As I’m writing this, we’ve got an extremely consequential American presidential election coming up on Tuesday, and the tension (and the pandemic) have sort of put a damper on candy corn season. I go on walks to relax and my mind wanders through everything I’m angry about, everything I’m worried will happen. I feel like it’s very clear what the will of the people is, and even more clear that the people in power are planning some bullshit to thwart that will. And it’s not clear that they will fail, or what we can do if they succeed, and when I think about it my stomach tightens up like I have stage fright.
But I’ve had some success escaping into the horror movies I try to marathon at this time of year anyway. I have a review of another horror classic that’s all ready to go and worthy of posting on Halloween. But late on Wednesday night it hit me that THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE 2 is the horror movie of this moment. Of course it is. We thought we got away. We thought everything could be okay again. We didn’t know it would get worse. Years later not only are they still getting away with it, they’re being more flagrant about it, making money off of it. Winning chili contests, living it up in fancy new digs. The Texas Chain Saw Massacre “seems to have no end,” according to the narration.
The Sawyers are Trump and friends. On the surface they’re very different – they obviously come from a different social class, they have a combat veteran in their family, and obviously Drayton comes across much nicer and less deranged in his public appearances as an award winning chili chef than Trump does as a president. But they’re living in massive opulence by the standards of their lifestyle, the house full of bones and animal parts having expanded to a massive underground complex. And when Lefty shows up to stop them, Drayton assumes it’s a business thing and tries to pay him off. Rich people shit.
Hooper and Carson were parodying Reaganism with some of this, so it overlaps with tried and true Republican themes of yore that mutated into the MAGA ideology. Drayton complains about property taxes and waxes nostalgic for the alleged good old days before technological changes at the rendering plant made the killing not as fun. He reveres Grandpa, a confused, drooling monster he says is “137 years old but as fast as Jesse James” even though his hands are too shaky to continue the family murder traditions. And since they live in the wreckage of Texas Battle Land, their house of horrors is literally built on tall tales of violent conflict.
Ironically it’s the straight horror stuff that more closely resembles Trumpism: the victimizing while complaining of victimization, the long history of flagrant violation of the innocent without ever being held accountable. The opening narration says that “It seems to have no end.” The police never got them because “No facts; no crime.”
Nothing is too foul, nothing is sacred. For God’s sake, their brother died 14 years ago and they don’t give a fuck, they just carry his corpse around and use it as a puppet. (insert Herman Cain joke)
Lefty is the one investigator trying to put a stop to this madness, with very little backing from the system. He’s not like the guys who went after Trump, trying to maintain a reputation as an institutionalist. He believes when they go chainsaw, we go chainsaw. He uses strategic leaks to the media and finds their literal skeletons in the very large metaphorical closet, but he’s powerless. It ruins and ends his life. It leaves him yelling “They can’t do this!” and “Bring it all down!” as he tries to do just that, sawing at the support beams. We feel you, Lefty.
Chop Top and Leatherface, of course, drive around in a huge pickup truck with an American flag covering the tailgate. If I may be so bold, I don’t believe they share my idea of American values. Chop Top is a veteran and now wears the tie-dyed clothes and peace symbols of the counterculture, claiming “music is my life” – I don’t know if it’s appropriation or trolling – but he doesn’t seem torn up about his war experience.
I’d say the sexual politics are of then, not now, but whatever you think of the things this movie puts Stretch through, the point is she gets through them. She fights, she bites, she literally climbs out of metaphorical Hell, from the dark catcombs to the sun-drenched surface, up to the top of that mountain, dumping Chop Top into the hole like garbage as the whole thing comes crashing down on the motherfuckers.
And she stands up there looking like a mad woman, waving the chainsaw around, mirroring Leatherface’s dance at the end of the first movie, but for her it’s a victory dance.
And that right there is the reason I had to watch this movie in this week of anticipation and hope and dread. Because some day, whether it’s in a couple days, or after a whole lot more fighting and running and climbing out of Hell, we’re gonna push past this era. We’re gonna survive, some of us. Hopefully most of us. And I imagine it’s gonna feel a whole lot like standing on top of a mountain, spinning around and stabbing the air with a chainsaw.
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