Tobe Hooper, Factory Farms, and Being Held Hostage by the People of Wal-Mart

[Thalassa]

Tobe Hooper knows not only the American madness, but the specific Southern madness (including the Tennessee Williams wheelchair cliché). Born in Texas, his early career masterpiece, Texas Chain Saw Massacre is a fantastic visual spectacle of excellent cheap cinematography, and taps in to deep fears and American cultural issues that stand the test of time. A movie created before I was born, which I loved and feared at seventeen, still remains one of my favorite films of all time, in 2016. Who else can capture the beauty of the South with the underlying fear of all "smart'" Southern people: being held hostage by the People of Wal-Mart, the ignorant inbred people who have pissed on your corn flakes, since your unfortunate geographic birth. Hooper crams it all in: the breath taking horizon, the sound of frogs and crickets soothing you by moonlight, a generator or chain saw in the distance, the fun and spooky/romantic old houses, the crazy relative who persists small talk whilst beating you with a broom, and last but not least, the fundamental American problem of meat. Tobe Hooper is famously quoted as saying Chainsaw is about meat, not Ed Gein, nor abusive rural parenting. It is a film of looking but not seeing the cow foaming at the mouth, the chicken in the too small cage, the girl on a meat hook and in the deep freeze. Clearly a man of detail, Marilyn Burns in one scene literally looks without seeing, in her pained madness, at meat steaming. Finally, the one person of color in the film is the truck driver who helps her, as a woman, escape at the end - naturally to the waiting truck of the finally enlightened white man.

Tobe Hooper, I love you.

 

[JAVO]

Heh, I feel held hostage by the people of Wal-Mart every time I wait a short eternity in the 5 open registers out of 30 total.