The Purge movies freak me out. But so do most horror movies. I’m a delicate soul and I can’t take the punishment of a Purge or Saw movie. I still have nightmares from watching The Shining when I was eight. Yet, the Purge got me thinking. If I lived in a society where you are allowed to kill anyone one day per year, how would I survive? The deeper question would be: how do people circumvent a social practice as psychotic as the purge?
The original Purge movie was interesting in that it offered a sociological understanding of ritualized violence. In the movie, the future US is in decline and a reactionary government creates the purge as a way to relieve social tension and keep certain businesses afloat.
We can take things further and ask how people in the cinematic universe of The Purge would try to evade the practice. First, the movie recognizes that social stigma is real. The kinds of people who use the purge as an opportunity for homicide wear masks while they do their evil deeds. They know that if they were recognized, life would be miserable on the other 364 days of the year. Thus, maybe people would invest in “purge doxxing” during the year - reveal the identities of violent purgers. There would be no criminal penalties, but the social isolation might be a strong deterrent.
The second thing we could think of is contracts and side deals. In other words, people could make deals that get sweeter and sweeter if they are alive in some future date. An elderly person would stipulate that an inheritance only be paid off if they died on a non-purge day and increased for every year they lived. Insurance firms would probably adjust in some anti-purge ways. For example, insurance contracts would go to zero if you died during the purge. Your family would sure work hard to make sure you lived. An interesting idea is the self-defense club pay-out. People could chip in money during the year, collect interest, hang out and defend each other during the purge, and get a financial pay out if they all live.
I suspect that religion might come into play. Much in the same way that early Christians preached against Roman cruelty, religious Americans in The Purge movies would probably try to stigmatize the violence and anyone who participates in it. The sequels, I think, delve into this idea when they discuss resistance to the government that sponsors the purge.
Just writing this post is giving me the willies, but we can use movies to exercise our imaginations in creepy but interesting ways. What social institutions do you think would arise to reduce the purge?
Bottom line: I am too wimpy to survive the world of The Purge, but I can still use it as twisted thought experiment about safety and violence.
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