Slashers and Proximity: An Exploration of Ableist Fears
Movies References In Order: Halloween, Psycho, Peeping Tom, Black Christmas, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Scream, Shutter Island. Spoilers for Shutter Island only.
TW: Mentions of murder, ableism, racism, psychiatric abuse, use of institutional language, and references to a cruel mindset about the formally institutionalized.
Halloween (1979) is not the first of its kind (some argue that the slasher franchise started with the movies Psycho (1960) and Peeping Tom (1962)) and it's not even the first holiday slasher to exist; calling to the stage, Black Christmas (1974). Yet it was still the first to really solidify the go-to slasher formula: a killer has escaped a hospital. He haunts not equal fighters to their strength, nor really people who delivered their current dealings of harm, but teenagers. Usually, ones that are somehow related to them. Ones that enjoy their rights as youthful creatures, falling in love. Having a party. Or merely, just a girl, trying her best to get home.
Culturally, the first inklings of the slasher genre are riddled with the time's ever-growing paranoia around young people's morality; but what did the 50s, 60s, and 70s think of the mental illnesses they claimed to be present in their slashers? What was the midcentury's common view of traumatized, neurodivergent, and disabled folks, or the response the general public had when witnessing the psychiatric abuse rampant throughout hospitals in documentaries like Titicut Follies (1967), Asylum (1972), etc.?
Well, it's both what you'd expect and what you don't: the foreclosure of asylums was indeed influenced by these journalistic exposés. But one has to wonder, when witnessing the massive dumping of these formally institutionalized people onto the streets without any sort of financial assistance, how much those documentaries coincided with the state's desire to cut their funding anyway; the JFK administration was the one who signed a bill, encouraging the release of over a thousand patients. It was during his term (which later was touched again by Ronald Regan, worsening them.) that he claimed this to be a humanitarian's victory while ignoring people's growing needs for housing, non-abusive caretakers, and funds to keep up with proper, life-affirming care. But for the movies of the time, they didn't seem to forget.
In Liat Ben-Mosche's book Decarcerating Disability: Deinstitutionalization and Prison Abolition, they state that suburban neighborhoods were terrified by the thought of group homes, equalized housing, and disabled care centers, and cruelly protested the existence of these homes being anywhere near their streets. Claiming that their town would be endangered, while simultaneously working as a collective, stigmatizing nuance. A mob, harassing the formally institutionalized with strict housing codes, NIMBY (not in my backyard) mentalities, and other segregating procedures (for racist, classist, and ableist reasons) as a means to keep the formally institutionalized out; why? Weren't they the ones previously advocating for a better quality of life? Homes so nice, that they'd choose them for themselves.
I would argue that, for most people, it was neither just the fear residing in the fact that anybody could be labeled "criminally insane" if their behavior did not match the oppressive conditions of American society, nor was it just the fear of the mere existence of disabled, neurodivergent, traumatized, or psychotic people, but instead their proximity to them. The terrified notion that they share their streets. Drive their cars. Stroll down their parks, and not have a clue about their formal, institutionalized status, and accidentally perceive them as equal neighbors. A local friend who walks and talks in normal's costume, to the point at which that ableist person, who was set on being normal forever, starts to ask themselves: what does it actually take to be normal? And when that threshold is reached, what makes it different from forced conformity, taken on as a way to survive?
The biggest evidence of these fears is the killers' practicing proximity with material goods: In the first movie, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974), the killer, a silent man named Leatherface, not only wears a literal mask, made from his victim's skin, but if you glance down from his face, you'll see a business suit. A tie pulled and tied correctly around the collar of a shirt. Though Leatherface is dressed in what societies' exclusive, upper class usually wears, it still does not negate the blood-stains, staining the fabric, or the buzzing chainsaw raised in his hands. Interestingly enough, however, when Pam, Kirk, and Jerry, see his nice, white house, they instantly assume the owner must be "safe" and it's not until they see Leatherface move into his own home, that they process the shock of seeing someone "like him" in this marked haven, they start to scream, regardless of their intrusion. Their assumption that Leatherface was a helpful neighbor, was out the window. Even though they held it and tossed it on him, just seconds ago.
Scream (1996) is another slasher that exploits an audience's ableist fears of communal proximity: Instead of the killer, Ghostface, being similar to Leatherface (a man on the outside of societal norms, costuming in society's golden, goal-orientated uniform) he instead exists as an infiltration. A permeating and invisible threat, spying on others. Watching them exist their whole lives; Ghostface frightens Sidney, Gale, Dewey, and Tatum, far past the threatful presence of the dangling knife at their necks, but more through the chance of being betrayed. The idea is that each victim cannot trust anybody in the town, friends they'd had their whole lives because Ghostface has successfully and silently walked among them since who knows when. Personally, I see a direct parallel to the cultural and ableist fears of the Halloween and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre time period, totally blooming into the 90's subconscious fears: The mad are out. And the people cannot tell them apart from the others that they've crowned morally safe. Innocently good and incapable of seeming "mentally ill" or carrying other, stigmatizing titles.
Finally, I think Shutter Island (2010), poses the most interesting development of this pattern; though not technically revealed to be slasher-adjacent till the very end, the movie follows a man, currently undergoing a long-term, post-traumatic relapse and exhibiting a large variety of coping strategies in order to survive it (i.e. creating an elaborate backstory for a case, posing as a detective, rather than a patient). What's fascinating about Shutter Island, is that it, of course, still exhibits ableist's internalized fears about "the mad getting out of the hospital", but I do think it's noteworthy to notice how the spooning of empathy has been completely flipped. That the movie encourages, or at least expects you, to feel some sort of empathy for Teddy Daniels, even though he murdered his family. Even though historically, people have sided with psychiatrists' narratives surrounding institutionalized people, and turned a blind eye to psychiatric torture. Yet, the infantilizing pretend play the doctors encourage Teddy with seems remarkably cruel, especially when its success (meaning Teddy "wakes up" or not) determines whether or not he'll be lobotomized. In the end, I at least hope all audiences start to dabble with the questions "Is this really what we're doing to other humans?" and "Is this what healing is supposed to look like?"
The movie is powerful, for sure, but to me, it's kinda a bummer (but at least historically consistent) that Shutter Island is set in the 50s, mostly because I think still it protects the ableist members of the audience by painting psychiatric abuse as "a problem of the past" rather than an issue still happening in hospitals, prisons, and any other isolating institutions today.
Sorry this was so long! I had a lot to say.
Posts