Response #5 - Texas Chainsaw

Tobe Hooper’s iconic slasher film, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974) emerged in a world and in a country severely disillusioned by the Vietnam War, spurred in large part by how the media depicted the graphic, unrelentingly horrific violence of the battlefield. Hooper articulates this cultural cynicism by “[identifying] the American family as the locus of monstrosity and terror” (Worland, 209). This would have been particularly poignant in the era of the film’s release, as the infamous Manson family murders had occurred only five years prior. Indeed, in Hooper’s world, the socially dispossessed family of slaughterhouse workers parallel the nuclear family in terrifying ways, as the onslaught of modernity brings only “fruitless carnage” rather than any kind of “social renewal” (Worland, 211).

             The family’s roles remain fluid throughout the film, a reflection of the turbulent social times in which it was made. Indeed, the hitchhiker bears a striking resemblance to Charles Manson, both in appearance and in demeanor. He ritualistically cuts Franklin’s hand, photographs him and subsequently burns it, and ultimately marks the group for slaughter by smearing his blood on the side of the van. This parallels the kinds of messages that the Manson family would write on the walls after their kills—most famously, “helter skelter.” This cultural reference in 1974 would have been especially poignant in 1974, as the social reverberations were still felt. During the exposition of the film, particularly, with the understanding of this character, the hitchhiker, being a stand-in of sorts for Charles Manson, we as viewers understand the general direction that the film will take: of a massively unhinged, dysfunctional family.

            Leatherface and Old Man are perhaps the two best characters to illustrate the fluidity of the family roles and structure. During the Vietnam War, this would have also been the case, although rather than lacking men, the slaughter family lack a female presence. Leatherface, although the most outwardly aggressive—a masculine trait—nonetheless wears makeup during the dinner scene in which Sally is tortured, and appears to take on a more placid, submissive role. However, Old Man also exudes a degree of femininity, particularly when Hitchhiker tells him, “you’re just the cook, me’n Leatherface do all the killing!” Thus, as much as the cannibals parallel the nuclear family, they also illustrate the malleability of gender roles within in; in other words, they disrupt and destabilize the entire notion of what “family” even means. It’s sort of a reversal of how the face of economic life changed during the Second World War, when women entered the labor force while the men were away fighting.

            Lastly, as Worland notes with the idea of time standing still on this farm, exemplified by the watch with the nail driven through it, the cannibal family hearkens back to a time when the nuclear family served as an economic unit, each member with a role to play to provide for the well-being of the household. It represents what happens when people either cannot or will not follow “progress”—which isn’t all sunshine and daisies, either. Progress can fail us—such as the van that runs out of fuel, leaving the teenagers stranded in a place where they must either learn to survive (a skill that progress actually robs us of, because modernity and capitalism remove the need for us to rely solely on ourselves, and rather profit and benefit from the work of others), or die.