excellent example if the balance between an author completely detaching themselves from the work they are writing (as Eliot says they should) and needing to put some of themselves—some honesty—into it (as seems generally excepted today.

In the movie there is an author, Alexander Rover. She is a famous adventure novelist who happens to be an agoraphobic and never leaves her house. In this respect she must detach herself from the books she writes because there is no way she could do the things and go on the adventures that her hero—Alex Rover—does in all her books. She can’t even walk ten feet outside to her mail box, let alone trek across deserts or through jungles. But Alexandra (Alex) is able to write such convincing novels that no one realizes that she is really a middle aged, agoraphobic who carries around several bottles of hand sanitizer at all times. The main character, Nim, even emails Alexandra for help when she gets stuck alone on the Island her she and her father live on. She does this thinking that Alex Rover is really the adventure hero from the books. As T.S. Eliot said in his essay Tradition and Individual Talent “The progress of an artist is a continual self-sacrifice, a continual extinction of personality.” Alex Rover the author’s personality is nothing like Alex Rover the adventurer’s, yet her books are no less convincing for it. Alex is able to—or in a way has to—push out her own feelings, fears and weaknesses in order to write about things she could never do, thus confirming Eliot’s theory. Or so it seems.

But Alex has a problem. Her next book is due soon and she cannot finish it. It may seem at first glance to be a simple case of writer’s block, but I think it goes deeper. In the past Alex has been able to push herself out of her writing and write widely successful books. But now it seems that Alex’s limited supply of ideas has run dry because she has no experience and none of herself (save perhaps an inner longing to break free of her fears and have an adventure) to draw from and thus cannot continue writing. Alex must face her deepest fears and go on an adventure of her own. She must put herself into her writing, to be real and honest within the text. In doing this she not only breaks free of her fears but also fulfills that inner longing in order to finish her latest novel. She can at last be honest, to poor part of herself out onto the page because she has something to draw from.

This film is an excellent example of balance. In my opinion balance is the key to most things in life including, as the film clearly shows, writing. An author must be able to both detach themselves and their personality form their writing in order to write about concepts, characters and events of which they have no personal experience or similarities, but they must at the same time be able to make their writing real and honest, as Alex does in both facing her fears and having an adventure and also in her deep longing to break free of her fears. These very real emotions and experiences have a definite and prominent place in Alex’s writing, as does the ability to detach herself from her writing. Balance. Ideally there is balance between diet and exercise, work and play, rationality and feeling and in the same way there must be balance between emotional detachment and emotional attachment. Life and writing are best when they are balanced.