Infographic: Jason Voorhees Death Toll

I love infographics.  If I were good at design, I'd make my own.  Fortunately, there are other geeks out there who are making up for my shortcomings, and today we are blessed with a poster detailing Jason Voorhees' murders across ten movies:

Click to biggify.

UPDATE!

27 August 2012

At Fan Expo Canada, this past weekend, I had the good fortune to run into Andrew Barr, the man who created this infographic. It happened completely by accident; I was walking away from TheAvod's table and saw this chart on display. 

"Omigod, did you make this?" I asked, sophisticated journalist that I am.

"Yes I did," said Andrew.

He laid it out for me: Andrew drew up the chart for the National Post and from there the thing went global. National Post took it down, but the infographic had gained momentum and could not be stopped. I learned the original chart had a few mistakes, which Andrew has since corrected. Among them, Shelly--the dude who inadvertently provides Jason with the hockey mask in Part 3--was erroneously depicted as a female victim. 

Funny story: One day Andrew received a letter from a law firm. Dreading some kind of lawsuit or C&D order, he opened the envelope only to find a personal letter from Larry Zerner, the actor who played Shelly. Now a lawyer, Zerner was writing not to threaten Andrew, but to set the record straight. He pointed out the mistaken gender on Andrew's chart.

I think I originally pulled the chart from liveforfilm.com but I can't be sure. I do remember a tweet about it and grabbing the image right away. I then tweeted my own post and it got picked up made the rounds.

All this is it to say I met the man who made the Jason infographic, he sat three tables down from me at the convention and I didn't know it until 5pm on Sunday. Be sure to visit his site and check out his art, including Michael and Freddy infographics.

(S)expolitation: A Primer

When you spend eight hours in a car with a close friend you haven't seen in a while, the time just flies by as you talk and talk and talk, catching up on months of separation. I wish I could tell you most of our conversation was full of enlightening repartee, witty banter, and incisive criticisms about 21st century social-economics, but the truth of the matter is that Lady Dinwhistle and I are just too foul-mouthed for that kind of talk. Mostly we talked about men.

However, in between musings on cheese and the benefits of living by yourself (pantlessness being primary among them), we did manage a relatively high-brow dialogue about exploitation in film. Lady Dinwhistle had some particularly interesting things to say--stuff I'd never thought of--and we found ourselves in total agreement on the topic of exploitative horror.

I'm a really good driver and this almost never happens.

Before I go any further, let me ask a question: what is exploitation, really? The word gets bandied about like a shuttlecock on a summer afternoon, but do we really know what we're talking about? I here define exploitation horror as either lurid, gratuitous, and/or sensationalistic depictions of sex/violence. This simple definition might appear to be too broad and by my standards any horror movie could be classified as exploitation--and I'm willing to entertain the notion that all horror cinema is, to some extent, exploitative--but my vagueness serves a purpose.

Usually when we talk exploitation, we're talking about how the audience reacts to what's on screen. But I submit that exploitation might also refer to character relationships within the films themselves. I'll first give an example of straight-up visual exploitation to better explain what I'm talking about and then move on to an example of character exploitation. Though both kinds of exploitation stem from the same source--taking advantage of something or someone--the two are showcased quite differently on screen.

I don't care what your name is, you'll always be Dick Casablancas to me.

In 2009's Friday the 13th remake, Chelsea water skis topless. While this topless scene is wholly gratuitous, completely unnecessary and does nothing to move the story forward, Chelsea's decision to take her shirt off is perfectly normal, given that she is a) slutty, and b) an exhibitionist. For these reasons, her nudity isn't exploitative. But this same scene ends on an exploitative note. Chelsea looses her grip on the towrope and hits the water and, from then on, is only seen from the neck up--she's still topless but her breasts are no longer exposed to view. Swimming for safety from Jason, Chelsea hides under a dock. Jason stabs Chelsea in the head, though the dock, and yanks on his machete to free it from her skull. The effort of pulling the knife from Chelsea's head forces her body to rise out of the water before the blade comes free, giving the audience one last eyeful of boob. But because Chelsea is dead, the image, though still gratuitous, takes on a lurid quality, underscored with a hint of necrophilia. What's more is that because Jason is asexual, it doesn't benefit him to catch a glimpse of Chelsea's bare chest (his vantage point also prohibits a clear view of Chelsea). Rather, the whole kill scene was staged and shot for the benefit of the audience. The combined effect of dead, exposed breasts and the filmmakers' deliberate staging of the action makes this moment extremely exploitative and serves as a perfect example of how exploitation works as a relationship between the audience and the film.

Not pictured: the actual scene from the actual movie.

Chelsea's toplessness isn't exploitative because it's within the nature of her character to expose herself, but Jason's manipulation of Chelsea's body--pulling her bare chest from the water, is completely exlpoitative because Chelsea's agency is no longer a factor. In Freddy vs Jason, we find a example of how character agency works to create an exploitative situation while the camera work remains neutral. While people are hanging out at Lori's house, Trey takes Gibb upstairs for sex. The sex scene is not filmed in such a way that would make it exploitative for the audience--Gibb never exposes her breasts to the camera. In fact, part of the scene is shot from Jason's point of view, and he is, as I stated, disinterested in sex as a pleasurable or stimulating exercise. Thus Jason's POV is necessarily neutral. Instead, the exploitation is to be found in the relationship between Gibb and Trey; Gibb has self-esteem issues and letes the overbearing Trey boss her around. When they have sex, Gibb does all the work and Trey takes no interest in her pleasure. Trey is exploiting Gibb in the truest sense of the word--he takes complete advantage of her for his own benefit and with no regard for her welfare*.

Horror, more than any other genre, is well-suited to explore exploitation both a relationship between film and audience, and as a relationship between characters. Most discourses, and most films for that matter, generally stick to the more overt and easily identified type of exploitation, the visuals. I've said it before that sex sells, as does violence, but some of the sex and violence we see on screen, though keyed to a particular aesthetic, might not always be understood as exploitative when, in fact, they are.

And it's Rob Zombie with the win!

*What makes the scene all the more interesting is that shortly after they finish having sex, Jason kills Trey. Gibb is in the shower at this point but Jason doesn't kill her. Instead, he leaves the house. Sex doesn't figure largely in this movie, so it's almost impossible to comment on the "triumvirate of evil" in Freddy vs Jason, but the fact that Trey is killed immediately after having exploitative sex with Gibb, while Gibb herself is left unmolested, suggests a moral code not found in many slashers.

Friday The 13th (2009)

Um, yeah...

So I was really excited to see this movie. And I promised myself I wouldn't get my hopes up. But you know how it is.

The movie begins with a black and white chase, kill sequence set in 1980. In it, Pamela Voorhees kills a camp counselor, blaming her for her son's death. After Mrs. Voorhees is beheaded, the audience gets a good look at the locket she was wearing, which is picked up by her boy, Jason. In the locket is a picture of Mrs. Voorhees as a young woman. Fast forward to present day. A group of friends are "hiking" through the woods looking for a pot crop. I say "hiking" because one of the girls has got a fucking purse with her, which she carries in her perfectly french manicured hand. The friends make camp and one of them tells the story of Pamela and Jason Voorhees. Camp Crystal Lake, he says, is not too far away and sometimes people go missing around the lake. After he finishes the ghost story, two friends go exploring and find Jason's childhood home, two more go have sex, and the single guy (the geek in the group) goes looking for the pot. Geek finds the pot and gets killed. Sex couple gets killed. Wandering couple gets killed, but not before they find the locket and comment that Whitney, the girl, looks like the woman in the picture.

Title!

Now it's six weeks later and Jared Padalecki is looking for his missing sister, Whitney. While he's at a gas station, he meets a group of friends who are heading up to Trent's "cottage". I say "cottage" because Trent's family is loaded and their shack in the woods is palatial. Trent is a complete asshole to Jared Padalecki and pretty much everyone else. I think it's important to note that Trent's crew includes an Asian guy, a black dude, Dick Casablancas from Veronica Mars, and three hot chicks in a deliberate attempt to diversify the cast of characters. Further attention is drawn to the film's inclusiveness by drawing attention to the fact that the white kids are "accidentally" racist towards the black guy.

Jared spends the rest of his day talking to people about his missing sister and meets a woman who tells him his sister's dead and that her killer just wants to be left alone. Meanwhile, Trent and friends settle in at the cottage and get drunk and high. Then people start dying. Eventually, only Jared Padalecki and one hot chick, Jenna, are left and as they're running away, they end up finding Whitney. Jason, you see, didn't kill Whitney but chained her up in his warren of underground tunnels beneath Camp Crystal Lake. Whitney is rescued, Jenna dies, and the brother and sister kill Jason. Sort of.

Sound a mess? That's because it is.

In this retelling/sequel/remake/whatever, the writers have recreated Jason as a human monster. Jason is, in fact, human for the first few movies of the series, but he's an unknown entity. Not because we can't know him in the sense that we can't know The Thing, but because we don't want to. The unknown is what makes a scary movie scary. Of all the Fridays, only in the second movie do we even get a glimpse of Jason-the-man, and that is only because Ginny stumbles into his home during the final chase. In this new film, we follow Jason for a good part of the time. We see him "at home" where he's keeping Whitney, we see him disposing of a body, we see him menacing a topless girl in the lake. And when Jason's not on screen, we still get to know him through the stories and experiences of the other characters. We learn more about Jason than any other person in the film, and though he is the star, he is not the lead. Humanizing Jason in this way detracts from the whole point of the film, which is to watch people die at the hands of an unknowable and seemingly unstoppable force. Even Michael Meyers, the most human of all monsters, is entirely and irredeemably evil, and for that reason it is beyond our ability to fully comprehend him or escape him.

Trent, as I've said, is an asshole. Fully and completely. He has zero redeeming qualities and proves himself to be not only a jerk to his guy friends, but has little respect for women. Trent is, easily, the most awful person in the movie and his characterization as such forces the audience to invest a lot of energy into hating Trent, when they would otherwise be fearing Jason. Additionally, the character of the farm hand is so repulsive, that we direct our revulsion at him instead of Jason, which again takes away from the true horror in this movie, which is Jason himself. Conversely, most of the other characters have little or no characterization at all--they are cannon fodder and nothing more. Indeed, this is a Friday the 13th movie, but it's never a waste of time to vest some energy into creating likable characters. Were I to care at all for the people on screen, then I would be more emotionally invested in their deaths, which would up the terror. The whole point of the movie is to be scared, after all. But this movie treats its characters as being dead already, divesting its audience of any emotional engagement or involvement with the people on screen.

To watch Jason kill people, it's why I went to see this movie. I can forgive a lot if a movie looks good. And I might have been willing to let it go that Jason is too human and the movie is badly written were I able to actually see Jason at work. But due to the filmmakers' incomprehensible affinity for shaky-cam and short takes, it is nearly impossible to see what's happening on screen. Film is a multi-sensory medium, meaning you have to engage your audience with both sight and sound. Deliberately blinding or deafening your audience can intensify their experience, but limiting their ability to follow the action fully displayed onscreen detracts from their enjoyment. Horror movies aim to terrify, horrify, disgust, and amaze their audience with musical stings and cues, framing, jump scares, and special effects. To cut up the action of a kill or to film it in such a way as to make it difficult to follow, reduces the impact of the scene. Yes, I can be scared without seeing the object of my fear, but I can't be grossed out without looking at what is meant to be disgusting.

I can go on about why Friday The 13th fails to live up to expectations, but my goal here is to stick to purely academic reasons for disapproving of this latest installment in the series. The film is by no means the worst of its kind, but the filmmakers' pedestrian approach to making a horror movie in general is insulting to Jason fans in particular.