Scream 2 (1997) – First of all, he wasn’t gutted; I made that part up… his throat was slashed

Full disclosure? Scream 2 didn’t speak to 16-year-old Jaclynn in the same way as the original, therefore these musings are contemporary impressions of the film. My jaded 16-year-old self wasn’t nearly as impressed by Craven throwing Sarah Michelle Gellar off a roof. I was so worldly by that point, slashers were like baby stuff. Maybe that attitude was what freaked my parents out, compounding their distress at the fact that I had acquired a taste for violent films.

As a result of their discomfort, I wasn’t allowed to watch horror films at home, nor was I allowed to see them in theatre. I saw Scream 2 on video a year after its release, in a friend’s basement, when there were NO ADULTS HOME! Every parent’s nightmare; unsupervised consumption of mindless, corrupting violence! Is my sarcasm overly callous? Are parents wrong to fear violent media? Interestingly enough, Scream 2 has some unsubtle things to say on that very subject.

There isn’t much narrative shift from the original Scream to its sequel; the meta-commentary on film making and Sidney’s empowerment remains in the foreground throughout Scream 2. These facets remain but their continued thematic presence doesn’t make the film anything to write home about. I get the sense Craven is no longer making much effort to innovate through them. The references are amusing but their insights are not particularly compelling, just as Sidney’s empowerment is more pronounced but doesn’t speak to the same directorial apology as in the original Scream. The second instalment is interesting because it addresses something very, very different. We aren’t getting any “sorrys” in this film. In fact, Scream 2 functions as the inverse of an apology. If the original’s intention was to offer a new beginning for women in horror, then this film is a giant “suck it” gesture in the face of the other critical dialogue that plagues the horror genre; violence in media and its impact on reality. Let’s consider Scream 2 a meditation on an entirely different kind of agency: Personal culpability and the impact cultural environment has on individual action.

As Randy Meeks explains: Sequels must be gorier, more elaborate and the body count higher in order for them to make an impact. This assertion presents an interesting dilemma to the filmmakers. The first Scream was accused of inspiring copycat crimes and inducing violent acts. What’s a horror franchise to do in the face of such accusations? If you’re the creative forces behind the Scream films, apparently you satirize the moral panic. I read Scream 2 as, among other things, a thinly veiled “fuck you” to every politician, critic and media pundit to ever make the claim that violence in films causes violent behaviour and social decay in reality. It’s a gory rebuttal to this “magic bullet” type argument which over-simplifies and reduces a complicated set of social factors to sound bites. Why do seemingly normal kids do horrible things? The movies! Gangster rap! Scream 2 is a pointed “Hell no!” to the accusation that media breeds real-life monsters.

Some trivia: Scream 2’s ending was leaked to the Internet prior to completion of filming. This led to a serious overhaul of the plot and a re-write that altered both the killers’ identities and motives. In the original ending, the motivation was straight forward fame seeking.

The choice of a for-the-glory motive is an obvious criticism of the voracious consumption of real death by the public through news coverage. In American culture, the sensationalized approach the news media takes to non-fictional violence is typified by the maxim “if it bleeds, it leads”. This grisly sentiment has become particularly prevalent in the last 20 years and that kind of approach to reporting is personified by Gail Weathers through the series. Scream 2 hangs on to this criticism but adds a second dimension in the re-written ending.

Mickey (Killer Number One) offers a media circus as his motivation for the murders. In his talking-when-he-should-be-killing monologue (who doesn’t love an expository villain a-la-James-Bond?), Mickey explains his expectation that all the conservative pundits and politicians will rush to his defence, pleased as punch to support him as innocent by virtue of violent movies. Our killer posits he will be perceived as a victim of directors (like Craven, get it?), who bear social responsibility for his crimes because of the content of the media they produce.

Mickey seems to only half-believe this himself. He clearly states his main motivation is the desire to test the feasibility of an environment-trumps-personal-agency defence and the fame his actions will garner him. Killer Number One is excited by the prospect that his case will be a landmark and confident there will be people eager to believe the horror movies he consumed robbed him of his ability to distinguish right from wrong. By establishing Mickey as madman AND cynic, the film implicates as enablers those who would believe the claim that he is less responsible for his actions due to violent fiction.

But we’re not done yet, the antagonist committing mass murder with the intention of getting caught and then acquitted in a media frenzy induced by a movies-made-me-do-it defence is not enough of a middle-finger to its critics for this sequel. Sure, it’s a painfully literal illustration (this whole sequence occurs in a goddamn theatre. Subtle right?) and condemnation, but it’s not sufficient. To further discredit the idea that media shares second hand culpability, Mrs. Loomis (Killer Number Two) is introduced into the dialogue. Equally crazy but more logically motivated by revenge, Mrs. Loomis functions as judge, jury and executioner. She rejects Mickey’s defence, discounts his plan and then definitively opines only an idiot would buy his motive. To quote her directly: “Mickey was a good boy but my God? That whole ‘blame the movies’ motive? Did you buy that for one second? Poor boy was completely out of his mind.” Here the conclusion is spelled out for us in block letters: Even homicidal crazy people think the theory that fictional violence is a central cause of real life violent acts is… well, crazy. Scream 2 offers a final rebuttal in the form of Mrs. Loomis shooting Mickey. It’s hard not to read that plot twist as Craven/Williamson’s cinematic version of “OH SHUT UP!”

Scream 2 addresses a difficult question with brutal finality. It leaves no doubt in my mind about the filmmakers’ opinions on the pop-psychology/tabula rasa idea that media, like horror films, somehow imprints violence on malleable minds. Whether or not they are correct in the assertion that: it is false and cynical to attempt to shift blame from personal agency to particular medium of artistic expression, is a topic for a blog of a different colour. For our purposes, Scream 2 gives us its best shot at an argument against the premise that violent movies create psychos. They just make psychos more creative, if Billy Loomis is to be believed.