You’re only good until you’re not / You’re only certain until you’re not

“You either die a hero, or live long enough to see yourself become the villain.” – Harvey Dent, The Dark Knight (2008)

            On the internet it’s very likely that not even dying could stop you from becoming a villain these days. “Call-out culture” is now a part of that digital ecosystem and, in essence, “refers to the tendency among progressives, radicals, activists, and community organizers to publically name instances or patterns of oppressive behaviour and language use by others. People can be called out for statements and actions that are sexist, racist, abeliest, and [etc.]”[1] There is potential in calling out truly dangerous actions—such as abuse and assault; “like confronting a rapist, for example”—to hold the perpetrators accountable and to publically call attention to their behavior in such a way so as other potential victims know to avoid them; nevertheless, there are serious problems with call-out culture as a form of “political critique.”[2] Because calling someone out is a highly public event thanks to the social media platforms that enable the culture, the act is never private and is tantamount to “a public performance where people can demonstrate their wit or how pure their politics are.”[3] There are definitely problems with even a seemingly justified call-out, but the issue of a “statute of limitations,” say, on statements of a political nature previously made by a person raises its own questions. 

            As the second article quoted above suggests, calling attention to harmful behaviors and actionable acts of violence is one thing, and making something potentially hurtful, insensitive, or uninformed someone said years ago the evidence in a trial of that person’s current politics is another altogether. Oftentimes, however, this latter type of squabble seems to be the focus of call-out culture. This is the reason why it can be difficult to answer the question “Who do we actually like and trust?” (or, “Who is really good?”) when browsing the tweets or blogs of socially- and politically-conscious people. It seems everyone has some dirt in their past that eventually gets called out, forcing us to decide if that person was ever really as “good” as they appeared. It’s a difficult matter to parse generally. For example, I use the term “good” here as a last resort. What other, better descriptor is there for the something about that person that shifts the minute an old tweet or blog post or reblog emerges from their past? Especially when the material is years old, how much weight should it carry with regard to our current perceptions of that person? How much does it actually speak to who that person is now and what they believe? Is it out of line to expect the person in question to apologize years after the fact for something they said or thought before? I don’t have an answer—nor, I suspect, does anyone else. What I do know is that The Dark Knight was more or less right: You’re only good/a hero until you’re not.

            Ultimately, call-out culture is only related to the topic I actually want to address in this post. I want to talk about the supposed “controversy” surrounding the news that some incoming freshmen at Duke University refused to read Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home (as a common reading experience book) on moral grounds. My immediate reaction to this news item was to post to Facebook and mock the fact that it was a news item at all: “‘Extre extre! Incoming college freshmen tend to bring conservative views with them!’ (Since when is this news and/or surprising to anyone?)” After posting that initial response, however, I started to think about how this non-news could be used to address larger issues of personal and political expression, knowledge, and certainty. I still think that this individual story is a virtual non-issue—“some” students objected to the book; “several” declined to read it; even the sites running a story seem to suspect that there’s nothing remarkable here given that people object to things like this all the time, and a student not doing the reading? That’s not breaking news.

            What I do think is interesting and noteworthy about this story is how it lends itself to a larger discussion—namely, whether any of the names attached to the story who objected to Alison Bechdel’s graphic novel/memoir Fun Home for its open discussion and depiction of sexuality (and especially homosexuality) will one day find the things they said now with such certainty coming back to bite them in a call-out. Let me say upfront that this isn’t me suggesting that that might be comeuppance of some kind. My natural inclination to mock aside, I take the issues surrounding this news story seriously. It raises the important question of at what point anyone ought to make their personal and/or political views public in any way. 

            I was already thinking about this topic because I recently got a new job and in the process of completing my required training came across the statement that no one should ever post anything to a social media platform that they wouldn’t want displayed on a banner. That sounds good and seems to make a lot of sense, but it also ignores the fact that sometimes what you would want held high on a standard one day does not inspire the same confidence days, weeks, months, and especially years later. We are often very certain about things at various points in our lives only to find that certainty challenged down the road. Part of being human is learning, growing, and changing. If we generally agree that our progress is forward toward a fully-developed human being, then the old ideas or certainties we leave in our wake may no longer apply to the new model. The problem is that internet culture preserves (and sometimes resurrects) these old ideas down the road, and what can we do? It’s true that what we post to the internet stays on the internet indefinitely somewhere, but, again, what’s one to do about that? At what point is anyone (college freshman or otherwise) allowed near a computer? We want our ideals on a banner, and we want the community that comes with rallying under shared ideals.

            To return to the specific case of the Duke students, however, I think that the college seems to have taken the proper, educational track with the “controversy.” At least, that seems to be the case based on what a member of the summer reading book selection committee had to say on the issue: “I would encourage them [students who disagree with the book] to talk about why they chose to read it or not.”[4] Although I did see comments on the story to the effect that the students should be indirectly punished in some way with a quiz or that they should more or less gut it out, it’s much more effective to make this a teachable moment rather than mete out some form of punishment to force them into broadening their perspective whether they like it or not. Specifically, I think that this is an opportunity to foster critical thinking. It’s easy to see student responses that accuse Duke of indirectly peer pressuring people into reading the book, or that suggest the university simply does not know that students with conservative views exist, as worthy of scorn; in fact, in a national culture that is becoming increasingly (though only gradually) more progressive-minded, it’s easy to look at the shock—“I thought to myself, ‘What kind of school am I going to?’”—and perform something akin to a call-out where all sorts of liberal and educated minds tee off of these kids in particular and off the very concept of a sexuality-averse conservative Christian faith at large by wittily, scornfully suggesting that they need perspective or to wake up and realize their squeamishness is the result of religious dogma and a doctrine that’s becoming obsolete even in the religious community.[5] It’s easy to do that, but it’s also wrong, and that kind of aggressive response tends to only make people of any creed retreat and go on the defensive rather than feel like voicing and further exploring their ideas is safe. 

            While I certainly don’t agree with people who claim that Christians are oppressed in the United States, I do think we don’t do much to not support such claims when our response to those familiar-sounding words of Biblical censure is to mock or insist that they are completely, utterly wrong. Is religion a crutch? Does it serve only to keep people docile to institutions by suggesting that the rewards are coming not in this world (that belongs to the institutions) but in the next for all those who are appropriately penitent? It suffices for the purposes of this argument simply to acknowledge that religion means a lot to people. For many people (myself included), it played a key, foundational role in their lives. They’ve defined themselves by it and shaped their worldviews through it. Demanding that they just give that up and learn better isn’t a productive use of time—particularly in an educational setting. 

            There are certainly folks to the right and left of center politically who would argue that the purpose of college is to “liberalize” students (though they would say as much with very different intentions and intonation). It’s simply true that many freshmen come to college with a more conservative outlook that doesn’t last all four years. Christian films like God’s Not Dead make the case for the right that the left (namely liberal atheists) are out to tempt or coerce their children away from the Truth. That’s simply not the case, though. At least, in my experience, that’s not the case, nor is the purpose of college to “liberalize.” Colleges don’t churn out little Judith Butlers and Friedrich Nietzsches. To my mind the purpose of college is to teach critical thinking and to task students with answering questions more thoroughly while also asking more questions of things they take as certainties (of which religion is only one). Now, uncertainty itself can be a kind of mistaken certainty, but that’s not really the matter at hand. What is is that it’s not all that surprising for the new Duke students who object to Bechdel’s work to do so because it “[conflicts] with their personal and religious beliefs.”[6] It’s also not the college’s job to take those beliefs away from them, strictly speaking, but it is its job to suggest that this is only one of many perspectives on the text and to ask that the concerned parties get beyond knee-jerk reactions of disgust or outrage that they were even presented with this particular work to a point where they can find its literary merits and to understand why someone else might not object to it or might, in fact, object to their objection. 

            In all likelihood, a number of these objecting students will leave college very different from when they entered it. I speak from personal experience, and lest anyone so inclined think that I am a godless, postmodern heathen, I will interject only one personal note here: I definitely came out of college questioning things that I went in believing, but I have a greater appreciation for my own conservative Christian background than I did before because I questioned it and continue to grapple with and try to reconcile a spiritualism that’s very personal and dear to me with other ideas. Sometimes Christianity as a religion seems determined to avoid questions, whereas a belief system like Judaism may embrace them by “wrestling” with texts and ideas and prizing “the ability to question freely and without inhibition [and] the valuing of difficult questions.”[7] At any rate, the ability to question the certainty or least staying power of what one believes may help prevent one from stitching any banners preemptively.

            Case in point: Perhaps you’ve heard of Lexi Kozhevsky, the nineteen year-old who stood in front of police officers in Ferguson and (in)famously said she “would rather get hit by something than let it hit them.”[8] If you haven’t heard of Lexi herself, you’ve probably seen her photoshopped into various other scenarios where she defends everyone from Voldemort’s Death Eaters to the entire cast of villainous characters from Dragonball Z. I’m trying to avoid particular partialities of my own here (that Black Lives Matter, for instance), but I offer up Lexi as so many others have done, albeit with less derision, as an example of the same sort of certainty on display in the Duke case. Although I cannot speak for Lexi’s personal experiences or her background, this is a college-aged kid (someone who would just be starting college), and her casual certainty—“Look guys, discrimination is a thing and I get it, but we need to say with the people who protect us and that’s what I’m doing”—seems like the sort that changes with time and questioning.[9] Or maybe she won’t change. All I know is that I was once a freshman in a class of freshmen who argued with a professor that there was nothing racist about The Lion King, and today I would tell you that The Lion King is a very “problematic” piece—that it represents an extension of a cultural association of evil with darker colors; that the “bad” lions live in the impoverished area of the wilds; etc. People change and grow (and should change and grow), and whether they radically alter what they believe or not in college, chances are they will be better equipped to parse those beliefs on the other side and to at least offer a more nuanced argument than “I’m certain about this and am shocked that you aren’t.” The problem is that sometimes those certainties, when publically aired with confidence, come back to haunt you down the road. 

            Ultimately, it’s simply impractical to say that no one should express themselves or their views until they’re of an arbitrary age or ambiguous level of experience—though there is an argument to be made that entering a new discourse community requires first acquainting yourself with what the pervading trends in that community are before making yourself heard (God gave us two ears but only one mouth, after all). The solution to the particular problem of things people may have once been certain about being brought up as evidence against them in the future likely lies with reworking the toxicity of call-out culture and in questioning at every stage of one’s personal growth the propriety of posting everything you think at a given time in a place where it can be found and returned to you when you are older, wiser, and perhaps justifiably embarrassed to once again see that old, dirty banner you thought you buried years ago.              

Notes:

[1] Ahmad, Asam. “A Note on Call-Out Culture.” Briarpatch Magazine. Briarpatch Magazine, 2 Mar. 2015. Web. Accessed 24 Aug. 2015. <http://briarpatchmagazine.com/articles/view/a-note-on-call-out-culture>  

[2] ourcatastrophe. “On ‘Call-Out Culture’ And Why I’m Not Into It.” browcatastrophe. Tumblr, n.d. Web. Accessed 24 Aug. 2015. <http://mewmewfoucault.tumblr.com/post/7909863121/on-call-out-culture-and-why-im-not-into-it>   

[3] Ahmad

[4] Ballentine, Claire. “Freshmen Skipping ‘Fun Home’ For Moral Reasons.” The Chronicle. Duke Student Publishing Company, 21 Aug. 2015. Web. Accessed 24 Aug. 2015. <http://www.dukechronicle.com/article/2015/08/freshmen-skipping-fun-home-for-moral-reasons>

[5] Ibid.

[6] TWC News. “Duke University Summer Reading Sparks Controversy.” Time Warner Cable News. Time Warner Cable Enterprises, 24 Aug. 2015. Web. Accessed 24 Aug. 2015. <http://www.twcnews.com/nc/triangle-sandhills/news/2015/08/24/summer-reading-sparks-controversy.html>

[7] Horowitz, Bethamie. “A Tradition of Questioning Tradition.” Forward. The Forward Association, 27 May 2005. Web. Accessed 24 Aug. 2015. <http://forward.com/opinion/3565/a-tradition-of-questioning-tradition/>

[8] “Powerful Photo: College Student ‘Protects’ Police from Ferguson Protestors.” Fox News Insider. FOX News Network, 11 Aug. 2015. Web. Accessed 24 Aug. 2015. Web. <http://insider.foxnews.com/2015/08/11/college-student-protects-police-ferguson-protesters-powerful-photo>

[9] Ibid.    

It Follows (You)

           It Follows is a movie that understands the importance of tension in a good horror film. It’s also a horror movie with a soundtrack so unnerving that it’s frightening to listen to all on its own without the visual context provided by the movie. Disasterpeace’s score is an at times disjointed symphony of discordant noise that builds and ebbs with the action on screen, baiting listeners with periods of quiet that only make you anticipate (and fear) the next jump. Never have I encountered music that so perfectly mirrors the rhythm of a horror film. Like It Follows itself, the soundtrack teases you. Although neither resorts to jump scares often, they both take advantage of the fact that we’re a culture accustomed to them, and they constantly trick you into waiting for a bang that doesn’t come. If there’s going to be a next period in horror, this may very well be it. Jump scares have become so prevalent that a post-jump scare horror culture has to monopolize on it to create new levels of uncertainty and tension without becoming exploitative. Like The Babadook, It Follows is a horror film from which other horror films could learn a thing or two—and not just about how to ration and effectively using jump scares, but also how to use space.

            Horror movies depend upon effectively controlling space. Deliberately restricting the viewpoint of the audience by blocking off areas to the back or side of a character in an uncertain situation, using their body or a door or other obstruction, is old hat by now. We know that we’re being purposefully toyed with and forced to anticipate both what occupies the hidden space and the exact moment that it will be revealed to us (and in what manner and with what aural stinger). The found footage sub-genre of horror that has thoroughly saturated the market at this point is a prime example of space control. It not only forces the viewer into a closer relationship with the events they’re witnessing through a first person perspective but also puts blinders on them and deprives them of the real world “sixth sense” and peripheral vision that would make sensing danger easier. Instead, their senses are restricted only to the visual and the auditory, and the space they can perceive is incredibly limited.

            Restrictive close-ups of faces, frenzied camera jiggling, and quick cuts are all ways that horror movies toy with space and force the viewer into a position of uncertainty; however, David Robert Mitchell makes the wise decision in It Follows to break free from the obvious claustrophobia of close quarters and to instead use more wide angle shots. The old standbys are still present, but It Follows makes good use of the larger world to create more complex spaces that still feel dangerous. There are multiple scenes that focus on the decrepitude of a Detroit neighborhood, for example. By breaking out into a larger world, Mitchell only increases the tension for the viewer because of the nature of the beast at the heart of It Follows. The titular “it” could be anywhere at any given time and could look like anyone. By giving the viewer more space to observe the action, the film also exposes them more thoroughly. Rather than immediately knowing that the threat is behind the characters or off to the side behind a convenient door, the audience is forced to search for and attempt to identify the monster in crowds or in wooded areas. It’s a twisted game of “Where’s Waldo?” that only gets more fiendish when the film switches perspectives to a character that cannot actually see the thing at all. Sometimes it’s easy to identify the antagonist because of its form or because a shot is designed to highlight its presence, but the use of wide open spaces still works effectively as a scare tactic because even if we can’t immediately see the creature, we anticipate its return, and it could be lurking anywhere in the fore-, middle-, or background of any of It Follows’ wider, more open spaces.

            That It Follows is meant to be macabre game of sorts for viewers makes sense given the way that the rules are so handily dispensed by the protagonist Jay’s “boyfriend” Hugh/Jeff, who tells us everything we ever learn about the monster/creature/thing at two points during the film. It’s very convenient and perhaps a bit heavy-handed, but plenty is still left unsaid about the actual nature of the beast. Also, I just so happen to find the rules by which the creature plays spine-tinglingly excellent. Rather than appearing from thin air to shock us repeatedly, the monster has to walk to get to its victims; however, it is always walking straight for them, and it is constantly aware of where they are. It doesn’t speak or rest, and apart from one startling scream during an encounter in a boat house, it never communicates in any way apart from knocking on doors and moving ever closer to its target.

            We learn these facts about the creature early on, and as I previously suggested, it serves the important purpose of making the audience constantly look out for it. Although it can jump out at people, it’s far more common to see it approaching first, and the fear the monster generates has less to do with its appearance than it does with its inexorable nature and the knowledge that if you aren’t seeing it, it’s either en route to you or somewhere you haven’t looked yet. At one point, Jay and friends pull out of her driveway in the car, and as they’re driving away we see a naked man standing on the roof watching them. The implication, of course, is that “it” was literally right on top of them for some time before they left. The viewer must then re-contextualize the previous scenes with the new knowledge that the creature was there all along.

            Moments like this one that force audiences to imagine what they cannot see or are not shown employ what the Gothic writer Ann Radcliffe termed “terror”—a concept apart and different from horror. In her essay “On the Supernatural in Poetry,” Radcliffe distinguishes between terror and horror thusly: “Terror and horror are so far opposite, that the first expands the soul, and awakens the faculties to a higher degree of life; the other contracts, freezes and nearly annihilates them . . . and where lies the great difference between horror and terror, but in . . . uncertainty and obscurity.”[1] Terror, Radcliffe argues, forces the reader (or viewer) to exercise his or her imagination. In this regard, uncertainty or obscurity can be used to more effectively frighten people by making them fill in the gaps themselves. Conversely, horror is simply showing someone something horrific outright. It’s shocking, but “in real life . . . to ascertain the object of our terror, is frequently to acquire the means of escaping it.”[2] In essence, a sense of horror is a fleeting thing. It causes a shock, but once it has revealed itself, it’s often possible to escape from it. Literally, you could say that seeing the monster’s location makes it easier to evade (in some cases). Metaphorically, however, escape comes in the form of a release from tension. Fear is more lasting, then, if people are forced to consider uncertain or obscure elements because without a definitive answer they must turn to their imaginations and a myriad possibilities that are likely more frightening than anything the writer or filmmaker could come up with.

            A good scary movie, in my opinion, uses both terror and horror throughout. They can both be frightening when properly employed, but the use of horror can also turn an otherwise good movie on its head. I usually offer up The Conjuring as an example here. The largely unseen entity is well used for the first two acts of the movie, but when it becomes embodied exclusively in the third and the film devolves into a laughably typical exorcism plot I stopped being afraid and started laughing. The distinction between terror and horror is an imperfect one, though, and while Radcliffe was arguing for the superiority of terror, I believe both have their place. It’s difficult to say what “ratio” of the two is appropriate in general, but I think It Follows specifically does a good job balancing the two. It begins with a tense scene of uncertainty where a girl flees an unknown threat (terror as we struggle to understand what’s going on), then offers up the sight of her mutilated body on the beach (horror as we behold the gore) before settling into a lengthy build-up focused on the protagonist Jay, her friends, and her relationship with Hugh/Jeff (terror as we wait to find out how this story connects to what we’ve already seen).

            Wisely, It Follows ends with terror rather than horror by leaving the fate of the monster uncertain, much of its nature completely undisclosed, and the day-to-day happiness of Jay and Paul in question. Rather than ending with a cheap bang (I’m looking at you, Sinister), It Follows concludes with more uncertainty. The out of focus figure walking behind Jay and Paul might be an ordinary pedestrian, or it might be something else. The screen then cuts to black and to the title “It Follows,” which could be read as an answer to the question of the creature’s survival but also serves as a reminder to the audience—It’s still out there (maybe), we still don’t know what it is or whether it can be killed, and you might very well be next. Rather than granting the audience release, It Follows only offers more tension. It’s a quiet but menacing farewell that wants the audience to stay engaged and to keep imagining as they exit the theater. There’s even a scene in the movie where Jay and Hugh/Jeff go to the movies and encounter “it.” It makes you want to look around at the other people with you there in the dark. It makes you only want to open your door to a knock if it’s accompanied by a familiar voice, and even then you still might find an unwelcome guest crowding into the room behind your pal.

            By all accounts, Mitchell is well aware of the importance of uncertainty to the film. In an interview, he says, “I’m not personally that interested in where ‘it’ comes from. To me, it’s dream logic in the sense that they’re in a nightmare, and when you’re in a nightmare there’s no solving the nightmare. Even if you try to solve it.”[3] Apparently there are rumors of a sequel exploring the origin of “it,” and I cringe at the thought because I know that they’ll inevitably go to the well of demons and spirits that Hollywood keeps dredging from and offer a disappointing, canonical (definitive) answer to a question that doesn’t require one. It puts me in mind of something my Cultural Studies professor once said about the comic book industry—namely that art tends to succeed in spite of the industry rather than because of it. The very notion of “industry,” of course, is industrialized, calling to mind conveyor belt assemblage, mass production, and capitalist money-mindedness. It’s the antithesis of art, and although one can defend the move to capitalize on a profitable idea as logical, it still doesn’t make it right.

            There’s nothing especially frightening about learning that “it” is just another demonic presence lurching after people. What is frightening is a monster that defies explanation. Without an answer from the filmmakers, we can only guess at what “it” is and what “it” means, and we’re likely to continually cycle through the possibilities in a manner that recalls the creature’s own shapeshifting. It’s more threatening this way because its identity is uncertain and because that uncertainty allows it to defy the schema by which we qualify, compartmentalize, and usually put away horrific things. It recalls a Lovecraftian universe in which there are things that simply defy human understanding. Fans of the Hannibal Lecter novels and films were disappointed by the origin story on offer in Hannibal Rising because its explanation of Hannibal reduced his inscrutable quality (his intelligence and his brutality) to something known and trite.

            Not everyone has my imagination, though, and the mixed viewer reviews—with people despising It Follows for not being scary and others giving it more credit than it deserves—suggest that people either really like the focus on uncertainty or feel short-changed by it (and/or the obvious allegory between sexuality, disease, and a monster that cannot be stopped and can only ever be temporarily evaded, surrendered to, or passed along to some new innocent). “Generally speaking,” writes Peter Debruge for Variety, “horror is only as potent as whatever fear it exploits, and ‘It Follows’ relies a bit too heavily on a wobbly venereal-disease allegory.”[4] Arguably It Follows does have other thematic interests, however. Specifically, the film focuses on morality and the fear of death, the latter of which is inevitable and often impossible to recognize in advance. The movie incorporates passages from T. S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” and a couple quotes from Fyodor Dostoevsky’s The Idiot. Clearly It Follows has aspirations beyond simply invoking the classic horror films of the seventies and eighties with its period piece look, music, and poster design. John Carpenter’s The Thing is a clear inspiration for the creature, but there are also bits of music that sound somewhat familiar. To my ear, there is a little of the Halloween theme in It Follows’ “Detroit,” for example.

It Follows' poster has a certain "retro" quality.[5]

            It Follows might seem to be somewhat hamstrung thematically by associating its monster with sexual disease, but it also feels like an appropriate, self-conscious literalization of a theme that underlies many more traditional slasher movies like Friday the Thirteenth. I wrote the following post on the subject on Tumblr a while back:

“It’s pretty clear that the Friday the 13th films embody the duality of Americans’ fascination/repulsion regarding sexuality–the heavy-breathing voyeurism, on one hand, and the deeply-ingrained puritanical desire to stifle (or shame, etc.) on the other. Viewers are able to enjoy the creepy, peeking camera and then experience the catharsis of seeing Jason murder (in first person, no less) the objects of their misbegotten desire. They are able to project their guilt over their desire (their subconscious sense of their own perversity) onto Jason as he violently annihilates the erotic tableau that has caused them so much confusion. The films are essentially torture porn for the guilty consciousness of a nation that continues to insist ‘she was asking for it’ and to simultaneously emulate (even worship) and vilify the perceived amoral virility of youth culture.”[6]

Horror films have often linked sexuality and the subsequent murder of characters. It Follows might appear to be stating the obvious by making things so explicit, but it feels like a long overdue open acknowledgement of the way that we like to associate youthful promiscuity and experimentation with extermination. While there is some sense that “Mitchell creates a situation where the infected are super-motivated to pass it on,” it also highlights the importance of the disclosure of health issues for prospective sexual partners.[7] Consent requires knowing what you’re getting into, and a reading of It Follows as symbolic of a rampant serial infection like AIDS thanks to unprotected sex (or sex with strangers) works as well. A culture that is complicit with these behaviors is a culture stalked by a monster that could easily come almost anyone’s way.

            Furthermore, although the disease angle is certainly a valid interpretation of the film’s events, the plot also deals with issues of morality. Jay and the other bearers of the curse have a difficult choice to make when faced with the fact that they are marked for death. The seemingly right thing to do is to either try to outrun the monster forever or to surrender to the inevitable and die without passing it on and hurting someone else. Of course, surrendering isn’t necessarily the moral thing to do since your own death only sends the monster to the next person in line. They might be a scumbag who knowingly tricked someone else into taking on the curse, or they could be a complete innocent who didn’t know what they had or what they were doing. By passing the curse on, you can prolong your own life in addition to the lives of those before you in the chain, though you are also likely committing a heinous immoral offense if you trick someone else into taking on the curse. The least selfish action seems to be to run and to keep running as long as possible. You guarantee your own suffering but postpone that of the other folks in line and do not curse others; however, any good you do (even by staying alive as long as possible without further spreading the curse) only postpones rather than eliminates the harm that will eventually come to other people. Again, It Follows refuses to give easy answers, and with the unnamed girl in the opening, Jay, and Hugh/Jeff it offers a poignant depiction of the madness and amorality that come from trying to solve the unsolvable quandary.

            Similarly, It Follows examines the ambiguity of human sexuality and the cultural baggage with which it is saddled. After having sex with Hugh/Jeff, Jay ruminates on her growth from girl into young woman. She talks about her dreams of holding hands and sitting in a car—not to go places necessarily but just to be there—and it all sounds very much like how we tend to paint love, sex, and monogamy in idealistic terms. You could argue that It Follows is an anti-premarital sex PSA that uses the scare tactics of rampant, inescapable, deadly disease and the fact that a single sexual encounter essentially forces Jay into several others to suggest that sex outside of marriage cheapens the experience of relationships with other people. The evidence is all there to back up such a reading, but I think it is ultimately undermined by the aforementioned reflections by Jay herself who, after recalling her childlike interest in relationships, asks Hugh/Jeff (and likely herself), “But where do we go now?”

            These musings are accompanied by shots of Jay toying with a plant growing from the asphalt beside Hugh/Jeff’s parked car. In a sense, the plant symbolizes Jay’s romantic development. Born and raised in soil, she has blossomed to find a world of asphalt and dilapidated buildings. She lives on the edge of Detroit, a city with a sense of rampant decay in the film. Literally, Jay has to wonder where she goes from her comfortable suburb when the world outside it seems to be on the downslope. Symbolically (metaphorically), she has found that the idealism of sex that she grew up with has no foundation in reality. There’s nothing to it really. It is what it is: underwhelming and bereft of arcane meaning. Reality fails to live up to expectation. You could argue that this sense of directionless (“But where do we go now?” From here; from sex) actually reinforces the PSA reading, but at no point does It Follows suggest that waiting or marriage are better answers. Parents are sorely lacking in the film almost to the point of stretching believability, but what parents we do meet are not happily married either. Jay has only her mother, and several shots focus on the father in photographs that is clearly missing from the family’s current living situation. Greg seems to only have a mother as well. Hugh/Jeff also has a single parent. At least, these are the only parents we hear about or see. If It Follows is a critique of premarital sex, then it’s missing half the message. If it’s a critique of the idealization of sex, though, the message comes through loud and clear. Love doesn’t exist. Sex is still a Big Deal in the film because of the monster that comes with it, but the actual act is meaningless.

            It Follows’ plot is almost cruel in its efforts to make Jay see this meaninglessness. She has sex with one man who lies to her about his identity and his reasons for being with her in the first place. She has sex with another man who doesn’t believe that her problems are real to try to solve those problems, and when he dies, she may or may not have had sex with multiple strangers at once to try to save her life. She finds herself increasingly alienated from her romantic notions of love and sex, and when she finally thinks she can find a measure of that old idealism with her longtime friend Paul, she only finds more of the same nothing.

            Paul himself is an insufferable “good guy”—the “friendzoned” gentleman, the pencil-necked “beta male” who deserves the girl but can’t get her because she only likes “jerks.” He’s the worst part of a superficial reading of It Follows because of how he seems to vindicate that sort of “good guy” myth. He eventually gets the girl, after all. And yet, Paul also finds that sex with Jay is not what he thought it would be. Afterward, they ask one another if they feel any different. The obvious implication of this question is that they are trying to determine if the creature is still alive (if Jay now feels less cursed while Paul feels a sense of foreboding); additionally, though, the question is about the sex itself and their relationship. Does Jay feel better now that she’s been with this “good guy” who risked his life to save her? Does Paul feel better now that he’s been with Jay? Neither feels any different. It’s just more sex. We see them holding hands in the final scene of the film, but neither one looks happy. On the one hand, there is still the potential supernatural threat: The camera pans up to the window looking out onto the open expanse of a yard and the concealing foliage at its edge when the two are having sex; the composition of the final shot of the movie emphasizes the space between the two and the out of focus figure following in their wake.

            If not deadly, sex is still instilled with none of the idealistic weight we often attribute it in It Follows. True to itself to the end, the movie refuses to tell us the truth about the monster or its survival, makes us only guess at what transpires between Jay and the men on a boat we see her wade towards in one scene, leaves only a question mark in the wake of another where Paul drives through town past a pair of prostitutes after having sex with the cursed Jay, and ultimately undermines whatever happiness its ending and the relationship it presents with more doubt.

            It is existential dread—the failure of ideals, the death of the promise and blissful ignorance of childhood, and literal death. The “it” in the title of It Follows might just be the monster, or AIDS, or it could suggest that something follows after something else. Disappointment follows sex. Death follows life. It all follows you as long as you’re alive.

Notes:

[1] Radcliffe, Ann. “On the Supernatural in Poetry.” The New Monthly Magazine 7 (1826): 145-52. Print. (Note that this is one possible source for “On the Supernatural in Poetry.” Since I have yet to find a full version myself, I have to rely on indirect quotes from other sources. The quotations featured here are sourced as page six of “On the Supernatural in Poetry” and clearly do not correspond to the version cited above, though obviously they should appear fairly early in it.)

[2] Ibid.

                                                                                 

[3] Rawson-Jones, Ben. “Exploring the Horror of It Follows: David Robert Mitchell Interview.” Digital Spy. Hearst Magazines UK, 8 Mar. 2015. Web. Accessed 31 Jul. 2015. <http://www.digitalspy.com/movies/interviews/a633564/exploring-the-horror-of-it-follows-david-robert-mitchell-interview.html#~pk3JrCZhirHXlr>

[4] Debruge, Peter. “Cannes Film Review: ‘It Follows.’” Variety. Variety Media, 28 May 2014. Web. Accessed 31 Jul. 2015. <http://variety.com/2014/film/festivals/cannes-film-review-it-follows-1201194726/>

[5] Film Fan. “It Follows (poster).” Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, 17 Mar. 2015. Web. Accessed 31 Jul. 2015. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/It_Follows>   

[6] MStatoNation. “On the ‘Friday the 13^th’ Series.” The Taco Ranch. Tumblr, 2014. Web. Accessed 31 Jul. 2015. <http://mstatonation.tumblr.com/post/101606971801/on-the-friday-the-13th-series>(Note that I trotted out the concept of “catharsis” here—a notion that an audience’s tension can be released through something like the projection of those tensions onto a safe outlet that dates to Aristotle—however, I no longer necessarily believe that catharsis exists in the sense that it is often used: namely by defenders of violent media as an explanation for how consumption of said media deters violent behavior. Various other theories of social development have roundly disproved catharsis in the arena of practicality as anything more than a theory, but it still gets mentioned a lot. Sometimes by me.)

 

[7] Debruge. 

Fridging Ms. Shayla (a Mr. Robot story)

          

"The intertitle of the TV show." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, 5 Jun. 2015.

           At the end of this past week’s Mr. Robot, hacker extraordinaire Elliot opens the trunk of a car and discovers the dead body of his girlfriend and former morphine hookup Shayla. This is supposed to be a devastating moment for Elliot and for the audience—Shayla has been in the series since the premiere and she and Elliot only just recently made their relationship official. We barely knew her, but, perhaps more importantly still as far as this particular episode is concerned, Elliot endangered himself, Darlene, and countless others to release Shayla’s violent supplier (who Elliot put away for drugging and raping Shayla) from prison. He was promised Shayla’s safe return in exchange for his assistance, and, of course, anyone who has ever watched a movie or TV series in the thriller genre knew from the get-go that the effort was doomed. Situations like these never turn out well, especially for the women.

            Elliot finds Shayla’s corpse in a car, but she might as well have been in a refrigerator. If that statement sounds nonsensical, then this post is for you. The “women in refrigerators” trope (verb—“fridging” a female character) was given its name by comics writer Gail Simone in “honor” of a story from DC’s Green Lantern series in which the hero returns home to find his girlfriend murdered and literally stuffed into a refrigerator to cause him as much harm as possible. TV Tropes summarizes the specific story briefly and offers the following description of the trope: “[A]ny [usually female] character who is targeted by an antagonist who has them killed off, abused, raped, incapacitated, de-powered, or brainwashed for the sole purpose of affecting another character, motivating them to take action.”[1] This is essentially a cheap tactic designed to elicit an emotional response from readers. It often represents lazy writing and also devalues the life of the character killed, reducing them to little more than a motivating factor for someone else’s story.[2] Does that mean that every female character death is an example of fridging? No. Is it always easy to distinguish a cheap fridging from a meaningful death? Definitely not—though Simone offers some thoughts on the difference on the blog where she documents fridged characters in comics.

            Simone notes the obvious counter-argument to the problem of “women in refrigerators”—that “male superheroes ALSO get beat up, cut up, and killed up”—however, she goes on to say that the percentages are off (fewer major female characters of note means that each death essentially “counts” for more), but also that “male characters tend to die differently than female ones.”[3] While the men tend to die heroically and nobly on their own terms, the women are often first abducted, tortured, or violated as “shock value seems to be a major motivator in the [female] deaths more often than not.”[4] Because these women were already often fixtures in the lives of male characters (the girlfriend, the wife, the sister, the mother, etc.), their deaths often do less to characterize them or serve as a dramatic ending to their own lives and instead serve to motivate or characterize the men around them in the story. From an audience perspective, there’s just something especially horrid about the deaths of women and children, and I suspect that it’s primarily a result of gendered expectations and a thoroughly masculinist society. “Women and children first,” after all. They’re the weak ones, and when we see them butchered or even just endangered, we instantly get upset. Men are often the action heroes and the ones who instigate and fight back; therefore, we have less of an instinctual desire to see them protected or unharmed.

            As far as I know, there is no codified method for figuring out what constitutes a fridging. In terms of Mr. Robot, specifically, I offer the following evidence that suggests Shayla’s death was an example of the “women in refrigerators” trope. First and foremost, as a character, Shayla has only ever been understood as a part of Elliot’s life. Her own interiority is a complete mystery, and we’ve only ever encountered her by way of Elliot, whereas characters like Darlene and especially Angela have segments apart from Elliot where we see them do their own thing without having the experience colored by Elliot’s presence, his narration, or his subjective point of view. We know very little about Shayla as a person, and what we do know comes about because Elliot specifically asks her to tell him about herself when he asks her out. Although we’re over halfway through the first season, Shayla remains a non-entity. Admittedly, there are other characters we know very little about as well, but when we’re talking about Shayla and her involvement in the story, which has presumably ended, the possibility of further development down the road is no longer an excuse of sorts. Granted, we could see her developed further through flashbacks (a la Abigail Hobbs on NBC’s Hannibal), but as of right now her development is finished. She died the way she lived—a supporting character in another person’s story. 

            At this point, it’s hard not to see Shayla’s death as the pay-off from the time and effort the writers put into developing a relationship between Elliot and Shayla and Elliot, Shayla, and the audience. We got to know her just well enough to care about her so that her death would matter. Not to mention the fact that she’s already been victimized once already (drugged and raped) to drive Elliot to give up his morphine hookup and put the vile Vera away. Shayla was only ever adjacent to the main plot action of the series (taking care of Elliot’s dog at times, serving as an impromptu date to Elliot’s boss’s party). I have admittedly been bothered by how Elliot has varying degrees of romantic tension/possibility with so many members of the female cast. He’s been attached to Shayla, but it’s been suggested that he wants to be with Angela. Darlene is still a bit of a wildcard; however, the way that she’s been treated as something like a grungier version of a “manic pixie dream girl” makes her seem like a male fantasy and potential partner also.[5] Like I said before, though, Angela definitely seems to be striking out on her own and acquiring more agency apart from Elliot and her ex-boyfriend. Conversely, Shayla’s role on the show has only ever been defined by her position next to Elliot, and we never really saw her in her own element, though her night on the town with Angela hinted at possibilities we’ll never see bear any fruit (and I’m not just talking about the kiss the two shared in a bathroom). What I’m saying is, “Rest in peace, Shayla. We hardly knew ye.”

            I initially wrote a largely ambivalent post about Mr. Robot. It’s since grown on me somewhat by striking a balance between visual artistry and good old fashioned thrilling that has been skewed significantly toward the former over the latter on Hannibal this year. It’s also a show with an interest in detail and being as accurate as possible with its depictions of hacking and technology. This past week’s episode of Mr. Robot has left a bad taste in my mouth, though. The fact that the show held the moment between Elliot’s opening the trunk and the ultimate reveal of Shayla’s body as long as possible despite the fact that the audience would immediately know what he found based on Rami Malek’s response feels exploitative at worst. At best, it serves to characterize Malek’s character, but we’ve already talked about what it means when a woman dies just to motivate a man. If Mr. Robot really wanted to break out into new territory, it should have exploited the audience’s expectation of what was in the trunk and then had Shayla live. Instead, it’s gone down a familiar road so well-trod, so hackneyed, and so offensively lazy that the show is going to have a hard time earning back my respect. One could argue that I shouldn’t be as pissed off about this as I am. It’s nothing new or shocking, after all, but that’s precisely why I’m sick of it. It’s not just disgusting, it’s boring.

Notes:

[1] “Stuffed into the Fridge.” TV Tropes. TV Tropes, 30 Jul. 2015. Web. Accessed 2 Aug. 2015. <http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/StuffedIntoTheFridge>   

[2] Ibid.

[3] “Fan Gail Simone Responds.” Women in Refrigerators. N.p., n.d. Web. Accessed 2 Aug. , 2015. <http://lby3.com/wir/r-gsimone.html> 

[4] Ibid.

[5] The “manic pixie dream girl” is another trope that reduces a woman to little more than a fixture in a male character’s life. The “manic pixie dream girl” is a male fantasy. Often an outspoken guy’s girl, she enlivens the life of a male character through her quirky or eccentric behavior that helps him come out of his shell or break out of his funk. Again, this character exists solely for the benefit of her male counterpart. Darlene’s vulgarity (her casual remark about cum stains on her clothes, for example), her masculine assertiveness, and her penchant for just appearing in Elliot’s apartment marks her as a “manic pixie dream girl.” For more on the trope see: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ManicPixieDreamGirl