#thats fucking horrific! kill him again sawyer!!!

[simptasia]

as if anthony cooper wasn't already one of the most horrible people in lost, i just did some reading and he was 31 when he was dating 15 year old emily locke

#yep. yep. anthony cooper is the Worst Person In LOST it's been decided #thats fucking horrific! kill him again sawyer!!! #i knew he was older than her. i knew he was an adult dating a teenager and thats already bad enough #but i had no idea the actual ages until now and GOOD LORD

[horrordirtbag]

Who made Leatherface the way he is?

this is another ramble post

I see a lot of people talk about this, usually in citing why hes wholesome 100 himbo, and most of the time people like to throw blame solely onto the cook and I kind of take issue with this. Is he abusive? Sure. He’s also bat shit fucking insane like everyone else so who’s shocked to realize that

If we’re going to extend so much sympathy to Leatherface in understanding him and what made him the way he is, why dont we ever ask what made Drayton the way he is? Why does the discussion always begin with Leatherface and end with Drayton?

Now I am aware that Leatherface is much more sympathetic due to his autistic and fearful nature but I find that the rabbit hole to what made the Sawyers the Sawyers runs far deeper than most slashers and the answer is much more complex than emotional abuse. 

First some contemporary context. The 70s were the first time serial killers became a big national deal, and the first question everyone had on their minds was what made them this way. We still see this all the time whenever there’s a new school shooter, it’s just in our morbid curiosity.  When horror films started focusing more on serial murderers rather than supernatural monsters, naturally they also took up this question and it became integral for each slasher villain to have their origin stories. 

Why am I saying all this? Because TCM takes a unique approach to solving this riddle of what makes someone a murderer. TCM is a very accusatory movie, it kind of bullies the audience lol. It makes them feel bad for eating meat, that’s obvious, and most will know it makes the audience feel bad for understanding and sympathizing with the titular, horrific killer. 

Keeping in line with this, while Halloween points the finger inward and says everyone innately has a bit of the Bogeyman inside them, TCM points the finger outward and blames the world for making the killers the way they are.

And that’s why I think it’s too simple to just point at Drayton as the cause. In a complex way, TCM makes him out to be a victim, too.

The Sawyers’ backstory is never overtly given to the audience and it’s something we’re left to just piece together on our own, but we are given an almost complete picture.

The family was always in the meat slaughtering business, at least as long as Grandpa’s been alive (137 years, no exaggeration lol). They’re a family on the complete outskirts of society, without many other options given to them (the slaughterhouse was just the closest place to them), so after generations, it’s all they really know. And once they lost their jobs, they couldn’t stop.

This is what made them killers, their job. Only before they were slaughtering acceptable meat. When they do the same thing to humans, it’s not longer ok. I mean it’s a job thats got to be done, but it’s easy to see how, when all you’re doing all day is assembly line killing things, you’d go a little crazy. And slaughtering was passed down each generation as tradition.

TCM obviously has beef with the meat industry, but it goes beyond that. It’s not just the industry that made them killers, but American 🤡society🤡 in general. Because really, the Sawyers are an all-American family, in all-American Texas. That’s why the film extensively shows us their dynamics, so we can see they’re just a very, very weird family, not dark sinister monsters who want to cause pain and suffering. They argue, laugh, worry about electricity bills and property damage like we do,  just in a very, very insane manner.

Just like how TCM takes cow slaughtering and turns it on it’s head, it also takes the nuclear family and turns traditional values on it’s head, too. We have our honest, hard working american breadwinner, the patriarch (Grandpa), but one problem... no women (rip grandma, we’ll meet again in Chainsaw Heaven ✊)

We simply can’t have a man do the dishes or cleaning, so Leatherface has gotta dress up as one to fill in these female assigned gender roles (not trying to downplay personality disorders, just trying to explain how it fits into the films theme), and as a man to fulfill the manly ones (butchering).

TCM takes all these normal American ideals, the woman doing the housework, the men running the family, and the preservation of family tradition (slaughtering/Grandpa), and makes them seem utterly insane. There’s a point where Drayton tells Leatherface to “get back in there” (the kitchen) and that should say everything needed lol

Ultimately, this is what made the Sawyers into killers. Once they lost their jobs and were left in the dust and pushed further into the outskirts of American civilization, they were left to fester in their lonesome craziness put on them by their jobs, and to preserve their family tradition in the most taboo way possible, they switch to humans. It’s not that emotional abuse made Leatherface a killer, or any of the Sawyer’s killers, it’s that society bred them to be. Cuz we gotta have our steaks lol 

PS this should go without saying but obviously the sawyers are responsible for their own actions, I just think TCM makes a profound claim on how rigid social structure breeds insanity

#rambledirtbag #texas chainsaw massacre #leatherface #horror movies #slashers #bubba sawyer #drayton sawyer #nubbins sawyer #choptop