I’m rewatching Scream for the first time in over a decade and dear god, it’s ANCIENT. Landline phones! Video stores! Asshole white straight boys laughing about murder not being narratively cued as sociopaths!
I love how the Scream killers combine “I Am An Asshole Gatekeeper About Pop Culture Trivia” with “Women Owe Me Attention And Must Humour My Threats Or I’m Justified In Hurting Them” and this was 1996 and we’re still meant to think Gamergate was about ethics in games journalism.
Like it’s not even meant as a satire of toxic nerdboy culture; it’s accidentally predicting it by depicting a known thing without realising its implications.
“Let me ask you this - what are you doing with a cellular telephone, son?” I AM *HOWLING*
Sidney immediately turning in her boyfriend because he’s been a creepy dick who didn’t stop his friends being assholes within the past 24 hours? Absolute power move.
It's been long enough since I watched this film that I can't 100% remember who the killers are (my brain says Stu and Billy though) but either way LITERALLY FUCK STU AND BILLY THEY'RE THE WORST.
Oh my god Billy is really out here complaining that Sid is still upset about her mother’s RAPE AND MURDER because it makes her not watch to touch his penis and anyway, HIS mother left so she should be fine!! AND THEN SHE CALLS HIM ON IT AND HE CALLS IT A BAD ANALOGY?! INCEL ALERT
The fucking reporter flirting with Dumb Cop Brother by telling him "you don't look a day over twelve except for this torso area" oh my god THAT IS SUCH A RED FLAG IN SO MANY WAYS, ARREST HER YOU PORNSTACHED FOOL
I can't remember if Rose McGowan's character lives but she is CLEARLY a lesbian who deserves to grow up and realise that she only dated Stu because he looks a like a dumb tall butch
All the white boys accusing each other as if two of them don’t know they’re the killers just to rule up the innocent third because “it’s the millennium, motives are incidental” is maybe the most accidentally perfect commentary on internet trolls I’ve ever seen.
“Billy and his penis don’t deserve you” YES TATEM SPEAK THE TRUTH
Aw, fuck, she’s gonna die in the garage door, isn’t she.
"No, Billy," says Sid, "I'm the one who's been selfish and self-absorbed with all this post-traumatic stress."
HOW IS THIS AN ACTUAL UNIRONIC LINE OF DIALOGUE, I'M GONNA FLY TO HOLLYWOOD AND THROW HANDS WITH WES CRAVEN
HOW IS THIS AN ACTUAL UNIRONIC LINE OF DIALOGUE, I'M GONNA FLY TO HOLLYWOOD AND THROW HANDS WITH WES CRAVEN
ROFL ALL THE GUYS HIGH-FIVING THE TIT SHOT ON SCREEN WHILE THE ONLY ACTUAL GIRL PRESENT SAYS 'I'LL LEAVE YOU GUYS ALONE' this is like the perfect microcosm of skeevy dudes on the internet but also Tres Accidentally Homo in a way I suspect craven did Not intend
Oh no billy got stabbed I’m so sad for him
“FUCK YOU BOTH” says Sid to Stu and Randy, earning my eternal admiration
this is probably not meant to be as Murder Boyfriends as it looks AND YET 
Stu: "See, we ask you a question and if you get it wrong, BOOYAH! You die."
Billy: "And if you get it right? You die!"
AKA, the reason why you don't debate sealioning trolls online. They're Stu and Billy. They don't care if you know the answer; they just want to play the game.
Billy: "And if you get it right? You die!"
AKA, the reason why you don't debate sealioning trolls online. They're Stu and Billy. They don't care if you know the answer; they just want to play the game.
Billy claims they had no motive for killing Sid's mother then SECONDS LATER goes into a misogynistic rant about how he did her a favour because she was a slutbag whore. THIS IS MEANT TO BE A META MOVIE AND YET I SWEAR CRAVEN DIDN'T REALISE THE IRONY. *MISOGYNY* IS THE MOTIVE.
I DON'T EVEN CARE THAT HE'S THEN LIKE 'OH BEE TEE DUBS UR MUM FUCKED MY DAD AND THAT'S WHY SHE LEFT AND I DID IT BECAUSE ABANDONMENT' LIKE NO, WES/BILLY, IT'S NOT THE ABANDONMENT IT'S THE HATRED OF WOMEN JFC
when your murderboyfriend tells you he just had sex with the girl you're going to kill
it's perfect on so many levels that these fucking IDIOT KILLERS decide to stab each other BEFORE they do away with sid and her dad like come the fuck ON you painkinky incompetents
god this film is so EERILY FUCKING PRESCIENT in the most accidental (or at best incidental) ways. while stu sobs about being "sensitive" because his motive is "peer pressure", billy starts screaming that she's a bitch and tearing the couch up. they're the yin/yang of 4chan trolls
OK, film is now done! Verdict: I think Wes Craven accidentally chronicled the genesis of sexist nerdboy toxicity as a byproduct of being meta about horror tropes - specifically, by asking which characters in a setting would a) have that knowledge and b) act upon it.
I think it's really telling, for instance, that at the moment of Big Reveal where we learn that Billy killed Sid's mother, the fact that she was also raped (or had sex) isn't revisited. Had she really just been with the dude they framed, or did Billy rape her, too?
The fact that Sid doesn't ask this, even though her own issues with sexual intimacy stem from her reaction to the crime, tell me that Craven wasn't cognisant of or especially interested in the misogyny underlying the tropes he was otherwise trying to play with.
Craven's failure to see how drenched in sexism his killers are and how it informs their anger, even though he wrote them that way, reminds me of that famous @danielortberg piece about Women Listening To Men In Art History the-toast.net/2014/06/23/wom… - specifically:
Like the painters recreating bored women without apparent insight into *why* they were bored, Craven is recreating nerd misogyny without apparent insight into the fact that it is an actual, bitter hatred of women and not just using bitches and sluts as handy insults.
When Sid tells Stu and Billy that they've seen too many movies, they retaliate with the line that movies don't make serial killers - the whole thing a deliberate invocation of the 80s/90s paranoia that video games, films, DnD etc were Turning The Youths To Evil.
Arguably the biggest sign that Craven misses the misogyny inherent in his own killers? SID DOESN'T CONFRONT STU ABOUT TATUM'S DEATH. They were dating! Was it Stu who killed her? Did Billy strike out on his own? Her death was the only needless one, a red herring on Craven's part.
The principal is killed because, well, they're angry teens who hate school; even three years before Columbine, that's not a psychological stretch. But Tatum? You could maybe argue they were taunting Sid by taking her friend, but the plan was to survive. What's Stu's motive?
They don't remember to taunt her about Tatum; Sid only finds her dead by accident, after fleeing. If their plan had worked and they'd gotten away with killing Sid and her dad, looking like heroic survivors, why wouldn't Stu want Tatum there to comfort him?
Tatum's death, I would argue, is proof that Craven is playing with horror tropes without being fully aware of or invested in their misogyny: you can take that scene out of the film and absolutely nothing changes. It's there for shock and to throw us off Stu's trail: nothing more.
ANYWAY. That was fun! I might have to watch the sequel soon and livetweet it in turn. Some nights, you've just gotta watch a horror film and crush an obscene amount of mint choc chip ice cream while spouting commentary, y'know?
FIN.
FIN.
OH WAIT, FINAL POINT: I am COMPLETELY FREAKED OUT by how closely Murderboy Skeet Ulrich, aka Billy, resembles an evil, bizarro world version of absolute sweetheart hockey player Tyson Barrie. JUST LOOK AT THEM.
FINAL FINAL ADDENDUM: It's been pointed out to me by multiple helpful persons that Craven was only the director, not the writer, so much of what I've attributed to Craven here is really down to Kevin Williamson. My bad! I stand by what I've said - I've just used the wrong name.
