Rev Left Radio - Marxist Film Analysis: The Texas Chain Saw Massacre

Episode Date: October 30, 2017

Halloween Special: The Revolutionary Left Radio's Film Vanguard applies Marxist film analysis to The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974). Please support us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/RevLeftRadio  and follow us on Twitter @RevLeftRadio  Follow us on FB at "Revolutionary Left Radio"

The film which you are about to see is an account of the tragedy which befell a group of five youths. In particular, Sally Hardesty and her invalid brother, Franklin. It is all the more tragic in that they were young. But had they lived very, very long lives, they could not have expected, nor would they have wished to see as much of the mad and macabre as they were to see that day. For them, an idyllic summer afternoon drive became a nightmare. The events of that day were to lead to the discovery of one of the most bizarre crimes in the annals of American history. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

Welcome to Revolutionary Left Radio! All right. I apologize. I had to do that. I am your host, Anne Comrade, Brett O'Shea. And today we are going to do something new for the podcast. We're going to be doing a Marxist film analysis of the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre as a little, Halloween special for you. If you guys like this episode and you want us to do more film analysis

episodes, let us know on Twitter and Facebook. This is totally unique for us, but we would love to do this more in the future of people want to hear it. So today we have three guests. We have Phil from our Cuba episode. How's it going? We have Seth from our Maoism episode.

Howdy. And we have Taylor from our first episode ever. Yippie Kai, yay, motherfuckers. So let's do this. This is going to be fun. I'm excited. We all watched it. I watched it separately from these three, and then this is the first time we're really sitting down and talking about it.

So I think we're all going to bring something new and different to this analysis. First and foremost, before we get into the plot and the analysis, I do want to point out that Leatherface, the iconic villain of this film, is based on the real serial killer slash grave robber Ed Gein, who was active in Wisconsin in the, 40s and 50s. He actually only killed two people, but he was a notorious grave robber. He would go dig up corpses and cut off parts of their bodies, save them, use them for his own purposes. So Ed Gein was actually a precursor to a lot of cultural horror tropes and villains from Norman Bates and Psycho. His relationship with his mother was based on Ed Gein. Buffalo Bill and Silence of the Lambs. This leather face, obviously, from Texas Chainslae Massacre, and even Jason Voorhees on Friday the 13th. He was influenced in part by Ed Gein.

So he had a very weird close relationship to his mother who actually wanted to have a daughter. She had a son, and then she tried again for a daughter, and it was Ed Gein. So he loved his mother, and he always knew that there was this tension between him and his mother that she wanted a daughter. But she also had this very puritanical internalized misogyny that came out of a literal reading of her Christian religion. So she actually had a deep hatred of women. She would call women, you know, horrors, and she said that sex was only for procreation, and that anybody that indulged in it beyond that was sinful. So, you know, Ed Gein grew up with these contradictions of, on one hand, his mother wanting a daughter,

and on the other hand, his mother hating women. Eventually, everybody in his family died. He was left in his farmhouse by himself, a farmhouse that is not unlike the farmhouse in this film. When they went into his house, and the things that they found scattered around his cellar were some of the things were human skulls, were actually on his bedposts. He had jars of fingernails from bodies that he dug up. up. He had leggings made of actual human leg skin, lampshades made of human skin. He had a belt of nipples that he actually cut off the nipples of dead bodies and fashioned a belt out of them.

Human skulls with the tops shaved off so that could be turned into bulls. And two of the most famous things that connect up a little bit with this film was he would cut the torso and breasts off women corpses and he'd fashioned vests out of them and he would actually wear them around the house. And another thing they found was a box of vulvas that he cut off from dead corpses and he would actually wear them, you know, over his, over his penis. So this was a very disturbed individual who had very disturbing views on himself and on women. And he was eventually caught and I believe executed for his crimes. And one last thing that I just find interesting because I'm kind of a serial killer nerd is the difference between product killers and

Process killers. Ed Gein and Jeffrey Dahmer were product killers. They killed primarily for the corpse at the end so they could do whatever they wanted with it. And then there's processed killers like a John Wayne Gacy who killed for the love of the killing itself. And then afterwards discarded the bodies underneath his house. So those are just kind of interesting. In this film Leatherface and his family are absolutely product killers. They kill for the cultivation of meat and for whatever weird psychological benefits they get out of it, which will touch on later in the film. Did you guys want to say anything about the plot, about the movie before we get into actually analyzing the theory behind the film, anything about the cinematography or the film itself that we want to touch on, Phil? The initial shot you get of the Red Room with the trophies, it's so, like, creepy, just that image. I don't know, I thought that was super powerful.

And so much of this film is about suspense and cultivating suspense that, people remember the film is a gory movie and in fact the director wanted a PG rating so he deliberately avoided putting gore in the movie what we get is this suspense built up over time everything from the broadcast you'll periodically hear in the film drawing out all of these really terrible social phenomenon you know cholera and riots and grave robings to i think franklin Sally's brother confined to a wheelchair every shot that we spend on him

we feel the anxiety and the tension of being stuck in one place and needing people around you to assist in normal functions we cultivate that frustration with through Franklin and that just revs up

our terror engines and we get ready for that bloody horrific payoff and it is made worse by that frustration and that fear that we get pent up in us. The lingering shots only service that point and further it. Yeah, it's frustrating and like this is an odd bird in the world of war I feel because it's a restrained exploitation flick. Yeah.

Like it's an exploitation flick that's repressing itself and restricting itself and like censoring itself, which is crazy. and that's what I mean that's kind of what I was going to say too like I really like how it doesn't really focus on a bunch of like the gore really show that whole process not because like gore bothers me but um I mean specifically why it doesn't gore bother me is because like it's see it all the fucking time with you know horror films like that's the all the saw films it's played out like I mean and like it not being able to see that stuff almost makes it more frightening because you leave it kind of to it's your head that has to fill in the blanks and as opposed like a movie like

saw or whatever you know you're seeing all this stuff and you know it's fake and you know it's further reinforced that it's fake by how ridiculous it is and i think like one film review i was reading about they kind of talked a bit about like the interesting phenomenon of like him showing a lot of restraint on that violence and gore like using it you know as you say like with the the audience's role in this like it kind of causes you to think about like your own obsession with violence because you know you're expecting to see all this stuff happen and you know you're actively like trying to fill in what it looked like more or less and he doesn't grant you that easy way out yeah it's it's it's funny that it was intended to be a PG movie and at the end it was like banned in certain

countries and had like an X rating it was a different time brett it was a different time but even though it wasn't gory and uh that also reminds me of the hitchcock film psycho and the knife scene in the shower an iconic scene in film but there's also, it's just jump cuts you don't actually see the knife penetrating skin you don't even see the knife touching skin it just with this sharp editing

it gives you the you know conscious sort of feeling your brain fills in the blinks you know and a lot of people remember this film as gory when they look back on it years later but in reality it wasn't but that's just the brain filling in the gore it's a testament to the filmmaker not only is

the filmmaker talented at putting the film together, literally assembling it, but at the same time, he trusts his audience. He treats his audience as an intelligent group of people. The film doesn't need an intricate plot. It doesn't need a mastermind. That makes the film so great as what it is, a film about something terrible happening, almost on accident. It works because the filmmaker and everyone working on the film expects an intelligent audience. And they show that they understand the medium, because that's what film actually is the function of film is that the viewer fills in the blanks between the cuts and people who don't under the directors filmmakers don't understand that will put it lay everything out

on the table well like like the saw movie for example they'll lay everything out on the table leave nothing to the imagination but people who do understand the function of film will keeps you know they won't play all their cards they'll leave for the audience to fill in the blanks and in that respect it is like very Hitchcock E.M. You know? Absolutely. Like that would restraint like Hitchcock's movies were never like super gory or like scary in the sense that

horror movies you would associate with and I think Tyson saw massacres obviously more of a lurid story but it's told in a kind of a similar way I mean, there's similar understanding of, I think, the actual function of cinema. And to that point, I'd argue that this film, the Texas Chainsaw Massacre, is an inheritor of films of the early 20th century, like the cabinet of Dr. Caligari and a lesser-known film from America, I think made in 1924, 50 years prior to the release of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre called Greed. It was a film about greed. originally something insane eight hours long a studio made the filmmakers

cut it down to two and it follows the story about I believe a man and his lover who win $5,000 in lottery tickets and the money tears them apart and you get these macabre and really violent acts shown

in this film that aren't violence for the sake of violence for the sake of stimulation but artful artfully used tools for illustrating this violence that is a social, cultural phenomenon and also something personal,

something that we have to have a relationship with. And a lot of these films, you know, that require the mastermind and explain the horror to the audience, what they don't grasp is that personal relationship, a relationship that doesn't need to be spoken about, that can be intuitive. through emotional intelligence, something that film should be used for, cultivating and talking through.

Yeah, and it's worth noting that Tobe Hooper, the director of this film, was the first, this was first movie ever, never really, never really matched it after that. It was kind of, kind of a one-off for him. And it was also one of the first times that film was, a fictional film was presented as real. In the opening credits, that scroll, they talk about it as if it's a real story. and you see that lineage go all the way down like the Blair Witch Project and a lot of found footage film that we see nowadays that was one of the first times that that was done

so when you're looking at a film and judging it a lot of people should look and do look at its influence on films after it and in that context this film is a classic in the horror genre well and this also belongs to a group of films like Night of the Living Dead

where in the beginning scenes a couple in a graveyard discuss horror movies You have a horror movie discussing the tropes of horror movies, and in the Texas Chainslawn Massacre, you have, instead of art imitating life, you'll see art imitating life, imitating art, and you get the postmodern turn in art and culture, and that accompanies the turn in U.S. culture towards neoliberalism, the spread of this uneven development of mass liberalization of the markets globally and, you know, a whole host of other political, social, cultural phenomena. that are so perfectly wrapped up in this little film. Yeah, I'd say like it's so important to understand this film that the time in which it was released really, for me, it's like a very clear shift in, uh, it's a, uh, sort of a watershed time and we're-1974 for people that don't know. Yeah.

And so we're moving into this, into a new era with the release of this film. And I think that's so, that's one of the reasons, you know, we all find it so meaningful and evocative because it's, it's right up in there with, you know, Nixon, Pinochet, you know, uh, the end of the Vietnam War. Yeah. After the Manson family, which has a little bit of ringtones in here. Yeah. And I think the key thing for me, like, I'm sorry, this is just supposed to be like introductory stuff,

but now we're getting into it. Like, I think the key thing for me is like in light of all those. events like you know at the beginning of the film you know they're going there's the news stories about all these horrific things are happening like you know in tens of you know dozens of people are dying at a given time but you know it's really easy to kind of just ignore that part as like you know they added it in there for you know whatever reason and you know what you're inclined to be really shocked by is you know leatherface and the family killing these four people when all this other stuff, you know, the news reporters listening off of a slew of things that in reality are not only just as horrifying, they're in fact more horrifying as far as like scale and like how they're, you know, these aren't the actions of like a couple crazed individuals. This is like a systemic, these are all like large problems that occur at a really like institutional level and are product of the time they're existing. But all those news stories,

that he's reading off are the afterthought and you know we're more when it's like in your face we're more inclined to care or think it's a shocking shocking and appalling and I think you know that's a that's story of society like they've done a really good job of making us like we don't think about that well if I can you could put a little spin on that that's almost you know through the radio broadcasts we hear whispers of Marxist universe broad social forces and the result of those forces expressed in mass numbers when in the family and what I like to call the slaughterhouse you know leather face and co that we see in that we see the particular this manifestation this sediment off of the universal personally touching the lives of individuals and so in the film from the beginning to the end you see the universal condensed to the particular the broad sense the broad sense in reality of the horrific conditions of late capitalism as it starts to set in all the way down to the particular aspects of where the terror touches our lives. Absolutely. And it's like the, and I think that's further

extended to like go to like a particular instance amongst the family. Like a, you know, when they have the girl Sally tied to the chair and they're like kind of psychologically torturing her and stuff, you know, the dad is like just get it over with like, I don't want to see this stuff. You know, and he even says, you know, like I don't take pleasure in the killing part. but he still wants the end product, the meat. And I mean, that's the same thing. You know, like when you're talking in the news credits about a factory collapsing and a whole bunch of people die.

Nobody wants, everybody wants the $40 shirt that comes out of the factory. But as soon as you start talking about the terrible conditions in the factory and what had to go into making that, it's like, I don't care, I don't want to see any of that, but I still want this product from it. And so I think that was like, you're saying like a particular reflection of like a universal issue i guess yeah absolutely and the

notion of product killer in the beginning can be universalized in that in that way the the violence that is is that capitalism depends on is masked and we get these products flowing across borders we buy every time we swipe our credit card you know people have called it an act of violence and that's what they're saying is because there's that facade of it just consumerism glitz and glitter but underneath is a mountain of corpses and I think taking the social context and boiling it down to an individual act of brutality drives that home and that's part of the point of this film yeah and we're definitely jumping right into the analysis and I just want to kind of build on what you were saying or Taylor what Taylor was

saying I like immediately what fascinates me about this movie and in the opening you know in the opening scene is this sort of body snatcher phenomenon that's being reported as a news event and it's generating this hysteria within the world of the film and people are coming to make sure that their family members aren't being taken away

and that like that theme of body snatching and like grave robbing is super interesting to me and that's such a great premise for the film and that's such and that's kind of the reason why the Edgyne story is so I feel like it's so resonant it's like for similar reasons it's sort of body snatching uh paranoia and for me like the analysis is like everything under capitalism is becoming commodified uh to the point where

not only your you know your body is commodified through the labor process but even death you know can't stop that process and even the bodies of your dead love ones even your own body when you die is now subject to this commodification process and this sort of body snatcher paranoia I think really betrays like a growing insecurity and a growing realization maybe not conscious realization but a realization of some sort of this sort of commodification process and so within the world of film there's a hysteria and people are running to the graveyard and people are camping out there to guard the bodies of their dead loved ones but outside the film You know, people flock to the film, and they watch the film.

And I feel like they're kind of attracted for the same reason. Oh, one thing I, because we already, we are getting into theory already. And I did want to make a caveat up front for anybody that might not be totally familiar with Marxist film analysis and how it operates. I know Phil, you were talking earlier before we started recording about the notions of, you know, social consciousness and how material conditions give rise to art as cultural products. Do you want to touch on that a little bit before we go deeper into the theory of the film? Yeah, yeah. At some level, we can think of the cinematic work as a product by individual artists.

And at some level, we can talk about, oh, you know, this artist is a good artist because he did this or this artist is smart because he did that or whatever. But we've already started talking about the film on a very high, like, ideological level. And at that level, it's not always really a matter of what the director, what the individual artists wanted, and particularly with film, because film is more than like a novel or more than like a painting determined by the mass amounts of people involved. Like, this was a tiny film, but there was still like a lot of artists involved in its creation. And so it's not as simple as pointing at one particular person that's saying they intended it to be this way. But we can think of cinema. as a sort of

as a sort of, as a sort of cultural dream. Dream within a dream. Yeah, do you want elaborate on that a little bit of that notion? Yeah, so, I mean, this is something, one of the rare times that I'm going to look, I would look you in the eye and say Zijek was on to something. But in reality, you know, I think that there is something fair to say in Gijek's analysis of film that, you know, films are like dreams.

And when you analyze dreams, you don't look at the who, the what, the win and the wear in their particularity. You have to ask questions about why this person and this thing and this place were organized in such a way without any notable agency. You know, why was the form as such? You ask questions about the form and the way that the form has been rendered rather than the content of the form. And the form in real life, I guess waking life, is ideology. You know, and the contents are, you know, my consumer choices, my home life choices, my social choices, you know, those are the particular aspects of my life. And I have an arena of possibilities to choose from. But over and on top

of that, I have an ideological blinder. We all do. You know, we have forces that have constructed these arenas for us to choose our particular possibilities out of. And that form is the unconscious and like dreams, when we play with the form and content, i.e. make films, you know, we have the particular arena of choices that the artists involved could choose from and did choose from, but more, you know, what adds another level of depth to them are the cultural, ideological, social, and economic and political forces that constructed the arenas of possibility in the first place. And so movies themselves are dreams and our dreams.

Yeah, that's really interesting. I think horror films specifically have a way of reflecting a social, subconscious fear of things. So like when you see a huge glut of zombie movies, for instance, a culture that puts out zombie movies and that becomes obsessed with zombies or vampires or whatever the particular tropes may be, that touches on something that the society subconsciously is going through and fears after 9-11 you saw a rise of superhero movies

and so many of those films featured destruction in downtown big cities as good versus bad we're battling it out every single director and writer wasn't consciously thinking I'm making a movie in the post 9-11 era but you know the conditions they're operating out of gave rise to that fear and you know it's instantiated into individuals but it exists collectively

yeah and I think like going off what both three you're saying and the important thing and I mean this will apply to any sort of analysis that you do or be a, any film, book, whatever, you know, you can certainly have a number of critiques of

Texas chainsaw massacre in regards to say like, you know, gender roles and stuff and those are fair to make. But it's important and I think there's a tendency for a lot of liberals and stuff to get wrapped up in this when they're analyzing, you know, be it music or film or whatever, it's like, well, they did this and there and that was really,

you know, sexist, racist or whatever. So, you know, fuck that. And yeah, fuck that. But, like, the art itself, like the director in Texas Chainsla, massacre, for example, I don't think any sexist content in there, it's not like they sat down and was like, okay, we're going to make sure that the women get it worse than the men. It's, again, it's a product. it's a product of a society that is like normalized violence against women even fetishized it and it's a reflection of that so and that's not to excuse that type of stuff because it absolutely should be critiqued but it's also i think when we're talking about these things um it's important to realize that you know like you're saying like this is we're still working within the confines of a social and political context and so you can't really completely dismiss something because of these bad aspects you can critique them but you have to recognize that that's the playing field that we're on unfortunately and to import a little Maoism

into this I mean that's that's that's that's theory praxis theory right you know you know you make something with your best intentions and then when someone identifies when someone identifies when someone identifies problematic content you don't rebuke them you listen to them and say you're right, I made a mistake when I, let me go back and correct, you know, the problematic content of my work because I had ideological, um, blind spots. Yeah, blind spots, prerequisites that I was working off of that. I had no idea existed. And so in film and film critique and media production, you can have a mass line in that respect. You'll have the individual doing, you know, individual and individuals involved in making the product. You have the masses that consume the

product. When the masses, you know, identify something genuinely harmful, hurtful, uh, and offensive, um, to them, they can address it to the filmmakers. It's the responsibility of the filmmakers to listen and accept their criticism. And for the filmmaker, for the artist, for the writer, being aware of this sort of ideological determinancy or like the, the, the, being aware that your work is susceptible to that influence. And then working to, I don't, subvert it or reflect it instead of simply passively channeling it is the most that you can do and it's the most that you can do and it's the most that you can do and it kind of marks you know for me it's a big marker of whether someone I consider to be a great artist

is whether they are aware of it and whether they are able to subvert it even if they can't ultimately detach themselves from ideological which is impossible but if they are able to be aware first of all and then second of all work to subvert that function that ideological function yeah and one other thing i want to add real quick and i know this is getting more into the marxist side of marxist film analysis and less the film but i think the point i was making about like um that art and you know problematic stuff within that is also the same way that we as leftists need to be thinking about the masses, right? Because, like, I, you know, I've seen firsthand a lot of times

where a leftist will, you know, kind of dismiss like an average working person because, you know, they used problematic language or made some stupid joke. And that's the key thing is we have to look at our interaction with the masses the same way we look at film analysis. That stuff sucks. It needs to be critiqued, but it needs to be. critiqued in a thoughtful way in which like we don't cast aside the entire thing because if

you go around and you know start you know as communists we should hold ourselves to a higher standard absolutely as far as way we use language and our relationships with people go but you know for your average person this is all really new stuff and they're more concerned about rent at the end of the month and stuff and they just haven't had time to think about that so I think the you know That's the Marxist way to, like, apply film analysis to the masses. Is that, like, there's going to be a lot of problematic bullshit, but why are, why does that problematic bullshit exist is the key thing? And, like, we can't just throw the baby out with the bathwater.

I hate that phrase, but, yeah. Well, that's critical engagement with art. Um, you know, critically engages it. This is the movie that Rex Reed called the most horrifying motion picture I have ever seen. This film is positively ruthless in its attempt to drive you right out of your mind. It accomplishes everything it sets out to do with brilliance and unparalleled terror. Branklin! This is the horror movie to end them all.

Sally, I hear something. Stop! Stop! This is the movie Rex Reed called The Most Horrifying Motion Picture I have ever seen The Texas Chainsaw Massacre So let's go ahead and move on to the theory We've talked about, you know, we did the caveat of the film analysis And if we do more of these episodes, that right there will stand as our As our caveat up front.

We want to do it in future episodes But it's important for people to understand Because not everybody understands the dynamics involved there. So let's go ahead. and hit our first big category, which is the capitalism and the material conditions of the 60s and 70s, out of which this film arose. One thing I want to touch on was the actual productive base of the film. Actors didn't get paid for this work. They worked in horrible conditions. It was a blistering, steamy, hot Texas summer, and the opening credits are

like an overdeveloped picture of the sun boiling when all those corporate malfeasance and grave robbing little news out clips were playing it's actually a very zoomed in you know distorted picture of the sun popping and and that kind of goes to the heat of the conditions and these people worked with you know when they were soaked in blood at the end like the final girl she soaked in blood in 125 degree whether the farmhouse was not well ventilated and they actually had rotting meat on the set so this contributed to really horrific working conditions that that are somewhat similar to the conditions in a lot of slaughterhouses in real life if i may say that that last hurrah where they have the family down to dinner,

spent maybe 10 to 15 minutes of screen time on as an audience. It took 23 hours to do, man. 23 hours during 110-degree day with the windows boarded up and riding meat all the day. And then not only do you have a whole table full of actors, you got light guys, you got sound guys, you got that house stunk, it swam, and the people that worked on the set didn't get paid, number one. and so therefore clearly did not get paid what they were worth. Exactly.

That's kind of what I was getting at with like the ideological determination of film in particular because it is an industry and we have worker employee relations here. And if we talk about capitalism sustaining and reproducing itself through ideology, we talk about the ruling class putting forth ideology that justifies their existence, that is reproduced or that is reproduced or that is, It's the same operation going on within film where we have an industry, we have workers, we have money flowing, and that in itself, more so than just writing a book, creates a higher level of ideological determination.

Absolutely. Important point. So in the film, there's a clear notion once they pick up the hitchhiker in the van, it comes to light that this family was actually kicked out of the slaughterhouse. They lost their jobs at the local slaughterhouse due to automation. The invention of cattle killing bullet, I think it was air-pressured... Air-pressure guns with the metal bolts. Which is shoot the cow through the head and kill it immediately.

And one of the hitchhiker who is clearly disturbed and cuts himself and acts in horrific ways talks about he likes it the old way, where they just use a sledgehammer, which the sledgehammer will be used to kill the first human victim which is interesting parallel there The old way With a sledge See that was better

They died better that way How come? I thought the gun was better Oh no With a new way People put on a job But it's in the context of automation And the loss of jobs

And the loss of identity That comes with that And maybe that touches on Leather faces putting over his own face the skin of somebody else. There's a loss of identity when your job, which defines you, is ripped away from you. And at the end scene, when they're in the table and he paints, he puts makeup on his face, his individual identity is basically consumed by the family and whatever role they need him to play,

whether it's killing kids that are coming too close to their farm or acting as the matriarch and a family devoid of women, whatever it is, there's this loss of identity and this role that leatherface plays where he tries to put the put a mask on literally um so that was interesting to me yeah and like i think you know that's that phenomenon of you know them losing their jobs slaughterhouse is also you know says a lot about the way our society and particularly our society you're at this instant operates that you know it's likely that this family wasn't really bad people prior to you know losing those jobs that uh and um that um that industry going away for them. They get driven to a certain point and they feel like they

have to do these things that are reclaiming the old way to them, you know, by slaughtering people as like how, and, you know, it's out of both necessity that they feel like, you know, for food, but also like that connection to a prior time. And so like we see that today, you know, like a lot of like liberals and stuff like to make fun of people in rural America who voted for Trump. Well, why did people vote for Donald Trump? Because the coal miners voted for him because he said he was going to bring coal jobs back. Like people want, people do what they have to, what they perceive is going to help satisfy both directly their material needs and like some sort of emotional things. So the like in the emotional thing here is, you know, that like connection

to the meat industry and they're also satisfying their hunger. So it's like, I mean, like I said, all these people probably weren't, they probably weren't going to be serial kill. prior to all this stuff happening, just like a Donald Trumpvert might not necessarily identify themselves as part of the alt right or anything prior to such a buildup of various material conditions that they feel driven to do those things and associate with those type of things, I guess is my perception.

Yeah, and they do those things, even if at some level they understand that it's wrong or that as contradictory. And I think that's for me one of the most interesting things about Leatherface as a character is because I think he's conscious

at some level that what he's doing is maybe not wrong but certainly not quite right. Oh, he knows it's wrong. There are scenes where I think after he kills the second gentleman

to enter the house, he rushes to the window in a beautifully framed shot and scans the horizon with noticeable anxiety. It makes him whimpering sense. yeah yeah and so like and so for me leather face the dynamic the family dynamic of the slaughterhouse as you as you call it taylor is like uh is for me it represents or it uh it evokes for me

the social dynamic of uh late capitalism and the social relations it social relations it uh produces and that and and especially particularly at leather face i see as being sort of the generic human subject under like capitalism. And the mask, the mask is so important for that character. And I think that's about, it's about false consciousness, but it's about a sort of, it's a self-conscious false consciousness, if you will. The people, especially in this period of 1974, and what we kind of talked about before, it's a new era,

there is a sort of awareness that everything is awful. and you get that with the looping radio the radio reports about all this awful shit like there's this there's this knowledge that all the post-World World War II stuff is like gone 50s white picket fence notion even the optimism of the hippie movement yeah and so there's a well it's not that it's gone it's that it's being challenged there's like the vision that it could disappear at some point and that's what causes

the anxiety for people because like it has doesn't happen, but it looks like it might. And that's what scares people more. And so Leatherface, he knows that it's not quite right. He knows what he's doing is not quite right, but he doesn't know what else to do. And that is like he, he's fulfilling the role, as you said. He's wearing the mask. He's wearing the apron. He's doing what's expected of him, what he feels is expected of him. He's going through the motions. He's wearing a mask. And I feel like that's the most important thing is like the mask, the, the sort of total alienation is like and we don't like we we don't see we don't really see his face

and if I may you know speaking to the phenomenology of the film itself it's not as if the white picket fences and the promise of a better future have disappeared in the film itself in the universe of the film everything has disappeared I mean the film is speckled with completely empty landscapes, desolate and blighted roadside fixtures, gas stations, and any house, any home that you see is run down or completely abandoned. The graves themselves, as a last bastion of sanctity, are being robbed. You know, in this film, the universe of this film, and the way that the characters experience it, you don't have something that appears to be disappearing. You have something that's totally gone. And the slaughterhouse is left full of animals. And when that happens,

the contents and the members of the household, the one household that we see occupied, turned towards an authoritarian top-to-bottom governance structure with the most vulnerable member at the bottom being cycled between identities that it hasn't chosen because that character's arena of possibilities has closed entirely and that is devastating. It causes a human zero point. Yeah. Great. And that's, and I mean, kind of about that like that's absolutely still true with like rural america broadly you know like i'm from a town of a thousand people in western Nebraska and like you know it sucked like i hated how racist and like small-minded people could be but the thing is they're not a most of them

aren't actively terrible it's like this thing that's seeped in and that's because all those things that you know you just described are actually happening like things are going away all these towns are shrinking losing their population and there's nothing you know and there's no clear promises of how it can change anymore so yeah just to like tie it back into like where you're saying a minute ago that's the thing is like those material conditions these people are shitty but like the important question to ask is not whether they're shitty or not it's why are they shitty you know and then we can extend that further like why does the quote unquote white working class tend to support these really bad politicians that like on some level don't immediately

appear to serve their interests like so yeah and I think we see it's sort of a similar thing with Leatherface like Phil is saying where it's you know he understands it's not 100% right but again it's a reaction to a very real thing people don't just do that there's a reason yeah and there and there's also an inactive um tension between city and rural they're coming to this old place the house nearby the the place where they're ultimately killed was sally and franklin's grandfather's house or something and it's all run down and they just go to visit it as a little road trip so you have these this youth culture from the city coming to a rural situation with a decidedly older population and in the 70s post 60s

post hippie movement that tension between the young and old which perpetually replaced itself in every generation was really was really you know high pitched um and so there is that sort of like what is this what are these young people coming up with in our society and this almost refusal for an older generation to to embrace it and understand it and that conflict ends in bloodshed um which we saw in the streets of chicago and the 68 convention we saw with the assassinations of MLK JFK etc with the vietnam war um we see a lot of those tensions in our society and those tensions are brought to a microcosmic level in the film itself. One thing Seth mentioned a while ago is that, like, you said something like, you know,

these people weren't bad before they lost the job, or like, that's maybe an approximation of what you said. They're not, they're not necessarily or actively. I don't want to make, like, moral judgment. Yeah, they're probably not cannibals. Yeah, they're certainly not cannibals, yeah. But the central metaphor of the film is the beef, the cattle going through and being slaughtered and produced for me. And I think through that metaphor and through sort of the

kind of the unfolding story of this family, we kind of, I get the impression that it's, it's a reflection of our sort of the commodification of everything around us and our alienation from the products of our labor and the sort of unhealthy social. uh, dynamics that unfold that leads to. And so like, uh, before they lost the job at the, at the slaughterhouse, they may not have been cannibals, but there's an indication that, that they, that there is still something deeply wrong, deeply barbaric about it. That doesn't, that it's, it's beyond the cannibalism. It's underneath the cannibalism. The cannibalism is just a, you know, uh, you know, sort of obvious evil thing

but the central metaphor is the slaughterhouse and and the beef being led to slaughter and when they talk about this certainly from the family's perspective everything was fine you know when they had the job you know everything was fine maybe maybe an equivalent of that would be oh everything was fine

before the Vietnam War everything was fine before World War II when we had FDR when we had the civil rights movement yeah whatever the perspective was fine back then but through the film we get this impression that that may be not so we get this horrible grandpa figure who's like a dead body that's somehow still alive vampiric almost yes and he and he represents that old time but he's that they're trying to hold on to you by preserving his body but they

can never truly get it back because that's the thing with all these things is that like it's not it was never as good as you remember it being and like that's still like when you hear people say like make america great again well for those that are saying that that were alive during the time that they're referencing that should be whatever america was again you know they were still pissed off then they were pissed off about something they were probably still just bad races but like so the thing is it was never we always tend to look back history is better than it really was and uh so i think yeah that's the they try to hold on to this body and it's never it's you know grandpa isn't really alive he's you know decaying in a cherry

can't even hold the goddamn sledge here. And he had the job of the slaughterhouse. Yeah. And he was the best, you know, slaughter. He was the best guy at the slaughterhouse. He could kill so many beefs. And like, called beefs.

It was the proper parallel. And if, and like, there's the line where he's like, oh, and if only the other guys had been able to get the beaves on the hook fast enough or something like that. Like, he was so good at killing. There's always an external reason. And like, he was so, he was so. he was so good at killing and and uh and that's what they like that's the thing that they want to latch on to like that was the good time like when we when we had this job where we could kill and we're the

best at killing like that was that was our glory days that's to make america great again and like there's impotency there and the only reason they didn't do better at is because there's some external force that play whether that be the people that were not hooking things quick enough for the immigrants or, you know, like, it's all serves the same function. And so a lot of the horrific imagery is based around that metaphor of the kids in the movie being sort of these stand-ins for the cattle in the slaughterhouse. And so, and he's simultaneously, like, I'm not sure that he intended to, like, make a vegetarian film, but he's pointing out the cruelty of the slaughterhouse and, like, comparing

it with the cruelty of treating humans in that way. And I think the point that's been made for me, or the thing that I saw reflected is in how capitalism how our participation in capitalism our participation in like the labor exploitation kind of

leads to that kind of thing where we all are we are all sort of what was the term you used? The product murderers. Well I like how Brett said it like if you want to explain a bit more on what you're talking about when we're outside of the room before you start recording like a you know the consumers end up being the consumed exactly that's what i that's what i wanted to touch

on because after they were displaced from the slaughterhouse what they did to what they do to make money now is they they grave rob and they kill people and cut them up produce meat and then the the um the drayton soyer the the guy that works at the gas station um that asked the kids before they go to the house um we want you stay here and eat some barbecue um that barbecue is human meat they later come to find out and again like you said taylor it's implied it's the the it's not not done for you. The director respects you enough to let you fill in the blanks there, but it's very, very clear that this is human meat. So what they end up doing is they're desensitized by the killing of animals in the slaughterhouse. They lose that job. They go out,

they see human beings now as their only way to continue their work that gave them meaning and gave their life and productivity value. And so they kill, slaughter, and sell human beings. So the consumers become consumed. The human beings become cattle. The human body is modified in life and death. And so all those factors play a role, I think, in that situation. Point of order, in Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2, we get Mr. Sawyer coming back at it with producing Texas's finest homemade chili brought to you by human remains.

There it is. Yep. So before we move on to gender and sexuality, is there anything else you wanted to say about capitalism and material? conditions before. Oh, yeah. Fuck capitalism. Well, you know, just maybe an attempt to wrap it up. Like, what else are you going to do when the

only thing you're good at is killing large mammals? And then you lose your job at the killing large mammals factory. Like, that's kind of the general. There's also an echo of the Vietnam War. And that was just a mass killing.

The slaughter of human beings. And a lot of people made a lot of money off that. And you know, the bodies that were killed and tortured and decayed in the jungles of Vietnam profited people back here in the U.S. that, you know, that profited off of that war. Just one little interruption, because we brought up, we talked a little bit about Jijic earlier.

So let's just get the, you know, the boilerplate, a Freudian analysis of it over with the dad. What was that you said before the episode, Philo, in regards to people that don't like Freud? Oh, you can't trust them. Okay, just so we're clear. So the dad is, what's his name again? The dad is Drayton Sawyer.

Drayton Sawyer is clearly super ego. Leatherface, obviously ego, and hitchhiker, id. Interesting. I thought I can put leather face in the id position, but I don't, no, no, no, no, no. I like that. Go ahead and, where's a mess? Go ahead and do, that's true. He's getting pushed and pulled.

Go ahead, that's beautifully, that's beautifully said, yeah, that's true. Go ahead and just make the phallic point about the chain sound. Oh, my God! I love chainsaws. Chainsaws are immense, beautiful, beautiful babies, man. Chainsaws, and especially, especially in this movie, chainsaws in and of themselves look like dicks. They are phallic baby.

They are long, strong, they got it going on. But what I love about this movie is the purpose and implementation of the chainsaw itself. You get this phallic symbol, you know, representing, representing the virility that the male inhabitants of this household are alleged to have by virtue of their status as men. However, the chainsaw itself, when implemented, does the exact opposite that cultural mythos tells you men are exemplars of. It's not rational.

It's not concise. It's not ordered. It's messy. It's chaotic. It's actually very bad. It's inefficient and it's loud. It's not slick. it's not clever it's brute it's ugly

if you've been using anything besides the chainsaw he could have actually killed sally because you have like a three foot range on that and so i mean it doesn't yeah it's heavy and he's trying to run like i mean so if you're trying to fuck people up it's a not wise weapon to choose and so with the chainsaw you get the inversion of the male fallace you get this implicit critique of masculinity that it's this uh you know wrapped up you know everything everything that this person ought to be is actually shown to be the opposite case through the physical manifestation of their gender identity.

Wow. That's a beautiful segue. Good job. Yeah, what did you like that is. Gender and sexuality. So one thing that I definitely noticed in this film was the overall asexual nature of the family and their inclinations and what they're out to do. And the asexual nature of the film as a whole, you know, where you're, you know, we're

used to now, with these slasher films representing, you know, kids, teens always are involved in quotas, you know, they always have sex and that's when Michael Myers or Jason Voorhees breaks in or Chucky and ruins their day. But when, in this film, when they're, when, I think it's Kirk and Pam run off for the first time to try to find the waterhole, there's an implication they're going to go, they're going to go have sex. They don't. They go and they try to find gas, and that kind of subverts an expectation we have as American audience filmgoers that we expect that sex to come into play. And at the very end, in the family, when it's just Sally that's left, she's at the head of the table, she, you know, in her desperation, says, I'll do anything. And the

subtext is, there might be a sexual dimension to that, to that statement. And the family just laughs. They scoff at the idea that she is a, that she's a sexual object. To them, she is just food, just meat, just something to be chopped up, eaten and sold. And, and she loses her gender power. Just some things you gotta do. Don't mean you have to like it. Oh, please. What are you doing? I don't do anything you want. I'll do anything you want.

Ah! Ha! Ha! Ha! So the film as an overall asexual film, it was actually weirdly refreshing and something that you don't expect of horror films.

Yeah, it's a really, it's a really remarkable thing about it, honestly, is that like it's, it's not asexual in like a, you know, a 1960s PG movie type way where it's like a wink and a nod or like something implicit. there's like nothing implicit and there's nothing there's no winks or nods it's not even it's not it's not a hitchcockian and that there's like definitely like conversation yeah and there's there's there's literally nothing sexual in this film at all and like wait and and it seems for the phallic chainsaws don't forget about the phallic chainsaws yeah i mean that's a that's a great point it's

like uh you know that's the only uh thing sexual that's in there and i'm not sure entirely what to make of it beyond what taylor said about the about the felt like chainsaw, but like... If you watch Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2, it gets a lot more explicit, but we don't have to go into that now. I think it's very slapsticky, though. It took a whole new twist on the film, right? Well, it was supposed to be a comedy.

We can talk about that more to the point later, because I do think that if you're interested, you should watch it, but don't go much further than number two in this series. That's a good rule of thumb for, like, most film series, I feel like. That's why I stopped watching. Because all good content is just sucked out, and it's just the surface value of the film. the gore you know the murders the whatever it may be um that's a perpetual problem of remakes

um but another thing that i wanted to point out with regards to gender and sexuality we touched on it a little bit there's a total lack of women in the family you have the grandfather this vampiric impotent call back to an earlier time who was really great at his job back in the day but now he can't even summon the strength to slam a hammer down um they feed they cut her finger and they put in his mouth and he drinks her blood and that seems to give him a a a moment of virility for a second but it's still ultimately impotent yeah it's a very odd scene but it's but ultimately the family is a total patriarchy um the grandfather sits at the top then it goes down to the father drayton and the two sons the hitchhiker and leather face um and at the very last scene

leather face is dressed as a woman almost as if to desperately try to fill that gap and if you notice i just just popped in my head but sally is seated at the head of the table um she's chained you know she's chained into the chair but she's seated at the head of a table of all men um i don't know exactly what that represents, but there is a certain sort of toxic, unhealthy, delusion, psychosis that is produced when men run things. And that might speak to the men that ran the Vietnam War or the men that run the economy. There's an implicit critique there, I think. Oh, yeah. And, you know, when you watch the movie, you look into some of the analysis, you do see reoccurring themes about people writing about the inequitable treatment of women

during the moment of slaughter in the film at the slaughterhouse and around it. You know, whenever a male member of the party dies, it's through a swift drop of the hammer or not so swift. Usually takes a couple strikes. And there you see, you know, a little bit of the suffering, but you get the impression that, you know, when those hammerfalls number two and three come, they're not there. You know, they've clocked out.

And with the women, you see them strung up on meat hooks, thrown alive into freezers, chained to the head of a chair, psychologically tortured at a gas station meant to think that help is coming, only to have that hope snatched away. You get a little more play. And one of the more interesting aspects that, you know, I walked away with that was, walked away from that with was, was that, uh, very nice. Thank you.

That's a beautiful. I was speaking English for some years. Um, but something I walked away with, uh, was, um, and after doing some research, you know, on the one hand, you get this interesting phenomenon, uh, phenomenon in, um, culture where I, I think there was a, you know, and don't quote me, do the, do the homework. But, um, after conducting a study of, uh, an unspecified sample size, males that watched violent scenes, or scenes that depict violence against women, didn't respond as strongly a second time that they watched those scenes.

And so, you know, we have to, and then on the other hand, in the film, you know, you get a universe where male intruders in this house are slaughtered like animals and given no thought, you know, like animals in a carnivorous, you know, meat-consuming society, they don't get the benefit of the doubt. They don't get, you know, the hunt. They are dumb, you know, hunks of meat and are going to be cut up and served promptly. But with women, you know, you get that psychological dimension of there's something more complex going on. These objects as commodities need to be they need to be prepared. There needs to be a ritual of torment.

One of the women is actually preserved in the freezer for a while. Right. And so in the real world, you get this funny phenomenon where these scenes seem to reinforce male perspectives on violence towards women. And in the universe, I think you can pick up these really interesting particular instances where the filmmakers are trying to subvert that. but you have another case of a universal meeting in particular in this case the particular being the universe of this film and the universal being the universe of all films and their interactions with culture and something that I think again harkening back to the mass line artists need to be conscious of and respond to criticism and masses people consuming media whenever something problematic is identified and take steps to correct it because sometimes something that you see in a film that can be interesting and playful in the context of the film and a larger social context can be incredibly harmful and destructive. Yeah.

Yeah, I guess the thing with gender roles that I don't have an answer for, so I'll pose it as a question to everybody, is like, why do we, you know, so even though like the way that Leatherface, you know, treats the women in the film as you know horrifically more violent and protracted than he does with the men like why is it like first of all why is that that he almost seems to take like more care with them you know it's almost like he they're more of something to him than the man as opposed to like you know like you say like the men are like animal objects like why is it that he takes his time with the women and then why is it like when the family is having dinner you know

they keep her alive for forever and like they don't they're not like it's it's weird they don't they're not like blatantly disrespectful it's like almost like they they want her there for a period of time but then they want to you know obviously discard of her after a certain point and murder her so like i guess i don't i don't have any answer really like what's the family's relationship with like women roles as far as like having kind of this weird respect for them, but the response to that respect for them ends up being really violent and degrading. It's like a very complex relationship, I feel like. I actually have something to say to that. The family unit in this film is a closed circle.

Having lost all of its female participants, it's incapable of naturally reproducing additional female occupants without having to consume an intruder, so to speak. It's good. you know, incorporate them into the family. And the film being, you know, as a sexual as it is, you know, these people have been in the context of capitalism and its influence on the environment of the characters in the film, these people have been robbed of anything other than hunger. You know, they can't even function on a reproductive level.

They function merely on the productive level. They require sustenance because their environment and community has been so blighted by the forces around them. And so I don't think that in this film in particular, they're in a place to consider adopting someone into their, into their community, let alone their family, although I think they desperately want it. And I think that could play a part in explaining the relationship of women, you know, and their relationship to violence in the film, is that in this film in particular, you get a social situation that so desperately wants this component, but by virtue of

its material conditions is incapable of assimilating it. So then do you think that ties in, is there a tie in between that relationship and the fact that, you know, leather face dresses as a woman at the family dinner? Like, to fill a void at least? Yeah. I think that that's imposed from the top down, you know. I think the elder family members enforce that. You know, I don't think that that's something that Leatherface, you know, does, you know, autonomously. I don't think that Leatherface has allowed any autonomy by virtue of the authoritarian patriarchal structure of the circle, this family unit, you know, so in order to sustain, you know,

the need for that kind of reproductive influence and personality in this family unit as a community, the authoritarian structure designates a role. And I think that putting a leather face in that position says something about what patriarchy thinks about women. You know, they make the lowest common denominator portray this. It's treated as a, you know, something that needs to be, you need to put aside your identity and then do this. And it's something that can be put aside again. And you're the person that doesn't have any set personality. So we're going to make you do it. You know, we don't, none of us here that are attached to our masculine identities feel comfortable putting that away to adopt more feminine persona or persona and we want you who has nothing to do this for us

to indulge our male identities yeah and like i think to further that uh the relationship between like the father and leather face is really reflective of typical um marriage relationships like you know so leather face does all this work uh you know kills like three fucking people and you know dad comes on when he's pissed off because he broke the door it's like you know the it's like the dad it's like the dad coming home from work you know the wife cleaned the house she got all the groceries but uh damn it she forgot that bottle of whiskey and i'm fucking pissed about it like and that's like a similar thing there's as well if i may um i think that's more geared towards

identifying the status of women as more akin to the status of children in our society than men. I mean, men are by and large on a higher plane and allowed to be on a higher plane. And enforcing patriarchy means equivocating the roles of women and children. You know, can't hold property.

You know, I have no voting rights and no social role, no official role in production. and that too I think in the way that this figure coming into the home berates this person like he berates a child

is something that doesn't get touched on a lot in this movie which is domestic violence you know when he comes home with Sally in the car the hitchhiker is walking up the driveway and he gets out of the truck and beats him with a stick like you know we were up at that graveyard again

we can't be up there because the idea is like we don't want to give away the fact that we're the ones doing the grave robbing because it's an open case they beats him with a stick And then he walks in and, you know, berate's leather face for his inadequacies or his fucking up the door and whatnot. So that child, woman, dynamic and the father figure coming home after a day of work and being angry, that certainly hits with a lot of people, especially raised in the 60s, when the father figure was one of emotionless disattachment and disciplinarianism. And there wasn't really an ability for men to convey their more sensitive, vulnerable aspects of their emotional side.

and that was really just an iron-fisted father at the front of the table and the mother was the source of compassion for children and that's something that's utterly lacking in this family which I think you know any kind of romanticization of is undercut by the chainsaw you know being this phallic symbol it is not very good actually at being a phallic symbol you know sort of the male identity frustrates itself and is something that is better left at the door of history you know and swept into

the dustbin good stuff all right for the final section we're going to on vegetarianism. And this is the only basic content that the director, Tobhooper, explicitly said was the meaning of this film. So I'm going to read a quote from the director. He says, of course, a bloody horror movie is the last place you'd look to find a quote unquote vegetarian movie, but the fact that so few viewers know about the message going on could make it all the more effective. It's not just preaching to the converted. After all, most of us would prefer to be naive to the suffering that goes into our meat. To be like the vacationers win early on, they stopped to buy some sausage from one of the

Sawyers, but have no idea how it got there. To be like Sally, who tells her friend, Franklin, I like meat. Please change the subject. So Tobhooper wanted to instantiate a pro-vegetarian message into the film. And when they're driving in the van, they cut from the scene of the people to the cattle. And the cattle scene is prolonged unnecessarily. If it was a throwaway shot, it would have been a much quicker shot. But there's a expansion of time that they focus on it.

And this also, this movie has a conspicuous lack of a soundtrack. Instead, if you pay close attention, it's animal sounds. And when the people scream, there's little subtle cuts of animal sounds into the screaming of the people themselves. And they're ultimately chopped up and sold his sausage and barbecue. So there is a vegetarian aspect. Does anybody want to say anything more about that? Well, just thematically, I really like kind of the long cuts and, you know, the effective montage on filmmaking. You know, I'm going to dial kind of our talk back to technique for a little bit.

filmmaking is by and large the technique of montage, you know, cutting little bits and pieces of filmed bits together in hopes that our minds will place, you know, a coherent story on top of it. I think, I don't know if it's Alfred Hitchcock. Someone's got a very famous example where he says, you know, we take this film clip of a man smiling. It's Hitchcock, yeah. And then after that, you know, you say, if he smiles and then you cut to a charming family picnic scene, he is a virtuous man. But if you have the smiling man, uh, cut to a woman in a bikini. A little girl, I think. Oh, yeah. Yeah. You've got a lettuous man. And so, you know, the way that we experience film is his montage. And so when you get, um, uh, plot action, um, happening cut with

non-plot elements like the sun in the sky, the dead armadillo on the road, the cattle kind of bustling in the, um, in the slaughterhouse, uh, you. you get excellent use of montage where you don't have to incorporate plot structure into your filmed units, you can incorporate theme directly and make, you can take a film or you can make a film that way. And I think this film, it works in this film. And I think it's just the time that, you know, is spent on it is just right. Dare I say it.

Dare I say it is a Lynchian moment. Oh, my God. I knew he was going to say something about TV. like I told you. So, and on that note, I think he may have set out, and like this, we were kind of talking about directorial antenna, or filmmaker, intent, or artist intent earlier, he may have set out to make a vegetarian film. And like, as a vegetarian, I can appreciate that, but it is, you know, that's kind of a

sort of shallow, you know, you know, we know, like the slogan, meat is murder. He set out maybe to make a meet his murder film, but I think what we end up actually getting is a much more complex and nuanced film that, although it was intended to just be meat as murder, we actually get so much about like the way this late, this period of late capitalism influences our social relations with each other and our social being and like how we relate to products and how we relate to each other. each other and how we commodify each other and all this stuff and so like i've i you know i definitely feel the meas murder theme and i feel like on an artistic level he's really good at getting you viscerally in there and like his imagery of the cows is like some of the most haunting shit uh like and his you know butcher imagery and his uh slaughterhouse imagery and like the dialogue of them describing that whole thing is very like it's very effective And, like, at a level of technique, at the level of technique, he's very good at that and that meat is murder theme.

Shallow as it may be on the surface is a great way for him to sort of unconsciously, perhaps, import all these other complex themes. Because I think the moment you start talking about how meat is produced in a society, whether you intend to or not, the notions of capitalism are going to come into it. Well, you've already entailed production. Exactly. Yeah. And, like, I think the, you know, the key thing when we talk about, like, the meat industry and, like, what this director was trying to say about it, and again, I'm a vegetarian as well. But, like, there is critique to be had, right? I feel like a lot of, like, vegetarians and vegans and, you know, maybe even this director, he wanted to make it ostensibly about vegetarianism in the meat industry. Okay. The important part is, like, why is that problematic? It's really not the fact that animals are being eaten. In fact, I would go so far as to say that, like, you have to be pretty idealist to just say that eating animals is inherently wrong. Because, I mean, you know, we look at plenty of other cultures where, like, they rely on that because that's what's there.

So, like, I don't think it's, I don't think it's fair to say that eating meat in and of itself is wrong. What's wrong is the meat industry. And I think that's maybe where, like, the director could be a little short-sighted in that, again, it's the, it's not the individual case of the meat industry or people eating meat that's problematic. It's industry in general and the problematic relationships that come from that. Like, I decided to be a vegetarian because, and I know, you know, fuck. Like, there's no ethical consumption under capitalism, but, you know, it's more of like a political and environmental thing. It's not because, like, I really feel like, oh, the poor animals, like, that sucks, too. Don't get me wrong.

But at the end of the day, I like humans a lot more than I like animals. But the problem with it, my problem with it is not the eating of the animals itself. It's all the stuff that goes into that. The, like, I don't have a, like, I don't think we could sit here and berate for you to look back on, you know, uh, Native American societies, uh, oh my God, they hate buffalo, like, blah, blah, blah. It's like, there's a difference between going out and hunting animals and, you know, just literally creating, like, massive farms to produce these things that even really aren't animals. They're, like, blobs. Genetically modified creatures. But I think to wrap it up, I think the key thing that a lot of people get wrapped up,

and I think that maybe the director got wrapped up in was a critique of a byproduct of capitalism. Like, he focused on the byproduct instead of what actually produced that. So real quick, though, Brett, are you a vegetarian? I am not a, I'm sorry. Oh, my God. You're the one vegetarian. Okay, so, Bray, you're the only, is it? Have you seen this movie called Texas Chainsaw?

Oh, I've never heard of it. No, I don't know. You know, it's the only non-vegetarian in the world. and we're going to have to take you out back. We're going to have to beat you outside the head. Well, we're going to beat you out back with it. We're going to have to hang on a meat hook. Well, I didn't, hold on.

This is going to be a fun, family-friendly joke. I was going to make the punch. It was going to be, we're going to fill a sack of tubers and beat you outside the head. Call it a knick-knack potato whack. But you just, you beat me to it with the meat hook. I'm actually glad you stepped on that jokes. No, I mean, yeah, and for my part, I don't want to get too deep into this. But I totally understand the ethical arguments in favor of vegetarianism.

It's a moral failure. of mine that I still eat meat. And there's also a point worth making, which is individual lifestyle choices of taking meat in or out of your diet is nice, but it ultimately doesn't, it doesn't matter because it doesn't hit the basic structure of capitalist production. And it takes collective resistance to address that. Well, I was going to say that. I do slightly disagree with Seth in that I do think it's wrong to eat meat and I think it's wrong to kill animals. But I don't, you know, take that personal perspective and use that. as the liberals do, which is to, you know, sort of impart upon people who don't do that,

or people who don't agree with that stance as sort of stain on their soul or whatever. You know, I understand that people do things for specific reasons and their cultural shit, and there's, like, different scenarios and contexts. And so I don't, I, you know, I don't go around, you know, attacking people for eating me, even though I do believe it's wrong. But, and I think what you were, you were, you're not saying it's wrong. I'm not saying it's not wrong wholesale. It is certainly wrong in particular context.

It's just like in other context, there's not another option. It sucks that that's the only option, but that's... Yeah, and you were kind of saying like this director is maybe he's going into it from that perspective and he's selling himself in the film short. And I think, you know, kind of what I was saying earlier, like maybe he went in that way, But I think whenever you start thinking of things in terms of industry, in terms of production, you sort of, he does sort of unconsciously bring in all this deeper critique. Like, he's going in there like, oh, meet his murder, meet his murder. But he's choosing to go about it in a certain way.

Like, he's not, you know, he could have done it in a different way, but by focusing on the industrialization, by focusing on the moment of production, he's so, he's so focused on production. Yeah, automation. Yeah, the tools that you do it with. And because he's going out from that angle, I think he's opening himself up to all this, you know, more deeper meaning. Yeah, and think about how different this movie would be if it was a horde of mad ranchers, you know, that were raising grass-fed cattle, you know?

Or like, yeah, or like... It'd be a totally different movie. Like, if they were like, oh, like, like, instead of like the industrialization, they'd be like, it would be like pastoral, like they would have like nooses around the kids next and they'd be like relating them out to graze. or something.

I don't know. It'd be silly, almost. It'd be like dogs. It'd be fucking goofy. Yeah. All right, well, I think we're past an hour. We haven't checked the time. So let's go, one more thing, actually, before we move on.

The vegetarian aspect, the tools that they use to murder the people. It's sledgehammers. That's what the hitchhiker is saying in the van. He's like, I like the old way. You know, the sledgehammer. That's how you do it. Meat hooks, freezers. The tools that you would use in the slaughterhouse are the exact tools they use

to slaughter people. So I think we hit on the three main categories. Before we wrap this show up, though, any last words, anything you want to say about any aspect of this, the film, you know, the way it was shot, the content, anything about the time period it was shot in, just last thoughts. Well, really quickly before last thoughts, I do, because I think you guys brought up something interesting earlier before we actually started recording. I was like that I think deserves discussing is the role of Franklin in the film. film? Oh. Do you want to let, does somebody want to like talk about that? Sure. Well, you know, Franklin, I think as someone who's, I mean, differently abled, you know, wheelchair bound and plays an important role in the film. I think he gets, he gets real far for a guy, you know. I mean, he's, he's the fourth person, you know, to be off, just before Sally. And so I think, you know, I think that it's, um, it's interesting the, the role he plays because clearly the, the filmmakers wanted to keep him in the film for a certain period of time. And it's that, you know, he mainly, he builds suspense. You know, I, and in a, in sort of a backdoor kind of way,

you get an eye into what it's like, not, you know, being the standard of ability, you know, not having the standard of ability, because this person being wheelchair-bound experiences, frustrations in every single scene that he's in, every single scene, you know, I don't think that he really wants to be there and I don't think anyone with him really wants him with them because he limits their capacity to act. And thematically, as a film this works, as a, as a spotlight to, you know, a social, you know, relationship between our bodies, ourselves, and our communities. This works.

In the film, it works as a tension builder. You know, you have this character who at times you must follow their perspective, who can't just get up and walk away. And so you have to. work with them whenever they stop by the side of the road and he has to use the restroom. You have to address that difficulty. Whenever he wants to get into the house, it has to work himself over the lumpy porch and overgrown grass. You have to work with him as he overcomes that and gets there. You know, when Sally leaves him, you know, you have to, and he doesn't have the keys to the car

and he's frustrated as all hell at being left alone. You have to be there with him. So you not only does this person's struggle, you know, work with the tension building in the film. It also is, you know, it is a depiction of, you know, the real frustration of being, you know, a member of a very particular group in an otherwise group of people that, you know, resemble the generally accepted standard, as arbitrarily said it as it is. And I feel like, and maybe you guys had different experiences, but I feel like he's the only character that the audience is really led to identify with. Ooh, I don't know.

I don't know, though. Because that's definitely how I felt like. Well, because, like, he was really frustrated. He was, like, a frustrating character. He was. Like, even for the audience, like, not because of, you know, him being a wheelchair wear it, not because of, like, the physical aspect, you know, for the characters

in the film, he's a creator of anxiety because, you know, they have to basically, they feel like they have to drag him around. But, like, for the audience, like, he's, and also for the characters in the film, it's also, like, he's also very frustrating because, you know, he'll get attached to, like, a certain subject and, like, keep,

he, like, won't let things go. And that, and, like, I remember, you know, watching the film and me like, I got to, like, shut the fuck up, Franklin. Yeah. I guess, like, I had that, I had that same. Like, absolutely, so did I. Like, he's a frustrating character. He's, like, kind of petulant. He's, like, not, like, pleasant. But at the same time, like, I feel like, he was the sort of the viewpoint that the audience saw the rest of the film through and like his death is like for me that was kind of it was pretty shocking because like I kind of expected like him to like sort of last the whole way like he was the sort of viewfinder through that through which you saw the rest of the film and he was the one like

sort of constant up until his death it was one of the scariest deaths too yeah and other face pops out and like that's one of the big jump scares and like and I guess you guys experience it differently but personally I never empathize with any of the other characters even and and other than as, like, well-characterized as Franklin. And, like, when he died, like, and, like, I don't even remember the name of the last woman. Pam. Pam.

Yeah. Pam, Sally, like, I never, like, I never, like, I never, like, I never really identified with her at all, and she seemed totally generic. She's supposed to be the main. Yeah. And, like, but Franklin, like, I really honestly felt like he was the, the character that the audience, like, experienced the film through. Yeah, I think that's a, I think that's a really good option.

observation um one thing i mean i mean i don't remember when i was watching it last um you know it it was noticeable like the lack of character development amongst the so-called like protagonists but like i get to thinking about that and i feel like that's kind of just how the horror genre um is supposed is not how it's supposed to function but i think in a weird way makes the film like films in a horror genre more effective is like by not really overly developing these characters because like the idea is that like not to get attached to what happened before like you're supposed to the real fear from movies like that comes from being able to see that like this could just happen to somebody not because there's like a particular series of life

events that drove them to the situation but because they are just like a human being a blank person that you can yeah exactly that you can that you can kind of

project whatever you want on to you so I think that's a fair criticism and I do agree that you do get more attached Franklin but I also think that that's kind of

just how horror movies work and I think it works well in some instances and other instances it works really really poorly as someone that watches a lot of horror movies I think that's too general a statement to make.

A lot of horror movies work better when you have someone that you develop a relationship with through film, rather a character that you develop a relationship through film and seeing bad things happen to them causes you to dread, causes you to feel terror for them because of a personal relationship that you develop. I think it's expedient not to incorporate that into a movie where you need to incorporate an entire horror

element as well. Sometimes, sometimes that entails. It entails incorporating a mythos and a lore sometimes, you know, a little bit of world building. That takes time too. At this point, I know we're deviating far, far away from Marxist discourse, but I think film is an interesting craft. It's one of my passions. And, you know, talking about, you know, characters in horror movies as just blank slates and generalities, you know, it might work on a technical level for expedience, but I'm more Effectively, there are certain films where you get to know these characters and you are devastated by their devastation. That's also very effective. Yeah, and I would say I would really like to see the medium of the TV series take horror in new directions.

Because you're right, with horror films, there's a lack of time to do character development and all the scares. With TV series, it can be more drawn out. One more thing before we do our final thoughts on Franklin, because I shared something with all of you guys. I share Seth's, like, frustration and sort of, like, repulsion by Franklin. Like, he's digging his knife in the van, and, like, Kirk's, like, you're messing up the van, man, and he's, like, doing it for no reason. But he's very frustrating. He's a, but he is, um, the lens through which, like Phil said, the lens through which

we kind of, he, if we have any, um, orientation of the film, it's through Franklin. And as you say, um, Taylor, his, he limits the, the group's capacity to act. this all puts into my mind the notion of a Vietnam veteran returning home he's paraplegic he's disabled he's unable to use his feet that is a common thing like even in Forrest Gump we saw the wheelchair bound Vietnam veteran that's something that is a very famous trope in film and culture and he wasn't obviously a veteran but him being put into a wheelchair in the end of the Vietnam War era can't be a mistake and his burden on the rest of the group, if you're looking at it from a zoomed out position, the veterans coming home were a burden on the society, a moral burden, if not an actual physical and financial one, because it was a reminder of what the U.S. government had done in that country,

the brutalities that it committed on their people and its own people. So in a weird way, I think Franklin is a stand-in almost for the horrors of Vietnam. But that's just kind of my two sense on Franklin. but for the for the final thoughts i guess i'll start off why give you guys a couple seconds to to think of what you want to say as your final thoughts my final thoughts are two things um it reminds me it harkens back in so far as it's a vegetarian film to upton sinclair's the jungle um you know that was one of the big breakthrough investigative pieces um attacking the meat industry which simultaneously attacks capitalism we see that same dynamic

through here if if if tobe hooper's idea was to attack you know the notion that that animals are food he inadvertently ends up attacking the whole capitalist system and upton sinclair's the jungle did that very much so this can kind of be seen in that lineage in a way different way it's taking you know that and putting it in the horror genre and then my my final thought would be it's important to remember the effect that this film has had on other films and the final girl trope the notion that a single individual female survives the slaughter, which we see in horror movie after horror movie after horror movie, was originated in large part in this film. It really got that trope going. And afterwards, we see that trope pop up in film after film after film. And the way that

she was driving away, soaked in blood, and her screaming could be confused with laughter. It's a laugh cry. Now, there's documentaries about the background of making that film. And she said she was so exhausted. They had to do these takes a million times. She was so fed up with the film and over it. And they called her up and she thought she was done and they said, come back for one more shot. We had to redo this shot. It didn't go well. And she's like, my scream laughing

at the end was an exasperation of having to do this horrible film in these horrible conditions. She's like, that was a very real reaction to actually being an actress in that film context. It wasn't me trying to act. So I found that extremely fascinating. Any

final thoughts? Well, yeah. And Going off that, like, I just want to, like, clarify my position from earlier in regards to, like, the vegetarian thing and, like, me saying he's, like, short saying. I do absolutely agree that, you know, the focus, implied focus on vegetarianism, like he says, leads to thinking about these broader things, I guess, so that's good. I guess I was just more referring to, like, you know, director intent. I feel like he probably wasn't thinking about that. and I feel like a lot of people that's the framework that they work in is that they want to attack byproducts

and they don't realize that the system is actually the problem, although they inadvertently critique it. So I will say yes, it does a very good job of opening up those discussions and allowing us to think about those things in spite of the fact that that wasn't necessarily its intention. And I guess that's what I was getting at

as opposed to saying it's like, short-sighted necessarily. You know, I actually I'm disposed to wanting to suspect that major Hollywood studios bought the rights to

Texas chains on massacre and mass produced it in order to neuter the actual political content of the original. I really want to believe that. In 1974, in the heart of the cultural revolution, it could have just been a whole pro Mao China movie

and they just completely ripped it. You see the CIA purchased the Texas chainsaw massacre. And they rendered it into a goofy abstract art. Yes. Something you can talk about later. But you know, I think that

I think that everyone should watch the Texas Chainsaw Massacre. I think it believes in a basic primer for American film. It belongs to, as I mentioned before, deep, deep, theatrical traditions that range from early American movies such as Greed, a silent film made in 1924, that if you're into it, you ought to

see. It touches on deep early European influences with the cabinet of Dr. Kelly Gehari, and it has projected itself onto, I mean, you know, through the reproduction of filmmakers that wanted to take inspiration from its style, its form and its technique, you know, culture has reproduced it so that it touches so many of the films that we watch now. So in that, I think the Texas Chainsaw Massacre is a very special place, not only historically, but also, you know, in reference to the future of film. And it's many reproductions over its long history, don't have any bearing on it. It ought to be experienced as itself on its own. Maybe watch the Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 for a funny Freudian send-up, which is all some sort of dark psychosexual humor.

I think that works on a certain level. It's unrelated to the first movie. absolutely different movie. You know, I think maybe it ought to have been done under a different brand. But at that point, you start to see the commodification of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre name. This name moniker, its character is being used for completely different ends and completely different thematic contexts and content. And it starts to lose its teeth over time and has ever since. You know, in conclusion, though, I do want to draw a point. to apocalypse in filmmaking and the inability of capitalism to address its own demise.

So much of what happens in the Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and this I think is one of its most prescient moments as a film and why it is so valuable is it demonstrates the inability of capitalism to construct its own history, and therefore every moment that it is in crisis is an apocalypse. And so capitalism produces and reproduces apocalypse. Whether or not we come back from it is dependent on the people that operate in it. But like the family Sawyer in Texas Chansom Massacre, enduring their own apocalypse, and like the kids on a road trip, who's encountered with the family Sawyer produced an apocalypse.

We need to escape the system that produces and reproduces the end times. we need to have an appropriate historical line, an appropriate historical method so that we can afford an efficient economic, ethical future, something that I think can be achieved through communism. Yeah, it's like, it's the, how you were talking about the consumer being consumed sort of theme that was going on there. That's even more broadly representative of the. kind of like a roberos

nature of capitalism eating its own tail. It's a... It's a... It's a system that requires infinite growth, yet only has a finite amount of resources. And that's the like weird contradiction

that, you know, normally we think of capitalism as just going for what's good for them. But in the end, it's... It is an apocalypse. There's the seeds of bits of them nice, yeah. Phil? I think Texas Chancel Massacre is probably one of the best ever candidates

for the treatment of cinema as dream, cultural dream. And we've been talking about how, you know, it kind of stands in opposition to, quote-unquote, the American dream. And so, you know, if you wanted to get cheesy or head cheesy... Oh! Why did he do that? this is a beautifully realized evocative feverish American nightmare and I think everyone should experience it if they haven't already absolutely well thank you guys so much for coming out

and talking to anybody that listens to this episode if you want us to do more we will do this we're a bunch of film nerds and a bunch of Marxists and we love this shit so reach out to us yeah reach out to us on Twitter reach out to us on Facebook message me tweet at me let me know if you want more of this we can we can do more of this we can make it a every holiday do a holiday special or we can do it at a weekly thing or i mean i'm sorry not a weekly thing a monthly thing um whatever you guys want so please please please more than ever give us your feedback on this episode and let us know if you want us to do more and go out and watch the texas chainsaw massacre and the final thing i'll say is Halloween and in the american context is

so reduced it's so it's so turned into commodified bullshit where we just buy candy and we and we buy plastic pumpkins and costumes we wear for one day and throw into a dumpster. You know, I wish, I hope that we can make Halloween into a real cultural event where we examine death and we examine our own cultural production and we examine art and we can turn Halloween into something more than just buying candy and buying costumes and buying shit. So hopefully one day we can do that. And we examine our fears and we examine our paranoia. Yes, yes.

We can do a whole episode analyzing the holiday of Halloween, honestly. But, oh, can I give it a really quick, shameless plug? Sure. So some of us here on this episode have a monthly food program that we do, that we distribute free food, particularly fresh produce and, like, hygienic products to people primarily of a refugee and immigrant background. And so we do that once a month. Our next one is this Saturday.

Just recently, we got a payperson. so we can accept monetary donations very easily. So if you would like, please feel free. Look us up on Facebook. It's Feed the People-O-Maha. And our PayPal is PayPal. me slash feed-the-people OMA, even if you only have like five or ten bucks to contribute.

It doesn't matter. It makes a big difference. And bear in mind, PayPal does take a $1.75 fee. but anything that you're willing to throw is awesome and like the whole point in the program is not like just to give out free food it's about to like you know build up class consciousness and like neighborhood solidarity

and identify other struggles like recently actually just a little while before we came here I got off the phone with a man who was coming to feed the people and identified a lot of problems that he was having with his landlord and tomorrow we're going to go over and try to document this stuff and figure out a path to deal with these exploitative behaviors that his landlord is inflicting upon him. And so, like, that's the idea.

It's not just, like, giving stuff away. It's not charity. It's solidarity. And we want to, like, build up those community connections and provide a platform to wage a broader anti-capitalist struggle and kind of build dual power in our communities. Yeah, and it's one of the best things we're doing here in Omaha. I just have my coworkers at my job.

I sent an email to everybody in my office saying bring in any donation so I can give it to feed the people. it's one of the best things that's going on in this community so yeah support that if you want happy Halloween to everybody be safe and thank you guys for this film analysis give us your feedback yeah have a great thank you brad wha ha ha ha ha insert scary noises here stay spooky my friends We're just a spot It's a... ...sovite

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