Any Photoshop Skilled Freak Want to Help a Fellow Horror Fan Out?

Devil_666 · Aug 4, 2011

SilentSurfer said:
But I still say he wasn't mental. There is nothing to suggest he was disabled before he killed his sister. I believe it was meant to be taken as though nobody could have seen it coming.

Just to clarify, I'm not suggesting that Michael Myers was/is mentally retarded (I think the P.C. term is "Intellectual disability"). I'm saying he was/is mentally ill just like Norman Bates, etc.

And mental illness is considered a form of disability.

So as far as Michael Myers having the mind of a child, that's simply because he was institutionalized at a young age. Somehow I doubt he received the same education in a mental facility that a normal child would have outside. So even though he eventually became an adult and looks like a grown man, he still has the mental capacity of a child. But again, he doesn't have an intellectual disability.

SilentSurfer · Aug 4, 2011

I'll right, dude, I've got to break out the quotes on you I see. :lol

For somebody who goes by Devil 666, you seem oddly incapable of accepting Myers as evil and not human. Mental illness is a human frailty. Pure evil is supernatural.

Dr. Sam Loomis: I met him, fifteen years ago. I was told there was nothing left. No reason, no conscience, no understanding; even the most rudimentary sense of life or death, good or evil, right or wrong. I met this six-year-old child, with this blank, pale, emotionless face and, the blackest eyes... the *devil's* eyes. I spent eight years trying to reach him, and then another seven trying to keep him locked up because I realized what was living behind that boy's eyes was purely and simply... *evil*.

Dr. Sam Loomis: I- I- I watched him for fifteen years, sitting in a room, staring at a wall, not seeing the wall, looking past the wall - looking at this night, inhumanly patient, waiting for some secret, silent alarm to trigger him off. Death has come to your little town, Sheriff. Now you can either ignore it, or you can help me to stop it.

Laurie: It *was* the boogeyman.
Dr. Sam Loomis: As a matter of fact, it was.

Wikipedia: In some cases, the bogeyman is a nickname for the devil.

Michael Myers is John Carpenter's interpretation of the boogeyman, a shapelss terror that is meant to scare children into behaving. That's why his credit is listed as The Shape.

Get with it, Devil! :stick

Devil_666 · Aug 4, 2011

It's not that I'm incapable of accepting Myers as evil and not human. I just think it's possible to be both. That's a term a lot of people use to describe murders, etc who commit atrocious crimes. People said Jeffrey Dahmer was "pure evil". In other words, it's easier to say people like Dahmer, Bundy or Gacy, etc were evil personified instead of facing the grim reality that they were simply human beings who were actually capable of evil, inhuman acts. Same goes for fictional characters like Michael Myers.

Yeah I know it doesn't explain all the supernatural elements of the film like the fact that he apparently can't be killed. But even Carpenter said he only threw that aspect into the first movie for a shock (where Myers disappears at the end).

sprig0701 · Aug 4, 2011

But Jason Voorhees being on there doesn't make anyone scratch their noggin? Here's a kid who sits dead at the bottom of a lake for over 20 years, and returns after his mother being killed to exact revenge. What disability would that fall under?

ozzfan84 · Aug 4, 2011

Silent, I explore physical disability--both congenital and "environmental", intellectual disability, and emotional disturbance.

As for Myers, I do discuss his silence and his grunting and soforth as well as the fact that he's a mental case. But my book is also about portrayal of people with disabilities on film. Therefore, I even go in to things like the Frankenstein Monster, where he resembles a disabled person.

So in Myer's case, I even make the stretch that when Laurie pokes him in the eye, his unmasked face makes him resemble that of the classic hunchback monster... a mouth breather with a swollen face and bushy brows.

As a young child, he looks physically normal. Once he commits these atrocities, he physically morphs into the image of the stereotypical physically disabled monster.

ozzfan84 · Aug 4, 2011

sprig0701 said:
But Jason Voorhees being on there doesn't make anyone scratch their noggin? Here's a kid who sits dead at the bottom of a lake for over 20 years, and returns after his mother being killed to exact revenge. What disability would that fall under?

You can't write a book about the portrayal of people with disabilities in horror movies and not analyze this:

However, to address your question more clearly, I do discuss how Jason does somewhat "lose his disability" as the franchise continues past the first three. The audience expects more of him and he becomes more clever and versatile, his kills more creative. Also, he becomes something of a superhero, his face less resembling a classic "mongoloid" portrayal of the disabled and more of a skeleton in the later movies.

Anton Phibes · Aug 4, 2011

ozzfan84 said:
Silent, I explore physical disability--both congenital and "environmental", intellectual disability, and emotional disturbance.

As for Myers, I do discuss his silence and his grunting and soforth as well as the fact that he's a mental case. But my book is also about portrayal of people with disabilities on film. Therefore, I even go in to things like the Frankenstein Monster, where he resembles a disabled person.

So in Myer's case, I even make the stretch that when Laurie pokes him in the eye, his unmasked face makes him resemble that of the classic hunchback monster... a mouth breather with a swollen face and bushy brows.

As a young child, he looks physically normal. Once he commits these atrocities, he physically morphs into the image of the stereotypical physically disabled monster.

I hate to de-rail your theory...but that shot with his eye from getting jabbed with the sewing needle is a bit of a stretch.. meyers didnt morph into a scarred or horrifying visage until he was toasted in H2. In fact---quite the opposite, if you'll humor me for a minute. They chose Tony Moran specifically (according to Jamie Lee Curtis) for the unmasking sequence because he was "pretty" and "angelic looking" in his appearance. Everyone was expecting a horrible face beneath the mask---and Carpenter wanted to show that sometimes even pretty people can have some terrifying crap going on behind that unassuming face. Monsters don't always announce themselves like Frankenstein. In point of fact---even the very Devil himself has been known to take on the form of an "angel of light". Food for thought, maybe? :lecture

Devil_666 · Aug 4, 2011

sprig0701 said:
Here's a kid who sits dead at the bottom of a lake for over 20 years

Which movies you been watching!? :lol

In Friday The 13th Part II it shows that Jason didn't drown and die as a kid.

Anton Phibes said:
In point of fact---even the very Devil himself has been known to take on the form of an "angel of light".

I'm not religious by any stretch of the imagination but I have never heard of the Devil taking the form of an "Angel of Light". The Devil (at least in the Bible) is always portrayed as either a serpent or as a dragon.

ozzfan84 · Aug 4, 2011

Anton Phibes said:
I hate to de-rail your theory...but that shot with his eye from getting jabbed with the sewing needle is a bit of a stretch.. meyers didnt morph into a scarred or horrifying visage until he was toasted in H2. In fact---quite the opposite, if you'll humor me for a minute. They chose Tony Moran specifically (according to Jamie Lee Curtis) for the unmasking sequence because he was "pretty" and "angelic looking" in his appearance. Everyone was expecting a horrible face beneath the mask---and Carpenter wanted to show that sometimes even pretty people can have some terrifying crap going on behind that unassuming face. Monsters don't always announce themselves like Frankenstein. In point of fact---even the very Devil himself has been known to take on the form of an "angel of light". Food for thought, maybe?

I called it a stretch myself, so I know it's really just a connection I've made as a viewer. The history of the selection of Moran is interesting, but I still think the result of his eye being poked is a physical image that is commonly found on the classic portrayal of the disabled on Moran's otherwise angelic, "pretty" face. Put that together with all of his grunting and heavy breathing and that's what it means to me.

That's the cool thing about studying these films from an academic, literary viewpoint. Sometimes, even director intention doesn't matter when the focus is on how the portrayal affects an audience. It's okay for people to disagree about it, so long as their points could be backed up in one way or another.

With that said, I do spend a lot of time presenting the history of the production of all of the films I cover, and I spend a lot of time putting the film into perspective based on the background of the actors and directors as well as the social and legal changes that were occurring around each time, including wars, civil rights movements, special education law, etc.

ozzfan84 · Aug 4, 2011

Anton and others, let me also say I enjoy and appreciate being able to enter into these kinds of discussions with you because my work is primarily for an independent study I chose to do on the topic towards my Sixth Year in special education. Therefore, many of my peers and professors are not as knowledgeable on these topics. It's fun for me to work on defending my thesis with friends who really know this stuff well!

thenammagazine · Aug 5, 2011

SilentSurfer said:
Really, he shouldn't be included in this category. He is just evil. No disability. Unless you say he is disable to die, but since that's not a real word...

His inability to function in society because he's the personification of evil could be considered a disability. Also, I'm certain Freud would go into great details about some form of incestual angst being the reason he feels compelled to kill his sister, and anybody who gets in the way of that, to the point of unstoppable obsession, acting on it in violence as a means to play out the incest fantasy vs. doing so sexually (yet to Michael, he might get some sexual gratification out of it - hence the heavy breathing after kills).