KYLE LEITCH
The Carillon (University of Regina)

REGINA (CUP) — While I was actually paying attention in film class last week, my professor raised an interesting issue.

Over the course of the lecture, the aforementioned professor suggested that horror films, and more specifically the slasher films of the 1970s and ’80s, were representations of conservative ideology—albeit a cartoonishly over-exaggerated version.

My firmly established beliefs challenged, I scoffed, “Surely, you jest!” Perhaps the professor didn’t hear me, because the lesson moved on without the slightest pause. “Surely, he jests?” I asked my neighbour.

“Fuck off,” my neighbour responded, going back to the doodles adorning the margins of every page in his notebook.

“It’s okay,” I told myself. “Surely, he jests.” But still, I couldn’t get the nagging idea that he might be right out of my head.

The night after that fateful lecture, I sequestered myself in my living room. Beside me I had a veritable cornucopia of bloodlust. Jason Voorhees, Freddy Krueger, Michael Myers and Tommy “Leatherface” Hewitt would be my only company that cold night.

First up was Jason. Surely Friday the 13th wouldn’t let me down. Okay, things are looking good: teenagers getting high and screwing, Jason putting the machete to them and — wait. Teenagers. Drugs. Sex. All things right-wingers hate, and all being dealt with in a bloody, unrelenting manner. I ejected the DVD, starting to feel slightly panicked.

Nightmare on Elm Street? Freddy killed without discrimination, right? He got you in your dreams, right?! But on the screen: teenagers, drugs. sex, abortions. Oh, fuck.

Mike? Leatherface? Teenagers. Drugs. Sex. This was bad. This was really, really bad. How could I not have noticed the patterns? They had been in place since before the turn of the century! These movie monsters are the metaphorical archangels sent by conservative politicians to punish the things they hate most.

Think about your favourite slasher movie. Now, think about your favourite kill (you sick bastard). Now, think about the victim. Think about what they were engaged in immediately before their intestinal tracts were strung up on light fixtures. I guarantee you they were either having intercourse out of wedlock, abusing a controlled substance or discussing something guaranteed to piss off your local Conservative Members of Parliament.

Ask yourself: what does a Conservative MP hate more than teenagers, drugs, sex and abortions?

And, suddenly, it hit me. This is how the Conservatives have been exerting their power in Canadian politics for so long. They get into power, and then they use their cronies summoned literally from the very depths of hell to murder their competition in cold blood. All I’m saying is, who’s heard from Joe Clark lately?

Jason, Freddy, Michael, Leatherface — I expected more from you. I honestly thought you killed with no regard for political affiliation. I can assure that whatever the Conservatives are paying you, we, as a collective body, could easily double it to stop your mercenary work for the Conservatives and make a few more sequels each. Shall we set the first scene on, say, March 21, 2013? Oh, was that budget day? I’m not angry. Honest.

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Graphic: Cody Schumacher