Nazis, Fleshmasks, and Shock Treatment: AHS Teaches Us a Lesson

     American Horror Story has done it again.

     You know, when this second season started, it's a safe bet to say I was excited yet unsure.  Though titled "American Horror Story" the show seemed to me to be simply a horror story set in America.  The inclusion of the Black Dhalia and the Hollywood tours and Halloween were sort of tributes to Uncle Sam, but nothing really concrete.  Then again, maybe I didn't look at the show back then quite like I'm looking at it now.  The point is that I think AHS has definitively earned its self-appointed descriptor in the second season.

Spoilers will abound, so be careful when proceeding!


     Before moving on to my more adored talking points, we'll look first at some basic stuff - specifically, Bloody Face.  What the fuck kind of name is "Bloody Face?"  That name does NOT inspire fear.  The notion of a man wearing human skin, however, is something that I, as an American, find particularly terrifying, with real life killers like Ed Gein serving as the inspiration for movies like Psycho and the Texas Chainsaw Massacre (yes, I count Psycho as American - sue me!).  The attribution of the name "Bloody Face" falls into a particular category of fear - stuff of urban legend.  The kind of legend used to scare kids into complacency.  Who the hell is the boogeyman, and why the hell are we afraid of a dude whose name makes him sound like the leftovers of a sinus drip?  The name is irrelevant - you just need some words that make you question the "normality" or nature of the named and associate him with something reviled, and Bloody Face is perfectly suited to this task.  Sure, "Jack the Ripper" is way cool, but Bloody Face serves American sensibilities with it's easily identifiable wrongness, simple construction, and "urban legend" qualities.  Maybe every other country on earth can agree with these, and maybe the stuff I've said in this first paragraph isn't quintessentially American, but I promise that Americans can understand "Bloody Face" - even if, as with the horny honeymoon couple at the show's outset, the find it laughable at first.

     Next, let's talk about the setting - the asylum during the 1960's is classic.  In an era when science was earning its wings, gaining stride, it battled outdated and barbaric techniques in order to advance.  Here, under Sister Jude's watch, we see how religion treats people that, by today's standards, need more genuine assistance than beatings and solitary confinement can provide.  Sterilization as a punishment?  That's crazy - and what's really scary about this is that it's all being done in the name of good (and based on ACTUAL shit - we were arguably the first)!  And then, of course, you have the mad scientist figure, Arden - this figure reminds us that science alone does not provide a compass for morality inherently.  So in America, where we have a battle in 2012 over creationism and evolution, what does this tell us?  We're all fuckwads, capable of terrible, terrible things.  I have to say, the 1960's was the perfect setting for this season's escapades, especially as so many of the themes are applicable to our current socio-political atmosphere. 

     But now let's get a little more freaky - what else have we seen in this show that is an inextricable nod to American culture?  Freakin' aliens.  Did anyone else ever watch Unsolved Mysteries with Robert Stack?  I always caught it late at night, and I'll tell you right off the bat that those glowing lights and abduction re-enactments ensured I kept my blinds down and the covers firmly pressed to my cheeks.  It's not surprising to me that here, in the 1960's, set less than a decade after the infamous Roswell incident, we find a story about alien abductions and implantations.  It can be hard, I think, to make these aliens seem frightening - they seem to represent the classic "little green men" with large eyes and swollen skulls, which would hardly inspire even the most meager of goosebumps in the faint hearted, especially since film history has given us countless more frightening variations on the extra-terrestrial.  But the imagery here is done to perfection - it stays true to the classic tale, the bright lights, the odd hovering, the operating tables and mysterious visions, the barely-recalled incidents - AND it ties it all back into that lone operating table in Arden's lab, where the visuals are (not-so-surprisingly) reminiscent of those visions Kit recalls.  This fear of aliens, of the idea that they will get into us and change us, the show seems to say, goes beyond just "otherworldliness" but also into the realm of penetration of our intimate spaces (in the metaphorical sense!!).  The abduction of Kit, and later, Grace, is made more frightening because of the possibility that they these invaders from space are gaining access to them forcibly, without consent, performing tests on them in ways not all that different from Arden, or even Threadson, who prefers psychological means over physiological.  They get into you, and they don't get out - they leave behind traces of their interventions, things you can't quite identify or understand, but nonetheless experience.  The aliens seem to be running their own asylum.

     But this show doesn't just stop with aliens!  Two weeks ago (episode-wise), the inclusion of Anne Frank in the asylum was a bit I found a little more difficult to swallow than all the rest of this.  Sometimes, additions as such can become really, really corny, and at first, it seemed like it might.  But then we have Arden accused of being a Nazi!  The idea of Nazi obsession with the occult is fairly infamous, as is the hiring of Nazi scientists by America after the war.  When I realized what was happening, I was pretty elated - what a perfect bit of American history to include!  So now, we've got aliens, mad scientists, brutal religion, face-wearing serial killers, AND nazis - all Made in America!  As if this nod to Uncle Sam's involvement in some of the scariest shit the planet's seen wasn't enough, the Anne Frank character gets even MORE complicated when she's been diagnosed with Post-partum Depression - HELL YES.  It felt like I was reading the Yellow Wallpaper all over again as they displayed the clips of "Anne's" home life, delicately shot like a 1960's television show.  Of course, they started in on this with Lana's character - the forced subjugation of her sexuality, paired with shock therapy treatment that was so common back in the day.  Shock therapy, by the way, deserves a mention here - I feel as though that's one treatment option that everyone thinks about when they think of the scariest parts of history of American psychological treatment. Anyone who's ever picked up a copy of the Bell Jar will see just how Anne Frank and Lana Winters fit into the story of Real American Horror. 

     Just think - I didn't even mention the interracial marriage or investigate the overt homosexuality, both things that are definitely huge parts of this show, and intricately entwined with America, past and present.  So are you scared yet?  No?  Well you should be.  Because the single most horrifying thing about American Horror Story is just how close to home - and history - it actually hits.