After nursing others to health during warm-up phase, manic pixie dream girls pursue their own needs during manic phase of excitement cycle

So far we've been looking at the role that manic pixie dream girls play within the context of the restless warm-up phase of the 15-year excitement cycle -- coaxing wary guys out of their shells, so that the sexes can get reacquainted with each other, after 5 long years of refractory-phase hyper-sensitivity.

What happens to these girls once that role has been fulfilled, though, and the cycle enters the manic phase where everyone feels invincible and carefree? There's no longer a need for an earthly guardian angel to lift a guy up out of a deep psychological hole.

Roles are adaptive within a phase, and do not stay constant over time. New environment, new roles. Still, some may be better suited to a particular role than others are, based on their birth and development.

Once the wary people have been rescued from their emo funk by the manic pixie dream girls, during the warm-up phase, the MPDGs are then free to pursue their own social and emotional needs and fulfillment during the manic phase. They've been caring for others for the past 5 years -- it's time for a little vacation, a little break, a little "me time".

They were glad to care for others in the previous phase, and don't resent that at all. But now that that work has been done, it's time to play. They are not abdicating all duties and responsibilities, they're simply going on vacation. And it's not in a hedonistic degenerate way -- they just want to shake off their role of nurse and get footloose and fancy-free for awhile, in a wholesome way. As MPDGs, they were validating others -- now it's their time for receiving validation from others.

That's what was behind the backlash against the MPDG role during the early 2010s, after its heyday during the late 2000s: everyone understood that the MPDGs' function had been successfully accomplished, and now it was time for them -- and everyone else -- to move on to new roles during the manic phase. They were going to have more of a social life of their own, fulfill their own emotional needs, have others validate them rather than vice versa, and have some wholesome fun on their little vacation.

This change to the MPDG role shows up in a new focus on social independence during the manic phase movies with characters who, in the previous warm-up phase, may have been straightforward MPDGs. The girl in Ruby Sparks (2012) gets a life of her own, separate from her author-creator. The operating system in Her (2013) socializes with other OS's and leaves the human social ecosystem entirely. And the mermaid from Splash (1984) ends up leaving the human ecosystem of her love interest, taking him back to her own world under the sea.

This change was foreshadowed already at the tail-end of the MPDG heyday, in 500 Days of Summer (2009), where half the movie explores the MPDG leading a fulfilling married life of her own with another man, after having nursed the male protagonist out of his stagnant depression. It's not that manic pixies are fickle gypsies -- but that roles change along with the phases of the excitement cycle, and some other type of person may need her attention in a different phase (or she may need attention herself).

A more concise, impressionistic display of the changing of roles is this ad for Magnum ice cream with former MPDG Rachel Bilson from 2011 (infectious enough that I still remember it, despite watching minimal TV during my adult life). No longer nursing others through emotional rehab, she's now free to pursue a wholesome carefree treat of her own, on her own:



But the most intense signal of the changing roles is the "it's time for a little me-time" anthem that explodes during the manic phase of the cycle. These are not hedonistic, about cutting all social ties and responsibilities, egocentric, etc. They clearly place the desire for a little vacation and validation for themselves within the context of having already fulfilled their duties to others and behaved responsibly. It's simply time to take a break, catch their breath, and replenish their own emotional stores after having given to others, by having some carefree me-time fun. They will get back to their responsibilities to others, just after a brief rejuvenating vacation.

These anthems were performed by women who were born during a manic phase, just like the MPDGs were (early '50s, late '60s, early '80s). Also like the MPDGs, they socially imprinted on the manic phase environment when they were hitting their adolescent stride at age 15. And in one case, Avril Lavigne, she'd already played the MPDG role during the previous warm-up phase (the late 2000s, in "Keep Holding On" and "Girlfriend").

It's too bad that Cyndi Lauper and Shania Twain didn't have big hits from the late '70s and early '90s, when they would've been naturals in the MPDG role, to show the evolution across phases like Avril did. I assume that they at least resonated with the MPDG role during the warm-up phase, like other manic-phase births do in such an environment. By the time the manic phase rolls around, they certainly show signs of having been through a MPDG role recently -- I've taken care of others, now it's time for a validating vacation of my own.

They don't treat the generic topic of "me-time," though: it's a specifically feminine form of needing to unwind and receive some emotional validation from others. And that, too, is after having fulfilled a specifically feminine role -- nurturing others. That's why these fall into the broader "girl power" trend that characterizes the manic phase of the cycle. (There are different forms of girl power from women who were born during different phases, but that's a matter for a separate post.)

I searched the late '60s manic phase for examples, but came up empty-handed. The "girl power" songs from back then were more about social / political change, as the sudden eruption of the women's lib movement overshadowed the more mundane changing of phases in the excitement cycle. Without such a momentous one-time social revolution under way, I assume there would've been one of these anthems back then as well. Alternatively, in the pre-neoliberal era, it might have been unnatural to make songs that, in however qualified of a way, glorified me-time as opposed to couples-time, family-time, community-time, or country-time.

In any case, these anthems all made the year-end Billboard Hot 100 charts, and are some of the most iconic of the manic-phase zeitgeist.

"Girls Just Want to Have Fun" by Cyndi Lauper (1983)



"Man! I Feel Like a Woman" by Shania Twain (1997)



"What the Hell" by Avril Lavigne (2011)

Lars and the Real Girl, a transition between robo-gf and manic pixie dream girl trends of the excitement cycle

On a whim last night I watched this critically acclaimed box-office disappointment, and it resonated so well with some earlier posts here on the topic of manic pixie dream girls and their place in the 15-year cultural excitement cycle.

First, recall that during the vulnerable refractory phase of the cycle, there's a retreat into the fantasy of obtaining a made-to-order robo-gf -- one who won't require all that painful social stimulation in order to court and woo.

Then, recall that during the restless warm-up phase that follows, the manic pixie dream girl archetype appears out of nowhere, as a kind of guardian angel to coax the male protagonist out of his vulnerable-phase cocoon, lifting him out of the emo funk that he'd been mired in throughout the previous phase.

Lars and the Real Girl came out in 2007, during a restless warm-up phase that should not have had the robo-gf and should have had the manic pixie dream girl. Instead of featuring solely one of those two types, the movie shows both, but in a way that is consonant with the warm-up phase -- leaving the emotional crutch robo-gf behind, and welcoming the charms of the manic pixie dream girl, as the protagonist works his way out of a deep dreary depression.

Even when the robo-gf is the focus of the plot early on, the protagonist is never depicted as enjoying a fulfilling retreat into fantasy (unlike The Stepford Wives, Weird Science, and the like). His attachment to his robo-gf is clearly shown as forced on his part, plainly an emotional crutch, and is treated as pathological by the other characters, who still want to help him through this awkward stage. This is the only way the robo-gf archetype can exist during the warm-up phase when people are itching to leave behind their emo-phase cocoons.

The manic pixie dream girl, for her part, doesn't get as much screen time as in other movies during the most recent peak of the type (the late 2000s). But it's clear what role she plays vis-a-vis the protagonist, does not exist so much for her own character arc across the narrative, and has the usual eccentricities in personality and appearance that are associated with the type.

A post on the birth phases of manic pixie dream girls showed that they overwhelmingly were born during a manic phase of the cycle. They imprinted on a social-cultural atmosphere of invincibility and carefree social relations during their introduction to the world -- and then again during their adolescence (around age 15), when they're hitting their stride socially. And sure enough, the actress playing the manic pixie dream girl in this movie was born in 1984, during the early '80s manic phase. It rarely fails!

Strangely, she is left off of lists of manic pixie dream girls. I'd been looking over them and watching as many as I could lately, to get a better feel for this character type, now that she'll be coming back during the early 2020s warm-up phase. But this movie had totally eluded my radar until mindlessly scrolling Amazon Prime.

She must have been left off because the type of people who write those lists are obsessed with individual personas, both because they're spergy nerds who don't understand social relations, and because they're status-striving types who see things as contests among individuals rather than a holistic superorganic social ecosystem. (The movie does a great job of portraying this aspect of real communities like small-town Wisconsin.)

What makes a character a manic pixie dream girl is not her individual traits that could be listed on a trading card, or an online dating app profile -- it is her relationship to the protagonist, how their social interactions drive the plot of him coming out of his emo funk. She is his earthly guardian angel, not just some isolated free spirit who wears barettes in her hair and is generally in an upbeat mood.

Another reason may be the total lack of irony or self-awareness in the movie's tone. If every other example of the character was played in a movie that was ironic or self-aware in tone, then how could this one be a true example of the type? Because tone has nothing to do with the relationship between the characters. Again, cultural critics are just doing superficial analysis, ignoring social relations and roles, and emphasizing stylistic choices like the degree of irony struck in the tone.

A final reason why it's ignored in discussions of the character type or overall genre, is that the characters are not metropolitan professionals. In the striver critic's mind, who else but yuppies and current private school kids could ever be going through a funk and need to be coaxed out of their cocoons to fulfill some higher purpose that requires social integration? Certainly not office drones in flyover country small towns.

All these exceptions recommend the movie over most of the more well known examples of the genre. The focus on the holistic social ecosystem, the sincere tone, and the humanistic portrayal of ordinary people from unglamorous walks of life -- really makes it feel like a throwback to before the current status-striving / neoliberal era. Unfortunately that meant it couldn't succeed much with audiences, but it's definitely worth watching.

Manic Pixie Dream Girls are corporeal ass women, not cerebral boob women

We'll soon see a return of the Manic Pixie Dream Girl type, now that we're into the restless warm-up phase of the 15-year cultural excitement cycle, since that is the phase during which they appear.

That post looked at their character traits, and a pair of follow-up posts (here and here) showed that these girls are overwhelmingly born during the manic phase of the excitement cycle. They imprinted on a social mood that was carefree and invincible -- just what she needs to take the initiative and coax a wary love interest out of his vulnerable-phase cocoon.

Having covered their personality type, we continue on to their physical type. Height plays no role, ranging from 5' shorties to the 5'8 tall-for-a-girl end, although no one in the model-tall range. Not surprising: guys do not care how tall a girl is, one way or another. Still noteworthy, though: "taking the initiative" here does not mean being a tall amazon aggressor.

They have hourglass waist-to-hip ratios, which is not too surprising since that's what guys prefer in general. But it is worth noting that they are not relatively slim-hipped women with higher testosterone -- that's not the source of their taking the initiative with the guy. They have a feminine, fertile shape, reinforcing their role more as nurturers -- coaxing the guy out of his shell to heal him of his emo sickness, not strutting over to seduce him like an aggressor.

And to return to a perennial theme here, are they boob women or ass women? They are not busty: most have a B cup, with somewhat more A than C cups. Not being a boob man, I'm blind to them, and this was all news to me. I had no idea Natalie Portman was an A cup (guess she didn't get that particular Ashkenazi gene).

The only D cup is Katy Perry, but that's not such an exception anyway. First, she has a thick lower body. But to the point, I listed her because of "Simple," and in that 2005 video they dressed her in a baggy shirt so you can't tell what they're like even if you're paying attention. Their intuition told them it just wouldn't be right to have that persona coming from a girl with giant jugs.

Why not? Perhaps the sexuality would be too forward (literally) and threatening to a guy who is still wary about leaving his refractory-phase cocoon. Ass men would have no trouble ignoring them, but boob men would. The guy needs to focus on her facial expressions without distraction, to get back into the hang of back-and-forth social interactions with the opposite sex.

An ongoing theory here is that boob women and men are more cerebral, while ass women and men are more corporeal (see here for a recent post looking at political junkies being mostly busty women and boob men). So there's another reason she can't be the busty type -- she would likely be more cerebral, and that goes against the MPDG type.

She must be corporeal -- a touchy-feely free spirit in tune with nature and physical activities (like dancing), whose plans to get the guy out of his funk do not involve over-analyzing things, devising Rube Goldberg contraptions, etc. "Let your mind go, and your body will follow" (SanDeE from L.A. Story). Guys coming out of a refractory phase need to be rehabilitated physically, not just mentally, and corporeal girls will be best able to perform this role.

That means they're mostly ass women, by which I mean the gestalt fertility zone -- belly, hips, ass, and thighs, as distinguished from the mammary zone. That doesn't mean they have Kim Kardashian-sized bubble butts, just that they're on the thick side below the waist (including indie darlings like Zooey Deschanel). And some are slender above and below. But if they have a tendency toward one zone over the other, it's definitely the fertility zone. In performances or pictures, they play up their lower half, not their chest.

In fact, what first tipped me off to this was the photo from an album cover by Au Revoir Simone, who I mentioned before (click for a larger view):

That picture doesn't show it, but they're not busty as well, nor do they attempt to draw attention to their chests. In their videos for that album, they're comfortable showing off their lower bodies and engaging in corporeal activities -- carefree dancing, playing hopscotch, bouncing their thighs and slapping their knees to the rhythm while seated on a bench, and the like.

I highlight their example because it goes against the overall stereotype of their upper-middle-class indie-world social scene. You'd think they'd be cerebral, dismissive of dancing, and averse to showcasing the lower body because that's what vulgar proles pay attention to. But just because the overall scene may be like that, doesn't mean there aren't exceptions like Au Revoir Simone, a corporeal minority within a scene of cerebrals.

As for social media personas, this all reminds me once again of Alison Balsam (@foolinthelotus on Twitter before she left) -- an early '80s manic-phase birth, a fertility shape rather than a mammary shape, and a dance lover. She had to have been a Manic Pixie Dream Girl during the late 2000s heyday -- the signs are still there, albeit somewhat obscured by the vulnerable emo phase she was posting in (late 2010s). Much like the type portrayed in entertainment media, there wasn't anyone else like her among the big-ish accounts -- no "Alison Balsam clones" or "that whole Alison Balsam crowd". The unique ones make an impression, and people can't get over it when they're gone.

Manic Pixie Dream Girls were born during manic phase of excitement cycle: Will the next be born '95-'99?

While we're still working our way out of the emo trauma-porn hangover of the past 5 years, it's worth looking for clues about where the changes will come from as we leave behind the refractory phase of the excitement cycle and enter the restless warm-up phase.

I was just thinking about the Manic Pixie Dream Girl character type, which an earlier post showed clusters in the warm-up phase of the cycle, as people are coming out of their shells. She serves to coax the guy out of his refractory cocoon, letting him know it's OK to interact again -- that we're out of the phase where all social contact feels over-stimulatingly painful.

Who will play such a role this time around? I looked at the previous wave of them from the late 2000s (and the lesser crop from the 2010s), and they were nearly all born between 1980-'84 (with one born in '79, and another in '85, just outside this range by one year). That birth range was the manic phase of the early '80s. Then I checked the early '90s MPDG's, and though there weren't as many to study, they too were born in a manic phase (the late '60s: Sarah Jessica Parker from L.A. Story, and Julia Roberts).

So, this time around, will the actresses who play the role be born during the manic phase of 1995-'99? I have no idea who that could be, and this role tends to be a break-out role for the actress anyway.

Pop music doesn't offer too many examples of the role, since it has to be set within a character drama (or dramedy) narrative, where you can set up the withdrawn guy, the adorkable girl, her coaxing him, him resisting at first, and so on and so forth. It's hard to pack all that into a 4-minute pop song.

Nevertheless, I pointed to Katy Perry's deep cut "Simple" from 2005 in that earlier post, and during the late 2000s she projected a witty-banter, partner-in-crime, free-spirit persona. She's born in '84. Avril Lavigne, also born in '84, put on such a persona in 2007 with "Girlfriend," after she'd gotten out of the emo phase of the early 2000s (akin to the late 2010s emo phase, when she reverted to the emo type with "Head Above Water").

But the Manic Pixie Dream Girl wasn't meant for the Billboard Hot 100 kind of music. She was more of an indie girl. Not that I was big into the indie scene in the late 2000s, but even I remember Au Revoir Simone -- and sure enough, all three of them were born in 1980! In case you forgot or never experienced them during that phase (before their moody music for the Twin Peaks revival during the vulnerable phase of the late 2010s):

"Dark Halls" by Au Revoir Simone (2007)



That band in that time reminds me of our dear, departed anti-woke leftist Alison Balsam (@foolinthelotus on Twitter before she left). I'll bet she was like that during the late 2000s, and she too was born in the early '80s.

From the early '90s warm-up phase, the most visible Manic Pixie Dream Girl was Lisa Loeb ("Stay" in 1994), and she's born during the late '60s manic phase.

Everyone's so focused on the political domain these days, though -- who could coax us out of our self-centered partisan cocoons, and deliver us into a Manic Pixie Dream Government? Why, it's another early '80s birth -- Tulsi Gabbard, the most soothing, reassuring, and fun-loving free spirit in politics. (Her proto-form, Marianne Williamson, was also born during a manic phase -- the early '50s.)

On the younger platforms of social media, podcasting, etc., I'd expect the type to come more from the '95-'99 cohort, though. They've been listening to the Red Scare podcast to cope with the bad vibes of the late 2010s, but soon they're going to want to do their own thing.

They'll go from analytically criticizing the trauma porn industry and the absurdities of #MeToo, to becoming Manic Pixie Dream E-girls who sound the wake-up alarm to the male half of the audience, that it's OK to come out of your cocoon and mix it up with girls again. "We promise we're over that mood, and we're in a flirtatious, getting-to-know-you mood now." It won't even be that political in scope -- although they may identify as feminists -- but more about the social-cultural mood and the relations between the sexes.

I've left out the matter of explaining why the Manic Pixie Dream Girl is born during a manic phase -- or equivalently, why she was a certain age during another of the phases -- although the simplest explanation is that they absorbed the manic mood of their birth year and carried it with them for life, as a social imprinting. But if I think of something more satisfying, I'll post it in the comments, where you can spitball ideas as well. The main point here is descriptive and predictive, without necessarily understanding why the world works the way it apparently does.

Dream poppiest movie theme: Planes, Trains and Automobiles, to distinguish it as a dramedy

In the next of an ongoing series on the rise of dream-like pop music during the vulnerable, refractory phase of the 15-year cultural excitement cycle, let's have a listen to the most dream poppy movie theme of all time.

If enough of your family are Gen X-ers, you've made it a tradition to watch this movie every year at Thanksgiving -- Planes, Trains and Automobiles. This came from the all-time peak of dream pop as a mainstream phenomenon, the second half of the '80s (as detailed here). The original (also used in the movie) is from '86, while the more heavily featured instrumental remix is from '87.

"Modigliani (Requiem Mass)" by Book of Love (1987)



Although Top Gun from '86 does showcase the dream pop anthem "Take My Breath Away," its main theme is the less layered, faster-paced, melody-over-harmony rock song "Danger Zone". Planes, Trains and Automobiles also uses a dream poppy instrumental version of "Power to Believe" by the Dream Academy (1987):



Why such a dreamy soundtrack for a fast-paced comedy movie? During the action-driving scenes, they play the rollicking melody of "Red River Rock". But this movie is a dramedy, requiring those key moments of reflection, moodiness, and vulnerability. That's when you need the multiple layers of sighing and droning voices to wash over your mind and carry it away on a lazy river ride, to give it the proper tranquility to come to an epiphany.

Anna Khachiyan and Mediterranean / Eastern witchy sensuality

Ania Pieroni as the Mater Lachrymarum, trying to bewitch the protagonist of Inferno (1980):

Anna Khachiyan, trying to bewitch someone off-camera (2011):

Mediterranean and Near / Middle Eastern faces work best for vampires and similar characters. They combine severe bone structure with full-sized soft features -- eyes, eyebrows, and lips -- mixing danger and sensuality into a heady witch's brew. The restrained expression of Easterners intensifies the power behind their visage -- the energy becoming highly concentrated rather than dissipated.

I don't buy Slavs as vampires -- the bone structure is not high-relief enough -- not so threatening -- and the tendency toward an epicanthic fold keeps the eyes from achieving maximum size -- not so sensual. The vampire legend had to draw on Romanians because Westerners can code them as Slavic (hence Eastern European), but they're substantially Mediterranean (Balkan).

Some resist the idea of Mediterranean / Eastern vampires because they're supposed to be pale, not swarthy. Still, Italians, Armenians, etc. are olive-toned, not dark-brown like the Arabians. Light skin functions, in this character type, as a signal of a more sober temper than a more earthy and lusty one. They're not bloodthirsty predators always on the prowl, they pass for normal in temperament -- even seeming somewhat delicate -- and only occasionally give in to their passionate side.

Joker: neo-naturalism for the new Gilded Age (Part 2 on characters and themes)

Part 1 on visual and musical style here.

Almost none of the reviews I've read and listened to have accurately characterized Arthur Fleck / Joker in his role as a violent criminal. This is partly because most people came in with hardened preconceptions about the nature of the Joker as a character, but they still should have noticed how different he is in this movie.

First, Joker is not a vigilante a la Taxi Driver or Death Wish. A vigilante targets an entire group of people who represent a collective threat -- pimps, drug dealers, robbers, rapists, etc. For him, any member of that group is interchangeable with the others -- bumping off any pimp, robber, etc. will achieve his goal of stopping crime. Although a vigilante may have been the victim of a specific criminal, he generalizes that relationship to other criminals similar to the original one, seeking collective rather than individual revenge. His targets have not done anything wrong to him -- he sees them as a threat to a wider group that he belongs to, and is acting on behalf of that group.

Joker, by contrast, only hurts people who have already hurt him: the yuppies who attack him unprovoked on the subway, the co-worker who got him in trouble by giving him a gun, his mother for subjecting him to ongoing physical and mental trauma as a child, and the TV show host who sought ratings by humiliating him before the audience.

He spares another co-worker who treated him decently (and says so). Plus he spares Thomas Wayne, who he could have held a grudge against for telling him the brutal truth that his mother was delusional, that he was adopted, and to stay out of his life or else. It turns out that Wayne was the victim of Arthur's mother's delusions, and she has involved him in her delusions, causing him to get told off by Wayne. So rather than pursue a feud, Arthur takes his licks and leaves him alone. Arthur recognized that he himself was in the wrong, albeit from believing his mother's delusions.

Second, Joker is not a nihilist, anarchist, or other figure who believes in no rules, or that the rules don't apply to him, or that violence and destruction is fun and rewarding per se, a la the Joker from Tim Burton and Christopher Nolan. He does not practice indiscriminate and callous violence. He follows fairly common and traditional rules for who you may harm (specific individuals who have already harmed you without provocation, and not those who have done you no harm). The same goes for property crimes -- he does not smash in the windows of random businesses, or blow up buildings of his targets in a propaganda of the deed.

When he says he "doesn't believe" in any of the political protest motives, he does not mean he believes in nothing, but that he does not have collective and larger-purpose motives. It's entirely personal for him, and that is a traditional ethical code (get revenge against the individuals who've wronged you).

And third, Joker is not really a sociopath. He doesn't torture or toy around with his targets like a sadist, he gets right to the point. And again he doesn't choose targets who haven't harmed him, like a sociopath would. He's not a predator, stalker, or hunter. He never tries to force himself on anyone. He does not hold a lowly view of other people in general, nor does he demean them.

And he can sense when he is in the wrong, how the other aggrieved party feels, and does not try to put the blame on them for feeling wronged. We see this not only when he leaves Wayne alone after their confrontation, but also when he's doing his rent-a-clown act at a children's cancer ward and his gun accidentally falls out of his pants and onto the floor, spooking them all.

In fact, a sociopath would only accept a job at a children's cancer ward in order to gain access to them as a child molester or serial killer. During a bus ride, he makes funny faces at a small child in front of him -- not to try to get close enough to harm him, but simply because he's an aspiring performer and wants to make his audience laugh and reward him with smiles. This is echoed later when he approaches young Bruce Wayne -- to make him laugh, not to harm him after getting him to let his guard down.

He is certainly dissociative, suffers from self-aggrandizing delusions, and is socially awkward or cognitively impaired at empathy -- like an autistic person, he can't easily comprehend what others are feeling. But a sociopath is not cognitively impaired -- they can understand what another person is feeling, they just can't emotionally resonate with it. An autistic is clueless, a sociopath is callous.

This makes Arthur more of a pitiful and doomed character out of Steinbeck. Lennie dreams of petting soft rabbits, but his lack of awareness of his own brawny nature leads him into crushing them to death as he pursues this dream. And Arthur dreams of fulfilling his life's mission of making an audience laugh and feel better -- and getting rewarded with laughter and applause -- while his socially autistic nature means he will never be able to read the room and know what the audience would like, so he only ends up making them feel worse, and he only receives distancing reactions from them.

He's not quite so doomed in his quest, though, since he does ultimately receive rapturous applause from the rioting protesters, after he has set an example of striking back at those who have wronged you.

Making this movie an "origin story" is therefore a decision to return to naturalism and various forms of determinism (heredity, upbringing, current class role, etc.). It's not the typical origin story of a villain from comic books, horror movies, or whatever else. Those villains always rise to the level of sociopath, serial killer, nihilist / anarchist, and so on. Because their violence is so extreme, it feels wrong to reduce it to a naturalistic explanation -- Michael Myers became a serial killer because he got bullied at school, or whatever.

But since Fleck / Joker is not that level of a villain, but is a fairly powerless and pitiful figure who is lashing out at those who have already wronged him, it's totally fine to assign him a naturalistic origin story. And his psychology may be abnormal, but it's not inhuman -- so, sure, investigate its origins in his upbringing, his class position, and whatever else. In a twist, we can't explore the role of heredity through his mother (a delusional psychotic) because he's adopted.

But he was adopted by a delusional psychotic, profoundly neglected, beaten to the point of traumatic head injury by the mother's boyfriend, had been institutionalized himself, perhaps a victim of Munchausen Syndrome by proxy (at the hands of his mother), and loaded up on various psychiatric drugs (some of which may be inappropriate and causing iatrogenic harm, if his mother misled the doctors as to her son's condition).

Current circumstances -- dim job prospects, rising crime, urban anomie, austere government policy -- may play a role in other narratives about psychological breakdown and violence, but it's rare to see one focus so much on childhood and parental influences. There's no such investigation in Taxi Driver, any Batman movie, Blue Velvet, Silence of the Lambs, or scores of others. The brief scenes of childhood abuse in Natural Born Killers is a partial exception, but the throwaway exposition tacked on to the end of Psycho does not count as an in-depth narrative investigation. This places Joker more within the mainstream of Gilded Age naturalism than Midcentury existentialism (free will, agency, making your bed and lying in it).

As our material and ideological conditions have returned to those of the Gilded Age -- hyper-competitiveness, laissez-faire economics and morality, Social Darwinism, and widening inequality -- the subjective sense of hopelessness and determinism will re-emerge into the zeitgeist. When society keeps breaking further and further down, the forces of the world feel too over-powering to be stopped. Only when societal breakdown has been tamed -- as during the Midcentury -- do people feel like they have more agency and are not merely molded and tossed around by fate.

Joker: the return of naturalism for the new Gilded Age (Part 1 on visual and musical style)

After one of my rare visits to the movie theater, I sided more with the audience than the critics on Joker. The movie may polarize responses because it's trying to integrate two different movies, one about his background and origin and another about his initial acts in his new criminal role as Joker. It wasn't the most seamless weaving together of the two narratives, but it did the job.

It may have also polarized responses for bringing such crystallized expectations to it -- choosing a protagonist from a high-profile franchise, and a director from a comedy rather than thriller background -- and then frustrating those who had showed up wanting something different. I've never paid much attention to comic book franchises, in film or elsewhere, and I haven't seen a single one of the Hangover movies in full, so I didn't go in with any hardened view of how it should have been.

I did see it after having read and listened to extensive spoilers, though, including endless comparisons to Taxi Driver (whether they enjoyed the supposed parallels or not). Joker bears little resemblance to Taxi Driver -- it's the contrasts that stand out more, and reveal the differences between the zeitgeists behind the two.

I'll split up my review into two parts, this one on the physical aspects of visual and musical style, and another on the conceptual aspects of themes, characters, and narrative style.

On the cinematography, it differed from the earlier Batman / Joker movies by Tim Burton and Christopher Nolan in opting for a more realistic than heavily stylized look. The cinematographer is mainly known for the Hangover movies as well, so this could have been making the best use of their limitations (comedy films rarely stand out visually). And certainly it's less stylized than the neo-Expressionist look of Taxi Driver's scenes of city streets at night. Joker rarely uses striking compositions, dynamic camera movement, bold colors, or chiaroscuro lighting.

The low-style visual approach reinforces the naturalistic themes, characters, and narrative. This is not a real comic book or superhero / supervillain movie, nor do the Joker's crimes rise to such a level that they seem unnatural and in need of a more stylized visual delivery.

In fact, the only memorable stylistic device is the frequent use of shallow focus, putting Arthur Fleck / Joker in focus, and rendering everyone and everything else blurry, even his immediate surroundings and people sitting right next to him. This choice was not just some fashionable gimmick, nor was it used for utilitarian purposes (e.g., to de-emphasize things and people in the background that might distract our attention from key figures in the foreground).

When he's sitting in bed with his mother watching a late night talk show, there is no clutter of distracting objects -- just him, his mother a foot away, the bed, and a few odd pieces of furniture and decoration. And yet everything other than Arthur is blurry. Ditto for the shot of him looking out the window of a bus -- there's little action going on in the foreground, and not much in the background either. This shot is echoed later when he's in the back of a cop car. So minimizing distractions is not the reason for the extreme shallow focus.

What this does is visually convey not only Arthur's loneliness and isolation from the people, things, and places in his world, but his psychic state of dissociation and increasingly solipsistic retreat into his own mind. After what he's been through, he has begun to live so much in his own mind that on a raw perceptual level, anything beyond himself is just one great big blur.

By the end of the movie, his dissociation has gotten so bad that he feels disembodied from even himself. In one of the movie's iconic shots, only his head remains in focus -- the entire rest of his body below the neck has floated off into the blurry background of the dressing room. Usually shallow focus at least respects the integrity of a subject's body, but here this is violated in order to show how far he has traveled off into a dissociative fugue. The promotional still below is not the best example from this sequence (it's most striking when he puts a gun under his chin), but it's not out on DVD to do a proper screenshot.

Thus, the heavy use of shallow focus does not undercut the otherwise realistic visual approach. It is not used for purely stylistic effect, to delight the visual sense, but to try to render as scientifically and objectively as possible the dissociative breakdown and solipsism of the protagonist.

Unlike the effective naturalistic visual approach, the musical style did not achieve its goals. This may owe to the comedic background of the team of filmmakers, where music tends to use existing pop songs or well-timed flourishes to echo a bit of physical comedy.

To its credit, it did not rely on contemporaneous hit songs, which Arthur would have been oblivious of. Nor did it employ a melodic approach to the score, which would have suggested dynamism, action, and coherent structure in a movie about the cold impersonal shaping effects of the environment on a person, and a slow dissociative melting-away rather than a series of psychotic explosions. (Contrast this with the heavily melodic and thrilling soundtrack to A Clockwork Orange, whose antisocial protagonist wields more agency and experiences more exciting events than that of Joker.)

This approach to the score is one of the few similarities to Taxi Driver, whose score is mostly simple variations on a single motif, and plodding dissonant harmonies. However, Joker's score is too dramatic, almost bombastic, in its energy levels for a movie that is not very dramatic. Taxi Driver's score is more appropriately moody, despite being more dramatic in its plot.

And the instrumentation for Joker is too orchestral, taking away from the movie's overall naturalistic approach. Taxi Driver used a Midcentury jazz arrangement that feels more at home in New York during the 1970s. Joker needed an arrangement that was softer and more informal. Perhaps an elevated take on the moody, mellow country-crossover music that was dominant throughout the '70s, leading up to the year that Joker is set in (1981). Not the most exciting genre or period of music, but it would have done the job better for this movie -- more plausible as the background for lower-class characters, and more evocative of the tone of pity, disappointment, and bleakness that pervades the plot (at least until the final act).

The use of "Rock and Roll Part 2" for Joker's triumphant dance was great -- drawing from a moody, emo period that is more simple riffs than full melodies (early '70s, glam), rather than other stadium hits like "We Are the Champions" that are too melodic and high-energy to fit into this movie.

There should have been a counterpart to this song in the earlier part of the movie, to set up a contrast with the triumphant final act. Keep it in the glam rock genre, to make the comparison obvious, but one that is more yearning and self-pitying. Not melodic, layers of droning instruments, and a final vocal layer that is just disembodied sighing, to suggest dissociation or disintegration. With lyrics about one's childhood. The perfect choice -- "Cosmic Dancer" by T. Rex (also hits on Arthur's penchant for dancing).

Cover songs have disappeared, while movies & TV are all remakes

I've started looking more systematically into whether cover songs choose original versions that were from a matching phase of the 15-year cultural excitement cycle. Probably won't have the full results and discussion for a few days.

But I did notice something striking so far -- there hasn't been a single cover song to make the year-end charts since 2006 ("Life Is a Highway"). That ends a tradition of cover songs being popular.

Even more bizarrely, this is the same period during which all hit TV shows and movies have become remakes, reboots, and other derivative forms.

What's the difference?

Songs are lyrical and more personally tied to their creators, whereas narratives are more impersonal and only loosely tied to their creators (except where the narrative is considered the distinctive work of an auteur).

Songs are also more tightly defined formally -- by their melody and lyrics, whose alterations turn it into a different song. Narratives are more loosely defined, with an overarching plot, themes, and character types, which can be altered somewhat without turning it into an entirely different story.

So, covering a song commits you more to the efforts of someone else, and is less of a showcase of your individuality. Remaking a movie requires less faithful of a commitment, and allows more individuality to show.

Whether the void of original ideas during the 21st century, and the rise of individuality since roughly 1980, is due to the production or consumption side does not matter here. The point is that, although the culture overall seems bereft of new ideas among producers, and/or uninterested in them at the mass audience level, the two types of media are reacting in opposite ways to the same trends.

In both of them, the makers want to showcase their individual awesomeness, despite a lack of originality. Movie makers can dress up someone else's child in their own individual styling and pass it off as their own creation, while songwriters cannot because everyone has such a narrowly defined expectation of what that other person's child is supposed to be like.

Gen Z is not yet a culturally self-aware generation

It's striking how long it's been since there were pop culture narratives that announced a new social-cultural generation.

Millennials started with the indie hit Thirteen in 2003, and really thrust themselves into the mainstream with Mean Girls in 2004. Those two set the tone for the rest of the 2000s (Juno, Superbad, etc.), and their influence runs right up through the latest major generation-defining movie, Lady Bird from 2017. That movie is Millennial to the core, starring later Millennials who are portraying earlier Millennials. It is set in 2002, perhaps imagining itself to be a "Millennial movie before it was popular," i.e. before Thirteen or Mean Girls.

That span of time has also seen a proliferation of reality TV portraying Millennials, mainly on MTV. For shows following a social circle over time, it began with Laguna Beach in 2004, which was spun off into The Hills in 2006, and culminated in two series -- Jersey Shore, and 16 and Pregnant, each beginning in 2009.

Rather than a new series of reality shows following a new generation, those original ones are still on the air, only now showing the Millennials not as teenagers but as adults 25 and older. Jersey Shore: Family Vacation portrays 30-somethings rather than early 20-somethings, as does The Hills: New Beginnings. Teen Mom OG has changed the format from showing current teenagers who are mothers, to those who are late 20-somethings but who were teenage mothers a decade ago.

You might offer the younger characters in Stranger Things from 2016 to now (but the other half of the young cast are Millennials in their 20s), or those in the indie movie Eighth Grade from 2018. Maybe in five years we'll look back and see them as the first in a series of Gen-Z narratives. Still, where's the first mainstream movie like Mean Girls or The Breakfast Club?

Until we see something like that, it's premature to refer to Gen Z as a social-cultural generation. They must have a collective self-awareness of their culture being a distinct break with the last generation before them. And so far, just about all narrative "youth" culture is still focusing on the Millennial audience, many of whom are now over 30.

Gen Z may (or may not) be aware of themselves as a distinct group in the technological, economic, or political domains of life, but certainly not as a distinct social-cultural group.

It seems like the first generation-defining movie comes out around the time when a generation's earliest members are 20 years old -- The Graduate (1967) for Boomers (late '40s births), The Breakfast Club (1985) for Gen X (late '60s births), and Mean Girls (2004) for Millennials (mid-'80s births).

This suggests that, given the absence of such a movie by 2019, Gen Z does not include late '90s births, who are more like late Millennials. Then Gen Z begins at least in the early 2000s -- possibly later -- and we won't know until the first defining mainstream movie comes out. Eighth Grade may be the indie prelude, though, so the major hit may arrive sooner than later, which still puts Gen Z as those born sometime during the 2000s.

Made-to-order robo-gf archetype appears as guys retreat during vulnerable phase of cultural excitement cycle

Recent posts on the archetypes of the Manic Pixie Dream Girl and the supportive sex worker have looked at what types of women appeal to men during the restless warm-up phase of the 15-year cultural excitement cycle, as they feel like coming out of their shells and may need a little coaxing from those types of women.

But what types appeal to them while they are still in a social-emotional refractory state during the vulnerable phase? Rather than want to be drawn out, they want to hunker down and escape from their social world. This leads them to prefer make-believe women, blank slates customized to their tastes, so that they don't have to deal with the messy real world and all the social sensory overload that would entail, while still enjoying at least a simulation of a girlfriend.

The focus here is not on all kinds of female robots, but only those who are playing the social role of a girlfriend. They may or may not be physically intimate with the male character.

Why a customized, blank-slate robot instead of a real person with a fully formed personality? Because a woman with her own personality cannot be altered, and the man must adapt his own fully formed personality to hers, and she to his. Unable to change each other, they have to figure out how to work together despite not fitting each other precisely like puzzle pieces. The initial work done in a relationship is learning who the other person is, what makes them tick, and so on. All of this social-emotional effort is too much for someone in a refractory state. A blank slate that is customized to his tastes obviates all of that effort, and makes the relationship feel tolerable.

I'm only counting examples from mainstream or popular works, since I'm sure there are nerds who are portraying such types in paperbacks, b-movies, and animes all the time. Sci-fi and fantasy genres aren't the most popular genres, so movies featuring these types are not too common in any period. But when they do show up, they are clustered in the vulnerable phase.

During the current vulnerable phase of the late 2010s, there was Ex Machina, the Westworld TV series, and Blade Runner 2049 (unlike the female replicants in this one and the original, Joi is a blank slate, made-to-order girlfriend).

During the early 2000s, there was Simone and a re-make of The Stepford Wives.

During the late '80s, there was Weird Science and Mannequin.

During the early '70s, there was the original Westworld movie and the original Stepford Wives movie. Technically, The Stepford Wives came out in early 1975, though the novel it was based on came out in 1972. You can either count that story as from the first half of the '70s, or as the smallest of deviations from the pattern (off by 44 days, compared to the phase length of 5 years).

During the late '50s, The Twilight Zone was the only mainstream sci-fi / fantasy outlet (for movies, these genres didn't get big until the '60s). And sure enough, there was an episode from 1959, "The Lonely," whose central plot device is a robo-gf.

I couldn't easily find any examples from the early '40s, though again the genres were not that popular back then, and there was no TV. Perhaps there was a hit radio program like The Twilight Zone that had one, I don't know.

But from the late '20s, there was the first and most iconic example -- the robot from Metropolis.

There are two possible exceptions -- like the original Stepford Wives, not much of a deviation, though, missing the cut by one year.

In early 1990, an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation ("Hollow Pursuits") revolves around a crew member withdrawing to the make-believe world of the Holodeck where he re-programs the personalities of female characters who look like his attractive colleagues, so that they fall for him.

Also in 1990, the protagonist's butt-kicking babe sidekick in Total Recall is supposedly programmed as part of his fantasy vacation. I'm not sure this fits the category of a make-believe entity, though. The company messes with your brain to implant a false memory of your fantasy, similar to programming your dreams. It's not an actual thing he's interacting with in the real world. It's akin to specifying what kind of call girl he wants to show up to his hotel room, only in a dream-world. Also, the movie is ambiguous about whether or not the protagonist really goes through with the memory-altering procedure, so this woman may be a real person after all.

I'm excluding Her from 2013's manic phase, since the female-voiced operating system that the protag develops feelings for is not a blank slate that he customizes to fulfill his fantasies. She has her own personality, goals, and willfulness, and he has to learn to adapt himself to her as much as she must adapt to him. This is more of an "odd couple" pairing, specifically the fish out of water type, which showed up in another fantasy movie from an earlier manic phase -- Splash from 1984. But that may be the topic for another post.

Supportive sex worker archetype shows up during warm-up phase of excitement cycle

Related to the post below on the rise of the Manic Pixie Dream Girl during the restless warm-up phase of the cultural excitement cycle, this phase also sees the appearance of the emotionally and socially supportive sex worker (usually a prostitute, sometimes a stripper).

This is a distinct sub-type of the "hooker with a heart of gold" archetype. The general category includes examples that are simply non-stigmatizing or humanizing portrayals of prostitutes -- perhaps they are savvy businesswomen, sources of excitement for the ho-hum world the movie is set in, maternal or sisterly figures to other female characters, etc.

My focus here excludes these merely sex-positive portrayals (such as Ophelia in Trading Places or Lana from Risky Business), which seem linked more to the manic phase and its sex-positive flavor of feminism. See this review post on how feminism changes according to the phases of the excitement cycle.

The type here is one who helps the male character come out of some negative social-emotional state, akin to the Manic Pixie Dream Girl who serves as a nurse to a sick patient. She is a stabilizing rather than anarchic force for him.

He tends to help her rise out of a sunken state as well, typically by getting her to leave her emotionally degrading and socially isolating line of work. This rules out cases where they enable each other's negative tendencies, to their mutual ruin (Leaving Las Vegas).

As a more taboo character, this type does not appear as frequently as the Manic Pixie Dream Girl, but the timing is still the same.

During the early '60s, there was Irma la Douce, which shows most clearly the congruence between the two female character types -- it was a re-uniting of Jack Lemmon, Shirley MacLaine, and director Billy Wilder, who had collaborated on Manic Pixie Dream Girl movie The Apartment just a few years earlier.

During the late '70s, there was Taxi Driver, whose prostitute character is not the typical hooker with a heart of gold, but that just goes to show that it is not her internal motivation or personality that fit her for the role -- but rather how she interacts with the male character, and re-directs the course of the plot and his character development.

She initiates the redemption arc for the protagonist. Up until they meet, his breakdown had been heading in increasingly anti-social directions -- vigilante violence against robbers, nearly assassinating a political candidate. She gives him a more pro-social outlet for his anger, as he sets free an underage hooker from her pimp and brothel, allowing her to return home to her family in a wholesome, non-shithole part of the country. And unlike his doomed date with the adult Betsy, whom he cluelessly takes to a porno theater, his relationship with 12 year-old Iris takes a paternal form, and he struggles to protect her from, rather than expose her to, degeneracy.

During the early '90s, there was Pretty Woman, the most well known of this type, that needs no further comment.

During the late 2000s, there was The Wrestler, whose sex worker was a stripper rather than a prostitute, and who does not actually have sex with the male character. She does try to help the protagonist turn his life around, although to mixed success -- she does get him to reconnect with his estranged daughter, but he ultimately goes back into his dangerous line of work and chooses to do himself in.

Just before the warm-up phase began in 2005, there was a less successful movie with this type in 2004, The Girl Next Door. There was also a less successful form of the Manic Pixie Dream Girl movie from 2004, Garden State. But we don't see this in other final years of the vulnerable phase ('89, '74, '59, or at least so far in 2019). They just got the itch for those character types slightly early in 2004.

To wrap up, what connections do the Manic Pixie Dream Girl and emotionally helpful hooker have in common as individuals, aside from their role in nursing the protagonist back to health? Both are socially marginal -- dorky, awkward, and quirky, or earning a living in a taboo line of work. And they are utterly unknown to the protagonist at the beginning of the story -- she's not a friend, neighbor, co-worker, or a non-blood family member. She seems to come out of nowhere, as though from some alternate reality, making him feel like she's been sent like a guardian angel.

Such a background is necessary in the context of the excitement cycle phases, since he has been in the vulnerable refractory phase for several years now, and still associates his own world with unwanted contact, and from which he is withdrawing to avoid further pain. Then only a person who comes from outside of his own world, which has made him sick, can be treated as safe enough to enter into social and emotional contact with him. If she comes from opposite land, then she will have a light enough touch, and an airy enough presence, to not weigh him down and make him feel over-stimulated like the women of his own land.

This is the central source of irony in the two character types -- if anyone would be likely to physically and even sexually over-stimulate a man, and to have an earthy and physical rather than ethereal presence, you'd figure it would be a hooker. And if anyone would be likely to over-stimulate his social emotions, you'd figure it would be a manic pixie type rather than a boring quiet wallflower type.

But again we can resolve this paradox by looking into the context of the excitement cycle phases -- if he, and just about everybody else, are still in the refractory / emo phase, then someone who comes from a more sexual background, or who has a more cheerful disposition, will appear to be from a different phase of the cycle (namely, the manic phase). Coming from a different phase of the excitement cycle might as well be like coming from a different society altogether, especially opposite phases like the manic and vulnerable phases.

If she's from an opposite phase, she's from an opposite world, and therefore unlike the women of this world, who cause him enough stress that he's retiring from them, and so contact with her would not be painful or over-the-top. These marginal types from opposite land are the only ones who can coax him out of his shell as the refractory phase bridges into the warm-up phase of normal energy levels.

Manic Pixie Dream Girl arises in warm-up phase of excitement cycle, to coax guys out of their vulnerable-phase cocoons

As the vulnerable phase of the 15-year cultural excitement cycle winds down this year, and we enter the restless warm-up phase in 2020, I think we'll see the return of an archetype that we haven't gotten to hang out with since the last warm-up phase, during the late 2000s -- the Manic Pixie Dream Girl.

I'm using that term to refer only to those who play a kind of nursing-back-to-health role for the male character. Just being quirky is not sufficient, and neither is being a free-spirited foil to a buttoned-up stiff. The point of that term was originally to highlight male characters who were in some way sick, down in the dumps, in a funk, or otherwise not normal. The Manic Pixie Dream Girl served to bring them back to a normal, healthy, positive, lively state. She is a stabilizing force.

This is distinct from the archetypal woman in a screwball comedy, whose wacky antics are more of a destabilizing force to the orderly life of the male character. Can he handle being dragged so far out of his comfort zone? Can the odd couple manage to find something in common? These questions depend on the theme of a normal person being thrown for a loop -- not an unhealthy person restored to health.

And for the male to merely be sober, buttoned-up, etc., that is not a form of sickness -- he must be in a real funk, clearly not his usual self. It could be an acute sickness, or a chronic sickness -- something that is curable by a nurse. It cannot be an inborn and immutable personality trait of being drab, risk-averse, and so on.

Looking over the iconic Manic Pixie Dream Girls, they almost all cluster in the warm-up phase of the excitement cycle: the early '60s (The Apartment, Breakfast at Tiffany's), the late '70s (Annie Hall), the early '90s (L.A. Story, Joe Versus the Volcano), and the late 2000s (Elizabethtown, The Last Kiss, Yes Man).

In their social context, these characters are helping guys to make the transition out of the previous vulnerable phase, when they're in a refractory state and would feel social contact to be painfully over-stimulating, and into the warm-up phase, when their excitement levels get back to a normal baseline. (Not yet taking off into a spike of invincibility, which takes places during the following manic phase.)

Social relations during the warm-up phase have a kind of caricatured, ritualistic quality -- they're like doing simplified warm-up exercises before taking on a real sport activity, or doing simplified dances with easy-to-follow rules, before being spontaneous on the dance floor. The point is not to fully reach the mature form of the social relation, but simply to drag the person out of their overly sensitive refractory state, and get accustomed to relating to others all over again. Once they're comfortable with that, then they can do the real thing during the manic phase, when their energy levels can really take off.

That's why it doesn't matter that the Manic Pixie Dream Girl has a flat, hollow, or caricatured personality -- she's not the final girl that he's going to get into a long-term relationship with. She's more of a training-wheels girlfriend for guys who haven't ridden a bike in awhile, so she does not need to be fully realistic and possessing an in-depth personality, set of goals of her own, etc.

Her childlike qualities are similarly disarming, designed to convince a guy who's over-sensitive and in an emo phase, that she couldn't possibly hurt him or demand too much contact from him. It's an adolescent form of attraction, but that's only because during the refractory state, the sexes regress back into a juvenile state where they are put off by the icky, annoying, even dangerous opposite sex. First they need to work their way toward adolescence, during the warm-up phase, and then they can go for a more mature kind of relationship during the manic phase.

She is willing to spend all this energy coaxing him out of his shell because she, too, has left behind the vulnerable phase and is ready to start mixing it up with the guys again. Their women's intuition tells them that, after five years of being taken for granted at best and ghosted or maligned at worst, guys are going to need a little playful encouragement to reassure them that it's safe to come out and interact with the girls once again.

No point in apologizing, casting blame, or otherwise wallowing in what went on during the vulnerable phase. That was then, this is now, so come out of your shell already, I promise we're harmless and fun-loving.

When viewed in its longer context, the archetype doesn't seem so bad. It's not immature, stunted, etc. -- it's not being held up as the ideal, it's only a temporary practice girlfriend, between the two otherwise unbridgeable states of a social refractory period and a fully developed mature relationship.

And she's not temporary because he's just using her to kill time before he finds someone more three-dimensional -- it's because she's playing the role of nursing him back to health, and that recuperation only takes a certain period of time, not forever. Once that role of hers has been completed, there she goes, and he can find someone real to get into a mature relationship with.

These archetypes spring up right at the outset of the warm-up phase, to act as a bridge, rather than at the very end of the phase, so I expect to see another crop of Manic Pixie Dream Girls no later than next year or the year after. The #MeToo attitude has already started to run out of steam, which means they'll have to start picking up the pieces from what they've wrecked over the past five years. They will no longer view all romantic interactions with men as "emotional labor," but will enjoy getting to know them again.

I'll end this survey with a deep cut from a pop star who would go on to specialize in the decadent disco themes that emerge during the warm-up phase, and then really turn up the energy levels during the next manic phase (before more or less disappearing during the current vulnerable phase). At the opening of the last warm-up phase, before Zooey Deschanel had popularized adorkableness, here's a 20 year-old waif-like form of the singer of "I Kissed a Girl" and "Roar".

"Simple" by Katy Perry (2005):

Halloween spirit peaks during manic phase of 15-year cultural excitement cycle

Leading up to Halloween, I used to write an annual mini-series of posts on the social rituals surrounding the holiday, and how they've changed over time, from the perspective of both an observer and a participant.

Clearly I did not feel like it this year -- observing or participating -- then I realized I haven't felt like it in awhile. Going back through my archive, I notice that those posts are almost all from the manic phase of the 15-year cultural excitement cycle, the first half of the 2010s. These links are collected in an appendix.

I don't think this personal experience is idiosyncratic, since I'm an eager participant in Halloween when everyone else is -- so if I'm not, likely they are not either. And I've been an informal cultural chronicler for my adult life, whether or not I like the way things are heading at the moment. If there were still as much excitement surrounding Halloween in 2018 as there was in 2012, I would sense it.

Beyond these personal observations, during the most recent manic phase, Hollywood re-released Ghostbusters into theaters nearly every year leading up to Halloween, to help get people in the mood. Even better, at least when I caught it, they were projecting film instead of digital, as part of the general interest in all things vintage during that phase. The movie had lain dormant since its original release in another manic phase (1984), and has not been re-released during Halloween season since 2014, as we've entered the vulnerable refractory phase.

Before the early 2010s, I was also really into Halloween during the second half of the '90s, during another manic phase. I was in high school, too old to trick-or-treat, but still felt excited to participate in the traditions all the same. To get ready for handing out candy, I used to dress up in face paint or full-head masks that I made, in black and white and as close to Expressionist in style as a high schooler could manage. Then I would play whatever spooky-sounding music I was into at the time (like the Residents) out of the windows, and generally try to create a playful haunted house atmosphere so that the kids would not feel cheated on the only holiday meant for them.

This period of participation began in either '94 or '95, when my best friend and I spent Halloween pretending to be leaf-stuffed dummies on his front lawn, with a "help yourself" bowl of candy next to us. As the kids came up to get their treats, we'd rise out of our chairs to give them a good spook -- assuming their helicopter parents had not ruined the surprise already by saying, "I think those are kids under there". It was affected and comical, all in good fun, not trying to make them piss their pants.

My participation ended in '99, during my freshman year of college when I wore black tie and a top hat with a plague doctor mask, scaring the Japanese girl in our dorm to death. "Ohhh, I don't like this holiday..."

During the 2000s, though, Halloween was mostly a joke, as highlighted in the 2004 movie Mean Girls -- no longer an occasion for dressing up as something out of the ordinary and scary, but just getting a free pass to dress like an ordinary sexualized attention whore at a party. Or to dress up as a self-aware topical reference. People were being their ordinary selves (ironic hipster, pseudo-slut), not changing roles as part of a temporary carnivalesque inversion.

As for the last vulnerable and warm-up phases of the cycle before the 2000s -- the second half of the '80s and first half of the '90s -- I was too young to know whether the teenagers and young adults were more excited or less excited for Halloween than they were during the previous manic phase of the early '80s. Taking hints from pop culture portrayals, there's only one big movie outside the genre of horror / occult to feature Halloween -- The Karate Kid from '84 has a fairly long scene set at a costumed dance for the high schoolers. Must have been a pretty big deal during the new wave age.

I don't think average teenagers and young adults were as into the holiday during the late '80s and early '90s as they were back then. Toward the end of the restless warm-up phase, in '94, My So-Called Life devoted an entire episode to Halloween, focusing on its carnivalesque spirit. Watch it here. It's one of the best portrayals of the holiday's social rituals, and in a sympathetic, appreciative tone -- not overdone and fanboy-ish, nor cynical and dismissive. But that was more of a cult hit, ahead of the curve that would see popular fascination with Halloween revive during the second half of the decade.

Before the '80s, Halloween was not really a holiday for teenagers and young adults, so it's hard to tell one way or the other how much they got into the spirit across the three phases of the excitement cycle before the early '80s manic phase. I assume they were warming up to it in the late '70s restless phase, especially in the context of disco, and not in the mood at all during the refractory phase of the early '70s. If there were another period where they really resonated with it, it would have been the manic late '60s, but that was back when it was still a holiday strictly for children.

Without getting into a whole separate post about why these rituals peak during the manic phase of the excitement cycle, it seems pretty straightforward, and would seem to generalize to other holiday rituals as well, such as Christmas.

During the vulnerable refractory phase, people cannot tolerate social-cultural stimulation, and these big spectacle-sized rituals like Halloween are too much for them. It feels almost oppressive, and they prefer something low-key, if at all. As their energy levels are restored to baseline again, they're open to the spectacle-level rituals, some are experimenting with them, but they haven't really caught on broadly either. During the manic phase, these spectacles are just one of the many outlets that their all-purpose excitation is channeled into.

Appendix: Earlier posts on Halloween's social rituals

1. Schools using diversity sensitivity as an excuse to ban Halloween costumes altogether.

2. Review of scary pop culture to get your children, nieces, and nephews into the proper mood.

3. Decline of trick-or-treating phenomenon.

4. Trick-or-treating as a measure of communal cohesion.

5. Halloween's shift from communal rite of rebellion to egocentric business as usual.

6. Changes in the carnivalesque nature of Halloween, especially the shift of the main celebration to "the Saturday night before Halloween" so as to not disrupt the work week.

7. Turning Halloween into an individual status contest.

8. Grab bag of topics, including the conservative drive to banish Halloween as pagan, Satanic, etc., without wanting to replace it with something else / better.

9. Another grab bag, including the prolonging of the Halloween season to the entire month of October, preventing any spike of excitement by the time it eventually arrives, due to 30 days of habituation. (Just like Christmas.)

10. Only incidentally about trick-or-treating, but an excuse to show how romantic the landscapes used to look back in the '80s when the society had not yet come down with collective OCD, and did not rake their leaves, letting them blanket the ground.

Locating horror: Stalking the freely mobile vs. torturing the imprisoned

To instill a sense of dread in the audience for horror fiction, the victims we're identifying with must experience futility in their attempts to avoid the villain. Once our fight-or-flight reflex kicks in after the villain's opening move, we must know that simply fleeing is not an option, leaving us only with the more terrifying decision to confront the force that is trying to do us in.

There are two fundamental ways in which the victims could develop the feeling of there being nowhere to hide from the villain: either they're trapped in a location with him, or they are free to roam from one location to another, but always being relentlessly stalked and pursued by him, so that he could strike at any time and place.

Different types of villain are best adapted to those two choices of setting. When the victims are free to move around various locations, they are like game animals that must be tracked by a hunter, and the villain is a hot-blooded type who is in his element being out and about, constantly on the move. When the victims are confined inside a single location, they are like trapped insects in a spider's web that can be played around with at the trapper's leisure, and the villain is more of a cold-blooded type who is a clinical control freak.

Still, that is not to say that the two types are equally frightening, only in their own distinct ways. It is more unsettling to be pursued like a game animal because there are no external constraints on our movement, eliminating one of our potential hopes -- maybe we'll just out-run it, or flee its domain, and be rid of it. As the victim tries out that option, and fails, we cannot hold out hope for anything other than confrontation, which we are hardly guaranteed to win.

If the victim is only trapped, we can never know for sure how well the "flight" option would work against the villain, if only they could break free from the constraints imposed by their location. Perhaps the villain isn't that powerful on his own -- maybe he has merely cheated and tipped the scales in his favor before the attacks even began. He's just shooting fish in a barrel. The victims, and the audience, do not fear the villain himself so much as the dungeon-like location that prevents them from simply fleeing, or from directly confronting a villain that may not be very dangerous in a mano-a-mano scenario.

Periodization

This key distinction in location, and in the method the villain uses to attack his victims, helps to clarify types of horror fiction, such as the slasher movie. Early on, academics referred to this genre not as "slasher" but "stalker," which is more accurate. All sorts of villains may attack by slashing, even in serial fashion, but not necessarily by relentlessly tracking and pursuing their victims across a range of locations.

The heyday of the slasher movie was the first half of the 1980s, with Halloween from 1978 serving as a lone harbinger of a broad phenomenon soon to explode. Michael Myers, like the prototypical slasher, stalks his victims around multiple residences, inside and outside of the houses themselves, not to mention the local school, and other places around the neighborhood.

This rules out The Texas Chainsaw Massacre from being another early harbinger, since the villains abduct their victims and trap them inside a single isolated house that they themselves control, and their behavior is more like leisurely torture than determined hunting. They give off a playful sadism, because they know the victims cannot get away -- unlike the relatively more serious and determined persona of the slasher villain, who could very well lose track of his prey if he isn't focused on them.

That movie came out in 1974, too early to be seamlessly incorporated into a phenomenon that exploded during the first half of the '80s. Rather, its setting and villains place it more within the mainstream of other '70s horror films, where the single focal location is cursed, haunted, or controlled by psychos -- the dance academy of Suspiria, the suburban home of The Amityville Horror, the remote hideout of the rape gang in The Last House on the Left, the high school gym that Carrie seals off during her attack, and so on.

Likewise, Black Christmas is less a forerunner of the slasher / stalker genre, and more of a "haunted house" movie typical of the '70s, taking place entirely within a single sorority house, whose villain is more of a leisurely torturer than a focused hunter.

Finally, we can exclude 1960's Psycho from being an "early slasher" since the attacks take place entirely within the isolated Bates Motel, which is controlled by a torturer rather than a hunter.

Cycles in the stalker type

Other than the slasher phenomenon of the early '80s, when else have horror movies featured villains that stalked their victims, rather than a dangerous location? We're looking for trends or broad phenomena, not lone examples.

There was the slasher revival of the second half of the '90s -- Scream and Scream 2, I Know What You Did Last Summer, Urban Legend, etc. This is the stand-out trend of its time. The Blair Witch Project also had a villain that stalked its targets across a variety of locations (around open wooded areas as well as inside houses).

During the first half of the 2010s, the dominant trend was the paranormal haunting -- Paranormal Activity (a forerunner from 2009, with the series continuing into the 2010s), Insidious, The Conjuring, and so on. In a unique spin on the haunted house formula, these three iconic movies emphasized that it was not the location itself that was dangerous. Rather, there was a demonic stalker that would follow the targets from one location to another once it had initially locked onto them, making flight a pointless option.

This fixes the basic weakness of the haunted house formula -- why don't they just fucking leave? "Because they've been trapped inside" reduces the action to the villain shooting fish in a barrel, and the tension reduces to the uncertainty over when -- not if -- the villain will kill off the next victim. And "they're too emotionally or financially invested in remaining in place" is unconvincing, when they're in imminent danger of brutal murder.

It Follows also featured a villain that relentlessly stalks its victims in serial fashion across a wide range of environments. The villains of Let Me In are hunters who track their prey all over the place. And in The Babadook, the demon that cannot be gotten rid of pursues its victim once they have read about it and become aware of its existence.

These periods of stalker villains -- the early '80s, late '90s, and early 2010s -- all lie within the manic phase of the 15-year cultural excitement cycle. When people feel excited and invincible, they don't resonate with horror victims who are trapped inside a single location and get picked off with no real way to challenge the villain. They also don't want to see a villain who is cold and leisurely -- he too must be on the move, making the plot more action-packed.

With their higher free-floating level of arousal, audiences during this phase are more inclined toward harnessing their manic energy toward a confrontation with the villain, rather than withdrawing from direct conflict due to concerns of over-stimulation.

Cycles in the torturer type

During the proceeding vulnerable phase of the excitement cycle, after energy levels have peaked, they go into a refractory state where they want to avoid over-stimulation at all costs. In horror movies, this leads to agoraphobic characters who are not roaming all around while being stalked. Action taking place all over the place would be too much social stimulation for audiences in a refractory state, so the characters with whom the audiences are trying to empathize must be set in a single isolated location.

And because these audiences are in a vulnerable rather than invincible mood, the victims they're watching must also be more powerless than taking decisive action against the villain. Vulnerable people feel like they're being tortured by something with immensely greater powers, unlike the manic people who feel like they're only being outmatched in a contest against someone who they could conceivably defeat.

We've already covered this trend in movies of the '70s, the first half of which was a vulnerable phase, after the manic late '60s, and was more akin to torture porn than to the slasher genre.

After the manic early '80s, the trend of horror movies of the late '80s was no longer a stalking slasher but various evil forces confined to a single cursed location, such as Hellraiser, Pet Sematary, and House. There was also the evil toy trend, such as Dolls and Puppet Master, whose attackers haunt only one house, and behave more as sadistic torturers than hunters.

A Nightmare on Elm Street 3, from '87, is more of its own time than it is of the early '80s zeitgeist of the original, set entirely within a single mental asylum in which Freddy Krueger tortures the victims in highly elaborate ways, which pre-figures the elaborate traps of the Saw franchise during the next wave of torture porn.

The most prominent period of torture porn was the 2000s, kicking off in the first half's vulnerable phase with The Cell, Cabin Fever, House of 1000 Corpses, and Saw, as well as endless remakes of '70s torture porn like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. When slasher movies were inevitably re-made, they were transformed into torture porn.

The early 2000s also saw a revival of atmospheric haunted house movies that were light on gore compared to torture porn, beginning with The Grudge.

One major exception was The Ring, whose villain relentlessly stalks its victims across multiple locations, not just within its own lair.

As the vulnerable phase has returned in the late 2010s, so too have the stalker-hunters been retired in favor of leisurely tormentors whose victims are confined within a single locked-down location.

The Saw franchise has been revived with Jigsaw, Don't Breathe is set in a home whose psycho owner operates a sex torture dungeon in the basement, Get Out also relies on a single household and its creepy domestic dungeon, Krampus features a demon that terrorizes the Christmas guests of a single family's home, The Belko Experiment is set in a sealed office building, the victims in The Witch are a single nuclear household tormented within their homestead, Hush is set entirely within one victim's home, the evil in Hereditary is localized within the protagonist's household, and although we never encounter an external villain in It Comes at Night, it is still set within one agoraphobic household being shared by two nuclear families, whose distrust tears them apart.

The Conjuring 2, unlike the original from the early 2010s, does not develop the theme of demons that can stalk their targets no matter where they move to. It's more of a standard haunted house movie, where they make no attempt to flee, and even worse, where they are not trapped in place by the evil force.

The major exception is A Quiet Place, where the victims are stalked by hunters across a variety of environments, and where the deaths are not elaborate gimmicks designed by a sadist as a leisure activity.

Cycles in the transitional stage

As the cycle shifts out of vulnerable and into the neutral baseline energy level of the warm-up phase, there's a mix of both types, with the torture type continuing on from the last phase, while a few experiment with the stalker type again, now that they are no longer avoiding stimulation at all costs.

The late '70s were mainly a continuation of the early '70s, as described earlier. But Halloween was a clear signal of a new stalker type of horror movie, and even Alien hinted at this. Although the movie is set within a single spaceship, the different areas look and feel so distinct that it feels more like a variety of locations. We would only feel like the spaceship were a single gestalt setting if the frame of reference were the rest of space, other planets, other ships, and so on. But it feels like a self-contained community with a diverse mix of discrete locations.

The early '90s mostly continued the trends of the late '80s. Demonic Toys joined the torture toys trend, and Bram Stoker's Dracula continued the haunted house trend set by Hellraiser and others. Gremlins 2 is also set entirely within a single haunted location, in which the villains deploy an array of specific attacks akin to the gimmicky traps of torture porn. The original movie from the manic phase had the villains terrorizing people all around the town, and with less specific and less elaborate attacks -- reflecting their greater sense of urgency, since they might lose track of their prey.

More naturalistic movies like The Silence of the Lambs and Misery still featured psychos who did all their torture within their home lair, even if they ventured out to lure in unsuspecting victims.

The two harbingers of the late '90s slasher revival were Candyman and Wes Craven's New Nightmare, both of which also set the template for drawing explicit comparisons between slasher movies and urban legends.

The late 2000s generally continued the torture porn trends of the early 2000s, whether sequels to Saw and Hostel, further re-makes of '70s torture porn, or new entries like The Human Centipede. (Cabin in the Woods was made in this period, although shelved for release until 2012.) Building on The Grudge, the atmospheric haunted house trend caught on with The Grudge 2, An American Haunting, The Haunting in Connecticut, and The Exorcism of Emily Rose. The Descent moved the cursed single location from a house to a cave into which the victims have fallen.

As mentioned earlier, Paranormal Activity was more of a harbinger of the early 2010s, since the threat was not from a house or other single location, but from a demon that had been following its victim for most of her life, across multiple changes of residence. This novel variation on the haunted house theme is not elaborated on much in this first barebones example, which would have to wait until Insidious, where the family does move out of the haunted house, and the demons follow their victims to their new home anyway.

In Paranormal Activity, the concept of stalker demons is only there to tell the audience why they're not taking the obvious decision to simply move out of a haunted house. The tone is naturalistic and documentarian, so they could not have the characters stupidly and suicidally staying in a haunted house. And since they're aiming to create a sense of fear in our everyday settings, the characters cannot be trapped in the house by a malevolent superior being -- they have to be going about their quotidian routine, able to leave if they felt like it.

Final Girl character type mediates between normies vs. abnormality, not hedonists vs. puritanism

The received analysis of the "Final Girl" character type in horror movies -- the one who is left standing at the end, as the others are killed off -- is that her endurance owes to her being more abstinent than the other characters.

She is typically a virgin, or far less sexually active at any rate, and is less inclined to drink or do drugs compared to the others. The villain, in this analysis, is an enforcer of puritanical morality, punishing the hedonists and going lighter on the relatively more abstinent one. When they do confront each other, the Final Girl is in a stronger position to outwit or outlast the villain, since she has not had her energy and focus sapped by sex and alcohol.

Two opposed camps have sprung up around this shared analysis, the hedonists taking a negative view of this character type because they don't like the puritanical moralistic message that they believe the movie conveys, and the abstainers appreciating the hard-nosed no-nonsense view of the dangers of hedonism.

But this analysis misunderstands the relationship between the villain, the Final Girl, and the rest of the characters. The villain is supposed to be an enforcer of patriarchal and puritanical morality -- yet he is typically neither a husband nor a father, not a powerful elder of the community, and is a slave to his own desires and passions, primarily bloodlust. He is a poorly socially integrated loner or outsider, powerless at an institutional level -- resorting to violence as an impotent form of blindly lashing out -- and if anything, his sexual identity is that of a bitter angry incel.

He targets the rest of the characters not because they are hedonists, but because they are socially integrated normies -- teenagers having sex and socially drinking were things that normies used to do back during the outgoing / rising-crime period of the 1960s through the early '90s. He lashed out at them for taking part in the normal social group behavior of their time and place, which he was ruthlessly excluded from (whether or not that ostracism feels justified to the audience).

The Final Girl mediates between these two sides, as a marginal normie. She associates with the rest of the characters, but is still less likely to participate in their normal social behavior. Or her family life is more disintegrated than the families of the other characters. Compared to the others, she is noticeably farther away from the ideal teen of her environment.

Her being less than a total normie means the villain feels less hostile toward her than toward the others, and perhaps even feels a certain kinship with her, as a fellow loner or outsider. Rather than single-mindedly destroying her, the villain may try to seduce her, feeling that she is reachable in a way that the others are not.

This creates some tension within the Final Girl herself -- does she sympathize more with someone who is even more outside the norm than herself, or more with the normies who are under attack from a force of abnormality? Fundamentally, she is normal herself, not pathological like the sociopathic villain, so she sides with her fellow normies -- even if, in some cases, it takes her awhile to figure out that the villain is a warped psycho, qualitatively the opposite of her, rather than a kindred spirit who is simply quantitatively further out toward the margin than she already is.

And it sets up tension within the villain as well, leading to his downfall. He thought he could win her over, and it would be the two less socially integrated figures joined in a non-normie union -- or even an anti-normie union, where they go beyond withdrawing from the normies to actively trying to destroy them. By misinterpreting her marginal social status as stemming from pathology, projecting his own status onto hers, he goes easier on her, and lets his guard down around her.

This could be his only chance to become socially integrated -- albeit with just one other individual, rather than an entire group, but that beats total isolation and ostracism. His wishful thinking gets the better of him, and viewing her as a kindred spirit leaves him vulnerable to her plans to kill him off in order to protect her fellow normies. Her mere withdrawal of respect -- whether it had been out of fear or affection -- is enough to shatter his delusional dreams, and cause him to collapse into despairing powerlessness, neutralizing him as a threat anymore.

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Without going into an exhaustive review, three key examples of this tension come to mind.

First, Nancy Thompson in the original A Nightmare on Elm Street. Freddy Krueger is clearly intrigued and fascinated with her. He taunts her with hallucinations of her dead friends, rather than treating her as just another prey to be hunted down. He also takes on a more flirtatious tone with her, rather than an angry or hostile tone, and explicitly refers to his killing off of her boyfriend as eliminating his romantic rival ("I'm your boyfriend now, Nancy"). At the end, it is her withdrawal of fear and respect that causes him to collapse.

I don't think that move would have had the same neutralizing effect if it had been one of the fully normie girls or guys who he had targeted earlier. "Fear me or don't fear me, I don't care, I'm killing you off because you're normies who have ostracized me." But because Freddy did feel misplaced kinship with Nancy, and tried to seduce her in a way that belied some level of affection for her, he opened himself up to his own destruction when she dashed his dreams of winning her over.

Second, Sarah in the horror-tinged fantasy movie Labyrinth. She comes from a broken home, in which she is marginal compared to her baby brother. In a moment of anti-sociality, she wishes that the villain would take away her brother so that she wouldn't have to babysit him, and could indulge her own interests. She regrets making this deal with the Devil, and yet still has trouble resisting the Goblin King's fascination with her, as he attempts to seduce her over to his side, hoping that the two of them could be a union of anti-normies against the rest of the world.

She disillusions him about the idea that she wanted her baby brother gone for sociopathic motives. It was just out of fleeting frustration, not an enduring desire to sow chaos, subvert norms, or sever social relationships. As she realizes that he is her opposite, she withdraws her fear, respect, and affectionate curiosity toward him, causing him to collapse. That would not have worked if it had been a target who he did not already care about winning over as a kindred spirit. If Hoggle, Ludo, or the baby brother himself had withdrawn their fear of him -- big deal, he would keep callously exploiting them anyway. But the one chance of winning over an object of his affection? That is too much for him to withstand.

Third, Veronica in the serial killer comedy movie Heathers. She not only makes a deal with the Devil (J.D.) to kill off her fully normie friends, who have made her the black sheep of their social clique, she gives into his sexual advances, and they do become an anti-normie couple. Like Sarah in Labyrinth, she comes to realize that her anti-social impulse was an unimportant frustration with certain individuals, whereas the villain who she has aligned herself with is pathological and therefore targets normies in general.

When J.D. wants to blow up the whole school, that is the last straw for her. By the end, she does not just express regret or balk at his plans, as she had done in earlier attempts to wiggle her way out of his grasp. She directly confronts him with a withdrawal of fear and respect, calling him a mere psychopath, not the cool rebel she originally thought he was. After she ruins his dreams of winning her over to kill all normies, he gives up his entire anti-normie project and commits suicide. That ego destruction would not have worked if she had been a generic popular girl or jock who called him a psychopath -- it had to be someone who he treated as a kindred marginal spirit and felt capable of winning over to the anti-normie crusade.

These two Final Girls show a character arc that wraps up in redemption after making a deal with the Devil. In what way did they align themselves with the villain? Not to punish the hedonism of her peers -- Sarah's object of hostility was a little baby, incapable of sex and drugs, and Veronica engaged in casual sex and drinking herself. So that cannot be the role of the villain, and those are not the themes of the movies that the Final Girl appears in.

Rather, she aligned herself with the villain around the goal of lashing out at full normies who were in some way responsible for her assuming a marginal social status. Veronica was the black sheep and butt of jokes in her clique, and Sarah was stuck babysitting her brother instead of living a normal teenage lifestyle because of the baby himself, and her callous stepmother who stuck Sarah with the duty of looking after the baby while she herself spent the evening out on a prestigious social date.

The true theme is deviance vs. normality, with the Final Girl being a marginal-status go-between. It has little to do with hedonism vs. puritanism, with the Final Girl being the abstinent go-between. And the Final Girl becomes a heroine by defending normality against the pathological forces of deviance that threaten it -- an effort on behalf of a group that she belongs to (however marginally at first). She does not become a heroine by winning a contest among individuals as to who can outlast the villain -- the socially blind conclusion of the standard analysis.

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Boomers originally came up with this completely clueless analysis, which stems from their undying worldviews that every action must always take the form of a status contest, and that their hedonist project is under assault by puritanical forces that must be stopped.

The Gen X-ers who appreciate these movies, however, have still accepted this framing, only disagreeing about which side is good or bad. Yes, it's still a status contest among individuals, and yes, the more abstinent individual wins instead of the hedonist individuals -- but that's a good message, not a bad message.

It's time for a fresh look at the pop culture phenomenon of the Final Girl, as well as the quarter-century of analysis on the topic, from a late X-er / early Millennial perspective that sees the Boomer view for the fundamentally mistaken view that it is, rather than accept it analytically but take the opposite side of the value judgment. That stance prioritizes the Culture War implications rather than the objective understanding of the culture itself. For when you troll into the Culture War, the Culture War will troll back into you.

The correct understanding of the Final Girl trope still allows for a battle between two sides who approve or condemn the message. But now, it is between who approves of deviance threatening normality, vs. a marginal normie defending full normie-dom from deviance, even if they are somewhat sympathetic to the deviant side.

Boomers cannot appreciate this drawing of battle lines, because their worldview is all about the debate between "If it feels good, do it, man" or "Keep it in your pants, if you know what's good for you." It's a guide to individual survival and pleasure, only arguing about how those two may conflict with each other. It's not about social cohesion, which opposes normality and integration against abnormality and disintegration.

Boomers grew up in a socially cohesive world, which they took for granted, and have only ever concerned themselves with individual well-being. But Gen X-ers, and especially Millennials, grew up in a more and more socially fragmented world, making them more aware of concerns about social welfare. That allows them to understand a cultural phenomenon that is distinctive of a socially fragmenting climate -- like the Final Girl -- and to more generally re-analyze the zeitgeist of the mid-1970s through the present.