edenism

Somehow, in spite of the much-maligned homogenization of Hollywood, horror films alone have managed to maintain significant thematic density. If mainstream commentary on contentious topics was once solely in the purview of comedy, today it is solely in the purview of horror. Without attempting to explain this shift, we can take a second to admire the scenery at our new destination. The most striking feature of contemporary horror films is that they are thematically haunted by the ghost of psychoanalysis (an obituary of which might appear on this blog). Jordan Peele's “Us,” despite trading primarily in cultural symbols (ballet, masks, and shamanistic trickery), is above all a story of ego formation. Anyone familiar with the mirror stage should guess the twist: it is the subject who finds in the mirror her own fragmented body. While discussion of this film could easily fill the space allotted here, I would like to turn instead to “Scary Stories to tell in the Dark.” By far the less assuming two, with a familiar premise (kids in a haunted house on Halloween), difficult source material, and empty, half-hearted tropes (a blind, elderly black seer), I would question the sanity of anyone who voluntarily watches “Scary Stories.” However, I would also recommend it. For one, it is much better than any reasonable person would expect. For two... it's just really pretty interesting. “Scary Stories” unites the themes of its various stories with an eye toward the relationships of its characters with their mothers. This is done subtly enough to not be distracting, heavy-handed, or shoehorned while being overt enough to lend some structural integrity the anthology film. If the psychoanalytic subject matter of “Us” is the mirror stage, then for “Scary Stories” it is symbolic castration. Perhaps because of the rating, audience, or source material, “Scary Stories” has a sexual ethos that inverts the horror cliche. The castration of the characters lends the subject matter an entirely new meaning; there is no transgression, no perversion, and no jouissance besides the (very literal in this case) return to the womb. “Scary Stories” truly has its finger on the pulse its time; when the anxiety of children and adults alike to their cloying, oppressive environments is not a reaction to patriarchal power, but to the omnipotence and omniscience of the techno-AllMother, found in guidance counselor offices, HR departments, 24/7 hotlines for parents of university-attending adults, and in the emasculation and maternalization of the father (Dean Norris is an excellent casting decision). It is only fitting that Dean Norris's character and the sheriff both spend their days watching Nixon and Vietnam on the television with a nostalgia that betrays the ahistoricity of the film. The phallus is absent here as one character comments: “Tricky Dicky” is certainly no name for a president. The malaise of artificially-extended youth is felt throughout the film: sexual exploits end so soon as to question the use of the term at all (an interrupted date, a pen with a picture of a busty woman) and, above all, the juvenile (symbolically infantile) game of fishing feces out of the toilet. The Evil Tome of the film “reads” each victim and delivers the appropriate punishment. For each of its victims save for one (whose fate is precisely the opposite), this fear is of a return to the womb. While “Us” revisits the ego-formation and interpellation of an adult, we are left with a sense that in “Scary Stories”, despite the characters being adolescents, they are still largely unformed. Where the typical film of this breed lends its adolescent characters unrealistic freedom and power (e.g. Stranger Things), “Scary Stories” gives its victims only passivity and powerlessness. The resolution to the conflict is nothing more than a plea, a concession.