Every year around Halloween, I rent a bunch of horror movies from the 70s and 80s and watch them over a couple of days. Typically, this includes at least one Friday the 13th movie, and this year was no exception.
It’s my favorite horror series, and I’m not always sure why. Largely nostalgia, I suppose; my mom was always pretty indulgent with letting me watch R-rated movies as a child, so I think by the time I was about 12 I had seen all the movies up to that date. It’s certainly not about quality; I like Friday the 13th more, but I have to admit that the original Halloween is a much better movie. I have to say that the music is quite good, especially in the early ones – the scratchy strings and of course, the ch-ch-ch ha-ha-ha (or, for you purists, ki-ki-ki ma-ma-ma) “breathing” motif (but there again, Halloween’s legendary score has it beat).
So it’s got to be Jason Voorhees, then. Wielder of the machete, wearer of the goalie mask. No surprise; he’s the central figure and, let’s be fair, semi-protagonist of the franchise. But here’s the thing:
Jason makes no sense.
There’s no proper explanation for him. He was a deformed and possibly developmentally disabled child who apparently drowned in Crystal Lake, but it turns out he didn’t, or maybe he did and came back from the dead somehow. He’s not really a zombie, but he is undead; but even before he became truly supernatural when he was killed in Part IV and rose from the grave in Part VI, he was able to take crazy amounts of punishment. In Part VIII he gets hit with toxic waste and somehow reverts back to a little boy, which is ignored in Jason Goes To Hell, in which he’s a magical, body-hopping creature. Which, in turn, is ignored in Jason X where they talk about him having regenerative properties like Wolverine.
And fans wondered why the recent Friday the 13th remake/reboot didn’t do a Batman Begins/Casino Royale and delve into the character of Jason? Take a look at that previous paragraph and tell me how the hell you would do that. He’s not a character, he’s a big scary guy who walks around killing whoever he comes upon. Jason is a gimmick – and I say that as someone who loves Jason. A good gimmick is still a gimmick, and Jason as a horror icon owes everything – everything – to being a fantastic visual; there’s no reason in the story or thematically why he should be wearing a hockey mask, but it works to create a haunting image.
But I watched His Name Was Jason, a fairly fluffy documentary about the film series, and most of the cast and crew involved tried to offer up some kind of justification for Jason. It’s to be expected – this was made by fans, for fans, so they had to say something that sounded deep and worthy other than “because he looks cool.”
So most of what they say revolved around the idea of Jason getting revenge for being tormented as a child for being different and being left to drown by inattentive camp counselors; someone on the DVD said he was both the killer and the victim. But I really don’t have any sympathy for this brutal killing machine. And yes, a lot of the people he kills in the movies “have it coming” in the logic of the film – there’s the mean jock, the trampy brunette, the annoying stoner, and so on – but in the real world, I should hope nobody looks upon those things as being punishable by death.
And yet, I think we’re on the right track there. Because these are kids who, to borrow a phrase from Philip K Dick, were punished too much for what they did. Much has been made about the conservative tone of these movies in which sex and drugs = death, but it’s not like there isn’t some real-world precedent for that. If you have unprotected sex, there are possible repercussions – unwanted pregnancy or disease, and if there’s disease, then possibly death. If you smoke, you run the risk of developing health problems and, again, possibly death. You drink too much, there’s health problems there too, or you could run your car into a tree.
Basically, the world can punish you for wanting to have a little fun.
Someone else in the DVD described the “teens go into the woods without adult supervision” plotline as “ritualized,” and that’s dead-on, because it is a ritual. You might ask why people keep going to Crystal Lake if there’s a chance you could get your head split in half with a machete. But then people do all the things mentioned in the previous paragraph when there’s also a chance that bad things will happen as a result. Always have, always will, and I’m certainly in no position to judge anyone. Sometimes you get away with it. Sometimes you don’t. It’s random and senseless and unfair and brutal.
And that’s why Jason is the perfect vehicle for this metaphor, and why I think these movies resonate with people, whether consciously or unconsciously. Because a complex character would muddy it up too much. Jason is Fate, Jason is Consequence, and those things do not really operate with any rhyme or reason. Why does Jason wear a hockey mask? Why does he keep coming back from the dead? Why do bad things happen to good people? Sometimes they just do.
And that’s what Friday the 13th really means, Charlie Brown.
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Jason waited too long to go into space. Everyone knows the fourth one’s supposed to be in space. I mean, c’mon.
Still waiting for Nightmare on USS Elm Street: In Space.
A very interesting analysis. I just always thought he was a slow-moving doofus that, for some inexplicable reason no one could run away from.
But I think that describes Fate too.
I’d like to see a Friday the 13th where Jason suffers a handicap within the first five minutes of the film – specifically, he’s blinded. What does he do then? He’s still got all these urges to kill, but he can’t find anyone and he keeps bumping into trees and shit. Does his mother come back from the grave to help him out? Does he sit around and sulk? Does he befriend a fellow sociopath?
I think it may have been Rita Mae Brown who said this, but the whole “sex and drugs = death” thing in slasher films seems to me not so much to be about reinforcing Puritan values (because, really, that doesn’t square at all with all the gratuitous gore and nudity) as it is about the journey to adulthood. With the fun bits of being an adult (sex, alcohol, etc.) comes danger, and you realize that you’re mortal and that the world can kill you.
A few years back, some friends of mine and I sat around and sassed out the “nature”, so to speak, of the Big Three slasher baddies. What we came up with was:
Freddy is (obviously) a demon;
Jason is a force of nature;
and Michael Myers is…really, REALLY determined.
Sorry, but to me, Jason was always the dumbed-down ripoff who got more attention and better distribution because he was produced by a major studio (wheras all the GOOD horror in the ’70’s and ’80’s- yer PHANTASMS and EVIL DEADS and RE-ANIMATORS- was all sneaking around trying to avoid the wrath of the MPAA).I mean, sure, Freddy and Michael turned into self-parody the instant the sequels started, but at least the first ones were good stuff. But even the original FRIDAY was a lame ripoff- it’s TWITCH OF THE DEATH NERVE without the plot twists and geniune nihlism.Of course, I was a full-fledged grown-up when these things came out, so I was probably already too old for them…in a twisted way, despite the nudity and gore, on an emotional and mental level, Jason and the other “slashers” are children’s characters as surely as any superhero comic.(Hmmm…maybe THAT’s the secret of their appeal…)
TWITCH OF THE DEATH NERVE’s plot really confused me. At the end it really seemed like everyone in the movie was killing everyone else, in some sort of gorier variant on the third CLUE ending.
I’m an Evil Dead man myself. So, what drmedula said.
“to borrow a phrase from Philip K Dick, were punished too much for what they did.”
Which sounds a lot like “More sinn’d against than sinning” from Shakespeare’s King Lear (King Lear Act 3, scene 2, 57–60)
Oddly enough, I watched the exact same documentary on Halloween, and I wound up giggling at all of the attempts to portray Jason as tormented, or secretly victim and killer, or all of the other rationales they came up with for the character. I thought that the best description I read was in an interview with the writer of “Jason X” (still the best one, dangit!)…he said Jason was like a shark. He sees people, he kills them. Because he enjoys it. He is the exact opposite of conflicted or tormented. He is pure, purposeless, remorseless, unstoppable death. All you can do is run like hell and hope you’re not where he is.
Y’know, the Freddy vs. Jason vs. Ash comics (the first volume of which was based on the long-rumored screenplay) have established that Jason is a special kind of Deadite, his mom having used the Necronomicon to bring him back to life.
That works for me.
Correct me if I’m wrong but the Necronomicon does appear in Jason Goes to Hell. That would support rwe11338’s theory. Either that or its just a terrible retcon.
In addition, In Jason takes Manhattan the crew sets sail on a cruise ship from Crystal Lake to head for NY. Where is Crystal Lake that it is connected by some sort of channel or stream or creek… or something?
Jason is the movie equivalent of the Joker. He’s pure deadly chaos, and that he doesn’t have a reason or make any kind of sense is vital to his threat. He’s like a stray bullet from a shootout: violent, pointless, unpredictable, and uncaring of what it hits.
I read somewhere that the “sex and death” combo made famous by the series was, at least in part, a financial decision. By combining the sex scenes with the bizarro murders, they could work in the maximum amount of both in each movie, thereby drawing in the fans in large numbers. It’s not the whole story, I’m sure, but it’s something to consider.
Didn’t Jason acquire the hockey mask from a victim in #3? In any case, my fave of the series is JASON X where he goes into space. They oughta re-boot the ALIEN/S series by remaking it with an Alien instead of Jason.
Seriously.
There’s a lotta cool sci-fi ideas in JASON X and like RE-ANIMATOR, it’s one of the few movies where a character gets decapitated and still gets to finish the movie.
I’m not big fan of the slasher genre (I thought Freddy v Jason was a hoot in a comic book sort of way), but it seems particularly silly to try to find depth or character in an undead slug wearing a hockey mask (a type of mask that doesn’t even exist anymore to boot).
He’s not a victim, or a force of nature, or a metaphor of growning up. He’s just a plot device: the anti-maguffin. Staying away from him is the entire plot of 10 movies (discounting the first one and Jason v Freddy). Maguffins are cool, because you want to know what’s inside the suitcase or box or trunk or locker. But there’s nothing there but the demans of the plot. Same with Jason.
When do we get to hear your pitch for the Jason meets Final Destination cross-over?
Also, keep in mind the original Friday the 13th didn’t even feature Jason. It featured Jason’s deranged mother. In that sense, it wasn’t about a conservative fate conspiring to murder liberal teenagers, but about a bunch of haves being executed by a crazed and jealous have-not.
The best part of Jason is the lack of logic. It is very possible to analyze something to death.
Jason is scarier and cooler as an inexplicable and apparently unstoppable juggernaut. He’s sort of like the critters in Alien that way. (Seriously, what alien genius came up with the bright idea of shipping those things across the galaxy, especially in such large quantities? How does someone not know that is a Bad Idea?)
Just accept that Jason is more of a plot device than a character, and enjoy a bunch of high school stereotypes get filleted. I, for one, really don’t want twenty minutes of psycho analysis of my monsters to interfere with my movie.
“It is very possible to analyze something to death.”
Ooooh, Now THAT would be a plot.
I am personally all for more “versus” movies. Aliens vs Predator didnt work, nor did Freddy vs Jason. I think its because they are not fighting ENOUGH people. Jason vs Aliens vs Mike Myers vs Predator vs Rocky vs Captain Haddock… now thats a surefire hit.
drmedula: Very much agree about Jason and Freddy being children’s characters for grownups. Freddy vs. Jason was basically a supervillain vs. supervillain movie (but I love it just the same).
Josh: Either that or they sprung for an amphibious cruise boat.
And for all y’alls who say movies like this shouldn’t be overanalyzed … dude, I graduated college with an English major. I have a DEGREE in overanalyzing things.
“He’s sort of like the critters in Alien that way. (Seriously, what alien genius came up with the bright idea of shipping those things across the galaxy, especially in such large quantities? How does someone not know that is a Bad Idea?)”
I thought it was pretty clear that the dead alien in the first movie was just an innocent victim of the chest burster, and that the crew of the Nostramo was just the next bunch of idiots to have the same thing happen to them.
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Also, Freddy as Fate works on so many levels. Often, the most dominant, controlling force in life is some idiot who hides behind a mask and does untold damage to everyone around him for some stupid reason that makes no sense to anyone but himself.
That documentary on Jason couldn’t have been any better than this one on Michael Myers … er, were the latter even real, I mean.
I’m just impressed(?) you can sit through all those movies, much less try to write any justification for the character 🙂
John has it right. Just a nearly empty plot device to move along scenes of inventive gory deaths and some T&A.
It brings to mind a scary comic I once saw, one of those short stories in one of those anthology deals, like Creepy or Tales From the Spooky Place… I think it was British… anyway, “Bear-Bear.” It was about a new mother waking up one night and (spoilers!) finding a little teddy bear wandering the house. It’s clear that it’s making for her baby, so she tries to stop it and becomes seriously wounded because to touch the thing is death. And that’s what it is… infant death syndrome incarnate, pointless, unfeeling, horrific, the simple terrible unfairness of life, perfectly conveyed by its soulless black teddy-bear eyes. And I’d say there’s some of that in Jason.
He is the merciless dissatisfaction of a child, completely without empathy. Is there anything worse than a kid throwing a temper tantrum? Don’t we sometimes see a glimpse of something inhuman in a child’s displays of vindictiveness? Something we cover with adult civility, but which remains forever near the core of us. That’s why I rolled my eyes at Jason X. Because they changed his mask! They gave him angry eyes! Idiots…
The hockey mask works because those simple black circles convey no emotion. If someone kills you because they’re angry, well, at least that’s understandable. True horror is when you are killed by something which simply does not care.
Was I the only one rooting for Jason in Freedy vs. Jason? Somehow he was more sympathetic.
And the confusion comes from mistranslation. It’s actually the story of poor Yacob Vorstein, a sad fat Jewish kid sent to a fat camp and tormented by anti-semetic counselors and other kids. He was drowned when a pork chop hit his head while swimming. Now he roams the woods, seeking to keep all within it kosher. Or else.
I’ve never liked these sorts of movies. And the fact that the kids who get high and have sex are the ones who die is one of the things that bother me. I’ve always been disturbed by superstitious morality, in which people who do ‘wrong’ are punished in some way which has no cause-and effect relationship with their offense.
And I don’t think it makes a lot of dramatic sense, either. Wouldn’t it be more terrifying if the victims were completely random and unpredictable?
Gustopher, I don’t know why, but the alien eggs in the ship look like cargo to me, not a nest. The crashed ship just doesn’t have that Geiger look to it, in my opinion. I could be wrong.
And Justin, I get English majors. My sister is one. We spend hours watching bad SyFy movies and tearing them apart. There’s nothing wrong with analyzing it, I just think that you’re looking at it wrong to see Jason as a character, rather than a element of the setting. I think Friday the 13th is more of a haunted house story, than a psychotic killer story. Horribly bad things, often inexplicable, happen to anyone who ventures into the Crystal Lake area.
Oh, don’t get me wrong; I did say “He’s not a character, he’s a big scary guy who walks around killing whoever he comes upon.” He’s still able to *represent* something, though: that sort of senseless, finger-of-God, disproportionate punishment.
“There are thousands of people in the world having a carefree time with no consequence, but YOU are going to get bit in the ass for it.” *hack*
Joe England: “The hockey mask works because those simple black circles convey no emotion. If someone kills you because they’re angry, well, at least that’s understandable. True horror is when you are killed by something which simply does not care.”
Which is why Michael Myers is so effective in the HALLOWEEN movies.
‘cuz he’s wearing a William Shatner mask.
I was writing about the Wolverine Origins game earlier and came to a similar conclusion. Jason and Logan have something in common.
They are brutal, unstoppable killing machines whose fanbase continually has to come up with traumatic backstories to explain their violence.
It’s total crap. Just enjoy the characters for the vicarious thrill that is there. Don’t get twisted in knots trying to come up with a moral explanation for what they do.
I tell ya…Steve Ditko wouldn’t put up with that crap.