I've already addressed my opinions on the societal shun of horror films. I think that horror films are much more inventive and experimental than traditional genre films and I wish more of my peers appreciated their subtle depth and creativity. This post is specifically about the second installment of The Purge, which I highly encourage everyone watch. Unlike the original, The Purge: Anarchy is a slick thriller with a moral message about class, race, and oppression. I will briefly discuss the horror aesthetics in this film (and its original) before discussing this interconnected themes of hierarchy and exploitation. The cultural scholar and common person alike would greatly benefit from exploring these themes on the silver screen (even with a bit of gore). It may not need saying, but this post will contain spoilers of both films.
The Purger: Anarchy Trailer. Retrieved from YouTube.
The first film was typical of its genre. There were cliche pop-out-from-behind-a-corner fake scares, misdirection, and a dearth of larger meaning than the human urge to kill. The film centered around the near future where a government has issued a 24-hour lift of all laws allowing society to "purge" through murder, robbery, etc. This results in a lower crime rate through the rest of the year and a boon in sales of home defense systems. The first film followed a family that had a break-in in their home after the young son tried to save a man being hunted in their neighborhood. This film was simply okay, an interesting idea poorly executed and mostly abandoned for the cheap and easy scares. I almost didn't go see the second film because of my disappointment in the first. I'm very glad that I didn't miss it.
The Purge: Anarchy focuses on the streets that are ravaged by roaming bands of vigilantes and the mysterious presence of military and government forces patrolling the streets. A Malcolm X type figure (Carmelo) becomes a prominent character who preaches that the purge is a government tactic to eradicate the poor (and subsequently, minorities) in order to keep the crime rate down during the year. We find out during the film that the government is targeting low income neighborhoods, kidnapping people, and performing genocides of the lower classes. One black woman and her daughter are saved from this government kidnapping by a (white) purger looking for revenge on the man who killed his son in a car accident.
Two scenes stand out for me as particularly shocking and expressive. The father of the woman saved from government forces disappears early in the film. The daughter and granddaughter find out that he has sold himself to a rich white family for $100,000 to allow them to purge in the safety of their home. The white family has literally bought a poor, black body as if it were property, to ruthlessly destroy and exploit it without exposing themselves to the risks of the purge. There is a poignant frame where the nuclear family is standing around the father wielding weapons in their pristine suits and plastic-wrapped living room of expensive art. Their massacre of this man will be their new art, their secret expression of white privilege that protects their valuables, status, and domination over the lower class.
Auctioneer before the hunt. Retrieved from this site.
The second powerful scene is shown briefly at the end of the trailer where a woman in a blue dress announces before a seated group of people in fancy dress that they have collected the last purge of the evening. The main characters are released into a pitch black maze where the highest bidders enter with night vision goggles and weapons to hunt them down. There are obvious echoes here about the purchasing of bodies as in the previous scene, but it also echoes themes from Richard Connell's "The Most Dangerous Game." This short story is about a stranded man looking for protection who ends up being hunted down for sport like an animal in a rich man's safari game. Humans being the most cunning (and thus perhaps most satisfying to kill) animal provides an elevated type of sport than the traditional hunt. Indeed, the highest bidders in The Purge: Anarchy wear traditional British fox hunting uniforms as if they were out in a normal hunting activity and not viciously murdering other people. In a quite satisfying ending, I will simply mention that the group manages to get a hold of one of the night vision goggles and weapons, making the hunt more of a fair fight.
Both of these scenes highlight for me the interrelationship between class and race and the exploitative powers of a system that only reifies the lasting order and undervalues the lives of poor and minority bodies. In this film, both the rich and the government specifically target and kill blacks, the homeless, deviants, and youth in an attempt to eradicate and "purge" the society of perceived evils. This movie asks us all to reflect on who is in power, what oppressive acts are they committing, and who does society really serve. Both the murderers and the white families who can afford to lock up and hide are complicit in the exploitation and eradication of people deemed unworthy of life. Just as a police officer in Ferguson made a decision of life and death for Michael Brown, The Purge: Anarchy asks us to consider who is in control and what those consequences are. Who gets to define who is worthy of life? Who gets to define how punishment is laid out? Who is in control of our streets, our livelihoods, our identities as targets or as civilians?
Carmelo, leader of the anti-purge movement. Retrieved from this site.
Carmelo is trying to start a revolt against this system. He targets the rich, white, and off-limits bodies to upend the genocide of the poor and the minorities. His tactics are in part successful, at least in saving the lives of the main characters, but his ultimate goal is left unfulfilled. Will it take violent revolution to change the system? Can violence itself do anything but reify the use of violence as a peace-keeping tactic? If anything can be learned in the current state of Ferguson, it is that the tensions between authority, race, and class run deep, and define for entire groups of people their ability to claim a place on this earth free from fear and death. That is unacceptable and violates the very basics of human rights. The Purge: Anarchy brings these themes to life in an exaggerated thriller that asks us to ponder our own situation: how far off are we from this being our reality?
Many bloggers have been commenting on the recent Supreme Court ruling on for-profit businesses and the availability of birth control for employees. There are many directions this post could take, and each of those could be an entire post long. In favor of breadth over depth (and in deference to others who have done the details better justice than I could), I will list a few points regarding this ruling.
I have been abroad for an argumentation conference, so the news of the Supreme Court ruling in favor of Hobby Lobby came as a NYT update on my phone. At first, I was absolutely shocked, then heartbroken to hear that the ruling was 5-4. I could hear the chanting in my head: Hobby Lobby is people! Hobby Lobby is people! Businesses were given the rights of humans, where a non-human is ascribed the rights guaranteed to citizens and people in American law, while the rights of females are destroyed.
1) This only impacts for-profit businesses: specifically religious non-profits were already exempt from the Obamacare mandate. Now, all businesses and industries can impose religious beliefs despite the nature of the company. One could make the argument that choosing or accepting employment at a religious organization may require adherence with certain religious rules. But, these expectations have now been extending to employment at a Chick-Fil-A or Hobby Lobby or any business that decided birth control was immoral.
2) Pro-choice and pro-reproductive freedom does not mean support for abortion or birth control: I hear the conflation quite frequently that because people are pro-choice that they support abortion or want women to have abortions. Likewise, to be pro-birth control means that all women should always be taken some kind of birth control. The support is for choice. The support is for females as rational, decision-makers to decide for themselves what is best for their own bodies.
3) Businesses are not people: Though Citizens United and this Supreme Court case have stated otherwise, I firmly argue that businesses are not and cannot be people. People have the freedom of speech, the freedom of religious expression, the freedom to protest, etc. Businesses are non-human, economic networks that are organized around profit. Businesses are made up of people, but a business itself is not capable of free speech, protest, or religious expression. Simply put: how could a business be religious? Do Hobby Lobby stores attend mass? Do they pray? Do they get baptized, confirmed, or search for vocations?
4) Birth control is not just for reproduction regulation: Although this is obviously the most important and contested use, there are other non-reproductive reasons (such as regulating periods and estrogen levels) for the use of birth control. Providing the opportunity for businesses to deny birth control for "moral" reasons also allow for the denial of its purely medical uses. Though I dislike slippery slope arguments, I feel the need here to make a short one. If anything and everything can be subsumed under the idea of "violating religious expression," then anything from wearing a headscarf, getting divorced, wearing a cross, or any "religious whim" could result in firing.
There will certainly be many subsequent cases that unfold from this important decision. I hope that courts will stop rolling back the rights of females and move away from valuing businesses over actual human beings. This decision was certainly a disappointment for women's rights and the pro-choice movement. It is important, however, to acknowledge that despite the negative consequences of this ruling, people do have reasonable, legitimate reasons for their religious views and how they choose to express them. What is not acceptable is having these personal religious views interfere with and impose on the lives of others.
