Editorials
‘Donnie Darko’: A Critique of Conservatism and Book Bans in Schools
Let’s be honest with ourselves. On your first watch, second, fifteenth, did you ever figure out what the cult classic Donnie Darko is about? I will confess. I had absolutely no idea what Donnie Darko was about. And I still don’t. Not quite.
A Poignant Look at the Current School Systems
But the film’s warnings of pervasive and predatory conservatism facilitate important conversations surrounding censorship in the American post-Trump era, and illuminate just how out of touch the powers that be are with the needs of the younger generations. The central antagonist of Donnie Darko is not the giant bunny, not the bullies, but the conservative parent/gym teacher Kitty Farmer, whose lack of understanding of Middlesex’s youth causes extreme tension in the town. Farmer’s call for a book ban of Graham Greene’s “The Destructors,” given as a reading assignment by Miss Karen Pomeroy. Her reasons behind the ban enlighten us to what is currently happening in schools across the United States, especially in the South. The film’s post-Reagan political climate further enriches the comparisons to today’s post-Trump world, and politics is no doubt an ominous specter throughout the film.
Political Tensions in Donnie Darko
Donnie Darko is set in Middlesex, Virginia, in 1988. It is October, and the 1988 election is near. The film’s first piece of dialogue comes from Donnie’s sister Elizabeth at the family dinner table. “I’m voting for Dukakis,” she confesses to her parents. Mr. Darko pauses mid-bite, shocked. “Hmm, well. Maybe when you have children of your own who need braces, and you can’t afford them because half of your husband’s paycheck goes to the federal government, who umm…” “—my husband’s paycheck?” she interrupts. Mrs. Darko affirms her daughter with a giggle. However, she soon chides in, asking Elizabeth if she really thinks Dukakis, the Democratic nominee, will “provide for this country” until she’s ready to have children.
By now, we have learned that Elizabeth is eagerly awaiting an acceptance from Harvard University. This first scene sets the film’s political tone: conservative values reign and are in direct opposition to a bright young generation. Donnie Darko showcases the generation gap between the Baby Boomers and Generation X. Considering our political climate after just having an ultra-conservative showman president just as Donnie Darko is set amidst the race to succeed Ronald Reagan. The film is a window into the effects of the Moral Majority/GOP on schools, teachers, parents, and children. And sadly, the results are what you’d expect: conservative opposition to intellectualism/higher education, and an over-policing of children and teens. Sound familiar?
At Middlesex High School, English teacher Miss Karen Pomeroy introduced her students to the story “The Destructors.” This is a tale of a gang of child ruffians in the ruins of London in World War II after The Blitz. Together, they flood and dismantle the house of ‘Old Misery,’ a man whose house, unlike his neighbors’, survived The Blitz completely. The story includes a moment when the leader, T, finds bundles of cash in Old Misery’s mattress and instead of stealing it, he lights it aflame. When Miss Pomeroy asks what this scene in the story means, Donnie explains, “They just wanna see what happens when they tear the world apart. They want to change things.”
Kitty Farmer’s Crusade Against Literature
“The PTA doesn’t ban books.”
Unfortunately, the assignment from Miss Pomeroy was also given to Beth Farmer, Kitty Farmer’s daughter. An enraged Mrs. Farmer disrupts an Emergency PTA meeting to advocate for a school book ban. “I want to know why this smut is being taught to our children!” The PTA was on the topic of recent school vandalism, which included a flooding of the school (Frank, Donnie’s imaginary friend, instructed Donnie to do this). She cites that the child gang in “The Destructors” used flooding in their mission for destruction, which is what happened to the school earlier that month. Farmer receives scattered cheers from the parents present, but not from Rose Darko. “What is the real issue here?” she asks Kitty. “The PTA doesn’t ban books.”
Farmer continues, “The PTA is here to acknowledge that pornography is being taught in our curriculum!”
The Mislabeling of Literature as “Pornography”
According to Pen America, a literature and human rights organization, it is quite common for books to be labeled “pornographic” or “indecent.” However, as in Greene’s story, it is often the case that the books being accused of sexual content contain nothing of the sort.
[T]his framing has become an increasing focus of activists and politicians to justify removing books that do not remotely fit the well-established legal and colloquial definitions of “pornography.” Rhetoric about ‘porn in schools’ has also been advanced as justification for the passage or introduction of new state laws, some of which would bar any books with sexual content and could easily sweep up a wide swath of literature and health-related content.
Conspiracies and Hypocrisy in Donnie Darko
When Karen Pomeroy explains that the story is ironic, Kitty hurls with vitriol, “[Y]ou need to go back to grad school.” Kitty prefers her limited understanding to an intellectual conversation about the literature. Just as it is happening today, conscientious and knowledgeable teachers are being policed and scrutinized for routine classroom decisions on curriculum, while those who critique their actions follow abusive demigods with no question of their morals. It is later revealed that Kitty Farmer’s idol, motivational speaker Jim Cunningham, is a serial child predator who she introduced to children and adults in Middlesex. Kitty misses her daughter’s big break in Hollywood to be at his side for the trial. “It’s obviously some kind of conspiracy to destroy an innocent man!”
Though Farmer had no problem destroying Miss Pomeroy’s career. Within a few weeks of introducing Greene’s story to her class, Miss Pomeroy is fired after Farmer’s complaints with support from the school principal. She tells him, “I don’t think that you have a clue what it’s like to communicate with these kids. And we are losing them to apathy… to this prescribed nonsense.” Similarly, an Oklahoma teacher in 2022 was fired for providing students with access to banned books. Folks like Kitty Farmer, of which there are many, want to “protect children” by banning controversial literature while they are the real predators.
Donnie Darko and the Myth of Literary Influence
To Kitty’s point, could Donnie have been directly inspired by “The Destructors,” causing chaos in Middlesex? The answer is no. Donnie Darko deals with fate, and Donnie was always on this path, as posited by the film’s central premise of time travel. In this sense, the film can be a vehicle to analyze conservative hysteria toward literature — children will always find a way to rebel, and perhaps in defiance, be inspired by the actions of conservatives to call for an end to book bans and censorship in schools.
Donnie was certainly inspired by his distaste for hypocritical and conservative school leadership. Even though his actions, or at least what his imaginary friend Frank told him to do, mirror those in the story, “The Destructors” did not dictate his behavior. Even further, the gang of boys did not kill anyone, unlike Donnie. He tells Gretchen early in the film that he had burned down an abandoned house once before, prior to his introduction to Greene’s story. Destruction/creation is Donnie’s destiny.
Honoring Teachers Like Miss Pomeroy
I and many others have had our own Miss Pomeroys, the bright English teachers who, despite colleague scrutiny or petty gossip introduced kids to texts we may have only found with their help. Morrison, Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, Ginsberg, and countless other luminaries were sent my and other students’ way. But then again, I went to a public high school in New York. Teachers and students in conservative areas are facing the wrath of their own Kitty Farmers, many of whom have already infiltrated their schools, towns, and state legislatures.
These are scary times. To the Miss Pomeroys across the United States, thank you and keep going.
When I begin crafting my reviews, I do some quick background research on the film itself, but I avoid looking at what others have to say. The last thing I want is for my views to be swayed in any way by what others think or say about a film. It has been at least 13 years since I’ve seen the English-language shot-for-shot remake of Funny Games. And I didn’t remember much about it. After watching the original 1997 masterpiece just minutes ago, I quickly ran to my computer to start writing this. Whether or not I’m breaking new ground by saying this is up in the air, and I could even be very incorrect with this: Funny Games is the perfect foil to Scream, and the irreparable damage it has caused to the slasher subgenre.
The Family at the Center of this Film
Funny Games follows the upper-class family of Anna (Susanne Lothar), George (Ulrich Mühe), son Georgie (Stefan Clapczynski), and dog Rolfi (Rolfi?), who arrive at their lake house for a few weeks of undisturbed peace. Soon after their arrival, they’re met by Paul (Arno Frisch) and Peter (Frank Giering), two white-clad yuppies who seem just a bit off. Who will survive and who will die in this game that is less funny than the title suggests?
I’ve made this statement about Scream time and time again. Before I get into it too much, let’s take a quick step back to ward off the Ryan C. Showers-like people. I love Scream (as well as 2, 5, and 6). It created a new wave of filmmakers and singlehandedly brought the slasher subgenre back from the dead like a Resident Evil zombie. Like what Tarantino did to independent crime thrillers of the 2000s and 10s, Scream has done to slashers. Post-Scream, slashers felt the need to be overtly meta and as twisty as possible, even at the film’s own demise. There is nothing wrong with a slasher film attempting to be smart. The problem arises when filmmakers who can’t pull it off think they can.
Is Funny Games Anti-Horror or Anti-Slasher?
The barebones rumblings I’ve heard about Funny Games over the years are that writer/director Michael Haneke calls it anti-horror. I would posit that Funny Games unknowingly found itself as more of an anti-slasher rather than an anti-horror. (Hell, it could be both!) Scream would release to acclaim just one year before Haneke’s incredible creation, so I can’t definitively say that Funny Games is a direct response to Scream, as much as I would like to.
Meta-ness has existed in cinema and art long before Scream came to be. Though if you had asked me when I was a freshman in high school, I would have told you Wes Craven created the idea of being meta. It just strikes me as a bit odd that two incredibly meta horror films would be released just one year apart and have such an impact on the genre. Whereas Scream uses its meta nature to make the audience do the Leonardo in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood… meme, Haneke uses it as a mirror for the audience.
Scream vs. Funny Games: A Clash of Meta Intentions
Scream doesn’t ask the audience to figure out which killer is behind the mask at which points; it just assumes that you will suspend your disbelief enough to accept it. Funny Games subverts this idea by showing you the perpetrators immediately and then forcing you to sit in the same room with them, faces uncovered, for nearly the film’s entire runtime. Scream was flashy and fun, Funny Games is long and uncomfortable. Haneke forces the audience to sit with the atrocities and exist within the trauma felt by the family as they’re brutally picked off one by one.
Funny Games utilizes fourth wall breaks to wink at the audience. Haneke is, more or less, trying to make the audience feel bad for what they’re watching. Each time Paul looks at the camera, it’s almost as if he’s saying, “You wanted this.” One of the most intriguing moments in the film is when Peter gets killed and Paul says, “Where is the remote?” before grabbing it, pressing rewind, and going back moments before Anna kills Peter. This is a direct middle finger to the audience. You think you’re getting a final girl in this nasty picture? Hell no. You asked for this, so you’re getting this.
A Contemptuous Look at Slasher Tropes
Both Funny Games are the only Haneke films I’ve seen, so I can’t speak much on his oeuvre. But Funny Games almost feels contemptful about horror, slashers in particular. The direct nature of the boys and their constant presence in each scene eliminates any potential plot holes. E.g., how did Jason Voorhees get from one side of the lake to a cabin a quarter of a mile away? You just have to believe! In horror, we’ve come to accept that when you’re watching a slasher film, you MUST accept what’s given to you. Haneke proves it can be done simply and effectively.
Whether you think it’s horror or not, Funny Games is one of the greatest horror films of all time. Before the elevated horror craze that exists to inflict misery on the viewers, Haneke had “been there, done that.” When [spoiler] dies, [spoiler] and [spoiler] sit in the living room in silence for nearly two minutes in a single uncut shot. Then, in the same uncut shot, [spoiler] starts keening for another two or three minutes. Nearly every slasher film moves on after a kill. Occasionally, we’ll get a funeral service or a memorial set up at the local high school for the slain teenagers. But there’s rarely an effective reflection on the loss of life in a slasher film. Funny Games tells you that you will reflect on death because you asked for death. You bought the ticket (rented the film), so you must reap what you sow.
Why Funny Games Remains One-of-a-Kind
This piece has been overly harsh on slasher films, and that was not the intention. Behind found footage, slasher films are probably my second favorite subgenre. As someone who has watched their fair share of them, it’s easy to see the pre-Scream and post-Scream shift. But there’s this weird disconnect where slasher films had transformed from commentary on life and loss to nothing more than flashy kills where a clown saws a woman from crotch to cranium, and then refuses to pay her fairly. Funny Games is an impressive meditation on horror and horror audiences. Even the title is a poke at the absurdity of slashers. If you haven’t seen Funny Games, I highly suggest checking it out because I can promise you, you’ve never seen a horror film like it. And we probably never will again.
As a horror fan, I tend to think about remakes a lot. Not why they are made, necessarily. That answer is pretty clear: money. But something closer to “if they have to be made, how can they be made well?” It’s rare to find a remake that is generally considered to be better than the original. However, there are plenty that have been deemed to be valuable in a different way. You can find these in basically all subgenres. Sci-fi, for instance (The Thing, The Blob). Zombies (Dawn of the Dead, Evil Dead). Even slashers (The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, My Bloody Valentine). However, when it comes to haunted house remakes, only The Woman in Black truly stands out, and it is shockingly underrated. Even more intriguingly, it is demonstrably better than the original movie.
The Original Haunted House Movie Is Almost Always Better
Now please note, I’m specifically talking about movies with haunted houses, rather than ghost movies in general. We wouldn’t want to be bringing The Ring into this conversation. That’s not fair to anyone.
Plenty of haunted house movies are minted classics, and as such, the subgenre has gotten its fair share of remakes. These are, almost unilaterally, some of the most-panned movies in a format that attracts bad reviews like honey attracts flies.
You’ve got 2005’s The Amityville Horror (a CGI-heavy slog briefly buoyed by a shirtless, possessed Ryan Reynolds). That same year’s Dark Water (one of many inert remakes of Asian horror films to come from that era). 1999’s The House on Haunted Hill (a manic, incoherent effort that millennial nostalgia has perhaps been too kind to). That same year there was The Haunting (a manic, incoherent effort that didn’t even earn nostalgia in the first place). And 2015’s Poltergeist (Remember this movie? Don’t you wish you didn’t?). And while I could accept arguments about 2001’s THIR13EN Ghosts, it’s hard to compete with a William Castle classic.
The Problem with Haunted House Remakes
Generally, I think haunted house remakes fail so often because of remakes’ compulsive obsession with updating the material. They throw in state-of-the-art special effects, the hottest stars of the era, and big set piece action sequences. Like, did House on Haunted Hill need to open with that weird roller coaster scene? Of course it didn’t.
However, when it comes to haunted house movies, bigger does not always mean better. They tend to be at their best when they are about ordinary people experiencing heightened versions of normal domestic fears. Bumps in the night, unexplained shadows, and the like. Maybe even some glowing eyes or a floating child. That’s all fine and dandy. But once you have a giant stone lion decapitating Owen Wilson, things have perhaps gone a bit off the rails.
The One Big Exception is The Woman in Black
The one undeniable exception to the haunted house remake rule is 2012’s The Woman in Black. If we want to split hairs, it’s technically the second adaptation of the Susan Hill novel of the same name. But The Haunting was technically a Shirley Jackson re-adaptation, and that still counts as a remake, so this does too.
The novel follows a young solicitor being haunted when handling a client’s estate at the secluded Eel Marsh House. The property was first adapted into a 1989 TV movie starring Adrian Rawlings, and it was ripe for a remake. In spite of having at least one majorly eerie scene, the 1989 movie is in fact too simple and small-scale. It is too invested in the humdrum realities of country life to have much time to be scary. Plus, it boasts a small screen budget and a distinctly “British television” sense of production design. Eel Marsh basically looks like any old English house, with whitewashed walls and a bland exterior.
Therefore, the “bigger is better” mentality of horror remakes took The Woman in Black to the exact level it needed.
The Woman in Black 2012 Makes Some Great Choices
2012’s The Woman in Black deserves an enormous amount of credit for carrying the remake mantle superbly well. By following a more sedate original, it reaches the exact pitch it needs in order to craft a perfect haunted house story. Most appropriately, the design of Eel Marsh House and its environs are gloriously excessive. While they don’t stretch the bounds of reality into sheer impossibility, they completely turn the original movie on its head.
Eel Marsh is now, as it should be, a decaying, rambling pile where every corner might hide deadly secrets. It’d be scary even if there wasn’t a ghost inside it, if only because it might contain copious black mold. Then you add the marshy grounds choked in horror movie fog. And then there’s the winding, muddy road that gets lost in the tide and feels downright purgatorial. Finally, you have a proper damn setting for a haunted house movie that plumbs the wicked secrets of the wealthy.
Why The Woman in Black Remake Is an Underrated Horror Gem
While 2012’s The Woman in Black is certainly underrated as a remake, I think it is even more underrated as a haunted house movie. For one thing, it is one of the best examples of the pre-Conjuring jump-scare horror movie done right. And if you’ve read my work for any amount of time, you know how positively I feel about jump scares. The Woman in Black offers a delectable combo platter of shocks designed to keep you on your toes. For example, there are plenty of patient shots that wait for you to notice the creepy thing in the background. But there are also a number of short sharp shocks that remain tremendously effective.
That is not to say that the movie is perfect. They did slightly overstep with their “bigger is better” move to cast Daniel Radcliffe in the lead role. It was a big swing making his first post-Potter role that of a single father with a four-year-old kid. It’s a bit much to have asked 2012 audiences to swallow, though it reads slightly better so many years later.
However, despite its flaws, The Woman in Black remake is demonstrably better than the original. In nearly every conceivable way. It’s pure Hammer Films confection, as opposed to a television drama without an ounce of oomph.
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