# Leatherface: Modern Haunting



## Abishai100

Our modern world is gauged by hyper-active consumerism culture catalyzed traffic (i.e., eTrade).

We read of airline narcotics rings and illegal Tijuana immigration operations.

The new terrorist seems to be the network destabilizer (i.e., the Internet hacker, the drug smuggler, etc.).

When the Taliban attacked the World Trade Center in 2001, people were suddenly aware of a global sensitization to networking issues.  Today, the National Security Agency (NSA) closely monitors many kinds of Internet communications and signals, a fact which perhaps explains our modern demand for Hollywood (USA) movies such as "Ghost in the Machine" (1993).

In Medieval times, we heard of warlords such as the diabolical Mordred who waged war against the beloved kingdom of Camelot which he was supposed to support.  Such figures created stories about phantoms or ghosts that haunted human sensibilities about monarchy and farms.  We read ghost stories from such eras about spooks such as werewolves and banshees.

Today, we see movies about strange comic book super-villains such as Video-Man, a mutant who can travel through electric wires and disrupt computing networks like an Internet virus.

The new psycho to be feared could be a maniac who wields some kind of a weapon symbolic of our sensitivities regarding resource-sharing and humanist profiteerism.  We now think of eccentric city-street stalking serial killers or ghosts haunting our office computers.

The seminal Hollywood (USA) horror gem "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" (1974) presented modern movie audiences with a new kind of human villain --- the tool-wielding maniac.  In this film, a maniacal cannibal named Leatherface stalks wayward American teenagers with a terrifying electric chainsaw and wears a mask made of the human skin of his dead victims.

Our modern world eerily seems to hint to impressionable youngsters that Leatherface is a social sign that people can find various stimulation in the media to become tool-wielding network terrorists --- a new kind of madman who invokes stories of a new kind of ghost: the gadget goblin.






Leatherface - Wikipedia the free encyclopedia


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## Moonglow

I prefer the Nigerian Scam Mutants.....


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## Abishai100

*The Wily Wendigo*


What gives me the willies about the image of Leatherface is that in our modern age of media images that glorify violence and mayhem, impressionable youths can find deranged inspiration from a movie like "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" (1974).

In the old days, it was the campfire storytelling that gave rise to a folkloric fascination with phantoms, ghosts, and ghouls.  That's why people dressed up like such fantasy spooks for Halloween.

However, in our time, it is the 'idea' of juvenile delinquency that gives rise to a new type of 'security terrorist' --- the mayhem artist or the copycat killer.

Remember those news stories from the 1990s of individuals mimicking crimes glorified in the controversial Oliver Stone film "Natural Born Killers" (1994)?

Well, thinking about how impressionable youths can make oddball statements like, "Since Leatherface carries a chainsaw, maybe he is actually an eco-terrorist who imagines that a chainsaw should be used to murder people instead of ripping down trees; and therefore, I believe I want to look and act like Leatherface and make a real _political_ statement."

That is to say, the odd truth is, he who _*copies*_ Leatherface in our time of media hysteria, perhaps actually _*is*_ Leatherface.  After all, Leatherface is a maniac who believes that mayhem is justified purely on the grounds of basic and humble human anxieties.

Maybe that's why Leatherface seems to evade 'normal' routes of human analysis.

Leatherface is a modern haunting, since he is today's version of Jack the Ripper or the Headless Horseman.

It is perhaps most appropriate to use the Wendigo (see below) to characterize or re-present Leatherface.






Wendigo - Wikipedia the free encyclopedia


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## Abishai100

*The Stalking Shade
*

Here's a really creepy question:

_"Does Leatherface remind us of our own fear of death and curiosity about self-ruin, or does he reveal the path towards real horror and darkness almost as if he was Satan himself?"_

We usually think that ghosts are scarier than demons or devils, but maybe there's a link between the paranormal (and our fear of the other side of death) and the path towards self-ruin that occurs during our lifetime (i.e., crime).

After all, wasn't Jack the Ripper as scary as any ghost?






Jack the Ripper (Wikipedia)


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## Abishai100

*The Velcro Magic Act*

People who believe in magical thinking tend to seek to connect seemingly unrelated events in a causal fashion.  The purpose is to elucidate the possibility that coincidence can have meaning applied to it.

Of course, scientific skeptics of magic suggest that they can make contradictory challenging claims that if two or more seemingly unrelated events can be causally related in hypothetical models in more than one way, then there is no concrete way to prove which way is the most probable or realistic.

When Hollywood (USA) released the horror film "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" (1974) featuring the iconic psychosis avatar Leatherface, just one year after Edward Abbey published his anarchistic approach to eco-terrorism, *"The Monkey Wrench Gang" (1975)*, people started making paranoia-analysis comments such as, "What if impressionable youth start thinking they should use a chainsaw (like Leatherface) to murder people instead of ripping down trees --- in the crazy name of eco-terrorism?"

People are fascinated by sentimentalism, and Leatherface's cult popularity speaks to this eccentric fascination.  How society talks about magic and the odd side of the human mind, the irrational side, will reveal how maturely we market American vigilantism-themed comic book avatars such as Daredevil (Marvel Comics), an offbeat crusader who defies his frustrations by becoming a rogue watchman.

When I first saw the self-image fantasy-themed famous play movie adaptation *"The Phantom of the Opera" (2004)*, I wondered if a psychotic individual got the dramatic and maniacal notion to use women in saw-cutting magic acts but to actually kill the girls in the act without the audience knowing/realizing --- in some odd statement about being an anti-prophet of superstition persecution.

Remember folks those weird crimes committed by individuals claiming to have been inspired by the crime-glorification Hollywood (USA) movie *"Natural Born Killers" (1994)*.  Oliver Stone got a lot of letters for making that controversial film.

Maybe the expedition-shock horror film "Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan" (1989) is the paranoia-exploration version of "The Phantom of the Opera" (2004)!







Friday the 13th: Jason Takes Manhattan


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## Abishai100

*Copycat Masala*

It is a certain and odd possibility that if an impressionable and/or criminally insane individual copies the mania and models crimes after Leatherface from the Texas Chainsaw Massacre film franchise, the person could actually be construed as the real Leatherface.

Perhaps this is because modern civilization is interested in image reproduction (i.e., photojournalism), and Leatherface is film history's most jagged maniac, so anyone who copies his behavioral image of psychological strangeness is, in fact, making some odd statement about psyche obsession.

Why are so many people today, for example, seemingly obsessed with Facebook?





Through the Looking-Glass (Psycho-Literature)


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## Abishai100

*That Darn Chainsaw!!*


Leatherface runs at you with that awful chainsaw, which is ironically a heavy and burdensome tool.

I used to run high school boys cross-country and one of the toughest (if not THE toughest) course was Holmdel Park in New Jersey which was comprised of very high and rolling hills.

Just imagine Leatherface is chasing you around Holmdel Park with his chainsaw. As you're running for your dear life, all that is sustaining you is the hope that Leatherface's heavy chainsaw will be too burdensome to run up and down the hills of Holmdel with sufficient swiftness to catch you.

Watching a Leatherface film makes you realize that human beings a naturally curious (and naturally afraid) of obstacles and crusades.


Holmdel Park


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## Abishai100

*Sphere*

I'd like to see a study of the 'apocalypto undertones' in American horror films especially the ones surrounding the 'Big 4' of American horror: Freddy, Jason, Michael, and Leatherface.

Freddy: dream warden
Jason: forest stalker
Michael: Halloween terror
Leatherface: chainsaw hell

When we think of Leatherface running with that chainsaw, we feel like we're being stimulated by an image of agony and ecstasy, of the pure mania of unfiltered violence and the obsession of running down a road that leads to the Devil.

You can pick up a chainsaw at any Home Depot hardware store in America --- modern convenience.  This makes Leatherface the modern realm-and-hardware storytelling Golem.



====

Shelbye ran as fast as her lungs would allow her.  She ran up and down the rolling hills of Holmdel Park (New Jersey) on the evening of the state high school boys cross-country race her younger brother Ryan won.  Shelbye wanted to smoke a marijuana cigarette on a certain hill at Holmdel at midnight to celebrate her brother's stunning victory and state champion trophy award ceremony.  It was when she sat down and started smoking her pleasant joint (to ease her glaucoma) that the 24 year-old beautiful American blonde realized she was being chased by Leatherface running at her with a chainsaw.

Shelbye called her stalker Leatherface, since he was dressed in a black suit-and-tie and was wearing a mask made out of human skin and was carrying a chainsaw.  The psychopath was apparently dressed up as the iconic American horror film ghoul from the cult-favorite _Texas Chainsaw Massacre_ horror film franchise and was determined to make Shelbye a 'young-bitch scream' 'celebrity.'  Shelbye simply decided this ghoul was as good as the real Leatherface and called him Leatherface.

Shelbye wondered why the chainsaw-psycho was chasing her around Holmdel Park at midnight.  She hypothesized that the monster was interested in creating midnight madness to deliver his perhaps prophetic anti-social message that human beings did not respect the sanctity of a cross-country race park and were willing to smoke 'joints' in the park after sunset.  Shelbye believed this 'Leatherface copycat' was obsessed about some half-baked insane vigilantism message about anti-loitering and knew she was nothing but a victim deserving of death in the psycho's glazed eyes.

Shelbye's only godsend was that she was running up and down the rolling hills of Holmdel Park, and Leatherface was burdened by the heaviness of his clumsy large chainsaw.  Shelbye kept running resilient circles around the hills to confound and exhaust the brute's otherwise relentless pursuit, since Shelbye herself was once a talented high school girls' cross-country runner herself and could still maintain great speed and endurance (even though her lungs were filled with marijuana smoke).  Shelbye coughed and ran, coughed and ran, until finally Leatherface fell down while climbing up one hill while chasing her, and his chainsaw fell on his own leg, gashing it deeply.

Shelbye got away from Leatherface and never saw him again.  Since it was her brother Ryan's final race at Holmdel, she never returned to the park again.  She also never told the police, believing that the 'Leatherface copycat' chasing her that night was simply someone who wanted to scare away trespassers and loiterers at Holmdel and use Leatherface's mantle as a shamanistic 'mask.'  However, she continued to eerily wonder in the back of her mind if the psycho chasing her that night was indeed some 'dark side' prophet here to resurrect the ugly vengeful spirit of Leatherface.  Shelbye decided that Leatherface was the modern age Wolfman, and she retired drawing evangelism pictures of long-distance runners at Holmdel.

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## Abishai100

*Lady of the Lake*


In a special trailer for _Texas Chainsaw Massacre III_, we see Leatherface standing by a little body of water and the prophetic 'Lady of the Lake' (mythological being from Arthurian legend who supposedly guards a magical sword of endowing power called 'Excalibur') rises with extended hand and hands the psychotic monster a chainsaw, which we're to interpret as being 'equivalent' to Excalibur.

After all, that darn chainsaw is certainly a modern power-tool and symbolic of post-Industrialization 'conveniences' such as deforestation and Home Depot hardware stores...

That's why (in some ways), Leatherface is the 'Video-Man' of modernism or the proverbial '*Ghost in the Machine*' (reference to the sci-fi horror *film* 'adage').


{invented dialogue}

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LADY OF THE LAKE: Take this chainsaw!
LEATHERFACE OF THE LAKE: Aaaarrrgggghhh!!!
LADY: Destroy the dreams of this world.
LEATHERFACE: Woo!!!
LADY: Return it to me once vanity is murdered.
LEATHERFACE: Woo!!!
LADY: I will guard your secret. That you too are lonely (like me perhaps)!
LEATHERFACE: Mmm-hmm.
LADY: A 'regular' chainsaw from Home Depot is not good enough.
LEATHERFACE: Excalibur!!!
LADY: That's right, Leatherface. You need the Excalibur-Chainsaw.
LEATHERFACE: Woo!!!
LADY: Love and death are two faces of the same dream and the same nightmare.
LEATHERFACE: Death!!!
LADY: That's right. Death is a machine.
LEATHERFACE: Free!!!
LADY: Free the vagrant souls from the cages of suicide (and power).
LEATHERFACE: Home Depot!!!

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