- Critical Theory, Media Studies, New Media, Social Media, Media and Cultural Studies, Ethnic Studies, and 21 moreComics Studies, New Media Art & Emerging Practices, Word and Image Studies, New Media and Education, Composition and Rhetoric, English, Cultural Theory, Comics and Graphic Novels, Melodrama, Race and Ethnicity, Gen X Film, Environmental Sustainability, Literature, Cultural Studies, Film Studies, Charles Burns, Ecology, Ecocriticism, Comics, Comics/Sequential Art, and Comic Book Studiesedit
- PhD · English · 2011 · University of Oregon · Eugene, Oregonedit
Research Interests:
Jason Voorhees is the most popular of all backwoods slasher killers. Very few masked killers have achieved the same iconic status and popularity as Jason, whose identity can be evoked simply via the image of the hockey mask he wears from... more
Jason Voorhees is the most popular of all backwoods slasher killers. Very few masked killers have achieved the same iconic status and popularity as Jason, whose identity can be evoked simply via the image of the hockey mask he wears from Friday the 13th Part 3 onward. Fans masquerading as Jason simply need a hockey mask and a machete, his preferred weapon. Imitating Jason’s stalking motif (ch-ch-ch) has become shorthand for evoking a slasher movie menace.
Jason’s enduring popularity and iconic status are a result of his framing as a rural backwoodsman protagonist. Symbolically born from Crystal Lake, from which we see him rise numerous times, he haunts the woods of a northeastern summer camp, killing anyone who trespasses. In his early film appearances, particularly Friday the 13th Part 2 (1981), his backwoods skills, including stalking prey and laying snares, are emphasized. However, Jason Voorhees, while celebrating whiteness as a hillbilly, can also signify as a berserker in light of the rise in interest in things European, Viking, and/or Medieval. There has been a recent spike in crusader and Viking imagery as signifiers of masculinity in red state US culture in particular. In recent news, Donald Trump Jr. posed with his custom assault rifle which has a Jerusalem Cross on a crusader’s helmet embossed on it. Jason’s last name, Voorhees, is Dutch, and his iconic hockey mask aligns him with northern winter sports associated with violence and fighting -- and whiteness. As Richard Dyer notes, the symbolic home of the mythical white race is northern Europe, especially its mountainous regions (White 21). Jason’s signification as a backwoods hillbilly and viking berserker, two idealized white masculine types, connect him to the primal and the rural, which justify his superhuman powers and allow him to render his suburban and urban victims as ineffectual and impotent.
The shift toward seeing Jason as the protagonist / fan favorite coincides with reading him as some form of unkillable warrior / berserker as a well as representative of white hillbilly strength and backwoods toughness. Ongoing sequelization / franchising plays a role in this too, breeding familiarity and increasingly non-serious / “camp” readings that allow viewers to side with Jason as slasher protagonist while disavowing or downplaying his retrograde politics (e.g., the later films are too silly to be taken seriously).
Jason has an oscillating significance that meets cultural moments. In Friday the 13th Part 2, he is established as a Natty Bumppo type wild man of the woods. In subsequent films he dons the hockey mask and more frequently ventures into non-wilderness (e.g., Manhattan) and fantastical (Outer Space, Hell) locales. Nevertheless, he exemplifies how white hillbillies serve to authenticate whiteness in popular culture.
We support our case by first analyzing Jason's depiction in Friday the 13th Part 2, the first film in which he appears in adult guise as a backwoods slasher killer, as well as select moments from later franchise entries including Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan (1989) and Freddy vs. Jason (2003).
Jason’s enduring popularity and iconic status are a result of his framing as a rural backwoodsman protagonist. Symbolically born from Crystal Lake, from which we see him rise numerous times, he haunts the woods of a northeastern summer camp, killing anyone who trespasses. In his early film appearances, particularly Friday the 13th Part 2 (1981), his backwoods skills, including stalking prey and laying snares, are emphasized. However, Jason Voorhees, while celebrating whiteness as a hillbilly, can also signify as a berserker in light of the rise in interest in things European, Viking, and/or Medieval. There has been a recent spike in crusader and Viking imagery as signifiers of masculinity in red state US culture in particular. In recent news, Donald Trump Jr. posed with his custom assault rifle which has a Jerusalem Cross on a crusader’s helmet embossed on it. Jason’s last name, Voorhees, is Dutch, and his iconic hockey mask aligns him with northern winter sports associated with violence and fighting -- and whiteness. As Richard Dyer notes, the symbolic home of the mythical white race is northern Europe, especially its mountainous regions (White 21). Jason’s signification as a backwoods hillbilly and viking berserker, two idealized white masculine types, connect him to the primal and the rural, which justify his superhuman powers and allow him to render his suburban and urban victims as ineffectual and impotent.
The shift toward seeing Jason as the protagonist / fan favorite coincides with reading him as some form of unkillable warrior / berserker as a well as representative of white hillbilly strength and backwoods toughness. Ongoing sequelization / franchising plays a role in this too, breeding familiarity and increasingly non-serious / “camp” readings that allow viewers to side with Jason as slasher protagonist while disavowing or downplaying his retrograde politics (e.g., the later films are too silly to be taken seriously).
Jason has an oscillating significance that meets cultural moments. In Friday the 13th Part 2, he is established as a Natty Bumppo type wild man of the woods. In subsequent films he dons the hockey mask and more frequently ventures into non-wilderness (e.g., Manhattan) and fantastical (Outer Space, Hell) locales. Nevertheless, he exemplifies how white hillbillies serve to authenticate whiteness in popular culture.
We support our case by first analyzing Jason's depiction in Friday the 13th Part 2, the first film in which he appears in adult guise as a backwoods slasher killer, as well as select moments from later franchise entries including Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan (1989) and Freddy vs. Jason (2003).
Research Interests: Identity (Culture), Race and Ethnicity, Politics, Melodrama, Ecology, and 11 moreWhiteness Studies, Critical Race Theory and Whiteness theory, Slasher films, Critical Whiteness Studies, Critical Race and Whiteness Studies, Whiteness, Ecocrtiticism, Hillbilly Horror, Horor, Ecological Film, and Ecohorror
Research Interests: Television Studies, Popular Culture, Comics Studies, Race and Ethnicity, Comics/Sequential Art, and 10 moreCritical Race Theory and Whiteness theory, Comics and Graphic Novels, Working Class Identity, Zombies, Blue-collar men, Horror, Zombie Studies, Zombies Related to Media, Hillbilly Horror, and Hillbillies
Black Hole’s horrific elements combined with the metonymic capabilities of the comics format and Charles Burns’ unique drawing style allow Burns to portray the ecological in Black Hole without reducing it into anthropocentric metaphors.... more
Black Hole’s horrific elements combined with the metonymic capabilities of the comics format and Charles Burns’ unique drawing style allow Burns to portray the ecological in Black Hole without reducing it into anthropocentric metaphors. To further analyze Burns’s formal achievements, it is important to overlap metonymic theories of images and comics with ecocritical analyses of metonymy in prose literature. The uncanny, abject, and unquantifiable qualities of Black Hole’s metonymic juxtapositions serve to resist the one-way street of metaphor in which nature is reduced to symbols.