first draft

Edward Vincent

Movies are wonderful things; they can transport everyone almost equally to the same place. Many movies are created with similar themes and devices, falling into genres. Movies are not the only things that can fall into these genres, often the medium is less important than the content. Joyce Carol Oates' short story, "Where are you going, where have you been?" is a genre piece as well, and contains all of the elements of a typical horror/thriller/slasher movie. Its similarity to many different genre films solidifies its place in the slasher movie repertoire. (oh my gosh I spelt that correct)

Conventionally, the slasher movie will begin with an optimistic view on the world. The higher off you begin the farther you can fall by the end. Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho starts off with two lovers wanting to get away, Sam Rami’s Evil Dead II starts with a man and his girlfriend going to a house in the woods looking for peace and quiet. In “Where are you going, where have you been?” Connie, the main character, is young and wants to get away, she is looking forward to the future. When she is away from her house she is a completely different and more up beat person, “her mouth, which was pale and smirking most of the time, but bright and pink on these evenings out (p. 744).” These moments of joy for Connie provide the reader with a high point. We are shown how happy Connie can be, the story peaks early and it’s all down hill from there.

Another staple of the horror genre is the bad guy, a person often introduced early in the story and revealed to be evil towards the end. The perfect example of this is any episode of Scooby Doo—old man winters, the owner of the old abandoned amusement park, is the man in the pirate ghost costume that has been terrorizing the area for the majority of the episode. When they are first introduced you aren’t supposed to know they are evil, but once you figure it out it’s clear they’ve been evil from the beginning. Arnold friend, the antagonist in “Where are you going…,” is first seen at the drive-in. Connie is walking along with her boyfriend for the night and glances at “a boy with shaggy black hair, in a convertible jalopy painted gold…He wagged a finger and laughed and said, ‘Gonna get you, baby (p. 744).’” The introduction to Arnold Friend is fairly subtle and is probably forgotten fairly quickly by Connie, but the attention paid to him and his behavior suggests that his role is more important, more sinister. And this time there are no pesky kids to stop him from getting away with it.

The antagonist or antagonists in most slasher/horror movies are presented differently from other characters, and they are usually unsettling for the main character and the audience. Norman Bates speaks nervously and his hobby is taxidermy and we later find out he has preserved his dead mother’s body and has conversations with it. Jason, Michael Myers, and the killer in Scream all wear masks. Arnold Friend acts strangely, his body language suggesting how phony he is, “the way he straightened and recovered from his fit of laughing showed that it had all been fake (p.748).” His entire appearance is a visual lie, “the way he was dressed, which was the way all of them dressed (p. 747)…[on his car] was an expression…kids had used the year before but didn’t use before.” His voice was different, “the voice of a man on the radio (p. 750).” More and more, Arnold Friend is revealed to be fraudulent, his motives less than honest, unsettling both Connie and the reader.

Statistically, the audience for thrillers and horror/slasher movies are younger white men. Psychologically it is more difficult for a man to comfortably watch a woman asserting themselves on screen, similarly it is hard for a white person to comfortably watch a non-white person asserting themselves on screen. This is in general the cause of the stereotype that the black guy dies first, and the reason why the girls who are more promiscuous are the ones who are always found by the killer. If “Where are you going…” were to feature both Connie and her sister, her sister would most certainly be the one to survive. Connie is self conscious about her appearance, thinks less of others, spends time with boys while outright lying to her mother and expresses interest in Arnold Friend before she realizes his evil intentions. Connie’s sister is plain and has her mother’s approval and does nothing to make the male audience members uncomfortable with her, and is probably the reason why she is spared from Arnold Friend.

Short of excluding women from the stories all together, the way horror/slasher movies (and many other genres as well) handle the existence of women is to fetishize or punish them. In a film called Peeping Tom a serial murderer films his victims before he murders them, both fetishizing and then punishing the female form. Similarly, Connie is both fetishized and punished in this story, first by her mother and then by Arnold Friend. Her mother punishes more than fetishizes, always complaining about Connie’s appearance and comparing her to her boring sister. Friend begins to fetishize Connie from the moment he first sees her. When he sees her he says “quote here” and repeatedly talks about “quote here” when he sees her the second time. He then begins to punish her when she doesn’t do what he wants by threatening her family and psychologically violating her, and then the implied physical violation.

“Where are you going…” has many things in common with films of the various contemporary horror genres. The story has structure, themes and characters to your every day fright fest.