Sitting on a Dock, Watching the World End

In light of a really rough week and a seemingly-endless string of terrible dates, the possible subject of future writing, I feel the need to begin this post by taking stock of a few sources of stabilizing optimism:

1. I don't sleep all that much anymore, but I'm managing to stay (mostly) on top of both my reading and gym-going habits, despite my entry into the work-day grind.

2. In spite of the occasionally soul-crushing (and usually racist) nature of my new job, the strains of political and economic thought it has forced me to engage have opened for me much more nuanced understandings of some academic arguments about politics and culture. Between my job and increasingly-frequent social outings in DC, where the general etiquette is "BE AS OBNOXIOUS AS POSSIBLE ABOUT YOUR POLITICAL BELIEFS,"  I'm finally able to locate myself within the political narrative that Lisa Duggan traces in The Twilight of Equality?. All of this is really just to say that I am still learning.

3. I recently saw The Cabin in the Woods, which is in serious competition for the title of "smartest horror movie I've ever seen." More on this point in a second.

4. Whether through my own sporadic efforts, Roxie's deeply energizing and critter-affirming optimism (for which I remain boundlessly grateful), or Historiann's repeated refusal to put up with anyone's bullshitte, the blogosphere continues to offer me intellectual sustenance  and emotional fortification.

Now, on to The Cabin in the Woods. This post got a little lengthy, but lie to me and tell me that you read it.

Anyone who's had a conversation with me for longer than thirty seconds knows that Will Danger loves loves loves horror movies and would go even gayer than usual for Joss Whedon, who wrote Buffy the Vampire Slayer, among other things. That being said, Joss hasn't actually produced anything of particular merit lately. Dollhouse fell pretty flat, and I've never been in love with Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog. Nevertheless, Whedon's newest movie, The Cabin in the Woods is one of the smartest/most entertaining horror movies I've never seen. I want to take this opportunity for my first sustained crack at thinking through horror movies.

SPOILER ALERT. SRSLY GUYS. I haven't held back any plot details. Read at your own risk.

Of course, the plot gets a little hokey. Joss leans into science fiction pretty hard, presenting a mysterious company of scientists whose sole job is to stage horror-movie rituals, where they kill off co-eds in an effort to keep "the ancients" from waking up. From what I can gather (some of the details are deliberately vague), these mysterious ancients (old gods who used to rule the world, but are now sleeping) require a horror-movie body count to be appeased. In this case, the slaughter-worthy breakfast club includes a Slut, a Jock, a Brain, a Stoner, and a Virgin. At the movie's end, the Stoner has managed to survive and the main character (the archetypal Virgin) is tasked with killing him, in order to save the world. She ultimately refuses, the ancients wake up, and the world starts to end just as the credits begin rolling. 

There are some pretty straightforward readings of this meta-narrative available, but I don't want to spend too much time on them, because they're pretty readily available and kind of boring (I hesitate to pass over them entirely, just because the straightforward and seemingly self-evident are seldom so). Among other things, it appears that the audience is meant to identify with the Company that stages these horror movies. The film's meta-narrative becomes less stable and less straightforward the longer I spend thinking about it, but in its more brilliant moments, I think the film questions our attachment to horror movies, horror's broader role in culture, and the kinds of narrative violence unleashed by our uninterrogated attachment to the conventions of horror.

The movie's most interesting moves, however, come in the last five minutes. In the film's final scene, Dana and Marty, (the Virgin and Stoner, respectively) are sitting on some stone steps, passing a cigarette back and forth and apologizing to each other as the world comes apart around them. I love how much the scene comes to resemble this image, a kind of "relax and watch the sun set" moment, except Whedon substitutes a sunset for the end of the world. I find the moment's calmness wonderfully interesting. Literally apocalyptic thought it might be, this moment indicates a resolution to the movie's suspense and is free from the tension that otherwise pervades horror movies. Though perhaps a generous reading, I think this moment has genre-redefining potential. What would it mean to end a horror movie with such a moment of calmness, clarity, and (most importantly) safety -- especially when the trope is typically to end a horror movie with a "final scare," in which we discover the villain is still alive and kicking, often at the expense of plot/narrative coherence.

In this scene, the Stoner also apologizes for ending the world. I’m absolutely enthralled both by the idea that ending the world is something that you would apologe for (why bother?) and by the idea that destroying the world is something for which you can be forgiven.

This decision to end the world is where The Cabin in the Woods most approaches queerness (Importantly, I'm not actually arguing that Cabin is a queer film, only that this moment hinges on a queer sensibility and contains mostly-unrealized queer potential). In the beginning of this scene, the Company's mysterious director (played by Sigourney Weaver, no less) lays out the Stoner's options pretty well: "You can either die with them, or you can die for them." He is going to die either way, the crux of his decision is whether or not he wants to take the rest of the world with him. This is pretty much a no-brainer, right?

The twist comes when both the Stoner and Virgin refuse this choice, opting to destroy the world, rather than to save it (This choice seems particularly strange for Dana, who opts to die AND destroy the world, rather than kill Marty. Her life is actually still at stake, here). I'm enthralled by the movie's determination to make the wrong choice and it's insistence on choosing the un-chooseable option. In his disavowal of correctness and his determination to fail in saving the world, Whedon opens up a host of previously unthinkable cinematic possibilities, the most immediate of which is that, paradoxically, failure might be the most successful option. This makes me feel much better about the fact that this post itself might indulge in failure.

Seriously, you guys. Go see this movie. Even if you hate scary movies, the writing really, really shines. Joss Whedon is back, y'all. I'm even managing to garner a little excitement for his version of The Avengers coming out this summer.