Babysitter abuse - 'dead babysitter ' films

Children Today, Sept-Oct, 1984

Babysitter Abuse

In the Fall 1983 issue of the newsletter published quarterly by the California Consortium of Child Abuse Councils, Paul Crissey, director of the Contra Costa County Child Abuse Prevention Council, takes Hollywood producers to task for creating a new--and violent--genre of films. He writes:

"Sometime when we weren't looking, Hollywood invented a new genre of films that have come to be known affectionately as "Dead BabySitter" films. The premise of these is the same . . . you find some logical reason to put many teenagers (mostly female) in the same location, then you have a psychotic killer maim and dismember them. There are variations on the theme, of course, but the essence is the same, run out again and again in such films as Prom Night, Halloween I & II, Friday the 13th, and so on.

"Why have these films emerged? That's simple--$$$! Hollywood will produce whatever they think will sell, and violence sells. Violence against children . . . graphic violence . . . against adolescent females mostly . . . sells very well. I wonder if the next step is graphic violence against younger and younger children?

"Let's make a distinction here between "Dead Babysitter" films and traditional scary films. Most of us loved to be scared at the movies when the scaring took some imagination. Now we have mastered the technique of depicting very realistic grotesque images of bodies being maimed or torn apart. The fear is not of being surprised, but of being grossed out. Oh boy.

"I speak a great deal to high school students (all of whom have seen one or more of these films), so I decided that I ought to watch one of these blessings. Friday the 13th appeared on local television, so I watched it. (Let me toss in here that I studied for an MFA degree in film-making at Columbia University in the latter 1960s.) I hated it, especially the techniques used by the director during a key scene. Camp cook (a nubile teenager, natch) hitched a ride with psychotic killer (whom we don't see). As psychotic killer chases girl through the woods, the camera swings around at a key moment and assumes the point of view of pyschotic killer. In other words, the viewer gets to feel not what the victim must be feeling, but how it feels to pursue a teenager, see her fall over a tree root, stand over the screaming child, and plunge a kitchen knife into her body.

"My point is that all of this is truly obscene. We should be threatening to boycott sponsors. We should be demanding enforcement of attendance restrictions. We should be forbidding our young children to see this stuff.

"We probably won't do this, though, and I can't imagine why not. Creating and promoting use of violence toward children as a new film genre, directed at other children, is madness. We don't know the ultimate effects on a generation of children saturated with such images, but it won't be good. It could contribute to the instances of real violence against children and women. We won't be able to prove it, though; as long as Hollywood producers can make a buck, they will find a way to justify these films and will continue to be more effective at producing them for us and our children. . . ."