Misunderstood Monsters: Lifting the Mask on Jason Voorhees
By Matt Konopka
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Welcome fellow monster kids to Misunderstood Monsters. This is where I, Matt Konopka, sink my fangs into all sorts of beasts, ghouls, and creatures from above while I search for the humanity behind their frightening exteriors. From monster favorites such as The Wolf Man to obscure monsters like the whistling Shadmock, there is more to these fiends than bad hair days and gooey tentacles. Within them all is a piece of ourselves.
A young woman lies passed out in a canoe on the lake. Nearby, a police car approaches the shore. She lifts her head, recognizing that her long night is over. Serene music swells. It’s a beautiful moment. Until a young boy, snarling and covered in the muck of the depths, leaps up from the water like the Creature from the Black Lagoon and pulls her back down into the darkness with him.
Cue the screams.
All of you campers know this image from the original Friday the 13th (1980) well. Not only is it considered to be one of the greatest jump scares of all time, but it marks the beginning of an icon. The first moment audiences ever laid eyes on Jason Voorhees (played here by Ari Lehman). And it was far from the last. Since then, Jason has become a titan of terror, spawning twelve movies, as well as comics, videogames, and an upcoming TV series. You can’t look at a hockey mask without thinking of him. You can’t go to a campsite without fearing him. He lurks beneath the shallow waters of society where everyone knows him by name. Ironic, isn’t it, that the towering behemoth that has macheted his way into our homes every Friday the 13th started off as just a frightened little boy?
Throw Jason in a lineup with all of horror’s top-tier slasher villains and he’d likely be deemed the most sympathetic (outside of Leatherface, who is a topic for another day). Sure, he has the highest body count of any of his peers. No, he isn’t exactly known for granting mercy. But what Jason stands for, what he has always represented, is far less monstrous than his bloody accolades would suggest.
Look, I adore the Friday the 13th series — there’s enough franchise memorabilia in my apartment to fill a tent. But the portrayal of Jason in that first film has always rubbed me the wrong way like poison ivy on the skin. As we later learn, Jason was a deformed special needs child who drowned at Camp Crystal Lake while the counselors were off practicing front strokes on each other. “He should’ve been watched,” hisses his mother, Pamela (Betsy Palmer), at a terrified Alice (Adrienne King) during the climax. She’s right. Jason should have been watched. The fact that he wasn’t only speaks to the poor treatment of kids like him.
Go back to that scene with Alice in the canoe. The sudden change from peaceful to abject terror in Harry Manfredini’s score suggests Jason is someone to be feared. Tom Savini’s makeup creation of Jason’s deformed head paints him as “other.” His snarls are like that of an animal. All of it plays into vile stereotypes accompanying kids with disabilities. The treatment of children like Jason throughout history is even worse. Kids with disabilities were sometimes left in the woods by parents who didn’t want them, or they were slain outright at birth. Treated without humanity. Shunned by others through no fault of their own. Perhaps the counselors who should have been watching him didn’t care if he drowned. When he pops up in that lake, Alice, and yes, even the audience, may see him as less than the human he is. But what if, at that moment, he isn’t trying to harm her? What if he’s just that scared little boy reaching out for help?
What if Jason was always just another victim of Camp Crystal Lake?
One element that director Sean S. Cunningham and writer Victor Miller indulge in with the first Friday that the sequels do not is that of fate. You can almost hear “Crazy Ralph” (Walt Gorney) shouting in your head, “this place has a death curse,” can’t you? And while he’s the most outspoken about this morbid belief, the whole town shudders at the mention of Camp Crystal Lake. Marcie’s (Jeannine Taylor) dream that she’s had since childhood of a storm where the rain turns to blood becomes a prelude to her death. The mere arrival of the counselors at camp brings with them a storm akin to an angry force spelling the doom ole Ralph was raving about. So, fellow campers, that begs the question, what if Camp Crystal Lake really is cursed? And if it is, was it that way before or after Jason’s death? I tend to lean towards the former.
Let’s put the lore of the comics aside for a moment and focus on the film itself. The audience isn’t given the history of the camp from before Jason’s untimely demise, but it’s fair to wonder if the place had a history long before he ever drowned there. It wouldn’t be unreasonable to assume that Jason was always destined to eventually pick up that machete and act as a protector of not just the lake, but kids like him. See, as much as we may disagree with his and Pamela’s methods, both are traumatized at the hands of aloof counselors. The hockey-mask-wearing slayer’s penchant for killing teens post-fornication was never a warning about pre-marital sex, but a triggered reaction to the act which ultimately led to his death. Vengeance plays a role, sure, but the bloodshed is also a means to prevent any kid from ever suffering the same fate again.
This is where Alice comes in. Before the kids have even arrived, she’s already considering going back to the city. I get the sense that kids aren’t exactly for her, and neither is motherhood…at least at the moment. In horror, the monster often acts as a metaphor for our greatest fears, and in this case, Jason and Pamela represent Alice’s own worries. With Jason, it’s the terror some experience in fearing their child may end up deformed. In Pamela, it’s the horrifying weight of that responsibility. Chopping Pamela’s head off in one of the franchise’s more glorious moments signifies her fighting back against the motherhood pushed on young women. But the dread of children still lingers, hence the nightmare of Jason. To Alice, his appearance and outstretched arms make him a monster. Seen from Jason’s point of view, though, he may only be seeking comfort from someone, anyone.
No, Jason didn’t start off as the maggot-head we see him as today; he was once just a little boy scared of a world that saw him as inhuman for his differences. That’s something we can all relate to, can’t we? A victim of Camp Crystal Lake, his tragedy still ripples across the waters of time over forty years later. He’s the story we tell around campfires to remind us to treat everyone with humanity. To look after and protect those who are different, or else.
Deep down underneath Jason’s hockey mask, trapped within that pustuled flesh, that lonely little boy is still there. Still there. Still there… 🩸
About
Matt is a writer and wannabe werewolf who began his love of horror at the ripe old age of 3 with Carpenter’s Christine. He has a horror podcast called Killer Horror Critic which he does with his wonderful wife and has previously been published on Bloody Disgusting, Shudder’s The Bite, and Daily Grindhouse. You can also find more of his reviews and ramblings at his blog, KillerHorrorCritic.com.
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