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American Horror Story 1.07 - Open House
This ep picked up the pace a bit from "Piggy Piggy" and I'm glad they're moving the storyline along in a very un-House M.D. sort of way (Ben and Vivien actively trying to sell the house and all); I just hope we're not stuck in a new status quo with the Harmons somehow never realizing that Constance and Moira sabotage all their attempts to do anything that get them out of the house, like a never-ending loop of The Prisoner in some universe where Number Six doesn't realize Number Two keeps dragging him back and is like "wait, how did I end up in the Village again?? Weird!" If they go somewhere meta with it -- IE that the house itself is cursed that no one who moves in moves out except in a body bag and will contrive various meta ways to make this happen, including Constance and Moira's interference, other life events, whatever -- then that'd be better, making the premise of "Harmons are in fact STUCK here" explicit. I like breaking-the-curse metaplots. That assumes the show's thought through that far, though.
AHS is kind of interesting to watch because it's such a typical middle-of-the-roadly bigoted example of horror media in terms of what stuff it leans on for creep factor and scares. Which is to say, a lot of horror stories are about trotting out freakshows, and freakshows wind up featuring a lot of 'grotesques' that Mom and Pop and Bobby and Susie in front of the TV are afraid of -- cripples, crazies, queers, vengeful women, children, you name it, if your average all-American John Smith might be secretly afraid of it, then it's fair game for the horror genre. Turning marginalized people or controversial concepts into scary monsters is the backbone of horror. Xenophobia is the backbone of horror. H.P. Lovecraft is the xenophobic granddaddy of this in the United States.
AHS is definitely no exception. Half the "monsters" it sets up are designed to make you, like many horror movies, fear what in real life you'd have no reason to fear -- children are helpless, so what's scarier than a dangerous child? Women are nonthreatening, so what's scarier than a threatening woman? There's a reason why J-horror long-haired girl ghosts have gotten popular in a way that male ghosts haven't recently; viewers find it disturbingly dissonant that a woman (who's supposed to be a model of helplessness and purity) turns evil and vengeful and menacing, fuck, it's the backbone of centuries of cross-cultural misogynist monster archetypes. Succubi, sirens, La Llorona, you name it, feminist critics have more or less beaten that horse half to death but it still lives. I'm not going to bother with going more into that, it's like a lowerclassman-level lit course.
Specifically on how AHS has been handling its various characters, though:
Addie and her brother: For all that Constance's disabled children are set up as victimized figures, there's no question the way they're shot is designed to shock/unnerve viewers who aren't used to seeing the faces of kids with Down syndrome and other birth deformities. Vivien's a total dick to Addie most the time and clearly unnerved by the appearance of her face in her house, and you're supposed to relate to her response. I think your average ableist viewer probably thinks they're sympathizing with Addie, but if you replaced all the Constance-Addie scenes with an actor who didn't 'appear' to have Down syndrome viewers would suddenly be disturbed much more by what a continually abusive mom she was to a really sweet curious intelligent child.
Moira: It says a lot that a straight male Tumblr acquaintance I know cluelessly said he was totally hot for ghost-projection-Moira in the first episode or two, even though she's the illusory projection of a hypersexualized version of herself constructed from the moments before she was violently raped by one of her employers and then murdered by the other one. It's hateful and degrading. I actually think Moira is one of the best-handled elements of the show in this regard but the fact that she's so easily misinterpreted that way means that her sexualized version also functions like cheap Mad Men fetish bait in the advertising.
The two male previous owners: I actually like them, though some well-meaning slash fans on Tumblr were arguing that the fact that one was femme and the other was unfaithful was too stereotypical, which I think is valid in terms of "what it presents to straight audiences" but also a little femmephobic (female slash fans are some of the strongest wishers that gay men presented 'more like' straight men sometimes) and sweetly naive about the reality of being queer and male and trying to hold down a relationship in LA. It's not all Angel and Collins, is what I mean. I find Zach Quinto's performance pretty personally relateable.
The most messed-up thing about their presence on the show is that they're dead anyway. That's the thing, really; in the end, they were only acceptable as tragic murdered ghost characters, which adds them to the freakshow whether or not they were sympathetic in life. It wouldn't make any straight viewer uncomfortable, which is a bad sign. It's always a bad sign when your portrayal of gay characters wouldn't make any straight viewer uncomfortable. Straight viewers should be more uncomfortable.
Hayden: Her actor is fantastic and makes her performance terrifying and manipulative, but don't it pander awfully well to every straight dude's fears that some baby mama of his is going to go psycho and try to ruin his life?
Larry: He's also really good and charming, but sorry, people with disfiguring burn scars of the world! Good luck finding anyone in media who's like you who isn't portrayed as evil! See also: Harvey Dent, apparently having some of the tissue of your face wrecked by an excruciating and disfiguring accident is great symbolism for how that part of your soul is tainted or whatever blah blah cripples are scary. I miss Sandor Clegane.
Charles and Nora Montgomery: Incorporating the practice of being an abortion-performing OB/GYN doctor into the originating horror mythology of the house and making him a mad scientist may not be explicitly condemning abortion, but it definitely is playing to mainstream notions that abortion is a more 'dark,' 'illicit,' or 'sinful' medical practice than the rest so it's no wonder Charles Montgomery went off the deep end. Something tells me this plot wouldn't have been written if he were, like, an orthopedic surgeon.
In other words, it's the same-ol' same-ol' bullshit. I watch because Wednesday is a boring night, the Harmon family themselves and the story are entertaining, I like to know what's going on in the horror genre, and there's nothing on TV that doesn't perpetuate the same-ol' same-ol' anyway. It's TV. It's the centrist Republicans of the media political caucuses. It's there to tell middle America what it already knows. And horror is generally there to reassure middle America that they're not bad people for locking their doors to the people they lock their doors to -- after all, strangers are scary. AHS is like a rogues gallery of that.
Speaking of Ryan Murphy, I loathe Glee with the passion of a thousand fiery suns burning the fuel of the universe's autotune machines but somehow his horrible pandering Disney Channel show has produced a cover of a song (that I normally also hate? Adele knock it off with the Whitney Houston runs) that now sounds like a haunting bitter love song from a queer person to their ex-partner they're still in love with who's chosen to settle down into a hetero life without them. Naya Rivera, why can't you be on a better show?
AHS is kind of interesting to watch because it's such a typical middle-of-the-roadly bigoted example of horror media in terms of what stuff it leans on for creep factor and scares. Which is to say, a lot of horror stories are about trotting out freakshows, and freakshows wind up featuring a lot of 'grotesques' that Mom and Pop and Bobby and Susie in front of the TV are afraid of -- cripples, crazies, queers, vengeful women, children, you name it, if your average all-American John Smith might be secretly afraid of it, then it's fair game for the horror genre. Turning marginalized people or controversial concepts into scary monsters is the backbone of horror. Xenophobia is the backbone of horror. H.P. Lovecraft is the xenophobic granddaddy of this in the United States.
AHS is definitely no exception. Half the "monsters" it sets up are designed to make you, like many horror movies, fear what in real life you'd have no reason to fear -- children are helpless, so what's scarier than a dangerous child? Women are nonthreatening, so what's scarier than a threatening woman? There's a reason why J-horror long-haired girl ghosts have gotten popular in a way that male ghosts haven't recently; viewers find it disturbingly dissonant that a woman (who's supposed to be a model of helplessness and purity) turns evil and vengeful and menacing, fuck, it's the backbone of centuries of cross-cultural misogynist monster archetypes. Succubi, sirens, La Llorona, you name it, feminist critics have more or less beaten that horse half to death but it still lives. I'm not going to bother with going more into that, it's like a lowerclassman-level lit course.
Specifically on how AHS has been handling its various characters, though:
Addie and her brother: For all that Constance's disabled children are set up as victimized figures, there's no question the way they're shot is designed to shock/unnerve viewers who aren't used to seeing the faces of kids with Down syndrome and other birth deformities. Vivien's a total dick to Addie most the time and clearly unnerved by the appearance of her face in her house, and you're supposed to relate to her response. I think your average ableist viewer probably thinks they're sympathizing with Addie, but if you replaced all the Constance-Addie scenes with an actor who didn't 'appear' to have Down syndrome viewers would suddenly be disturbed much more by what a continually abusive mom she was to a really sweet curious intelligent child.
Moira: It says a lot that a straight male Tumblr acquaintance I know cluelessly said he was totally hot for ghost-projection-Moira in the first episode or two, even though she's the illusory projection of a hypersexualized version of herself constructed from the moments before she was violently raped by one of her employers and then murdered by the other one. It's hateful and degrading. I actually think Moira is one of the best-handled elements of the show in this regard but the fact that she's so easily misinterpreted that way means that her sexualized version also functions like cheap Mad Men fetish bait in the advertising.
The two male previous owners: I actually like them, though some well-meaning slash fans on Tumblr were arguing that the fact that one was femme and the other was unfaithful was too stereotypical, which I think is valid in terms of "what it presents to straight audiences" but also a little femmephobic (female slash fans are some of the strongest wishers that gay men presented 'more like' straight men sometimes) and sweetly naive about the reality of being queer and male and trying to hold down a relationship in LA. It's not all Angel and Collins, is what I mean. I find Zach Quinto's performance pretty personally relateable.
The most messed-up thing about their presence on the show is that they're dead anyway. That's the thing, really; in the end, they were only acceptable as tragic murdered ghost characters, which adds them to the freakshow whether or not they were sympathetic in life. It wouldn't make any straight viewer uncomfortable, which is a bad sign. It's always a bad sign when your portrayal of gay characters wouldn't make any straight viewer uncomfortable. Straight viewers should be more uncomfortable.
Hayden: Her actor is fantastic and makes her performance terrifying and manipulative, but don't it pander awfully well to every straight dude's fears that some baby mama of his is going to go psycho and try to ruin his life?
Larry: He's also really good and charming, but sorry, people with disfiguring burn scars of the world! Good luck finding anyone in media who's like you who isn't portrayed as evil! See also: Harvey Dent, apparently having some of the tissue of your face wrecked by an excruciating and disfiguring accident is great symbolism for how that part of your soul is tainted or whatever blah blah cripples are scary. I miss Sandor Clegane.
Charles and Nora Montgomery: Incorporating the practice of being an abortion-performing OB/GYN doctor into the originating horror mythology of the house and making him a mad scientist may not be explicitly condemning abortion, but it definitely is playing to mainstream notions that abortion is a more 'dark,' 'illicit,' or 'sinful' medical practice than the rest so it's no wonder Charles Montgomery went off the deep end. Something tells me this plot wouldn't have been written if he were, like, an orthopedic surgeon.
In other words, it's the same-ol' same-ol' bullshit. I watch because Wednesday is a boring night, the Harmon family themselves and the story are entertaining, I like to know what's going on in the horror genre, and there's nothing on TV that doesn't perpetuate the same-ol' same-ol' anyway. It's TV. It's the centrist Republicans of the media political caucuses. It's there to tell middle America what it already knows. And horror is generally there to reassure middle America that they're not bad people for locking their doors to the people they lock their doors to -- after all, strangers are scary. AHS is like a rogues gallery of that.
Speaking of Ryan Murphy, I loathe Glee with the passion of a thousand fiery suns burning the fuel of the universe's autotune machines but somehow his horrible pandering Disney Channel show has produced a cover of a song (that I normally also hate? Adele knock it off with the Whitney Houston runs) that now sounds like a haunting bitter love song from a queer person to their ex-partner they're still in love with who's chosen to settle down into a hetero life without them. Naya Rivera, why can't you be on a better show?