"Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside in a cloud of smoke, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming "Wow! What a Ride!"

— Hunter S. Thompson

Read a book, watch a foreign film, do something you’ll be ashamed of, run naked, brazen, and screaming down the road of life! Don’t worry if

you fall down, because after you get back up, dust yourself off, remember : chicks dig scars! —Nathan Schubert

I‟ve never tried to complicate life. Try to be happy, travel the world, and experience anything you can get your hands on. This mindset has driven my passion for reading, movies, and travel; for me there exists little more to the human experience than trying to digest as much of this world as possible in our short time here. This has slowly led me towards teaching, to hopefully inspire that spark of curiosity, to fan the embers of possibility, to embolden that glimmer of imagination in a young student. Because missing out on the best things in life for the simple reason that no one ever showed you where the entrance was makes Nathan a very dull boy.

Finding a Message Amongst the Horror: An I-Search Nathan Schubert Spring, 2011.

“Give them pleasure - the same pleasure they have when they wake up from a nightmare.” —Alfred Hitchcock

The darkness was suffocating. Its oppressive weight bore down upon me, closing in for the kill. Only the light from my alarm clock held this predator at bay. Its candescent light glimmered across the surface of my bed sheets, enveloping me in a shield of blue. I felt like an astronaut floating through the vast emptiness of space; the sun reflecting off my visor, its thin curved glass, the only barrier between me and the all-consuming darkness that surrounded me. I felt adrift. The light from the clock choked as it tried to penetrate further into the blackness. The floor had been swallowed; I couldn‟t make out the shape of the shelves that stood only three feet from my bed, the traces of moonlight that would creep under the trim of my curtains had retreated, giving way in the face of a superior force. I was alone, abducted from the safety of my surroundings, placed in a void, and left to my fate.

As I lay there, my blanket pulled up just below my eyes, I realized that something was moving within the blackness, something evil, something unimaginable, something that crept ever closer. I remember wishing that I really was alone. I wanted to move, to peel back my fading shield and leap into the void. But any effort was in vain; my muscles were frozen in place. The cold grasp of the creature had hold of me; its icy web of fear guided it to its prey. I can‟t remember if I closed my eyes or if the dark finally shattered my shield, but in that impenetrable blackness I sensed the creature was finally upon me. The demonic hiss of its jaws opening reverberated in my right ear. Its breath moved every hair across my face. As the final moment approached it placed a hand upon my chest, forcing the oxygen out of my lungs. Then it pounced, snapped forward to administer the killing blow. I let out a silent scream.

A flash of bright light blinded my eyes. Someone or something was shaking me; their hand rubbing my chest. A distant repetition of words began to get closer,

—Nathan . . . Nathan, wake up, you‟re having a nightmare!

I wrenched forward, the empty scream in my throat found its voice. The terror of what I had just experienced manifested itself into a bloodcurdling scream. A scream that seemed to continue long after my vocal chords had ceased accompanying it with sound. Slowly, I began to slide back into reality. The room was now filled with light. There sat on my bed, at my side, was my mother. Both my sister and brother stood in the doorway, hesitant to venture closer, convinced I was possessed by the devil. A film of sweat covered my body, I struggled to breathe, laboring for air—my lungs heaved—arching my back as they fought for oxygen. I remember turning to my mother, looking for a haven of comfort, a sense of familiarity, the calming touch only a mother can bring. Instead, her eyes locked onto mine, her top lip curled, and she began to bare her fangs,

—Schubert, she snarled. Did you watch that horror film, even after I told you not to? She didn‟t wait for an answer before firing her next question. How many times have I told you that we can‟t watch horror films at night? What happens every time? She paused.

—I tried to answer, Well . . . But . . . It wasn‟t, I didn‟t think it was . . . —She cut me off; I‟ll tell you what happens! We end up with you screaming at three in the morning, waking the whole bloody house up!

This wasn‟t the first time I had heard those words and it wouldn‟t be the last.

To say I liked horror films as a child would be an understatement, a passion that is alive and kicking today. Good, bad, gory, clichéd, or art house, I didn‟t care. Be it a drooling monster, a psychotic serial killer, or a shambling zombie that wrought the terror, I wanted to watch it. This addiction became the bane of my mother‟s existence. There existed a perpetual struggle between my mother and me. On one side my mother fought to save my soul from irrevocable corruption, and on the other was my insatiable desire to confront those things that go bump in the night. This battle is an intrinsic part of human nature. It exists in every culture and society on this earth. Mothers across the globe are continually thwarted by imaginary demons, unspeakable monsters, and ghastly ghouls. But what is this struggle at its core? Like the struggle between power and liberty, does the influence of horror corrode the foundations of a moral character? As children we are told to be weary of dark basements, to avert our gaze from unspeakable evil, warnings designed to protect our innocence from the dark reality of the world, a notion that Friedrich Nietzsche chillingly echoes, “If you stare into the Abyss long enough the

Abyss stares back at you.” But, over the years I‟ve become convinced that horror movies, like the bulk of mainstream movies, are in fact a reinforcement of the very innocence and moral character that our collective mothers have been trying to protect. And Hollywood provides this social indoctrination a helping hand by propagating a subtext in which adherence to its well worn path is rewarded and deviation is punished. I want to explore the possibility that among the blood, among the screams, and among the killers there is hidden a moral agenda, that the stuff of nightmares is being used to reinforce the customs of Christian morality. And to find out if it is this hidden subtext that has driven me to disobey custom and to seek out those films that leave us with more questions than answers.

To further explore these questions I wanted to revisit two films considered to be horror

“classics.” Two films that explore the moral expectations of society yet do so in very different ways. Firstly, I hope to spend a little time at Camp Crystal Lake with one of the original

“slasher” kings—Friday 13th Part 1. This seminal horror movie introduces the rules and expectations that will come to define the traditional “slasher” movie for decades to come; rules that introduce the idea of moral responsibility, and the consequences of not adhering to them. It is Friday 13th Part 1 that gives birth to some of the most traditional clichés seen in almost every

“slasher” movie since. The survival of the virgin, the all American hero saving the day, and the punishment of those that break societal norms, such as experimenting with drugs, pre-marital sex, and anti-social behavior; actions that for decades to come will guarantee the perpetrator a grizzly demise. For the second film I wanted to explore a more modern horror film—Se7en.

This film challenges the expected rules laid down by predecessors such as Friday 13th and

Halloween. However, despite the obvious questioning of the perceived rules and moral code enforced by earlier films, Se7en, with its setting of urban dystopia, unsettles us with a tale of a society that has fallen by the wayside; a society that must be guided back to the straight road of morality by the lessons of a psychotic killer. This killer‟s lessons are revealed to us through a brutal expose of the dark heart of human behavior. So Se7en, despite its destruction of the

American hero, the desecration of the virginal female character, and the slide of humanity into the Abyss still follows the foundations of standard horror films; where redemption can only be found by turning away from what is the central theme of the film—the seven deadly sins. I also intend to use several books to determine the moral purpose of horror. John

Carpenter: The Prince of Darkness by Gilles Boulenger is a frank interview with one of

Hollywood‟s most famous horror directors, . A director with such films as

Halloween, The Thing, and under his belt; John Carpenter gives a frank and revealing look into what goes into making a horror film. The last three books I will use are Film•ol•o•gy:

A Movie-A-Day Guide to a Complete Film Education by Chris Barsanti, a fascinating book which deals with 356 acclaimed movies giving detailed accounts on their production and history.

Lastly, is a book called Horror Movie Freak by Don Summer. This book explains some of the most important and seminal horror films as well as exploring the clichés, rules, and machinations of modern horror. I also draw upon some of the writings of John Stuart Mill, specifically his essay, On Liberty.

It never fails to start the same way. My weak nerved wife safely in bed, the basement door tightly closed to muffle any wayward screams, and the safe harbor of light banished with the mere flick of a finger. This is a ceremony perfected through decades of practice. The red glow of the power light on my DVD player stares at me through the blackness. This one-eyed monster gives of a sharp whirl as it begins to transport me into another world. The television flickers, and my journey begins. Like countless times before I leave my basement behind, as the first images begin to appear on the screen a sense of terror fills my stomach, slowly that terror mixes with elation, finally a sense of weightlessness overcomes me. Imagine the exact moment when a roller coaster begins to crest its inevitable plunge. Do you remember the knot that begins to form in your stomach? A ball of terror tightening your muscles, resonating the intensifying beating thud of your heart, and filling your veins with burning adrenalin. Then, just as you begin to fall, that ball of terror explodes into a shower of joyous disposition. You begin to fill up with an overwhelming sense of ecstatic glee; your hands slowly release their grasp on the handrail, and gravity takes over. It is this precise moment that propels us to ride roller coasters, to subject our bodies to the physical ordeal, to argue against the natural flow of our digestion system. All of this for a moment that lasts mere seconds; this is the exact same feeling that takes hold of me when I watch horror films. That delectable sensation that covers my body in goose bumps, and just like gravity on a roller coaster, leaves me weightless. It was this familiar feeling that washed over me as I sat down to watch Friday 13th Part 1.

Friday 13th Part1 could be considered, along with Halloween, the grandfather of the modern “slasher” film. Not only is it credited with establishing the rules that are still prevalent in horror films today, but it pushed the boundaries of gore and in the process created a horror superstar—Jason Voorhees. The film revolves around the drowning of a child at a summer camp in the 1960‟s due to the negligence of the camp counselors. Following the child‟s death there are a series of brutal murders, which lead to the camp being closed and rumors of a curse become common place. Fast-forward twenty years and camp Crystal Lake is about to reopen; the story continues as the new batch of camp counselors arrive for the big opening. It doesn‟t take long for the body count to start rising.

From the very first murder it becomes clear that each victim is guilty of breaking a social norm or deviating from expected behavior. For example, as we watch the first victim, the camp‟s new cook, hitchhike her way to the camp ground. We witness, first, her dismissal of the impending danger and the curse of “Camp Blood” by the local doomsayer, itself a nod to the dangers of ignoring the warnings of prophets. As she gets into the vehicle of a stranger, we are reminded of the dangers of hitchhiking and societies warning against this practice. As we watch the killer‟s first victim try to escape her fate; we become aware that the actual murder is committed from the killer‟s perspective. The collective we, society if you will, has become the killer. It is our vengeance, our righteous wrath that punishes the wicked. Throughout Friday

13th Part 1 we are constantly transported into the killer perspective, it is we that wield the knife; it is our hands that tighten the rope around the victim‟s neck. A theme that draws directly from the bible, as seen in Isaiah 13:11 “And I will punish the world for their evil, and the wicked for their iniquity; and I will cause the arrogancy of the proud to cease, and will lay low the haughtiness of the terrible.” We the audience, become both the enforcers of morality and the punisher of those that that stray from it.

It connection between sin and punishment becomes quite apparent. The killer transforms into the manifestation of divine retribution, an unstoppable force guided by a higher power intent on subjecting the characters of the film to its strict code of morality, a code that if broken results in swift retaliation. This instant justice can be seen in a scene where two of the camp counselors are quickly murdered after having pre-marital sex. Again, in a following scene, we see two characters killed after playing strip poker and smoking marijuana. It‟s hard to deny the current that runs so strongly throughout Friday 13th Part 1. We see character after character killed for breaking social rules, such as drug use, or punished for committing acts that are considered religiously sacred; acts that are either immoral or one of the seven deadly sins, i.e. pre-marital sex, jealously, or lascivious behavior.

This is ultimately the driving force of the killer. At the end of the film, the killer is unmasked as the mother of the original child who drowned at the camp twenty years earlier. Her obsession with those responsible for her child‟s death has driven her to punish all those who are guilty of the type of behavior that led to her child‟s death. Her tragedy has twisted her into a killer, yet she is a killer whose duty it is to prevent the same tragedy from happening again. In a bizarre way her quest is, in the eyes of society, a noble one—to enforce the structure and rules that allow civilization to exist. As Don Summer reiterates in his book Horror Movie Freak,

Sinners will be punished, and the horror movie villains are just the ticket

to hand it out. Villains who deal the consequences for such behavior are little

more than a puritanical force of penance . . . Horror Freaks are drawn to cheer the

villain on in their murderous quest, then, not out of a deranged desire to be

harbingers of doom but rather a righteous longing to have no bad deed go

unpunished. (12)

So the mother in Friday 13th Part 1 has become the red right hand of God; enforcing a moral and religious edict in a swath of blood and guts. It is within this framework that the horror film begins to shed its mainstream skin as corruptor of youth. Instead it becomes a teacher, an instiller of moral ideals, one not afraid to render the consequences of deviating from these lessons in all its gory detail.

As I grew older and began to look deeper into the countless horror films I watched. I slowly realized that the horror, the blood, the dismembered limbs all paled in comparison to the darker undercurrent that lay beneath. As I recalled every film that supported these moral lessons, every scare designed to illicit a subconscious fear of breaking the rules, every unemotional killer dealing out righteous vengeance. I became aware of a far scarier reality, the herding of generation after generation into the accepted social pen occupied by the masses, the fear and guilt of a Christian civilization terrorizing us into accepting their religious doctrine as the standard bearer of moral behavior. This realization made me want to explore the genre further; it made me want to push my moral boundaries into a darker place, to explore the realm of horror not shackled down by the limitations of Christian morality.

A more modern horror film that attempts to bend those boundaries is Se7en. Its desolate, grey, and foreboding city aches with a sense of the morally unbound. Every scene reminds us that as a society we have thrown off the shackles of Christian guidance, and as a consequence western culture seems truly adrift in the void. Yet Se7en never manages to truly break away, and we soon find ourselves wrenched from the waste land and once again placed in the church of morality. The film revolves around a serial killer who is committing a series of murders where the victim is guilty of one of the seven deadly sins: gluttony, greed, sloth, lust, pride, wrath, and envy. His ultimate goal is to register a rude awakening to a modern world that has long lost its moral direction. His grisly work is followed by two detectives, one a fresh recruit, David Mills, the other a pessimistic, burned out cop on the brink of retirement, Will Somerset. As the viewer we are forced to watch the police simply follow his work; the police have become viewers right alongside us. Chris Barsanti writes in his review in Film•ol•o•gy: A Movie-A-Day Guide to a

Complete Film Education: “Predestination hangs over the film‟s cloud-covered universe, where the cops bag up the evidence, update their files, and wait for it all to play out” (152). Along with the police, we the viewer, become part of the killer‟s congregation, the police transform into monks, preserving relics of the killers work in order to continue his preaching‟s long after he is gone.

There are several references to the killer using his murders as “sermons” throughout the movie. The killer himself muses on how society has become corrupt, become lost from the path of God, and how his killings are akin to the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah; the fate of his victim‟s gruesome testaments to the dangers of sin. These parallels force the viewer to question the fate of modern mankind: a world that seems to be drowning in sin. The viewer is again, as with Friday 13th Part 1, being taught a lesson. We are being asked to examine our world, to testify to its abandonment of religious doctrine. We are being scolded for our inability to follow our masters. The film‟s conclusion, which sees David Mills succumb to wrath and kill the serial killer whose envy of a normal life led him to kill Mills‟ wife Tracie, offers us no redemption if we continue on our self-destructive path away from God. Just as Mills could have found true resolution by sparing the killer, we as the viewer are asked to make the same choice: give in to our base, sinful nature and go to hell or resist and accept Christ and ultimate redemption.

Despite my love for both these films and horror in general, it is undeniable that the message contained within the majority of the genre leaves me unfulfilled. I am left feeling admonished by the sting of their subtext. I am reminded of their religious doctrine by each metaphorical cane stroke to the back of my legs; however, instead of reminding me of my defiance of classrooms rules, I am given a list of my moral deviance: thou shall not do drugs, thou shall not have explicit thoughts, thou shall not have sex before marriage, thou shall not crave material items, thou shall not be prideful, thou shall not be envious, thou shall not stand out, thou shall not defy our teachings, THOU SHALT NOT! Every lesson is administered to the collective we (the viewer) with sharp violent thrusts. Each aberration from the norm within these films is followed by a visual cue designed to hammer home the message. We are not led to believe the literal message of breaking these rules i.e. a gruesome death at the hands of a psychopath, but it is insinuated that by loosening the religious shackles of morality we are condemning ourselves to a gruesome fate in a perceived afterlife.

I was always a trouble maker as a child; I hated following rules. Whether it was my mother or another figure of authority I felt a compelling urge to be disobedient. This streak remains with me today and manifests itself in my taste in movies. I never feel satisfied with cookie-cutter films; the happy-ending, the square jawed hero, the damsel in distress, it all feels like a façade. It seems like a happy picture constructed to cover the truth underneath. I have become obsessed with films that portray the real world—films that don‟t have that happy ending.

This led me to horror films, to the home of killers and monsters, logical companions in a deliberate quest for deviancy. So when I found that implicit message of compliance within the horror films I loved so much that primal urge to defy begin to surface once again.

I actively sought out horror films that broke the rules, such as The Strangers, REC,

SALÒ, Anti-Christ, and Demons. These were horror films that contained inescapable truths about life on this earth, and of human nature; often leaving you with more questions than answers. From pointless, unjustifiable violence, to the cruelty of Fascism, from the depravity of mankind to centuries of female subjugation, each one speaks to a truth that is often ignored within the mainstream. They do not seek to bend our will to a set of abstract rules, but attempt to expand our knowledge and leave us asking why. I simply could not accept the implied message of obedience in those films that attempted to reinforce societal expectations. The failure of these films to explore human nature, to reflect upon our state, and to force us to think critically about the world we live in reminded me of John Stuart Mill and his ideas about customs and tradition in On Liberty:

Christian morality (so called) has all the characters of a reaction; it is, in great

part, a protest against Paganism. Its ideal is negative rather than positive; passive

rather than active; Innocence rather than Nobleness; Abstinence from Evil, rather

than energetic Pursuit of Good: in its precepts (as has been well said) „thou shalt

not‟ predominates unduly over „thou shalt.‟ . . . It holds out the hope of heaven and the threat of hell, as the appointed and appropriate motives to a virtuous life .

. . it is essentially a doctrine of passive odebience; it inculcates submission to all

authorities found established (Prose, 268).

If we remain content with the message of mainstream films, we live our lives unaware of the world lying behind their constructed realities. Mill again warns us about a life led simply following the perceived rules, “He who does anything because it is the custom makes no choice.

He gains no practice either in discerning or in desiring what is best” (Prose, 275). This desire to seek knowledge, to explore the world in which I live, and to continually try to improve myself is central to my enjoyment of movies.

In the end, I‟m not naive enough to subscribe to the idea that Hollywood directors are part of some devious plan to convert the masses to Christianity, or that movie writers are involved in some great conspiracy to propagate ideal morality at the behest of the majority. But, movies do mirror the societies that produce them, and that intricately weaved within their DNA are the subconscious expectations, wants, and needs of a whole culture. And yet it seems obvious to me that a culture can only get better by examining our flaws, by taking a long hard look at our true reflection. By ignoring the truth or photo-shopping reality, which seems to be the current modus operandi, we only stifle our potential. Herein lays the problem: the current climate of our culture works to only distort the reflection. Like a carnival trick mirror, mainstream Hollywood seems only to echo an image of idealized perfection. We are cheated of the chance to better ourselves because we are never forced to face our ugly nature. Across millions of televisions and movie screens we are subjected to an endless parade of two dimensional characters and stories, their message as forgettable as their stars. Over the years I have strived to avoid this banality, to look beyond the pale. As Steve Martins character explains at the end of Grand Canyon,

Mack, you ever seen a movie called Sullivan's Travels? . . . All of life's riddles are

answered in the movies. It's a story about a man who loses his way. He's a

filmmaker, like me, and he forgets for a moment just what he was set on earth to

do. Fortunately he finds his way back. That can happen, Mack. Check it out.

The message here is being that like art, movies are an indicator of our society, not only do they serve to inspire us, but they can also show us our failings; that both the filmmaker and the viewer have a responsibility, one that requires us to be much more than a passive participant in our culture. If we the audience demand nothing more than the incoherent ramblings of say MTV‟s

Jersey Shore, or the commercial trash of blockbusters like Transformers or Saw and its sequels, then those involved in the creative process have no incentive to produce anything superior. I push the envelope of my movie experience because as it expands outward then so does my knowledge of the world. I believe it is vitally important for us to slip free from the shepherd‟s crook and to venture into the fields far beyond what was ever set out for us.

Works Citied

Barsanti, Chris. Film•ol•o•gy: A Movie-A-Day Guide to a Complete Film Education.

Massachusetts: Adams Media, 2011. Print.

Boulenger, Gilles. John Carpenter: The Prince of Darkness. Los Angeles: Silman-James Press,

2001. Print.

Buckler, William E, ed. Prose of the Victorian Period. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company,

1958. Print.

Friday 13th Part 1. Dir. Sean S. Cunningham. Perf. Betsy Palmer, Adrienne King, and Jeannine

Taylor. Paramount Pictures, 1980. Film.

Grand Canyon. Dir. Lawrence Kasdan. Perf. Danny Glover, Kevin Kline, and Steve Martin.

Twentieth Century Fox Film, 1992. Film.

King James Bible. The Official King James Bible Online. 2011. Web. 14 Mar. 2011. Web.

.

Se7en. Dir. David Fincher. Perf. Morgan Freeman, Brad Pitt, and Kevin Spacy. New Line

Cinema, 1995. Film.

Sumner, Don. Horror Movie Freak. China, Krause Publications, 2010. Print.