The Case for Remaking The Purge
Oct. 8th, 2015 04:37 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
wingedbeastThe Purge is the home-under-siege horror story set in a not-too-distant America that has declared that, one night out of the year, all crime is legal and all emergency/peacekeeping service is suspended. The surface justification is that this yearly event allows people to "purge" their violent tendencies, thus allowing for a more harmonious and smooth social cohesion for the rest of the year. But, another stated reason is that the yearly event eliminates "unproductive" members of the society.
As a premise, this yields a lot of potential, more than just one home-under-siege horror story, though that should certainly be included.
Within the movie as it is, we're told, but not shown, that the Purge works. Taken on its face, this naturally moves us to ask the question of if the benefits are worth the costs. That's a question asked far better in other fictions. The ending of Watchmen, alone, is a great conversation piece on just that matter.
The more interesting question is how could this happen, because it's not as far-fetched as it might first seem. Okay, it's still pretty far-fetched, but not *as* far fetched.
To help out my point, consider Newt Gingrich. In seeking the Republican nomination for the 2012 Presidential election, made comments about putting inner city, "urban" (AKA: code for black), public school students to work as custodians so they "learn the value of work". This did hurt his chances at the nomination.
In seeking the Republican Nomination for the 2016 election, Donald Trump said, of undocumented immigrants from Mexico, that they're "drug dealers and rapists and I assume some of them are good people." He's still very popular and it's not unreasonable to think he might have the nomination.
Consider the common rhetoric of referring to the very wealthy as "successful", to those who use public assistance programs as "takers" and "drains on the economy".
The story should be two stories, set at slightly different times, with interlacing scenes. The first story should be the story of how The Purge gets put into place. We should see the debate, not in Congress or whatever version of government this world has, but through the same upper-middle-class neighborhood in which the siege legally happens. The majority of Purge supporters are not looking forward to taking part in the mayhem, but rather thinking that the Purge will work and only sacrifice those who aren't hard-working enough to afford a reasonable security system.
Think nobody will make that argument? I live in a small town, one with people who would identify themselves as somewhere in the range of middle class and working class. One time, at a grille, someone said, seemingly out of the blue, that there should be an ice age. This struck me and I had to ask why this would be required. His reasoning was that an ice age would kill off the lazy people. Lazy, in this case, meant those who couldn't afford funds to survive in such a harsh environment.
Supporters won't necessarily be those who want to engage in such a Purge, but those who, with varying levels of justification, believe themselves insulated from the threat such an event would cause.
The story in the movie that we have right now wouldn't have to be changed very much. Eliminate some of the unnecessary atmospheric efforts, potentially eliminate one sub-plot. Otherwise, it fits very well into what this story needs. The upper-middle-class family of protagonists are not the primary targets of the antagonists. They only become the targets when the primary target, a homeless man that the antagonists openly state exists only so that they may kill him, takes refuge in their home.
This addition would make the movie something of a more kinetic horror version of The Masque of the Red Death. You cannot truly isolate yourself from that which you allow to afflict the poor outside your walls. You can only offer yourself a buffer zone and the illusion of being more safe than others. This story would simply add on that this also holds true for those horrors that are not merely natural, but for those that your society actively chooses to create.
As a premise, this yields a lot of potential, more than just one home-under-siege horror story, though that should certainly be included.
Within the movie as it is, we're told, but not shown, that the Purge works. Taken on its face, this naturally moves us to ask the question of if the benefits are worth the costs. That's a question asked far better in other fictions. The ending of Watchmen, alone, is a great conversation piece on just that matter.
The more interesting question is how could this happen, because it's not as far-fetched as it might first seem. Okay, it's still pretty far-fetched, but not *as* far fetched.
To help out my point, consider Newt Gingrich. In seeking the Republican nomination for the 2012 Presidential election, made comments about putting inner city, "urban" (AKA: code for black), public school students to work as custodians so they "learn the value of work". This did hurt his chances at the nomination.
In seeking the Republican Nomination for the 2016 election, Donald Trump said, of undocumented immigrants from Mexico, that they're "drug dealers and rapists and I assume some of them are good people." He's still very popular and it's not unreasonable to think he might have the nomination.
Consider the common rhetoric of referring to the very wealthy as "successful", to those who use public assistance programs as "takers" and "drains on the economy".
The story should be two stories, set at slightly different times, with interlacing scenes. The first story should be the story of how The Purge gets put into place. We should see the debate, not in Congress or whatever version of government this world has, but through the same upper-middle-class neighborhood in which the siege legally happens. The majority of Purge supporters are not looking forward to taking part in the mayhem, but rather thinking that the Purge will work and only sacrifice those who aren't hard-working enough to afford a reasonable security system.
Think nobody will make that argument? I live in a small town, one with people who would identify themselves as somewhere in the range of middle class and working class. One time, at a grille, someone said, seemingly out of the blue, that there should be an ice age. This struck me and I had to ask why this would be required. His reasoning was that an ice age would kill off the lazy people. Lazy, in this case, meant those who couldn't afford funds to survive in such a harsh environment.
Supporters won't necessarily be those who want to engage in such a Purge, but those who, with varying levels of justification, believe themselves insulated from the threat such an event would cause.
The story in the movie that we have right now wouldn't have to be changed very much. Eliminate some of the unnecessary atmospheric efforts, potentially eliminate one sub-plot. Otherwise, it fits very well into what this story needs. The upper-middle-class family of protagonists are not the primary targets of the antagonists. They only become the targets when the primary target, a homeless man that the antagonists openly state exists only so that they may kill him, takes refuge in their home.
This addition would make the movie something of a more kinetic horror version of The Masque of the Red Death. You cannot truly isolate yourself from that which you allow to afflict the poor outside your walls. You can only offer yourself a buffer zone and the illusion of being more safe than others. This story would simply add on that this also holds true for those horrors that are not merely natural, but for those that your society actively chooses to create.
