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(Pleatherface) Ghostface Knew: How Scream Predicted the Collapse of Creativity

By. Pleatherface

 

Hi all,

Sorry for not keeping up, again life and stuff happen. Snow days turn into snow months and catching up becomes a job. So after tackling an awesome entry into the horror genre in George Romero’s Dawn of the Dead, I move to another titan in Wes Craven. If there is anything like a pantheon member of modern horror and gore, I would strongly argue Wes Craven belongs in that group. Creator of one of the most well-known horror characters in Freddy Kruger (though he only directed two movies in the franchise),  he is also the mind behind classics such as The Last House on the Left, The Hills Have Eyes, and the Scream franchise (that from my reading of critical literature on his work was a natural evolution after what he had attempted in New Nightmare from a metaliterary perspective). I remember growing up in the 90’s and seeing Scary Movie – a good attempt at replicating the ZAZ formula of tackling genre films, though it has not aged well and that franchise aged as well as a pumpkin after Halloween – but never seeing the text that inspired most of it. That made me curious about what this movie had to say after exploring much older entries into the genre.

First off, I would remind you that my interest in consumer behavior and the activity itself is a big part of my own intellectual questioning. One of the major concerns I have about how consumerism is slowly eroding our critical capacity is connected to the way in which the replicating of texts as a strategy for spurring consumer acquisition has resulted in the marvelification/mcdonaldization/amazonification (pick your -ification) of popular art forms such as movies and books. And I must add I am not critical of Craven himself in that sense because as I mentioned looking at SCREAM within the context of his body of work it shows a natural progression of concerns over art and the thinking of the product within the product itself after he began questioning the role of popular movies in New Nightmare; my concern is that the later works of not just genre artists took the beats he developed in his work and turned them into a formula. I would be remiss not to notice how a lot of other action and comedy writers take elements such as almost obsessive pop culture knowledge and referencing, humor as a punctuator to create dissonance, strong female characters, and the almost wall-breaking use of Meta-fictionality seen in shows like Buffy and later superhero formulaic entries. Besides this, Craven points towards a peril of consumerism when SPOILER ALERT for a 30-year-old movie, the killers are obsessed with horror movies. While in New Nightmare his concerns played in a slightly awkward manner, I would argue he was taking early steps into showing viewers the perils of a world devoid of originality through the way in which fandom interacted with the fictional Heather. I would go so far as positing that Wes was right and it is the ancient god of creativity and wonder who is trapped within these worlds of regurgitated franchised slop.

Back to the film that spurred my thoughts, SCREAM is a great text. A little long at almost 2 hours (there are some scenes that go on a little long) it is nevertheless a brisk film that kept me engaged throughout. According multiple critics and academics, Scream ushered a new era of horror that broke out of the stale repetitiveness of the overindulgent 80’s and early 90’s franchises like Nightmare and Friday the 13^th by engaging genre tropes and going back to the roots of what had started those 80’s franchises – looking at the world through the lenses of horror to tackle contemporary concerns while offering viewers an entertaining time. Scream is arguably concerned with the way in which horror had genrefied to the point where it was an object of ridicule, as Randy (Jamie Kennedy in his only good acting role) explains the “rules of horror movies” and how anyone with a little bit of brain should easily survive in anyone if it was the real world. This becomes even much more clever later when Randy mocks Halloween protagonist Jamie Lee Curtis as he himself is being similarly staked by the Ghostface killer (one of them); spoiler Randy is a virgin so he makes it to the end. This idea of the unknown killer also clashes with the previous era of the known villain in the form of zombies, Freddy, Jason, or Michael. A big part of the creative work is in how Craven meshes multiple genres like comedy, horror, and mystery into genre-bowl that, while quite gory, does not rely on blood alone to engage viewers. While it may seems as if I’m implying this is all new, the unknown killer was already a character in various important 80’s horror movies. Wes Craven brings it back to the point that it became a new beat all future writers needed to meet in order to produce a reliable box office return.

Readers, let me be honest for a minute and admit I tipped the scale when I chose SCREAM. I had been concerned for a while about what I was seeing as a decline the quality of movies. I have read many a thought piece decrying the death of comedy, or the death of action films, or the death of insert your favorite genre that I thought to myself maybe that is what we really need. Death and renewal not live-die-repeat, which may be a good hook for a novel or movie but it is crap as a discerning consumer. I think this is in part why the genre of horror has been appealing to me as of late. As a newcomer it is all fresh, I can explore the genre’s rich history and relive it as new; and, from what I can read in sites like this one and others, while it does fall prey to some of the sins of other genres, I see less of the pressure of 3x or more box office return that plagues other genres that must appeal to all age groups.

While I cannot promise to not be missing in action, I do hope to return soon with a look at another film. While I was trying to find Cabin in the Woods to tackle, it seems not be easily or readily available to me via streaming. But, I did find one that made me curious in Dario Argento’s Suspiria (1977). Let’s see what it says about consumerism, or at least how it’s spectacle of horror assaults my sensibilities.