NOW PLAYING: American Horror Story: Cult
They rly said "our scariest season yet is going to be about the very real, already scary 2016 election" lol Ok
DISCLAIMER: Honestly ya’ll can skip this one if you’re not in the mood to deal with revisiting the 2016 election. I won’t be offended.
About American Horror Story: Cult I know very little. I heard somewhere along the line it was supposed to be an abstract, artistic take on the 2016 election and the alt-right uprising around it and according to Teen Vogue Yep. That’s exactly what is is. Of course a white guy like Ryan Murphy is going to dip his toes in to something divisive and polarizing because he probably thought his take would be alternative and artsy instead of sensationalizing a sensitive topic that affected a wide range of marginalized individuals. God I hate this guy.
I swear if there’s a topic being discussed that men have no stakes in they are ALWAYS at the forefront of the conversation because they HAVE to voice their opinion.
2016 turned in to a severe split down the middle for art. Some artists created genuine, honest accounts of the hell scape we live in, reporting on how the election compromised many people’s lifestyles like in the book The Undocumented Americans I just finished last night (flex) while others took advantage to pedal inconsequential shit no one cares about like fucking Ryan Murphy and his hot take on Cults. Apparently this one is also modeled after Charles Manson so I’m assuming they map the 1970’s over today’s online culture? I’m so annoyed with this guy. I’d love to see how my newsletters have developed to this point because now realizing he also wrote Glee, I am putting a warrant out for his arrest.
This season takes place in a suburb in Michigan after, I shit you not, the 2016 Donald Trump election. It centers around a cult terrorizing suburban residents after he becomes president.
I cannot imagine the offensive shit around race, sexism, and rape that Ryan Murphy employs in this season.
We kick things off with the pilot titled: “Election Night,” which starts off by playing clips of Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton announcing their presidential candidacy back to back. Trump’s talking about the wall, they bring up Hillary’s emails, and everything seems bleak. I open my Instagram to distract from this and see a post from the New York Times covering a Republican rally in Texas today centering around Donald Trump and his potential White House Run in 2024. It is January 31st, 2021. Nothing is better.
They play scenes from Black Lives Matter protests, riots at Trump rallies, and finally we get to November 8th, 2016 when Trump is announced as President. On this night I downed a bottle of wine and cried about the possibility of gay marriage being revoked, seeing as it was only passed the year before, and saw a woman the next day sobbing on the brown line in Chicago. Evan Peters character is clearly a Trump supporter because upon receiving news he is the 45th president he looks up to the sky and says “the revolution has begun.”
We are a minute and a half in and already I’m beyond pissed.
Cut over to Sarah Paulson visibly pacing around her room as Rachel Maddow says six states are still uncalled for. Apparently in this season Sarah Paulson plays herself: a lesbian. Was filming this cathartic for her? To visualize the palpable fear she felt that night on screen for audiences? Or was she equally pissed off at Ryan Murphy for having to dig in to the real horror she probably felt at the time? She cries onscreen as Hillary Clinton concedes and Evan Peters cries out “USA! USA!” Paulson collapses crying and this scene is so visceral, I hate it. American Horror Story really restarted the horror franchise, in my opinion, and now it’s all downhill. The Guardian captured what I assumed this entire season would be with this wonderful quote.
Donald Trump was elected president of the United States in 2016. This was a problem for the world in general and American Horror Story in particular. Horror and satire died that day. Nothing the writers could imagine comes close to the visceral shock of that moment – but they decided to offer their hot take anyway.
Maybe it’s because we all actually went through this, or maybe it’s because I’ve never seen media capturing the night of the election and how it affected the nation, but watching this scene is like watching a former image of a broken self completely covered in fog and smoke. It’s the feeling I get when I see myself drunk in a mirror and realize “this is me but also this isn’t me,” a complete disconnect from the body. To make matters worse, they’re in Michigan, where Clinton trails by 10,000 votes, and I feel the same betrayal I felt when Clinton lost my home state, Iowa. That year made us all realize people secretly do hate us, plotting behind screens to “die fag” was no longer a distant threat but one invading the place we always felt at home. Do they know I’m a fag? Are they the ones calling for me to kill myself on Twitter?
It was an absolute “who’s who” on either side of the equation.
I’m going to run out of email space so fast with this pilot.
We are reminded the lovely Jill Stein also existed, having swept 40,000 votes in Michigan, and we cut back to Evan Peters. Fox news says the path to victory did not come without controversy, or splitting this country with divisive language, but it does come now which I guess indicates hey, every battle has its casualties. A new cast member Tom (Tim Kang) chastises his wife for not voting and also brings up the people who voted for Trump as a joke reminding me yikes. That did happen.
Tensions are high as some blonde kid tells his lesbian moms “I don’t want you to not be married anymore” and this entire season is batting way too close to home. Meanwhile, Evan Peters blends Cheetos to eat in celebration of the victory, slathering it over his face to give a bad Trump impression while Billie Lourd talks aggressively on the phone about how canvassing in Florida was a bust. “Where will I get an abortion?” She asks, shedding light on how this election truly did a number on all of us. This white women’s issues and, even the lesbians, clearly pale in comparison to the levels of fear undocumented immigrants would be facing, what black people might be experiencing as white Nationalists don tiki torches at Charleston yet the expanse of cataclysmic events that snowballed from 2016 affected everyone. Like: an abortion is not an issue actively effecting you but it is the one taking weight in your mind. People became so selfish in their quest to protect their individual rights that a hole opened up for the vulnerable to become more vulnerable in the wake of their vanity. That election really showed everyone’s true colors. It feels like this whole episode relays Bacon’s Rebellion when they pit working class white people against black people to say “your skin gives you status and we’ll treat you as such if you break up your unions that would greatly benefit you as a working class person at the expense of black people.”
Does any of this make sense? I’m rambling. ANYWAYS:
Lourd is crying because CNN didn’t give them a trigger warning before posting the results. “You can not self harm again,” the person on the phone says and I’m actively laughing because this character reminds me of me and she is the walking embodiment of a Tumblr post and I really hate what that says about Who I Am. “Or who you Were” Ana says and that’s really sweet. My girlfriend has so much faith in me. I would probably trauma response to this situation by self harming again though and her outfit is one I 100% would wear today so really, I hate myself.
Evan Peters plops down on her bed and she’s in tears, upset with her brother for coming to rub it in her face. They pinky swear about SOMETHING and she says “I’m so scared right now” to which he responds “everyone is.” The intro features people putting on Hillary and Trump masks and I truly cannot believe they got away with this. FX REALLY said “yeah sure go nuts.” Also, I hate that it’s called Cult. I feel like that’s indicating both the left and the right have “mob mentality” with such a neutral word. Cult??? Really?
No time because two people are making out on screen now so i GTG!!!!
Peace. Serenity. A man is eating out his girlfriend in the woods the way God intended. He brings up Twisty, a deranged clown from season three who hacked a few people in the woods sixty years ago and lo and behold, TWISTY ARRIVES! WHAT? I’m so fucking confused, is this a fever dream? The guy pulls out a gun and starts shooting the clown but the clown doesn’t go down. Alright I feel like I’m going to need some backstory so let’s figure out really fast if the clown from Season 3 died.
SPOILER: He did.
He stabs the guy and chases after the girl now running away from him. Stumbling upon what must be his old bus from Freak Show, she’s crouched behind a cage in the bus before she’s killed and oh okay, it’s just a comic book. They made Twisty in to a comic book series and when Sarah Paulson sees her child is reading it before bed, she begins to faint. I’m talking music cut out, distant ear piercing high pitched noise fainting, letting us know she has some PTSD around clowns. Her wife Allison Pill from Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World goes to comfort her and I’m like Nice. Finally a spin-off world where Kim is Gay. “I am so sorry my phobia is starting to affect our son,” says Paulson and I truly cannot believe this is real. This feels like a satirical interpretation of cushy middle class people affected by the election except it’s a genuine depiction of them.
In court Kai Anderson (Evan Peters) speaks on the police department standing guard outside the Jewish center for longer periods of time to provide protection at night. Anderson speaks the way I imagine Holden Caulfield will if he existed in the AHS universe and says “humans love fear.” He says we love fear more than our children since we have an irrational fear of them being taken away from us and already, we get the kind of asshole they’re trying to depict him as. “We don’t need more cops, we need less. We don’t need to protect the Jewish Community Center, we need them to blow it up!” he says, spewing more rhetoric I’m sure Murphy had a great time writing.
I’m going to guess his whole character is just stoking fear at community gatherings and collecting followers from it now that 4chan is down.
They pass the motion and stoke Anderson’s fire, sending him home with his tail between his legs. “There is nothing more dangerous in this world than a humiliated man,” and I don’t hate the character (I do) but I hate that Ryan Murphy wants us to hate him because that means he gets under our skin. It’s not empowering, it’s humiliating. We move in on the white lesbians and I’m even more humiliated because they’re now talking about their housekeeper being gone because maybe she was deported to Guatemala. This is so highly offensive not only because of the Obvious, but Murphy made these characters on the left to be the absolute worst depiction of people on the left not out of a place of critique, but out of hatred. You can tell. It feels like he saw Get Out and abandoned his white skin for a little bit to create these caricatures because he thought it added to the discourse instead of taking away from real conversations at hand. Paulson talks about how bad her anxiety is to her therapist and how triggering this has been for all her other phobias including confined spaces, blood, air, everything. She couldn’t even leave her apartment after 9/11 so this is really affecting her, specifically. She got better for her wife and then when Barack was elected everything was better so they got married, kicking all the drone strikes and families separated at the border under the rug for her convenience. He must be sick of hearing from her because he prescribes her medication to shut her up. A mild anti-anxiety medication.
I cannot wait to research how Sarah Paulson felt about this role after I’m done.
She goes to an empty grocery store where the worker is wearing a Make America Great Again hat. Reluctantly, she shops for groceries as the camera splices in quick cuts to Clowns standing in the aisle. Is this real, we wonder, or is she crazy, given that she just got out of therapy. There’s clowns barebacking each other over some watermelons as Sarah Paulson fights high-pitched audio feedback playing from the speaker. Is this real? I have no idea, but I do love the blue necklace she’s wearing.
She grabs a wine bottle to toss at one of the masked figures before running to her car. She calls her wife from the car and yells that they’re “trying to kill her.” She sees someone in the backseat of her car and drives directly in to a pole. It doesn’t seem like the police are taking her seriously when they drop her off, since they didn’t see anything on camera, and Ivy (Allison Pill) attempts to calm her down by Gaslight, Girlboss, Gatekeeping these hallucinations. She’s like I believe you but also…. ???? Soccer Lesbian Ivy notices their son watching Sarah Paulsons breakdown and puts him back to bed. She serves Ally (Sarah Paulson) coffee at the cafe they’re at as Ally drones on about the election. Ivy is like listen, you got to get it together because you are the face of our restaurant The Butchery Tavern or whatever. Ivy takes this time to bring up the fact she hasn’t come in a while and I’m like nice, love this depiction of lesbians. Ivy just wants her wife back, which is valid, but why do we have to bring up the lack of fucking, huh?
Time and a place for everything Allison Pill!
They walk down main street and she’s like “do you forgive me?” and Ivy is like “I’m your wife.” Classic. We get some tea at this moment though because apparently Ally voted for Jill Stein because “as much as I hate him I didn’t trust her.” Evan Peters throws a drink at her as the lesbians begin to argue and says “enjoy your latte bitch.” Hold up I’m confused though because there is snow on the ground, this does not look like what I assume Michigan would be in the winter. Here’s a quote from the web on this CLEARLY pressing issue:
The snowiest November at most locations in southern Lower Michigan had 10 to 15 inches of snow. A November with that much snow certainly makes Michigan's winter feel long for those that don't like winter. Most of us get at least a dusting of snow sometime in November.
Billie Lourd responds to the nanny call the two lesbians put out in the paper bringing the two plot lines to an overlapping point. Her name is Winter and her hair is gray because she’s a Forever 21 bitch who’s probably dying to get in with these lesbians to give her life some spice. A scene takes place with her and Evan Peters pinky swearing as he lists off questions for her to answer that splices between modern day. He says “what’s your greatest fear” as she answer to the lesbians that she loves children, indicating these cut shots are an ask/response sequence where she’s withholding information from the lesbians. She' says she’s not ready to go back to Vasaar in Florida and gives background on why she left: working full-time on Hillary’s campaign. The answers are disjointed from what she’s telling Evan Peters, regaling her anal story about blood and shit to her brother, and now she’s crying to her brother. There’s no point to this scene, really, it doesn’t seem like she has ulterior motives, but the lesbians hire her to babysit so woo-fucking-hoo.
Evan Peters shows up to a site of where dayworkers are taunting them by singing “La Cucaracha” and blows up a condom that he pees in to. The workers are shaking their head confused as he launches a balloon full of piss their way, taking it upon themselves to beat the shit out of him which would be good except someone is filming them which feels like Peters did this intentionally to antagonize for means of some gross ass agenda. After six seasons, I’ve finally realized these actors must truly be some of the dumbest people alive if they continue to take these roles that further no conversations in America about anything. This isn’t art or teaching us anything we don’t know about the state of the world. It’s just lazy.
The lesbians are splitting a bottle of wine between them at the restaurant as Ivy cooks for Ally, their child at home with Winter. Winter, meanwhile, is taunting this poor son by asking which mom is his real mom, who carried him in his belly? He doesn’t know, since he’s clearly 8 years old, but she digs her heels in to asking about his dad. The kids drawing a clown killing someone and Winter doubles down on her insane behavior by asking if he’s ever seen a real body. At dinner, Ally checks Trumps Twitter instead of enjoying dinner with her wife, which clearly upsets Ivy. Opening her silver platter is a spongey cake with holes, which Ana sees on screen and immediately says “this is making me itchy, I hate that.” Ana also shares this weird hole phobia called “trypophobia” which clearly, she’s not too afraid of holes if she’s dating mine.
Hehe :)
Back home Winter shows the son a photo of dead bodies for some fucking reason, I guess. She pulls up the Dark Web while Ally has some perverse panic attack seeing clowns at the restaurant again. Knocking over a wine glass in her hysteria, Ivy comes to comfort her as she runs around the restaurant looking for clowns. Damn Sarah Paulson has to cry a LOT in this role and her wife is truly over it. “Have you been taking your medicine?” She asks her and Paulson shakes her head no. This hour long episode has been going on for a year as we see someone stab someone else’s neck on the Dark Web that this KID IS WATCHING!!!! He doesn’t want to see it but Winter is like no no this is like a vaccination for your mind! It hurts at first but it makes you better. This much be some tactic she’s employing as if she’s trying to desensitize this kid to the world since it’s “about to get much worse with Trump” and I want to reach through this screen and hug the small boy. I am so sorry you are stuck with this babysitter.
Even worse, I am so sorry a terrifying ice cream truck just showed up in the middle of the night with the exact clowns your mom was hallucinating now standing in the middle of the street.
The lesbians drive home and Ally is talking about how she doesn’t want to take medication because she doesn’t like how it alters her body. Ivy points out Ally drinks though and ridicules Ally for the Independent Voter behavior she’s exhibiting. As they pull into their street they see police, firefighters, and an ambulance posted up outside her house. They dash under the Warning tape to get to their son Ozzie only for him to run up and hug them two seconds later. Apparently Tom and Marilyn Chang, the only two central POC we have seen this pilot, were killed by “the clowns” making me think this was 100% a hate crime which: sigh. The kid saw them get out of the ice cream truck, alerted Winter, who went to check it out, and heard Marilyn screaming from inside. They saddle up to the window where the clowns slit Tom’s throat and stab Marilyn and Winter gaslights the little boy into not telling the cops. She tells the lesbians look, all we know is the cops showed up and now they’re dead which is NOT FUCKING TRUE. Okay so Billie Lourd is clearly a double agent in this case. Yas, girlboss!
Colton Haynes is head of police and I’m so sad because I love him so much and he does NOT need to resort to these kind of roles. He said it was a “murder-suicide” which is not the case but I don’t care to stick around and find out because I’m so fucking over this season. All they’re doing is airing this show in 2017 right after the election to depict every nightmare scenario people could possibly dream of come true.
Overall, I’ll give it a 1/10 because I’m annoyed I wasted time watching this and I’m not even sure if I can give it a zero. I guess I make the rules so sure: a zero/ten. It’s offensive, tedious, and lazy, a hollow vignette of a previously bustling series. I don’t think it’s a bustling series: I truly don’t give a shit about any season at all in the AHS universe at this point, but I know it did a lot for it’s time so I guess that’s cool.
Anyways here’s some answers to my own questions if ya’ll were also wondering while reading.
Sarah Paulson’s feelings on her role:
Apparently her least favorite role was Roanoke and all I can gauge on this one is that she’s also afraid of Little Holes.
What’s up with lesbians and their fear of little Holes.
Evan Peter’s feelings on his role:
He was elected for some awards in this role so that’s pretty wild but apparently he took two years off from the series following Cult because it left him mentally drained. Here’s the interview if you want more.
Did Ryan Murphy get a ton of negative feedback on this season?
Apparently it was pretty divisive according to this piece at the Wrap. I did love this quote in Indiewire, though:
To say that many Americans have been living out their own personal horror story isn’t an overstatement — not with border closings, hate speech, and potential treason all enabled by the White House — but the new season manages to undermine the left’s legitimate fears and amplify the right’s monstrous traits all in one frenzied mess of an allegory.”
What did his audience think?
“All corners of the media were trying to reckon with the election of President Trump in 2017, and that’s the through-line of AHS’s most political season, Cult. This season is ill-conceived at best and tacky and boring at worst. I can’t say I made it through more than a few episodes of Cult, and when Episode 1 featured Evan Peters smearing pulverized Cheeto dust on his face, I knew this season just wasn’t for me.” -Paste Magazine
Quotes from Ryan Murphy on why he’s annoying and decided to do this:
“Everyone lost their shit after this election,” Murphy said. “And everyone’s still losing their shit, and there is no real discussion. Everyone’s at each others’ throats. This is not about Trump or Clinton, but about somebody who has the wherewithal to use [that divisiveness].”- This Annoying Interview in IndieWire
I have so many thoughts but I’m tired and don’t care. I miss the warm embrace of Too Hot to Handle Season 3.