The Call is Coming from Across the Border: The University of Toronto in Black Christmas (1974) and Black Christmas (2019)
Filmed at the University of Toronto,
Bob Clark’s Black Christmas (1974), has important connections to
Canadian politics and feminist history. While we’re often reminded that Roe
v. Wade, a significant US legal decision, coincided with the year of the
film’s release, the Morgentaler trials were the more relevant and timely news
event in Canada —where the film was made and initially
released—and crucial to the development of that
country’s federal abortion laws. These trials occurred after Justice Minister Pierre
Trudeau (who would become a two-time PM and father of the current PM)
successfully passed a bill decriminalizing abortion, contraception, and
homosexuality (for more information, see this helpful description courtesy of
The University of Toronto). Focusing on the visceral horror of forced birth
rather than “medical privacy,” the Morgentaler trials secured abortion rights
in Canada (although abortion access remains a problem in many regions of the
country).
While
Black Christmas (1974) is now enjoying respect for its role in horror
film history and within national cinema, Canada itself isn’t just a film set:
it’s also a source of intellectual activity: a place where feminisms and
anti-feminisms exert influence on an international level despite the
specificity of their origins. Paradoxically, Canadian identity is anti-nationalist
and pluralistic, and as a film set, Canada is a place where Americans can
project their fantasies. In the original Black Christmas and its remake,
Canada is both invisible and obviously looming in the background like some sort
of giant, unmissable landmass casting its icy shadow below.
The 1974 film attempted to appeal to
an American audience with a few props: an American flag in the police station (actually,
I think that’s all), despite its obvious location. Filled with snow, wind,
snowmobiles, various winter sports, a number of heavily accented Canadian
actors, and shots of the world-renowned institution of higher education, it’s
almost a parody of a Canadian film set made up to look like the US.
The film’s location was as obvious as
it’s politics, and yet, when asked in interview, Clarke expressed puzzlement at
such claims, saying he didn’t intend to be political unless “unconsciously.”
Given the political climate in Canada at the time, his political unconscious
would have plenty of material.
Although apparently completely
abandoning its Canadian inspiration, and changing the setting to a classically
Ivy-League style New England college, Sophia Takal’s 2019 remake includes a
widely-recognized parody of long-time University of Toronto professor and
internationally famous anti-feminist Jordan Peterson, who, extradiegetically, has
contributed to the climate of backlash that Takal and her film faced.
A key point of difference, not in
content, but in marketing strategy between the two films was that the remake
was clearly marked as “feminist”—a word which
instantly polarized audiences. Although I would not be the first to argue that
both the 1974 and 2019 films are roughly equal in feminist content (for example, see Jamie Alvey), the
original is rarely described that way, and in fact, many fans were upset by the
remake because of its supposed “woke”ness. For that audience, it was incredible
that a film almost entirely about women, featuring abortion and sexual
harassment as key plotlines might be ruined by *gasp* feminism. The word
itself seemed to scare people away from the film.
In the original, the university of
Toronto served as set piece, in the remake, a source of intellectual
antagonism. In both films, Canadian politics and feminism are deeply embedded;
specifically, Southwestern Ontario is a key source of the feminist debates
these films reference.
Just as Canadian history is part of
North American history, feminism is part of history, and part of horror
history. But popular discussions of feminism often employ the narrative of
progress. The new is assumed to be more feminist on a linear scale, and films
can be graded on the degree of feminism, without regard to kind. Rather than
see the remake as adding feminism where it never was before, as Takal herself
has suggested in interviews, her work engages with feminist history as it
continues it. She described her process of remaking the film as picking up on
ideas already there.
And lastly, it’s worth mentioning, the
remake’s opening joke about the Diva Cup, the most commonly available menstrual
cup in North America, is a Canadian brand, made right here in “our home and
native land.”
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