John Kramer for President: The rise of authoritarian horror

Abstract

In 2016, Donald Trump was elected President of the United States of America, to great surprise. His election has been connected to the emergence of authoritarianism as a political force in America, as political scholars have argued Trump’s campaign success lay in how his rhetoric is authoritarian in nature, and how it activates an authoritarian tendency in a sizeable portion of the voter base in response to social and demographic changes within the country. This article argues that contemporary horror cinema reflects and responds to the rise of American authoritarianism. Building on the work of scholars of authoritarianism, this article outlines a number of characteristics of authoritarian horror films. Specifically, it analyses the case study of Jigsaw to argue that two understandings are possible, linked to the coding of both the authoritarianism associated with the villain and the social threats they react to as troubling. It then draws on a number of further examples (Unfriended, Don’t Hang Up and the Purge films) to suggest that the emergence of this tendency within horror cinema is reflective of an increasingly polarized population and that, although the films explicitly condemn authoritarianism through their villain characters, they simultaneously cater to both halves of this divide by also depicting the world in which these authoritarians rise as horrific.