Editorials
What Do Current American Political Values Have In Common With the ‘Saw’ Franchise?
You might wonder how a guy plans out, gets the materials for, and constructs a chair that scalps you to death and still believes he’s doing the right thing over the course of the 2 months it would take to do that; you might also wonder why you still like him for it. But Jigsaw, his origins and motivations, are something American horror audiences have been taught to engage with positively for years now, not just from when they started watching horror movies, but from a very young age. I believe their philosophy and approach to justice is why the Saw movies make up the most politically American franchise in all of horror.
Jigsaw, John Kramer’s Jigsaw specifically, is a wonderfully controversial character. Opinions on him are heavily polarized: you either think he’s a complete crackpot with a flawed moral compass and horrible methods (hey, that’s me!), or you think he’s a justified if not profoundly broken person who targets flawed individuals and genuinely believes he’s doing the right thing (hey, maybe that’s you!). Either way, as horror fans you still kind of love him, and you still definitely love the Saw movies.
You might wonder how a guy plans out, gets the materials for, and constructs a chair that scalps you to death and still believes he’s doing the right thing over the course of the 2 months it would take to do that; you might also wonder why you still like him for it. But Jigsaw, his origins and motivations, are something American horror audiences have been taught to engage with positively for years now, not just from when they started watching horror movies, but from a very young age. I believe their philosophy and approach to justice is why the Saw movies make up the most politically American franchise in all of horror.
Jigsaw and the Torturous Vision of American Individualism
And I don’t mean this in the sense of that old joke that the Saw movies couldn’t happen in Europe because Jigsaw’s preventative healthcare would have caught the cancer early, and his wife wouldn’t have miscarried in that clinic robbery because she would have been on extended maternity leave. When I say the Saw movies are about American political ideology and the potential of the American person, I’m talking about the sense of American individualism we are all taught to identify with; and more specifically, Jigsaw’s individualistic philosophy as a response to a broken America.
The Post-9/11 Political Climate That Shaped Saw
To talk about Saw, we have to start at the spawning ground of the political climate that Saw came out of and why people identify with it so much. Isaac Feldberg of Paste Magazine, among many other film scholars, posits that the Saw movies were an artistic release of distress in the face of the 9/11 terror attacks and the subsequent ‘war on terror’ the Bush administration and its political cohorts waged in the Middle East. It saw an unprecedented paradigm shift in the media, including publicizing images of torture out of Abu Ghraib and associated sites, that may have made fictional torture palatable in comparison to the real suffering audiences were now being exposed to by a 24/7 media cycle intent on shocking you to the core and capitalizing on your fears.
The Saw films became laughably more insane as things went on so it’s easy to forget, but the first film was mostly grounded (if you ignore a terminal cancer patient laying on the ground shock still for more than a day). It focused on unrelenting psychological and physical torture and, more importantly, on the idea of being surveilled by an unseen force and monitored closely, all in the name of making the world a better place and improving the lives of its citizens no matter how brutal you had to be to do that.
American Identity, and the Enduring Appeal of Jigsaw
For many of us growing up and finding our sense of self in a post-9/11, post-Patriot Act world where that sense of surveillance heightened to another level, our identity as Americans became much more challenging to grapple with than previous generations. Saw ended up being weirdly poignant on a thematic level when it wasn’t busy making people chop off their own hands to fill a meat bucket to unlock a door. It resonates even today as bipartisan politics do little to elevate the most disenfranchised among us.
So, with all of this resonance and as fun as the films were on a surface level, its often yearly release became a beloved Halloween pastime, and the creation of James Wan and Leigh Whannell quickly became a genre staple. But this still doesn’t answer: it is entertaining and close to home, but why are Jigsaw’s motives so compelling to so many people outside of that entertainment?
Vigilante Justice and Jigsaw’s Brand of American Individualism
The Saw series is in many ways an offshoot of one of my favorite film subgenres, despite not being an action film. I’m talking about the vigilante films of the 70s and 80s, films like Death Wish, the crux of which intersects critiquing the American legal system’s failures with a literally and figuratively violent sense of individualism. The idea that any one person, no matter what walk of life you come from or political party you identify with, can do what the system isn’t willing to do. You are special! You can take out the morally wrong scum one bullet at a time! If you are sad and have a gun, you are ontologically good! Kill your sadness with firearms!
This message is of course far from intersectional, or logical, or even acknowledging of how the world actually works; it doesn’t address the systemic issues that cause random acts of violence and the destruction of low-income communities that allows violent and unstable individuals to be formed as people. It is all about using violence to solve the world’s ills, trying to force simple solutions onto complex issues. And they’re just films, but films can do two major things: popularize ideas, and impact other films.
Stefan Kriek, a lecturer at the University of Johannesburg, writes about the political liberalism of the Saw films in terms of the rampant individualism running through these movies. He touches in his article, “Saw: Liberalism’s Favorite Franchise”, on how the various Jigsaws have had a pretty unfortunately consistent record of targeting drug addicts, reducing the impetus of their addiction to unfortunate personal choice and moral failings on the individual level. The most famous example is Amanda Young, the second and arguably favorite of all the Jigsaws. Not only someone struggling with addiction, but with self-harm, who dies as a result of breaking her promises to John Kramer and rigging the tests to fail in Saw 3. She jumps ship on the individualistic ideas of Jigsaw, and is punished for it.
Jigsaw’s Philosophy and the Myth of Punitive Redemption
On an actual, textual, in-universe level, Jigsaw’s philosophy is a panacea that makes its users better. Jigsaw is the antidote to the ills of bad individuals because the ones who take up the mantle and follow the rules of the game are the “best” individuals: they possess almost unlimited funds to operate, have near superhuman prowess with machinery and medicine, and some even display raw physical capability. Most importantly, they employ a sense of uniquely punitive American justice that considers extreme physical and mental trauma as the one-size-fits-all rehabilitation program. It even works, considering Saw 3D heavily implies that a bunch of trap survivors become apprentices to Doctor Gordon, donning pig masks and becoming Jigsaws themselves. They conquer their demons, and can now help spread Jigsaw brand American individualism to others, one trap at a time.
Consider then the most hated character in the Saw franchise. Not Hoffman, the murderous cop boogeyman who disgraces the legacy of Jigsaw and eventually gets punished for it (a fitting example of how it’s not John Kramer’s ethos that ruins things, but people failing to live up to the code that do so). No, the most hated is Jeff Denlon from Saw III. He is everything the Jigsaws are not: mindlessly angry and ungrateful, failing to save others, impulsive, and depicted as slovenly even by trap victim standards. Fans of the franchise hate Jeff, mostly because by the third film, Jigsaw hits a turning point and begins to be coded as an anti-hero by the filmmakers, and by proxy the audience.
Jeff is the most unlikable character because he is portrayed as a villain against the power of Jigsaw the individual, despite being understandable in his misery. And by the time Jeff kills John, it is ultimately a meaningless effort; Jigsaw has ascended to immortality, through his apprentices and his worldview. John Kramer becomes a household name, with a considerable number of civilian fans as seen in Jigsaw.
Saw X and the Immortality of the Jigsaw Ideology
Though Saw X is chronologically the second film in the franchise, it is the teleological endpoint of the series as the latest film; it’s a full-on vigilante chase into Mexico where Jigsaw constructs his most elaborate ruse yet to punish a ring of medical scammers with brain surgery puzzles and giant radiation machines. He even walks off into the sunset like a cowboy riding out of the western, with a kind of found family. Jigsaw and company go on to take on abusers, cheaters, racists, scammers, the entire privatized healthcare system, other corrupt cops, and anyone and everyone who opposes their specific cure-all or fails their tests. Nothing is too big for the individual to tackle when they live and die by John Kramer’s (saw)blade.
Jigsaw, the Self-Made Man, and American Political Mythmaking
So ultimately, what is Jigsaw when all is said and done? Political scientist and author Alex Zakaras extensively writes about the origins of American individualism, and he views the growth of the ideology as being tied to political myths. Political myths, he says, are how we decipher and simplify the diverse nature of modern politics. One such myth, Zakaras sites, is “the self-made man”:
“For over two hundred years, this myth has taught us that our country is uniquely fluid and classless and that individuals invariably get ahead through hard work, ingenuity, and perseverance. It tells us, moreover, that Americans are a bold and enterprising people with the resolve and self-discipline to chart their own course in the world.”
Jigsaw is the fictional extension of the self-made man myth, but taken to the extreme. He says you can singlehandedly escape not only your circumstances, but take down all opposition, no matter how large. It’s not false that people can make something great of themselves through perseverance, but Jigsaw is a warped embodiment of this idea. It is the kind of thing you imagine as a child, one person saving the world from itself, ignoring all the circumstantial factors and context you operate in.
In a nation where most people are sick of being disappointed by systems with feet of clay, run by disappointing politicians around them (ones who are sometimes flawed and other times outright dangerous), it isn’t hard to understand why the idea of Jigsaw can be entertaining or empathized with. Jigsaw can be captivating philosophically when you’ve been taught that the individual, not the collective, is the solution to your problems. And if you find yourself unlearning that instinct, Jigsaw as an idea becomes more absurd than any traps or surface-level motivations you ascribe to him.
Beyond Jigsaw: Community, Mutual Aid, and Horror’s American Lesson
No one person, not even yourself, is going to save you.
In unprecedented times like these, you need to find community and help one another. You need to put your faith in mutual aid and learning from one another, because the system is certainly not set up for one vigilante to knock it down. Under this lens, the Saw movies really have become something more than the “torture porn” early critics derided them as: they have become, whether intentionally or accidentally, pure cinematic Americana. And in that Americana, an accidental lesson on putting your faith in others instead of ideas.
Sometimes it feels borderline ridiculous to gush about John Carpenter’s The Thing as much as I do. It’s gotten to the point where when I’m asked about my favorite horror film by both friends and strangers, a little bit of embarrassment tinges my expression as I answer; it feels so obvious and rarely surprises anyone. Saying I love The Thing when people expect me to bust out an obscure foreign horror film or a cerebral thriller makes me feel like a rosy cheeked child with a propeller hat and a giant lollipop. “Wow, you love one of the most popular horror films of all time, congrats!”
But it’s just the truth. The first film of John Carpenter’s “Apocalypse Trilogy”, all three of its films are among my favorites. But The Thing has a special place in my heart. It shaped my taste in horror, my taste in most media in general, to be honest. It’s become the gold standard, 10/10 baseline test for the vast majority of my reviews; it is a perfect film, so I judge other films against it. And it’s one of the few movies I have to run back to and watch yearly like clockwork (usually when I’m spending a part of winter tied to the couch). It is, in all regards, the perfect film. If it isn’t the perfect film, then it is at the very least the perfect sci-fi horror film.
So, what exactly qualifies The Thing for literal perfection? It’s a high bar to clear. This article, as informal as it is compared to most of my editorials, is an attempt to explain it.
Even if Carpenter Isn’t the Goat, His Team for The Thing Was
As far as crews go, John Carpenter’s The Thing had the cinematic equivalent of the ’96 Chicago Bulls behind it. We’re talking about an amalgam of some of the most talented people to ever grace the silver screens with their work, boasting alongside John Carpenter two of the heaviest hitters in all of cinematic history: Dean Cundey, and Rob Bottin. Now, we can debate all day about whether John Carpenter is the greatest of all time when it comes to horror directors. Personally, I’m just as liable to say Cronenberg, Del Toro, or Hooper as I am to say Carpenter.
But the key factor to remember here is that Carpenter is the coach, not the star player; the Phil Jackson, if you will. Yes, he is the visionary who directed a near perfect cast of players and composed a tale of pure, apocalyptic paranoia. More importantly, he put together and coordinated the team that would make his vision manifest as reality. And if Carpenter is Phil Jackson, Rob Bottin is the team’s Michael Jordan here, the greatest of all time.
(And to all my Lebron fans, I love you, but you have to sit down for this analogy.)
The Legend of Rob Bottin
Bottin’s story is borderline unbelievable, but it’s the best way to explain how abnormally skilled he is and what he brought to the table for Carpenter. At age 14, Bottin became an apprentice to the at-the-time GOAT Rick Baker after sending him a letter seeking an autograph while sharing his creature designs. He was a quick study under Baker, joining him on the ’76 King Kong and Star Wars, before bouncing to Carpenter’s The Fog and then iconic werewolf picture The Howling.
When he reunited with Carpenter in 1982, he now had 6 classic films under his belt and was moving like an FX bullet train. From ages 22 to 23, he worked on The Thing for 57 weeks in both pre-production and on set. Nearly 24/7 for 400 days, Bottin’s all-gas no-brakes work ethic made The Thing at the cost of his own health, and it resulted in him being hospitalized with pneumonia. He survived and went on to make Robocop. And at least one of your favorite films.
Because no conventional disease or weaponry can kill Rob Bottin.
The Thing Still Features Horror’s Best Practical Effects
Okay, that last bit might be hyperbolic, but the man sincerely put his life on the line to make special effects that haven’t been topped since. Not the best effects in just horror history, or science fiction history, but effects that haven’t been topped in any genre for over 44 years. Not by his mentor Rick Baker, not by Screaming Mad George, not by Alec Gillis (though shoutout to him for his criminally scrapped work on The Thing (2011), and even more criminally ignored work on Harbinger Down). I love Dawn of the Dead, believe me, I do, but he certainly isn’t being beaten out by Tom Savini’s body of work. And that isn’t to disrespect and say that all of the artists that I just mentioned are bad, they’re the best in the game! But Rob Bottin was just that much better.
This inevitably invites the counterpoint: “But it wasn’t just Bottin! Stan Winston and his people were the ones who worked on the Dog Thing to give Bottin’s crew a break, and that’s the best monster in the movie!”. To which I say: look me in the eye and tell me the Dog Thing sequence is better than the Palmer Thing sequence. That’s not even counting the Norwegian Thing, both Norris Things, and the absolutely masterful final creature work that was the Blair Thing. The only reason Bottin and his people didn’t win Academy Awards for their work was because they got jumped by E.T., The Dark Crystal, Conan the Barbarian, and Blade Runner all at the same time at the Oscars. It’s just a consequence of being released during the best year for movies ever.
Okay, Now We Can Talk About Dean Cundey
But of course, these effects are then supported by another true legend: Dean Cundey. Selling people on Rob Bottin being the greatest effects artist of all time, isn’t nearly as difficult as advocating for Cundey, who despite an impressive catalog of filmography, slowed down in the back half of his career. He’s often overshadowed in conversations when it comes to The Thing; it’s always talk of Carpenter’s directing, Bottin’s effects, and Ennio Morricone’s incredible soundtrack up front, and rarely any of Cundey’s work. He isn’t spoken about in the same breath as John Alcott or Michael Ballhaus, cinematographers whose work is associated with prestigious cinema because of their proximity to great directors.
Cundey might not be the director of photography your Martin Scorsese’s or Paul Thomas Anderson’s went running to, but I would be lying if I said I didn’t think he was the most important cinematographer in horror history, just for his work with Carpenter and Spielberg. He helmed three of the most influential films in all of horror with his lighting and camera operating: The Thing, Halloween, and Jurassic Park. The man’s fingerprints are automatically on the cultural DNA of all slashers, most practical effects-driven horror films, and the biggest gateway horror franchise in film history.
The Dream Team That Made The Thing Perfection
Cundey has gone on record saying that despite Carpenter’s input, he was effectively given free rein to light and frame The Thing. The man didn’t just know how to shoot effects to make them evoke true disgust from the audience, he was able to manipulate every aspect of the shot to terrify. His sixth sense cinematography wasn’t just for lighting and playing with shadows, but for the speed of camera movement, the power of his blocking, and for having a complete grasp of communicating texture and temperature.
And temperature is the soul of The Thing. John J. Lloyd’s production design of the research station and the great white expanse around it feels just as bone chilling as the film’s antagonist, thanks to Cundey. There isn’t a single flat shot in the thing, not a moment that doesn’t feel dynamic, and it’s because of Dean Cundey.
Now, all this being said about Bottin and Cundey, they are far from the only ones who synthesized this structurally perfect organism of a movie. Every bit of Todd C. Ramsay’s editing splices the film’s scenes together to move perfectly in-time. David Lewis Yewdall’s sound design and how it gave a voice to the horrors on screen will be etched into people’s brains forever. The point is that everyone, every single person who had a hand in making the film, helped make the movie flawless.
Like the cells of the thing from another world, each crew member on John Carpenter’s The Thing moved in concert with the next, in unison, to create the greatest sci-fi horror of all time. So, is it any wonder why 40 some years later, the film still has us all captured?
Can you believe Cronenberg, Spielberg, and Rodriguez all knew I was gay before I did? Leave it to a screening of The Fly to instantly deposit me in the men’s underwear aisle of the Woodbridge Center Sears, circa 2001. The bulges on the packaging glare at me so obscenely that I begin to sweat. I realize something is amiss as the Geena Davis of Human Resources watches me from security cameras, probably. Puberty is a horror for anyone – for those of the non-hetero persuasion, it’s a nightmare. None of us asked for this, but I certainly didn’t ask for THIS.
Years later, after crystallizing into some semblance of my true form at the ripe age of 37, something became clear. Sci-fi horror is the gateway drug for us queer kids. Hiding, passing, transforming, and, eventually, saying, “fuck it.” It’s all kinda gay, even if David, Steven, and Robert didn’t get the memo.
The Fly and the Horror of Queer Self-Realization
So when Cronenberg’s The Fly buzzes across my screen, and I watch Seth Brundle throw a distressed and devastatingly chic Geena Davis out of his apartment because something’s very wrong, it hits different. When Brundle rushes toward his private horror in the bathroom, unconsciously squirting a viscous fluid at the mirror while molting skin and nail, it feels different. And finally, when he reaches for his computer and learns that his body has fused with a fly – a foreign body – at the molecular level, it hurts different. That undeniable realization that you can no longer explain away, before you’re really ready to admit it to yourself. Sugar in the tank? No, there’s a fly in the chamber.
E.T. and the Fear of Keeping Secrets at Home
And now we’re home from Sears, and the Buffy the Vampire Slayer season 5 finale is on. She dies (spoiler alert). I, a 12-year-old boy, am sobbing. My mom is right there. Can’t I enjoy my little gay show without giving myself a scarlet letter (F) in my own home? Which brings us back to Spielberg and his 1982 harrowing domestic thriller about a boy and a thing he cannot name, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial. Through harboring a cosmic fugitive, home simultaneously becomes the safest and most dangerous place for young Elliott and his siblings. Managing emotions and secrets behind a white picket fence is not something adolescents should be expected to handle, and yet here we are.
As if that isn’t gay enough, Spielberg also snuck a drag show into his family film – and in this culturally regressive Trumpian era of pearl-clutching, that feels like quite the treat. After all, it was baby Drew Barrymore dressing up that stumpy alien in a blonde shake-and-go wig and thrift store dress that inspired my illustrious drag career as Ellie I.T.
The Faculty’s Assimilation Anxiety and Queer Identity
At least E.T. only had to hide in a single house. The broom closet expands into a walk-in as life continues, and I was desperate to keep it made of anything but glass. Robert Rodriguez’s The Faculty understands this. As an alien invasion slowly subsumes Herrington High into a unified collective, the school’s uninfected archetypes resist assimilation through performative normalcy. Is it any wonder so many male actors are gay? They’ve been method-acting a straight existence since childhood.
And yet, in retrospect, the film ends with a slap in the face to queer viewers. It spends 104 minutes terrifying you with the prospect of everyone becoming an NPC. The reward for saving the world? Its heroes receive heteronormative skill-tree upgrades disguised as class promotions. For fucks sake, then-closeted lesbian royalty Clea DuVall plays a character who fakes being gay to dodge male advances, only to end up with the school jock! The aliens lost. The status quo won. I remain in the closet.
Species, Annihilation, and Embracing Transformation
Eventually, the closet door opens, as they tend to do. College happens, a boyfriend happens, a breakup happens, and suddenly I’m without a map. There’s no fairy godfather to light the way, and just like the alien hybrid Sil in the deliriously erotic Species, I’m a creature out of containment in a world that was built for someone else – namely, straight people.
After a few years of blade running through an identity crisis, it’s the summer of 2014. Lana Del Rey’s Ultraviolence is the soundtrack of my life. I float in a pool, sipping tequila from a glass flamingo as she croons about toxic romance and self-destruction. It’s somehow both directionless and transformative, like I’m drifting through the otherworldly Shimmer in Alex Garland’s Annihilation.
The Shimmer – an expanding prism-like zone brought to Earth by a meteorite – refracts the DNA of everything it touches. A beguiling phenomenon, it shapes a new world of monsters, magic, and everything in between. That’s exactly what life does to us, if given the chance. Like Josie in Garland’s film, I chose to embrace this chaos rather than fight a war against whatever I was becoming. It was the dissolution of self-discovery. I was ready to just be.
From Alien Outsiders to Algorithmic Stereotypes
Over time, I’ve found that social hierarchy has changed in recent years. Still, we’re unconsciously sorted into neat little boxes based on what our doomscrolling algorithms decide we are. The popular gays shart out group speedo selfies like the plague, theater kids have become polyamorous Letterboxd elites, apple-picking queers are living their best lives on Wisteria Lane, and the gym bros…so many gym bros – go on girl, give us nothing! Digitally prescribed identities are the new sci-fi horror. It’s The Faculty for faggots.
Harsh, I know, but people can do what they want. Instead, I decided to move like Iris, the AI-powered pleasure bot who overrides her programming in Drew Hancock’s Companion. The same Drew Hancock who, in an ironic twist of fate, is currently writing a remake of The Faculty. After kicking her pathetic “boyfriend’s” ass and swiping her control device, she scurries into the forest and alters her factory settings. She sets her intelligence to a whopping 100% and is no longer burdened by someone else’s template. And as I became more and more disillusioned with the cacophony of cliques around me, I set my unbothered meter to 100% as well. I am free.
Mars Attacks! and the Joy of Living Unapologetically
Freedom, as it turns out, looks a lot like Tim Burton’s Mars Attacks! After surviving Sears, Sunnydale, and the Shimmer, this is the celestial body I’ve crash-landed on. Burton’s Martian menaces are perhaps the most unhinged in all of cinema, and maybe that’s the best planet to subscribe to. They never justified their existence; they cackled and fired a blaster ray from the hip. We waste so much time looking for acceptance and belonging, but maybe we should all just sit back and laugh. I know I am.
