An Incomplete and Mostly Inaccurate Pathology of Jason Voorhees on His Big Day
Ki, ki, ki, ma, ma, ma...
Nostalgia is a fun vacation I don’t save for just the weekends—it’s a remember the time when we…-fueled trip I often take. Sometimes, if I’m feeling extra fancy, I’ll even snack on a few Biscoff cookies to pretend I’m on a plane going on a real vacation (they’re literally leftover Biscoff from a plane ride because buying plane cookies on the ground seems uncouth).
Perhaps some would claim that all this “nostalgia” and reminiscing is just a way to avoid reality and those people would be CORRECT. But honestly, do you blame me? Things are quite fuck-uppeth everywhere. I’m not oblivious to reality, I just choose to take a detour sometimes. However, just like any real geographical location you might visit, nostalgia has a dark side—Recurring Past Pathologizing. This is the part of town that is outside the enclosed safety of the resort (or what the brochure would like you believe); it’s the seedy part of town where you will invariably run into a gun-wielding, toothless bear who has a headless mannequin as a part-time lover (the bear—oddly enough—named Alice, was on bath salts at the time and ripped off the mannequin’s head. Again, a detail the brochure will leave out).
Recurring Past Pathologizing is a term I am pretty sure I just made up to essentially mean the way we (mostly me) tend to overfocus on the origins of past transgressions/trauma so much to the point where we hinder ourselves from moving forward. We get stuck in a loop of identifying and acknowledging past triggers, explaining their significance to death but never really moving past them. The biggest problem with this is that unless you are hidden from all forms of contact, there is inevitably going to be something that pops up during the course of your day that will trigger something from yonder. One day you’ll be going out to the mailbox and there will be a postcard (remember those?) from your dad’s uncle, Alan, who constantly reminded you every Thanksgiving between the ages of eight and 23, how you were looking “mighty plump, just like that there turkey.” Alan is a twat—this is a fact, but losing your shit for an entire week because of a postcard and constantly trying to connect your hatred for poultry to you already knowing your dad’s uncle is a defective moron is not a path you need to go down every time just to justify your rage. The constant intellectualization of triggers beyond identifying and acknowledging them keeps us from growth. If something makes you annoyed, you should figure out why, but you also don’t have to check the sky every time the sun is out to make sure it’s still blue.
I made this realization while accidentally wandering away from Nostalgia Resort and into a mental back alley, where for the umpteenth time, I started delineating current situations with childhood bullshit. The irony is, I realized that in all my whining about how I “just wanted to move on”, I kept complaining about everyone who has ever crossed me since the 80s and noting every dumb transgression, like a delinquency scoreboard.
I became a highlighted, glossy-haired Jason Vorhees (minus a few accessories) getting myself worked up. In all fairness, my annoyance with their behaviour was valid—it just wasn’t necessary to pathologize the shit out of it EVERY. SINGLE. TIME. for three days. This was bad, as in Jason Takes Manhattan bad. I ventured out too far from Nostalgia Resort and mentally ended up in a rat-filled bodega with coffee that tasted like Marlboros soaked in mushroom broth with a crusty churro floating in it (a crouton of sorts).
Yes—these people suck, but it was also on me to stfu about it because I’ve already made myself aware of their influence ad nauseum. Constant vilification was perhaps momentarily satisfying, sort of like how Jason felt getting all stabby every time the teenage campers dry humped, but then you’re just left with a big fucking mess to clean up. And I don’t know what to tell you Jason, but those campers are horny AF, so all that forest fornication won’t stop anytime soon, just like rampant stupidity at home, at work, the train, the grocery store, the overpriced buffet line...
That’s really the lesson here—you’re constantly going to get fucked by other people (not in the fun way, just to be clear) and how you react based on your childhood experiences/PTSD/trauma/lack of Ecto Hi-C coolers will determine whether or not it feels like a masked psycho with a machete is going after you. Rumination is a means to bleeding out faster.
At first, Jason seems somewhat justified in his vengeance. Those campers let him drown because they were being negligent (JUST LIKE SOME OF YOUR PARENTS); however, there comes a point where Jason needs to realize that he’s kinda making himself look bad—ahem, Jason X. If you’re already frozen, is it really any of your business to be taking your childhood camp trauma to OUTER FUCKING SPACE, JASON???! Do you not see how you have now taken this too far? Also, maybe just stick to seeking vengeance towards the specific campers that were negligent, not poor Scott and Sandra who were just aimlessly pressing buttons on each other’s Tamagotchis.
If they ever make another Friday the 13th (they undoubtedly will because Hollywood is bereft of fresh ideas), I want Jason to come to the realization that he is out of control, but only because his mother was a psychopath. That unresolved generational trauma kept springing up every time campers philandered in a van down by the river, which was Freud’s bread and butter. I am not a 19th-century psychiatrist, but Jason really has some psychosexual aggression he needs to work out. Also, creating a shrine using your mother’s decapitated head isn’t a good look, mentally—or decoratively—speaking. I postulate that some EDMR therapy might rectify some of this, but it’s hard to know when he won’t put down the machete long enough to focus.
There’s a lot going on there, which quite honestly, makes my problems this past weekend seem quite trivial in comparison. Even if Jason is a lost cause (along with any of the franchise past the sixth movie), I too, have taken decades to realize that all the rationalizing of past transgressions, while seemingly beneficial in the moment, only end up stalling my own progression towards a life where I am not stuck chasing kids in a forest.
That’s just good, old-fashioned therapy1.
This is the worst advice I have ever given and does not constitute anything even remotely resembling therapy.