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.
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.
Editorials
No, Cult Cinema Isn’t Dead
My first feature film, Death Drop Gorgeous, was often described as its own disturbed piece of queer cult cinema due to its over-the-top camp, practical special effects, and radical nature. As a film inspired by John Waters, we wore this descriptor as a badge of honor. Over the years, it has gained a small fanbase and occasionally pops up on lists of overlooked queer horror flicks around Pride month and Halloween.
The Streaming Era and the Myth of Monoculture
My co-director of our drag queen slasher sent me a status update, ostensibly to rile up the group chat. A former programmer of a major LGBTQ+ film festival (I swear, this detail is simply a coincidence and not an extension of my last article) declared that in our modern era, “cult classic” status is “untenable,” and that monoculture no longer exists. Thus, cult classics can no longer counter-culture the mono. The abundance of streaming services, he said, allows for specific curation to one’s tastes and the content they seek. He also asserted that media today that is designed to be a cult classic, feels soulless and vapid.
Shots fired!
Can Cult Cinema Exist Without Monoculture?
We had a lengthy discussion as collaborators about these points. Is there no monoculture to rally against? Are there no codes and standards to break and deviate from? Are there no transgressions left to undertake? Do streaming services fully encompass everyone’s tastes? Maybe I am biased. Maybe my debut feature is soulless and vapid!
I’ve been considering the landscape. True, there are so many options at our streaming fingertips, how could we experience a monoculture? But to think a cult classic only exists as counter-culture, or solely as a rally against the norm, is to have a narrow understanding of what cult cinema is and how it gains its status. The cult classic is not dead. It still rises from its grave and walks amongst the living.
What Defines a Cult Classic? And Who Cares About Cult Cinema?
The term “cult classic” generally refers to media – often movies, but sometimes television shows or books – that upon its debut, was unsuccessful or undervalued, but over time developed a devout fanbase that enjoys it, either ironically or sincerely. The media is often niche and low budget, and sometimes progressive for the cultural moment in which it was released.
Some well-known cult films include The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert (1994), Showgirls (1995), Re-Animator (1985), Jennifer’s Body (2009), and my personal favorite, Heathers (1989). Quoting dialogue, midnight showings, and fans developing ritualistic traditions around the movie are often other ways films receive cult status (think The Rocky Horror Picture Show).
Cult Cinema as Queer Refuge and Rebellion
Celebration of cult classics has long been a way for cinephiles and casual viewers alike to push against the rigid standards of what film critics deem “cinema.” These films can be immoral, depraved, or simply entertaining in ways that counter mainstream conventions. Cult classics have often been significant for underrepresented communities seeking comfort or reflection. Endless amounts of explicitly queer cinema were lambasted by critics of their time. The Doom Generation (1995) by Gregg Araki and John Waters’ Pink Flamingos (1972) were both famously given zero stars by Roger Ebert. Now both can be viewed on the Criterion Channel, and both directors are considered pioneers of gay cinema.
Cult films are often low-budget, providing a sense of belonging for viewers, and are sometimes seen as guilty pleasures. Cult cinema was, and continues to be, particularly important for queer folks in finding community.
But can there be a new Waters or Araki in this current landscape?
What becomes clear when looking at these examples is that cult status rarely forms in a vacuum. It emerges from a combination of cultural neglect, community need, and the slow bloom of recognition. Even in their time, cult films thrived because they filled a void, often one left by mainstream films’ lack of imagination or refusal to engage marginalized perspectives. If anything, today’s fractured media landscape creates even more of those voids, and therefore more opportunities for unexpected or outsider works to grab hold of their own fiercely loyal audiences.
The Death of Monoculture and the Rise of Streaming
We do not all experience culture the same way. With the freedom of personalization and algorithmic curation, not just in film but in music and television, there are fewer shared mass cultural moments we all gather around to discuss. The ones that do occur (think Barbenheimer) may always pale in comparison to the cultural dominance of moments that occurred before the social media boom. We might never again experience the mass hysteria of, say, Michael Jackson’s Thriller.
For example, our most successful musician today is listened to primarily by her fanbase. We can skip her songs and avoid her albums even if they are suggested on our streaming platforms, no matter how many weeks she’s been at number one.
Was Monoculture Ever Real?
But did we ever experience culture the same? Some argue that the idea of monoculture is a myth. Steve Hayden writes:
“Our monoculture was an illusion created by a flawed, closed-circuit system; even though we ought to know better, we’re still buying into that illusion, because we sometimes feel overwhelmed by our choices and lack of consensus. We think back to the things we used to love, and how it seemed that the whole world, or at least people we knew personally, loved the same thing. Maybe it wasn’t better then, but it seemed simpler, and for now that’s good enough.”
The mainstream still exists. Cultural moments still occur that we cannot escape and cannot always understand the appreciation for. There are fads and trends we may not recognize now but will romanticize later, just as we do with trends from as recently as 2010. But I’d argue there never was monoculture in the same way America was never “great.” There was never a time we all watched the same things and sang Madonna songs around the campfire; there were simply fewer accessible avenues to explore other options.
Indie Film Distribution in the Age of Streaming
Additionally, music streaming is not the same as film streaming. As my filmmaking collective moves through self-distributing our second film, we have found it is increasingly difficult for indie, small-budget, and DIY filmmakers to get on major platforms. We are required to have an aggregator or a distribution company. I cannot simply throw Saint Drogo onto Netflix or even Shudder. Amazon Prime has recently made it impossible to self-distribute unless you were grandfathered in. Accessibility is still limited, particularly for those with grassroots and shoestring budgets, even with the abundance of services.
I don’t know that anyone ever deliberately intends on making a cult classic. Pink Flamingos was released in the middle of the Gay Liberation movement, starring Divine, an openly gay drag queen who famously says, “Condone first-degree murder! Advocate cannibalism! Eat shit! Filth are my politics, filth is my life!”
All comedy is political. Of course, Waters was intentional with the depravity he filmed; it was a conscious response to the political climate of the time. So if responding to the current state of the world makes a cult classic, I think we can agree there is still plenty to protest.
There Is No Single Formula for Cult Cinema
Looking back at other cult classics, both recent and older, not all had the same intentional vehicle of crass humor and anarchy. Some didn’t know they would reach this status – a very “so bad, it’s good” result (i.e., Showgirls). And while cult classics naturally exist outside the mainstream, some very much intended to be in that stream first!
All of this is to say: there is no monolith for cult cinema. Some have deliberate, rebellious intentions. Some think they are creating high-concept art when in reality they’re making camp. But it takes time to recognize what will reach cult status. It’s not overnight, even if a film seems like it has the perfect recipe. Furthermore, there are still plenty of conventions to push back against; there are plenty of queer cinema conventions upheld by dogmatic LGBTQ+ film festivals.
Midnight Movies vs. Digital Fandom
What has changed is the way we consume media. The way we view a cult classic might not be solely relegated to midnight showings. Although, at my current place of employment, any time The Rocky Horror Picture Show screens, it’s consistently sold out. Nowadays, we may find that engagement with cult cinema and its fanbase digitally, on social media, rather than in indie cinemas. But if these sold-out screenings are any indication, people are not ready to give up the theater experience of being in a room with die-hard fans they find a kinship with.
In fact, digital fandom has begun creating its own equivalents to the midnight-movie ritual. Think of meme cycles that resurrect forgotten films, TikTok edits that reframe a scene as iconic, or Discord servers built entirely around niche subgenres. These forms of engagement might not involve rice bags and fishnets in a theater, but they mirror the same spirit of communal celebration, shared language, and collective inside jokes that defined cult communities of past decades. Furthermore, accessibility to a film does not diminish its cult status. You may be able to stream Tim Curry as Dr. Frank-N-Furter from the comfort of your couch, but that doesn’t make it any less cult.
The Case for Bottoms
I think a recent film that will gain cult status in time is Bottoms. In fact, it was introduced to the audience at a screening I attended as “the new Heathers.” Its elements of absurdity, queer representation, and subversion are perfect examples of the spirit of cult cinema. And you will not tell me that Bottoms was soulless and vapid.
For queer communities, cult cinema has never been just entertainment; it has operated as a kind of cultural memory, a place to archive our identities, desires, rebellions, and inside jokes long before RuPaul made them her catchphrases repeated ad nauseam. These films became coded meeting grounds where queer viewers could see exaggerated, defiant, or transgressive versions of themselves reflected back, if not realistically, then at least recognizably. Even when the world outside refused to legitimize queer existence, cult films documented our sensibilities, our humor, our rage, and our resilience. In this way, cult cinema has served as both refuge and record, preserving parts of queer life that might otherwise have been erased or dismissed.
Cult Cinema Is Forever
While inspired by John Waters, with Death Drop Gorgeous, we didn’t intentionally seek the status of cult classic. We just had no money and wanted to make a horror movie with drag queens. As long as there continue to be DIY, low-budget, queer filmmakers shooting their movies without permits, the conventions of cinema will continue to be subverted.
As long as queer people need refuge through media, cult cinema will live on.
Editorials
How ‘Child’s Play’ Helped Shape LGBTQ+ Horror Fans
Most of my early happy memories are of being released by my mother, free to wander the video store. I was at my happiest roaming the aisles when it was my turn, but I always walked a little faster going through the horror section, as this was before my love affair with the genre started. There was one VHS cover that particularly scared me, so I always avoided making eye contact with the sinister face on the front of Child’s Play.
A Video Store Recommendation That Changed Everything
Many years later, as I would return to the video store on my own as a teen, I was on a mission to watch as many horror movies as possible. I was also a closeted queer teen harboring a massive crush on the girl who worked the counter, who happened to like horror, and I took any chance I could to talk to her. One night, feeling brave and definitely not overwhelmed by gay feelings, I worked up the courage to ask for her any recommendations.
“Hey! I have a three-day weekend coming up, and was wondering if you had any suggestions for some movies I can just dive into all weekend. Horror preferred.”
“Do you like slashers?”
“Love them! Michael, Jason, Freddie. The classics.”
“Well, and of course Chucky.”
“The talking doll?”
Her eyes widened, and she walked around from the counter, making me realize I had never seen her from the waist down before. She grabbed my wrist and dragged me into the horror section.
“Your homework for the weekend is to watch Child’s Play 1 through 5. The first three are great, but Bride of Chucky is really where it’s at. You’ll see what I mean when you get there. If you make it to Seed of Chucky, we’ll talk.”
With a wink, she left me to do my homework assignment, and of course, I wanted to be a good student, so I picked up the DVDs, grabbed some Whoppers and a popcorn, and went home to study.
Discovering the Child’s Play Franchise as a Queer Teen
Child’s Play was instantly a hit for me. Maybe it was my childhood fear of Chucky, or maybe it was Don Mancini’s anticapitalist take on a killer in the form of something much smaller and cuter than the hulking slashers I was accustomed to, but I had to see how they would bring back my new favorite guy. While I have love and affection for 2 and 3 (I later named my cat Kyle after Andy’s foster sister), I rushed my first watch because I wanted to get to Bride of Chucky to see exactly what Video Store Girl was talking about.
Bride of Chucky was like Dorothy going from sepia to full-spectrum color for me. Having seen Bound at a very formative time for me, Jennifer Tilly was worshipped as queer royalty in my heart. She was instantly magnetic as Tiffany Valentine. The sheer camp of it all, combined with the fact that it had one of the first gay characters I’ve ever seen that was just a “normal” gay person, captured my heart. I dreaded the death David would face for the horrible crime of being a gay man on screen, but to my surprise and delight, he wasn’t punished for it. He was dispatched in the same gruesome manner as any of Chucky and Tiffany’s other villains.
Seed of Chucky and the First Time I Felt Seen
I was excited to get to Seed of Chucky, both because by this point I had fallen in love with the franchise, but also because I wanted to do a good job and impress Video Store Girl. What I didn’t expect was to have my core shattered in a way that I couldn’t fully express until I was an adult. Seed of Chucky is about a doll, first named Shitface by a cruel ventriloquist, that realizes Chucky and Tiffany may be their parents. Throughout most of the movie, Chucky and Tiffany argue over the gender of their child, whom they named Glen/Glenda. The name itself is a reference to the classic Ed Wood movie about a character that we would now likely call genderfluid, who likes to wear men’s and women’s clothing. At the end of the film, it’s clear that for Glen/Glenda, they are two souls inhabiting one body.
“Sometimes I feel like a boy. Sometimes I feel like a girl. Can’t I be both?”
Those words felt like someone was skipping rocks across my heart. It felt like a secret I wasn’t supposed to know, but it was the answer to a question I had never thought to ask. Gender fluidity wasn’t something that was discussed in my conservative home of Orange County. Did Video Store Girl see something in me that I wasn’t hiding as well as I could be? I loved my weekend watching the Child’s Play franchise, but I asked my mom to return the movies for me, as I couldn’t face someone who had seen me so clearly just yet.
Rewatching Seed of Chucky as an Adult
Seed of Chucky, a script that had been rejected by Universal for being “too gay” came to me again as an adult upon rewatch. Where I had found questions, I could not find the answer to in Glen/Glenda, I found acceptance through an unlikely character: Chucky. It’s in Seed of Chucky that our main character, Chucky, gives up the ghost and decides, for once and all, that he no longer wishes to be human. He loves himself exactly as he is for the form he chose for himself, a doll. If a psychopathic killer doll could love himself exactly as he was in a body that he chose to present himself in, why couldn’t I?
Don Mancini and Queer Voices in Horror
One of the best parts of having the same writer at the helm for every entry into the same franchise is that, unlike other typical slasher villains, Chucky gets to experience character development and growth. And because Don Mancini himself is gay, his voice behind the experience has been an authentic beacon of hope for queer audiences. “It has really been nice for me, again, as a gay man, to have a lot of gay, queer, and trans fans say that movie meant a lot to them, and that those characters meant a lot to them as queer kids.” He says in an article by Rue Morgue.
Why Chucky Remains a Queer Icon
One of my greatest joys was watching all three seasons of the cancelled too soon series, Chucky. Jake (Zacary Arthur), the show’s new gay protagonist, goes from clashing with his homophobic father (who is quickly dispatched by Chucky) to his first love and found family. Chucky with his own found family in Tiffany, G.G. (formerly Glen/Glenda), Caroline, and Wendell (John Waters). While the show has ended, I hope this won’t be the last we see of him, and I’m excited to see where Don Mancini takes the character for future queer audiences. One standout moment from the series is when Jake sits with Chucky and talks about G.G.
“You know, I have a queer kid…genderfluid”
“And you’re cool with it?”
“I’m not a monster Jake.”
If a killer doll could love his genderfluid child, I expect nothing less from the rest of society. Growing up feeling the way I felt about my gender and sexuality, I didn’t have peers to rely on to learn about myself.
But what I did have was Chucky. My friend til’ the end.






