By Patrick Storck
October 31, 2002
Jason Voorhees is known as one of the baddest baddies in film history, but is he really that bad? Sure, if you take into account the fact that he's killed or will centuries from now will kill hundreds of people, and his methods of massacre are somewhat cruel and excessive, then maybe he is a truly evil person, but is there no room for sympathy? Can nobody find it in their heart to see the poor, confused child who is merely a victim, a product of his environment? I can. Maybe that makes me just as evil or deranged, or maybe my shoebox full of wingless flies makes me that, but I think that Mr. Voorhees is just in need of a sympathetic friend. After all, look at what he's been through.
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To begin with, he was a "special needs" child. He wasn't a good swimmer, he wasn't bright, and here he was placed in a camp with so-called "normal" kids. It wasn't until those damn dirty hippies, with their free love and reefer, changed the world for the better by having people catered to based on needs in education and development. Back in the fifties, kids like Jason were forced to put up with taunts, struggles, and a lackluster education until the day they donned overalls and became the loveable town mechanic. His life leading up to his death was probably not pleasant, even by childhood standards.
When Jason died, it was not his fault. He was asked to do something he shouldn't have been asked to do, and would have been better off making macaroni art. This is not demeaning the handicapped. I think all kids would be better off making macaroni art at camp. Nobody has ever died from gluing pasta, plates and glitter into a refrigerator-worthy piece of juvenile expression. Besides, the camp I went to was down river from a horse farm, and many a kid would get ankle- to kneedeep in things best left unspoken of, requiring a counselor to canoe out and yank them from the "sediment." Invariably these children, myself included, would switch to an artistic endeavor and leave the world of athletics behind. The thought of poor young Jason stuck in the muck with no counselor around to free him as he sank deeper and deeper has to allow for at least two or three brutal slayings, even more because he died or almost died as a result.
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Flash forward a few years. Jason didn't apparently die, but his life was forever changed. He was scared, confused, and lost. His mother, thinking he was dead, never came to pick him up from camp that year, and he likely took this to mean that she no longer loved or wanted him. Dejected, he managed to survive off the land and live like Ted Nugent, eating animals and practicing rudimentary marksmanship. Even with one eye in the later films, the guy could give Bullseye or Geena Davis a run for their money. Jason, not Nugent. Well, maybe Nugent. The only activity in the woods amounted to the occasional developer trying to open another camp, and somebody destroying said camp. Some of this may have been Pam Voorhees, Jason's loving mother, but some could have also been Jason himself, either emulating her or acting out of his own desire to be left alone.
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Eventually, somebody really got going on the "reopen Camp Blood" idea, and sent a bunch of kids in to clean the place up. Jason likely hid from them, afraid of the type of people that let him almost drown in the first place. From the shadows, he saw his mother return and kill these kids. She even explained that she was doing it because of losing her son. Mom loved him! Of course, as soon as this is revealed, one of those mean people cuts her head off. As soon as he could have his mom again, he watches her die. Heartbreakingly tragic. They robbed him of the one chance to find love and acceptance after he'd finally regained hope. They had to pay.
Would a bloody massacre as excessive as resulted be justice? In our eyes, no. We've been taught the value of human life, for the most part. Jason was not. His first experience with death was his own, sort of. Then he saw his mother use death as an expression of her love for him. When she died, he learned that death takes a person away from you and keeps them away. His killing of Alice was revenge, but beyond that, much of his murderous rampage could be seen as self-defense. He kills before people can kill him. Anyone wandering the woods that have been his home for the bulk of his life are intruders, a threat, and since practically everyone he has ever met has been evil, incapacitating them is a completely logical option.
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Most of his rampage lasted only a few short days, so he probably had little time to reflect on the consequences of his actions, not that he would have reached some angst-ridden Alec Guinness blowing up the bridge moment. Frog Brother-in-training Corey Feldman, as a young Tommy Jarvis, ended Jason's suffering almost as cruelly as Jason had lived, without the benefit of a trial by a jury of his peers. For a brief time it seemed as though this tortured soul might finally rest in peace.
Unfortunately, Tommy Jarvis was completely insane and obsessive, and would not stand for merely killing Jason. Tommy had been driven further over the edge by a man besmirching the Voorhees name by using Jason's modus operandi (killing people, as far as I can tell) to take out his own revenge. This guy, by the way, had no right. As the deadbeat dad of an annoying guy in a mental camp clearly not up to any semblance of state codes, killing waitresses, drifters, broken-down motorists, and other unrelated innocents was about as justifiable as making POLICE ACADEMY: MISSION TO MOSCOW. Like that movie inspired countless people to lash out at cops who can make amusing microphone noises, so too did Tommy lash out at what he blamed his pain on, the corpse of Jason Voorhees.
In the middle of the night, Thursday the 12th, if I'm not mistaken (cue ominous music), Jarvis and friend go dig up the lifeless husk of our hero and begin to desecrate it. After a few stabs with an iron fence post, lightning strikes and brings Jason back to life. When lightning strikes power lines and causes damage in a home, the insurance companies call it an act of God. Why, then, would this be anything less. God was granting Jason the opportunity to return to his home and preserve God's country, the woods, from development by man, as well as punish those who are entrusted to protect the young and instead spend their time fornicating and abusing substances.
That may seem like a stretch, but who does Jason kill when he gets revived? First, of course, is somebody who openly attacks him. Then there are those who mock war, the paintballers, making a game of the life-or-death struggle that has plagued man since we first saw the monolith. Most of the counselors were being irresponsible when disposed of, and none were ever attacked while looking after the children. Actually, they were curiously spared. The domineering sheriff father? Gone. Yet when Jason enters the cabin full of children, instead of tearing them apart as we would expect, he watches them curiously, reminded of the innocent child he once was. These children were left open to the kind of things he could do to them, and while he knew he wouldn't hurt them, their protectors didn't know that, and for abandoning these kids like they abandoned him, they must pay.
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Admittedly, the remainder of the series provides little insight into Jason's motivations, but this is probably due to them not changing much. People are in his woods, they act bad, he kills them. He wound up in New York by accident, and was clearly lost and confused, and literally turned into that weak child again by the end. Even though only his body changed, suddenly everyone was struck by the tragedy of this poor little boy lying dead in the sewer, and likely they went off after Pennywise the Misunderstood Clown with torches and pitchforks.
Eventually Jason made his way back to Crystal Lake, only to fall into a trap set by the government. I'm far from a patriot at the moment, considering our president wants to be able to declare war on everything from countries to backwoods maniacs, so when extreme measures were used to take out Jason by the FBI (was this really their jurisdiction?) I felt for the poor guy. Me, I have more trouble with the IRS, but the point is the same. The government has taken away his home, his body (I'll spare everyone the subsidy farmer and DDT metaphors), so he must live in hiding until he can be reborn as an innocent child, a chance to begin anew. This could even be seen as a Second Coming if you want to border on blasphemy.
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Of course, he gets sent to Hell, comes back (somehow), and again the government steps in. This time they run experiments on him. All of you Greenpeace PETA types are aware of the inherent cruelty in live vivisection and the like. Despite his past, should this man be subjected to something so inhumane? For most of the movie he is lost, confused, trapped in a world he didn't make, and only trying to escape and get back home, unaware home is nice and nuclear toasty. We the viewer know what he does not. This can only end tragically, like Ash seeing a post-apocalyptic England, or Sheriff Burt Campbell walking into a mob set-up. It is to cry, and so this Halloweenseason, take a moment, and shed a single tear for that abused little boy behind the hockey mask and machete. I will. In spirit. I don't cry, being macho and all. Shut up.
For more movie mayhem from Patrick, check out his Danger Seekers Movie Collective.
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