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Abstract: This article proposes a categorization of the main archetypal character of suburban fantastic: the wronged boy. The archetype represented by iconic figures such as Elliott from E.T. (UNITED STATES, 1982) and Marty McFly from Back to the Future (UNITED STATES, 1985) refers to the heroes of this subgenre: young people discredited by their families and the authorities, who have to perform heroic acts in stories full of vampires, aliens, time travel… The article also draws parallels with another famous archetype of 1980s cinema: the slasher Final Girl – demonstrating how both are a restorative figure who needs to “become a man” in order to be socially validated. As the main object of analysis, the article focuses on the figure of Andy, the protagonist of the initial trilogy of Killer Toy (USA, 1988, 1990, 1991), a franchise usually read as slasher films – and which, through this categorization, can also be understood as an important part of the history of suburban fantastic.
Keywords: Injustice Boy, Suburban fantastic, Slasher
Abstract: This article proposes the categorization of the main archetypal character of suburban fantastic subgenre: the wronged boy. The archetype, represented by iconic figures such as Elliott from E.T. (USA, 1982) and Marty McFly from Back to the Future (USA, 1985), refers to the heroes of this subgenre: young boys discredited by their families and by authorities who must perform heroic acts in stories full of vampires, aliens, time travel… The article also draws parallels with another famous archetype of 1980s cinema: the slasher Final Girl – showing how both are restorative figures who need to “become a man” in order to be socially validated. As the main object of analysis, the article focuses on the figure of Andy, the protagonist of the Child’s Play trilogy (USA, 1988, 1990, 1991), a franchise usually read as a slasher film – and which, through this categorization, can also be understood as an important part of the history of suburban fantastic cinema.
Keywords: Wronged Boy, Suburban Fantastic, Slasher
Introduction
Suburban fantastic was a very popular subgenre in the 1980s, and is remembered for adventure films in which suburban/small-town youth are forced to deal with extraordinary situations, such as E.T. – The Extraterrestrial (Steven Spielberg, 1982), War Games (John Badham, 1983), Gremlins (Joe Dante, 1984), Back to the Future (Robert Zemeckis, 1985) and Forget Me Not (Chris Columbus, 1990). These are works marked by a restorative discourse, in which white, middle-class young people have to save the world, their neighborhood and/or their friends after a fantastic event threatens the status quo. They are also works strongly influenced by the neoliberalism of the Reagan years, where the broken family, the figure of the “Other” and the inefficiency of the authorities are what put the individual at risk in the first place.
After a decline in its popularity at the end of the 1990s, the subgenre gained momentum in the 2010s, with a series of nostalgic works from the 1980s, such as Super 8 (J.J. Abrams, 2011), Stranger Things (Duffer Brothers, 2016), It – Chapter 1 (Andy Muschietti, 2017) and Bumblebee (Travis Knight, 2018). Angus McFadzean, the researcher who first proposed a categorization and nomenclature of the subgenre, calls this return a “reflexive cycle” of suburban fantastic (2017; 2019)
One of the most interesting works in this most recent cycle is the Chucky series (Don Mancini, 2021-), a continuation of the Child’s Play franchise. Usually read as one of the most famous and influential slashers of the 1980s, the franchise embraces suburban fantastic in its new series, in an atmosphere reminiscent of a more satirical and anarchic version of Stranger Things. Despite appearing to be a “change of genre”, the series actually highlights a less discussed facet of the franchise (more specifically its initial trilogy) – that Killer Toy emerged as a hybrid between suburban fantastic and slasher, by centering its narrative on the most important archetype of the subgenre: the wronged boy.
This is the focus of this work, which begins by categorizing this archetypal figure, discussing its main characteristics and its relevance to suburban fantastic as a subgenre. Secondly, a parallel is drawn between the wronged boy and the final girl, a classic slasher archetype, demonstrating their similarities and equivalences within the Reaganist conjuncture. Finally, the article delves into the figure of Andy – the hero of the Child’s Play trilogy – to show how the choice of protagonist ended up making one of the most famous slashers of the 1980s a typical work of suburban fantastic.
The Wronged boy
Like the western ( DE BIASIO, 2015 ), suburban fantastic is a (sub)genre[1] marked by the whiteness and androcentrism (focus on the male perspective) of its narratives ( McFADZEAN, 2019 ). The epitome of this, of course, lies in the figure of its protagonist – almost always a white middle-class boy[2] – who will demonstrate his heroism by saving his friends/family through acts of courage, agility and intelligence. Androcentrism will be responsible for the main syntactic construction of the subgenre: the melodrama of the male hero ( Gleedhill, 1987 ; Williams, 1998 apud McFadzean, 2019). As McFadzean explains, the construction of the protagonist in the main works of suburban fantastic from the 1980s/1990s is based on male characters who have difficulty expressing their emotions or being honest about their feelings (2019, p.15) and who use action as an escape valve to resolve their interpersonal conflicts. Elliott, the protagonist of E.T., for example, only manages to make peace with the issue of his mother’s divorce after an adventure that involves saving an alien from being kidnapped by the government. Marty McFly, from Back to the Future, needs to go back in time to teach his father how to fight in order to build a “healthier” family relationship.
Like the western this construction alludes directly to the monomyth of the American hero described by Lawrence and Jewett, which is based on an understanding that institutions/authorities are unable to protect their citizens:
A community in a harmonious paradise is threatened by evil: normal institutions fail to contain the threat. An altruistic hero emerges to renounce temptations and implement his redemptive task. Aided by fate, his decisive victory restores the community to its paradisiacal condition. Then the hero returns to obscurity. ( Lawrence & Jewett, 1977 , p.215)
As is evident, is a structure that superlativizes the individual (and consequently gives him heroic status) while presenting a pessimistic view of democratic institutions and their public responsibilities. In other words, if the government wasn’t “heartless”, Elliott wouldn’t need to save the alien, just as if the police forces were competent, Billy Peltzer wouldn’t need to deal with the Gremlins infestation on his own. This individual-centered perspective directly refers to the acclamation of the values of rugged individualism, derived from the perspective of American exceptionalism .[4]
Rugged individualism was an idea coined in 1922 by Herbert Hoover (who would go on to become president of the country) under the name of “American Individualism”. It is a concept that is presented as a characteristic of the individual national of that country that would set it apart from the rest of the world, and would justify the lack of certain social policies (especially when compared to certain European democracies). In his 1922 manifesto, Hoover defined that
[American individualism] differs from all others in that it embraces great ideals: that while we have built our society on the achievement of the individual, we must safeguard for each individual an equal opportunity to assume that position in the community to which his intelligence, character, ability and ambition entitle him; that we have kept the social solution free from frozen class layers; that we must stimulate each individual’s striving for achievement; that, through a growing sense of responsibility and understanding, we must assist him in this achievement; while he, in turn, must face the wheel of competition. ( HOOVER, 1922 , p.3)
According to the belief in rugged individualism, the social strength of each citizen of the United States would be driven by the intrinsic stimulus of each individual to develop what is in their heart and mind. In other words, its citizens would be fitter than the inhabitants of other countries because they wouldn’t need external interference (i.e. public and social policies) to “flourish”. Not surprisingly, the emblematic figure of the country would be the Cowboys – men who throw themselves into the lawless (i.e. stateless) frontiers, overcoming the difficulties of the territory without blinking an eye. In addition to being colonizing, this perspective is an extremely romantic misreading of the period of the March to the West. As Stephanie Coontz explains in The Way We Never Were (2000), this was one of the greatest periods of government and intra-community assistance the United States has ever had. A time of public subsidies, land cession, railroad construction, military protection, as well as support provided by associations and churches ( HEIMAN, 2015, p.31 ).
Beyond the truth of the facts, this romantic perspective ended up consolidating the mythical Cowboy of the western genre as this figure who “turns his back on society, but keeps his morals intact and intact” (LAWRENCE apud GREGORY, 1972 , p.4). A man who is needed when the state (in the form of officers and sheriffs) is unable to deal with crime. However, he is also a man who, at the end of the plot, leaves civilization (usually in the direction of the sunset), realizing that his “rugged predicaments” will not be accepted by the very society he defended. A hero who suffers the injustices of a hypocritical society: one that needs him, but doesn’t recognize him. It’s a very similar premise to that of the hero of suburban fantastic, although with one crucial difference: social assimilation at the end of the plot. In other words, while Cowboy leaves, the wronged boy reconciles with his family and the government.
Looking at the heroic nature of this character, Eric Lars Olson wrote his thesis on the “great expectations” placed on the protagonists of E.T. – The Extraterrestrial, The Goonies and Stand by Me, which gave them the mythical role of “heroes” (2011). These expectations are based on the idea that in these films, society places responsibility on young people (and, consequently, the new generation) to solve problems that the authorities are unable to. Olson emphasizes how these values are linked to the discourses propagated by Ronald Reagan[6] , whose anti-state rhetoric relied on the individual and competition for the country’s economic growth and the maintenance of the spirit of the “American Dream“.
Ashley Carranza explains that the protagonists of suburban fantastic go through forced processes of maturation, due to the need to ensure the preservation of their daily lives – put at risk by a disruptive event that everyone around them is unable to resolve. To this end, she imports the theory of self-determination from psychology, which according to her
describes the psychological method by which a person becomes dependent on themselves and allows internal impulses to focus on the decision-making process. Becoming self-sufficient is a natural part of life, but there are many instances in which this independence is guaranteed at an early age. This early rite is not because the child is ready or deserving, but is the result of their parents being unable to provide the stability expected of them. (…) explains the rapid maturation of the characters, as well as the willingness to form strong bonds, creating the collective of child protagonists. These children inadvertently embrace self-determination as a way of defending themselves against the lack of protection from their parents (…) ( CARRANZA in WETMORE, 2018 , p.15) (Author’s translation).
It’s John Hughes, known for directing young coming-of-age films such as Breakfast Club (1985), who perhaps best sums up the feeling of isolation of the protagonist of the fantastic suburban drama. I’m talking about Alex’s monologue, the protagonist of Home Alone 3 (Raja Gosnell, 1997), whose script Hughes wrote. The film, which has no connection with the first two films, tells the story of a boy who accidentally wins a remote control car that was used as a hiding place for a computer chip containing the secrets of the US government. Unaware of this fact, Alex has to defend his home from international smugglers who are trying to recover the chip. Discredited by his parents and the police after reporting what was going on, Alex prepares for the confrontation with a revealing speech
“They’re going to come after me tomorrow. No one will listen to me. Not my parents, not my brothers. Not the police, not the air force. No one. So… What am I going to do? If you think I should run, you’re wrong. If you think I should fight, you’re right. They’ll understand when I’m finished. They’ll understand that I was telling the truth. I’m not going to cry, be scared or sad. They’re grown up, they’re criminals, but this is my neighborhood. This is my home. And no matter how old they are, how big they are, they can’t beat me here. They can’t beat me at home. (Alex in Home Alone 3, 1997)
As is evident from his speech, Alex’s physical solution (in this case, creating traps to defend his home) only comes about because – first – he is discredited by society. In the play, the young man is treated as a liar by his mother, his brothers and the police. Similar treatment to that received by Elliott from E.T., Billy Peltzer from Gremlins and Charley Brewster from Fright Night (Tom Holland, 1985)[8] . It is precisely because society ignores the words and reports of these young characters that they are being attacked by monsters, vampires or spies, that they can only act (i.e. be heroes). This is precisely the “injustice” that the wronged boy goes through – he has to prove that he has always been right, while saving the lives of those who disqualify him. It is only at the end of the plot that he becomes socially validated as a man (remembering the macho and conservative bias of these constructions) – someone who does what has to be done, even if alone.
This social validation, in turn, ties in directly with Rachel Heiman’s view that there is a feeling in the American suburban middle class called “rugged entitlement“. According to the author, this is the abstract feeling that this middle class has of “deserving” certain privileges evoked by neoliberal society, while at the same time contradictorily opposing the rights guaranteed by the state (2015). In suburban fantastic, it is possible to say that this feeling is transposed into an idea of a “robust right” to social recognition ( LAURIA, 2022 ). In other words, these are narratives in which young people believe they have an innate right to be honored by society, regardless of their immaturity or the absurdity of their claims, while at the same time contradictorily exposing the supposed inefficiency of these claims.
This, however, makes the “wronged boy” a morally complex archetype, to say the least. After all, these are works that mix the importance of listening to the sensitivities of these young people with the need to firmly believe their outlandish accounts (“E.T.s exist”, “My neighbor is a vampire”, “I’m a time traveler”). A very didactic example of the contradictions that accompany this archetype is in the construction of Davey, the protagonist of Cloak and Dagger (Richard Fraklin, 1984) – played by Heny Thomas, E.T.’s Elliott.
In the movie, Davey is a boy who witnesses the murder of an FBI agent. However, because of his age, he is completely discredited by both the police and his father, who goes so far as to say:
“When I was a child, I was just like you. I wanted to be a hero. That’s why I joined the air force. But heroes don’t just shoot bad guys. They do boring things. They put food on the table, they fix bicycles. You’ll understand when you’re a bit older.” (Hal Osborne in “Heroes Have No Age“)
The boy’s allegations are treated as fantasies to escape reality, justified by the trauma the boy is supposedly suffering from having lost his mother. It’s worth noting that the film makes it clear that the father is also hurt by the mourning process, inferring that he is reflecting his own pain on his son. In this sense, the narrative implies that the father has less emotional maturity than Dave, since it is he who presents a clouded view of reality (by not taking into account his son’s true account of the murder). This injustice, in turn, means that Davey has to act alone to solve the crime. He then creates an imaginary friend – the spy Jack Flack (played by Dabney Coleman, the same actor who plays his father) – in a clear parental substitution, which becomes even more explicit when he says to Dave “If we’re going to be heroes – no father, no cops”. As in a typical work of suburban fantastic – Dave was right all along, leaving his father to regret not having believed in his son (Figure 1). In the final action sequence, the film throws out the whole idea that “heroes don’t just shoot bad guys” – and sets Davey’s father up to save him from armed thugs. The boy, instead of feeling desolate for having almost died because of this discredit, feels happy that his father and the authorities have finally validated him socially.
[1] A term used to encompass both genre and subgenre.
[2] Based on a survey of more than 120 films analyzed by the author in partnership with researcher Angus McFadzean, between the works of 1982 and 2000, around 85% are starring male characters. More than 95% were made up of Caucasian characters.
[4] A variant of the doctrine of manifest destiny. An expression commonly linked to Alexis de Tocqueville, who is said to have been the first to write about this phenomenon. American exceptionalism is linked to the belief that the United States and its inhabitants are essentially different from all other peoples and therefore have a divine mission to transform the world.
[6] Republican President from 1981-1989. Commonly considered the most influential post-war US president, he was known for his neoliberal, conservative, anti-intellectualist and anti-state rhetoric. He was a great advocate of the idea that the real United States was in the suburbs and small towns.
[8] Obviously, each narrative goes through a different process in terms of how long this discrediting lasts. While Eliott comes to rely on his brothers and mother throughout the narrative, Charley can only rely on vampire hunter Peter Vincent until the end. Alex, however, is an even more hyperbolic case, as his isolation is practically total.
Figure 1: “Why didn’t I believe him?”. Davey’s father’s lament in Cloak and Dagger is an example of the realization of the archetype of the wronged boy: when family members and authorities discover that they should have taken the protagonist’s story into account. Source: Frame from the movie.
Davey, Eliott, Billy Peltzer… All middle-class white kids, all put in danger by the inefficiency or corruption of those around them. When they feel wronged, however, they start from a belief in themselves (the basis of rugged individualism and a kind of mantra of Reaganist neoliberalism) and resort to action. In the end, these narratives prove that they were right all along and reward them with the “robust right” to social recognition. However, male characters were not the only “wronged” ones featured in Hollywood cinema in the 1980s. The next topic presents the similarities and differences between the wronged boy and another classic archetype of 1980s cinema: the Final Girl.
Approximations between Suburban fantastic and Slasher: Wronged boy as a male version of the Final Girl
At first glance, the idea of comparing a subgenre marked by youthful adventures with another full of blood and nudity may seem strange. This is partly due to the production model associated with these films and the target audience they sought. While slasher films, from the outset, were produced mainly by independent filmmakers with distributors in mind who wanted to reach a teenage audience eager for violence and sex ( NOWELL, 2010 ), suburban fantastic was marked by its connection with the so-called “family films”, closely linked at first to Amblin, Steven Spielberg’s production company (McFADZEAN, 2019).
However, these subgenres are closely related to their origins in suburban Gothic. Bernice Murphy in The Suburban Gothic in American Popular Culture (2009) defines the subgenre as works that “raise suspicions that in the most ordinary neighborhoods, homes and families, no matter how quiet they seem, are only one event away from a dramatic incident” ( 2009 , p.3). She explains that the subgenre, which emerged in literature, comes from the American tradition of dramatizing the anxieties linked to the suburban lifestyle (2019). Most of these anxieties are corroborated by slasher and suburban fantastic: the inefficiency of the authorities, the broken family, children and young people in danger, distrust of neighbors, paranoia about exogenous figures… The main difference is that, while Gothic bases its main concerns on issues relating to suburban dwellers themselves, Slasher and Suburban fantastic use elements and tropes from the Unusual to point their main concerns at what comes from outside.
In addition to their common origin, both slasher and suburban fantastic start from the same narrative premise: the restoration of the status quo through physical action, after “normality” is destabilized by an extraordinary external element – be it time travel or a zombie in a field hockey mask. These are also works that operate on what is known as “recreational horror” ( PINEDO, 1997 ) – only the intensity differs. However, those who summarize slashers as “more violent” films and suburban fantastic as “more childish” are mistaken. The 1980s and 1990s were marked by a series of films that differed profoundly in their tone: while a slasher like Friday the 13th – Part 6: (Tom McLoughlin, 1986) is full of references and slapstick humor[1] , the suburbanist work Watchers (John Hess, 1988) has more graphic deaths and a more serious tone.
The most interesting similarity, however, is the proximity between the archetypal protagonist of each of these subgenres: the wronged boy and the final girl. I’m talking specifically about the structural and narrative role of the protagonists in these works: restorative figures who symbolically become “men” in the process. The final girl does so through a transformation from a passive to an active figure, as discussed by Carol Clover’s feminist critique (2015), and the wronged boy by fulfilling the expectations of the society in which he is inserted, believing in his individual capacities (OLSON, 2011).
The final girl is perhaps the most famous archetype in horror cinema, conceptualized by Carol Clover in 1992 to designate the last survivor of slasher films: usually a young woman with no interest in casual sex, drugs or drink (2015, p.48). These are characters who are persecuted and terrorized by the villain, and who undergo an act of transformation during the course of the film, where they come out of “passivity” to start fighting to ensure their survival, until they reach the final clash with the serial killer. In other words, she is not saved as a “Damsel in Distress”, but acquires “masculine predicaments” to become her own savior. It is this dramatic arc that Carol Clover points out is symbolically a transformation of the character into a man. According to her:
If the experience of childhood/youth can be – perhaps ideally – performed in a feminine way, the rupture requires the assumption of the phallus. The disaffected child is female; the adult or autonomous subject is male, so the passage from childhood/youth to adulthood involves the transition from feminine to masculine ( CLOVER, 2015 , p.50).
As Clover points out, this transformation from a passive figure to an active figure also refers to the maturing of a child into a man. This, in turn, is precisely the main syntactic structure of suburban fantastic. In the words of Angus McFadzean, the subgenre is based on the melodrama of the male hero: a character who cannot express his emotions except through action, and whose conclusion is the “triumph of masculine identity” (2019, p.15). From this perspective, it can be said that both the wronged boy and the final girl are driven to become heroes in order to respond to problematic aspects of a society whose authority figures are unable to resolve. This action, then, is what drives them to “become men” in this process, highlighting the masculinist and androcentric culture in which these subgenres have been consolidated. It is worth noting that these issues are linked to some of the main apprehensions and anxieties of the Reagan period: the “masculinization” of the United States. As explained by Suzan Jeffords, there was a dialectical construction of two fundamental categories: the “soft bodies” that invariably belonged to women and/or non-white people and the “hard bodies” that, like Reagan, were male and white – and therefore possessed of strength, work, determination, loyalty and courage ( 1994, p.24-25). In this reading, both the final girl and the wronged boy symbolized the need of the new generations (and therefore of the United States) to “harden their bodies”. The difference, of course, is in the way this comes about, highlighting the gender imbalance of its protagonists: the women needing to survive, while the boys just need to believe in themselves. What’s more, while Eliott receives his “robust right” to recognition at the end of the plot, Laurie Strode from Halloween (John Carpenter, 1978) is declared insane in the second film of the franchise.
But how much do these issues merge in the same movie? This is the focus of the following topics, which look at the Child’s Play trilogy and the protagonist Andy Barclay. Through an analysis of the films, it is shown how the existence of the “wronged boy” is a semantic and syntactic element strong enough to make suburban fantastic hybridize with another (sub)genre, highlighting the strength and centrality of the archetype.
The Killer Toy Franchise
The first film in the Child’s Play franchise was released in 1988, at a time when the slasher subgenre was already wearing thin. Even so, it was a considerable box-office success and achieved great popularity over the years. It can be assumed that part of the public’s attention came from the films’ unusual proposal: to feature a doll as a great killer, operating on top of the sinister representation that children’s culture usually has in horror films ( LENNARD, 2012 , p.133) – a field relatively little explored by the slasher.
Chucky ended up becoming one of the last great icons of the first slasher cycle ( PETRIDIS, 2019 ), breathing new life into a subgenre that was already sinking from the countless continuations of its main franchises. Just to give you an idea, that same year saw the release of Nightmare on Elm Street: The Dream Master (Renny Harlin, 1988), Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers (Dwight H. Little, 1988) and Friday the 13th – Part 7: (John Carl Buechler, 1988).
The centrality of the doll ended up making Child’s Play up the final girl as the main protagonist of the original trilogy, an unusual choice for slashers of the time. In its place was the use of the wronged boy, Andy Barclay (figure 2), whose existence interferes with the very syntactic and generic nature of the work (which becomes a hybrid between slasher and suburban fantastic), as discussed in the next section.
[1] One death that is always remembered and exemplifies the tone of the movie is the one in which Jason sinks a character’s face into a log, only to leave a little “Smile” face embedded in the wood.
Figure 2: Andy Barclay and Chucky. Source: Frame from Child’s Play.
First, however, it’s important to point out that the franchise has gone through generic variations over the years, even giving up the wronged boy in favor of a final girl for a period. While the first film blended slasher with suburban fantastic in a very balanced way (including a final girl as co-protagonist), the second, on the other hand, embraced the elements of suburbanism more. Child’s Play 3 is, arguably, a work that belongs almost entirely to suburban fantastic, with very liminal aspects of slasher.
The sequels, The Bride of Chucky (Ronny Yu, 1998) and The Son of Chucky (Don Mancini, 2004) represented a change in tone for the franchise, and did not continue Andy Barclay’s saga, giving up on suburban fantastic as a whole. Neither are they slashers (only in a limited way), focusing on a gothic mood centered on Chucky’s family relationships. Years later, The Curse of Chucky (Don Mancini, 2013) and The Cult of Chucky (Don Mancini, 2017) once again embraced the slasher, featuring the final girl, Nica, as the protagonist. More recently, both the requel[1] Child’s Play (Lars Klevberg, 2019) and the series (which continues the original franchise) Chucky (Don Mancini, 2021-) once again embrace suburban fantastic with elements of slasher (in the case of the former) and gothic humor (in the case of the latter).
Andy Barclay: Wronged Boy or Final Boy?
Child’s Play was directed by Tom Holland, screenwriter of aforementioned Cloak and Dagger and screenwriter/director of Fright Night. The movie begins with the death of its antagonist, Charles Lee Ray, shot during a police chase. In his last moments of life, Ray uses magic to transfer his soul into a Good Guys doll. After this foreshadowing, we are introduced to the two protagonists: Karen and her son Andy. The two live in an apartment in Chicago, and it is explained that Karen, a widow, has financial difficulties looking after her son on her own. As in E.T., the absence of father figures is a constant in suburban fantastic (OLSON, 2011; McFADZEAN, 2019).
It is precisely Karen’s financial difficulties that prevent her from giving Andy the Christmas present he wants: the Good Guys doll. Feeling bad about not being able to fulfill her son’s dream, Karen buys a stolen doll sold by a homeless person. Of course, it’s the very doll owned by Charles Lee Ray. In this respect, Chil’s Play draws parallels with other fantastic suburban narratives, such as Fright Night, Honey, I Shrunk the Kids (Joe Johnston, 1989) and Home Alone, where the parents are primarily responsible for putting the child in danger (LAURIA, 2022, p.294).
By bringing the doll home, the movie consolidates the two main archetypes of its subgenres. First, it develops the wronged boy, when Andy discovers that the doll is alive, even though his mother and the authorities doubt his claims. Then he develops the final girl, as Chucky needs to kill Karen to prevent her from stopping him from carrying out a ritual to take her son’s soul. Screenwriter Don Mancini explains that the original script created doubts about Andy’s innocence. The decision to make it clear from the start was a studio decision, as they realized that it would be more interesting for marketing if things were “black and white”, in Mancini’s words[2] . Although there’s no way of proving the influence, it’s notable that this decision is essential for the film to follow the same structure as The Fright Night, establishing Andy’s heroism (and wrongdoing) right from the start.
In this respect, it’s interesting to note the boy’s ambiguous relationship with Chucky in the first half of the film: Andy even expresses that the doll is the only one who believes in him, a construction similar to that of Elliot and the alien in E.T. – The Extraterrestrial. In this respect, Hans Staats points out how Chucky becomes a representation of how late capitalism (after all, the doll is a consumer object) exploits “broken” families with the promise of filling family gaps (2012 , p.61). It’s worth noting, however, that as is typical of suburban fantastic, the wronged boy is never in any real danger, with Chucky even needing Andy’s body preserved for the ritual.
Other tropes, however, suffer variations due to the hybrid generic nature of the narrative. The most striking of these is the fact that the final girl is a mother, rather than a “virginal” teenager. Another significant change that hybridization with suburban fantastic brings is its group of survivors. In contrast to classic slasher texts, in which, in the end, there is only the final girl, here, mother and son survive. But not only them: the survival of policeman Mike Norris is particularly interesting, since in horror films the authorities don’t usually survive. In Child’s Play, however, Norris also tangentially plays[3] a role typical of suburban fantastic: that of mentor, a male figure who takes the place of the protagonist’s father (LAURIA, 2022, p.290). Examples of this archetype are Centauri, from The Last Starfighter (Nick Castle, 1984), Dr. Brown, from Back to the Future, Peter Vincent, from Fright Night and Dr. Matthewson, from The Manhattan Project (Marshall Brickman, 1986). In this sense, their preservation at the end of the plot stems precisely from the need to rebuild, at least symbolically, the nuclear family (figure 3). This reconstruction, of course, only comes after Norris and Karen validate Andy, demonstrating that some of the killings could have been avoided if they had listened to the boy from the start.
[1] Legacy sequel or spiritual continuation. A mix of reboot/sequel/spin-off. In this case, the film completely abandons the Chucky narrative, but creates a robotic parallel centered on the same world.
[2] Available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3-uJq8zfAxI Accessed on 28/03/2024
[3] Norris isn’t a classic mentor in the sense of “teaching” the boy, but he does have a place in the plot defending him from Chucky.
Figure 3: Mike Norris, Andy and Karen – Symbolically the nuclear family is completed at the end of Killer Toy. Source: Frame from the movie.
Norris’ character also adds a layer of complexity to the archetypes of the wronged boy and the final girl. If in a standard plot of suburban fantastic it would be expected that Andy would be discredited by the end of the narrative, here this is resolved halfway through the film, when his mother comes to believe in him. Narratively, this is essential for her to play her role as the final girl, as Karen needs to understand the risk she is taking with the doll. Thus, in the second half of the movie, it is she who must convince Mike Norris that his son has been wrongly accused of the crimes committed by Chucky. In other words, narratively, she becomes a wronged girl who suffers from the usurpation of her power as an adult (LENNARD, 2012, p. 134) because she is unable to protect her son or even make herself understood by the authorities (figure 4). Although this lack of trust in the authorities is expected in the construction of the typical slasher plot (CLOVER, 2015, p. 146), it is less common for the authorities to be somehow convinced in the end and recognize the injustice they have done to the protagonist.
Figure 4: Two moments from Child’s Play. In the first, Andy is discredited by Karen. In the second, she is discredited by Mike Norris. Source: Frames from the movie.
In Child’s Play 2, the film gives up the character of Karen (who goes to a mental institution) and focuses its narrative on Andy, who moves into a foster home – returning to the discrepancy in the treatment of characters according to gender. This scenario allows the film to repeat Andy’s journey as a wronged boy, as once again he is not heard by his (now adoptive) parents in his complaints about Chucky. Unlike in the first film, however, the parents become increasingly suspicious of the boy, gaining a certain antagonism in the work and being killed by the doll.
Occupying the role of the most sympathetic figure is Kyle, Andy’s adopted sister, who displays some classic final girl characteristics, such as being a teenager with a unisex name and a more “childish” demeanor (CLOVER, 2015, p. 40). However, Kyle is rebellious and smokes cigarettes, with a less “puritanical” attitude. Furthermore, she is hardly persecuted during the movie, making it difficult to fit her in as a “classic final girl”. The only time she is threatened by Chucky, her life is not at risk, as she is forced to take him to Andy’s whereabouts so that the body swap can take place. Kyle could even be considered a second wronged girl, since she is accused of some of the actions committed by the doll, but she is never “recognized”, since with the death of her adoptive parents, she doesn’t have to convince anyone of the doll’s real intentions. Her main role within the narrative, however, is precisely to provide the “robust right” to Andy’s recognition, since she even doubts the boy during the plot (figure 5) and then admits that he was right all along. At the end of Child’s Play 2, she joins her brother to help him defeat Chucky, forming a CCP (Collective of Child Protagonists) – a typical element of suburban fantastic (LAURIA, 2022). In this sense, the parallel with E.T. is quite easy to draw, since the siblings are the first to believe in Elliott and help him on his journey
Figure 5: Andy accuses Kyle of not believing in him – realizing his role as the Wronged boy in Killer Toy 2. Source: Frame from the film.
In Child’s Play 3 Andy finds himself separated from both his biological mother and his adopted sister, trapped in a military school with virtually no other female figure to turn to (just his romantic interest, Da Silva). Not surprisingly, the third film in the franchise is the one that embraces suburban fantastic the most, not only giving up the final girl, but also failing to focus on the “chase” characters[1] . It’s striking, for example, that none of the young characters are in any real danger from the doll, which turns its murders on the school’s authoritarian figures. Screenwriter Don Mancini explains that Chucky’s “less threatening” behavior was intentional, as the doll was already adored by horror fans as an anti-hero who took revenge on the authorities[2] . The only death of a young man caused by Chucky occurs indirectly, with Whitehurst sacrificing himself by jumping on a grenade to save his friends.
Despite placing Andy in the role of “mentor” to a new character (the young Tyler), the protagonist continues to reverberate the archetype of the wronged boy, as he is invalidated by the school authorities and, at first, even by his friends (Figure 6). In this sense, the character Da Silva not only plays the romantic role, but also ensures his “robust right” to recognition by kissing him at the end of the film – just before he is arrested for crimes he didn’t commit. As in E.T., Back to the Future and The Goonies, the kiss codifies sexual maturation, showing that the character can now be validated as an adult, and is an important part of the melodramatic arc of suburban fantastic (McFadzean, 2019, p.57).
[1] It’s worth noting that the chase is an important part of the slasher, to the point that Vera Dika (1987) even called them “Stalker Films”.
[2] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JtZZ2uSz-A8 Accessed on 04/04/2024
ToFigure 6: Whitehurst (right) disbelieves Andy (left) when he talks about Chucky in Killer Doll 3. Source: Frame from the movie.
Developments and considerations
As this article has shown, the wronged boy is a central figure in suburban fantastic, to the extent that his character is profoundly important for the generic definition of the subgenre. It was also shown that there are profound similarities between the archetypes of the wronged boy and the final girl, as well as reflecting on how both are complementary figures in the Reaganist period. As the main object of analysis, the article chose the figure of Andy Barclay as a wronged boy who starred in one of the most famous slasher film franchises, and discussed how this choice led to an interesting hybridity with suburban fantastic. It’s worth noting, however, that Child’s Play isn’t the only film with slasher elements that relies on the figure of the wronged boy and the hybridism with suburban fantastic. Works such as Phantasm (Don Coscarelli, 1979) and Silver Bullet (Daniel Attias, 1985) already used the archetype in plots involving supernatural serial killers. After Killer Toy, other films from the 1990s invested in these constructions, such as It (Tommy Lee Wallace, 1990), The People Under the Stairs (Wes Craven, 1991), Brainscan (John Flyn, 1994), Ice Cream Man (Paul Norman, 1995) and Evolver (Mark Rosman, 1995).
Just as important as this historical look, however, is a look at contemporary productions. With the return of nostalgic works from the 1980s, works that discuss the white, male characterization of the wronged boy are increasingly common, not infrequently mixing his attributes with the equally controversial figure of the final girl. Films such as Happy Death Day 2 (Christopher Landon, 2018) and Totally Killer (Nahnatchka Khan, 2023) feature wronged girls in time-travel narratives where the protagonists are not the target of their killers’ pursuit, as in classic slashers. The Fear Street trilogy (Leigh Janiak, 2021), on the other hand, draws obvious parallels between the archetypes of the wronged girl and the final girl, placing a black, sapphic character at the center of the plot, a rarity in both subgenres. Even Stranger Things, the main product of the reflective cycle of contemporary suburban fantastic, brings typical slasher elements in its 4th Season – focusing on the narrative arc of the wronged girl Max.
Just like the final girl, the wronged boy is an archetype constructed within a conservative context that proposed that “becoming a man”, or in Jeffords’ words, a “hard body” (1994), was necessary in order to be validated by the surrounding society. However, these characteristics should not be seen as inherent to these archetypes or subgenres. Just as the Child’s Play franchise already experimented in the 1980s and 1990s, more recent narratives expand the possibilities that these texts and these characters can have – giving way to young people of more diverse genders, sexualities and ethnicities, and with more complex constructions that escape already trivialized tropes. In this sense, recognizing these categories and proposing a critical reading of them is an important step towards understanding their potential.
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