A Moving, Tin Can of Sound: Personal Horrors from Public Transit

Warning: HARK! There are spoilers here, traveler. Take the road less littered with thought.

What's Your Favorite Bus Route, Sidney?

Maybe I haven't said this already online, but I am a massive fan of the Scream franchise. With its homoerotic beginnings, perfectly showcasing what's like to follow your friend/lover to the ends of a bad plan, to its extremely whiny-worm-for-brain kills, a dark humor that relentlessly stretches out to slap its audience with a nostalgic-soaked rubber chicken. All of it is exactly what I want out of horror: a conversation unable to end. It's never been enough for me to see the movie, to stand up when the lights turn on, pick up my popcorn bucket and go home, just to funnel in the next best distraction till something more lively comes along, but I always felt like I needed my movies to talk back; I do not accept one night scares. Nor do I appreciate, or even, when others, especially big movie producers, encourage me to dump out the old, yesterday's movie, make way for the next, unsettling cash grab, and completely discard any opinion, theory, or emotional longing I have to understand why was this scary to me? and investigating that question, and finding my answers, without ever having to buy out the remaining stock of Warner Brother's licensed merch. And something I've always loved about Scream in particular is that it never was a project the fans of had to fight for; it belonged to them immediately. And with every new movie coming out, I am always filled with delight when I witness old and new fans take these goofy, yet extremely analytical, almost anthropological hats on top of their heads and ask themselves, over and over again, what actually is our favorite scary movie? And what do those answers reveal about our current culture at this time?

But in truth, I can recognize why to some, the Scream franchise feels like it's been slowly crawling its way toward sellout status for a while now. And I understand why the self-eating aspects of the genre are not interesting, if not boring, to some who already feel like every horror project is oozing with cultural nuance. And yet, after seeing Scream VI, a movie set way beyond perfect suburbia and taking its audience deep in the streets of New York, I would have to say that to those naysayers that Scream VI is both something new, yet a tale that is so normalized, almost yelled about every night, all the time on our TVS: paranoia about Inner city-crime is a topic as orchestrated, as smoke and mirrors, and as beaten down into a freshened lump, as the formula we've seen within Scream. And to me, it's become apparent that the killers are so obvious, not because the franchise itself is running out of ideas, but because we are no longer expected to figure out who the killers are (It's everyone always now, duh!), and instead take a deeper look at our internal, self-produced shortcuts and challenged the perspectives, seeded unnaturally in our minds, and finally see them for more than just wrong, but as literal distractions. A confusing complication of dead ends, wrong turns, and a hoard of faces behind a singular ghost mask; a swarm of beeves, protecting the location of their unknown hive, even sometimes uncritically, unknown to them. Death agents that victimize others by propagandizing for a larger, more sinister cause and preserving a violent and oppressive status quo. Ghostface is extremely interesting not just because the chosen killer spends the entire movie insisting to Sydney, Gale, or the Carpenter sisters of their divorced, almost fourth-wall-like culturally focused and fan-based intelligence, but of their obliviousness to their own servitude to an established system that will not blink at their own inevitable death and continue to churn out the next Ghostface, much like individuals on the police force who claim to be "free thinkers" and falsely identifying themselves with selfless, civil-serving and cowboy-like characters like Punisher, The Mandalorian, etc., much like the serial killers who feel galvanized by the symbol of Ghostface. Unable to think critically about their fan behavior and how it can violently narrate and propel the glorification of their own body, and millions of other marginalized peoples, as wasted scarifies to fascist overlord with a bottomless appetite.

One of the ways that I feel like Scream VI literally hints at the ways the decades of surveillance and inaccessibility exist, and is protected by the presence of stalking, Ghostface-like-tormentor, is the infamous New York subway scene: a place of complete, public display, diluted by a collection of humming, individualized acts of dissociation, that allows violent groping, harassment, and any other forms of attacks, go under the radar of everyone's blank, yet watchful eyes. This scene was incredibly masterful in not only its attempts to nurture its growing seeds of anxiety in its audience, complimenting the flickering lights, the familiar faces of other horror monsters on their way to a party, and spookily "Halloweenifying" the tension, but also in its honesty about how fucking scary navigating public transit can be! It was like the Scream writers woke up, went to the office, and they were like "Hmmm, what do we think will scare the neurodivergent/disabled?" And then on a white wall or board, my face was circled. Around it were strings of bright red. Their twisted ends hot glued to paper, that reads like AUTISTIC, DYSLEXIC, etc. And then even those words have their own harp of strings. Clustering adjectives and phrases that read "Lacks the motor skills and hand strength to open to grasp the steel handles." or "Can not handle the blaring sound of three people speaking loudly on their speakerphones." and the wounds where the knives can go just continue to open. Welcoming themselves up until the scene is written. The film is shot. And the credits roll.

I was snickering to myself in the theater, actually. Telling myself a joke that if Ghostface had perfectly orchestrated our subway, train, or bus routes to cross, my dyslexia would accidentally juke him. Saving me, ironically, even though I would be amidst a panic attack while trying to uncross the different colored lines, unfortunately, braided together and floating off of the map, and cussing myself out, along the way. Amazing how well a blessing can hide itself deep in a cloak of flaws - Still. If that subway car was accessible, meaning it was physically friendly to all bodies, crutches, and wheel users, while simultaneously over-stimulation free, I'm not sure if Ghostface would have gotten to them so easily. And it's unsurprising that a sinister agent of chaotic, kooky violence could thrive in a place that resents the needs of its own, daily dwellers.

But don't even get me started on how much I hate cars.

Or how much I hate you, Henry Ford.