Day 27: Sleepaway Camp

Even odder is Angela as a character and the film's controversial ending. I will be referring to Angela as a girl and with she/her pronouns. I personally think the "boy raised as a girl against his will" trope reads much more as transmasculine in nature, but all sources I've been able to find refer to her as such and transfeminine people have largely reclaimed this character, so I will follow suit.

Angela is rightfully thought of as a transphobic caricature. As previously mentioned, she was raised as a girl by her aunt after being disfigured in a boating accident. And, the ending reveals not only that fact, but the fact that Angela was the one killing everyone in the first place. People say she's demonized for this, and maybe to some extent she is, being the killer in a horror film after all, but I got much more than that from her character.

Angela is a very dualistic character. Masculine and feminine, innocent and villainous, sweet and mean, demure and determined. These seemingly conflicting facets of herself are the cause of her inner struggle. Her struggle to be accepted, her struggle to accept herself, and her struggle to stand up for herself.

I don't think she can be lumped in quite so easily with other slasher villains for two reasons. One being that she's really just a person. Jason, Micheal, Freddy are all immortal men who carelessly kill innocents and often children much younger than them. Angela is a little girl, no older than 14, who only kills the people who have wronged her.

Being a quiet, autistic trans kid myself who was often bullied without even noticing because my bullies would use illusions of kindness or pity to keep me around to laugh at, I found myself really connecting with Angela.

And I mean, are we supposed to feel sorry for who she kills? The very first "victim" is a grown man who attempts to rape her and openly says his "mouth waters" when he sees a camp full of tweens. He got what was coming to him. The others? Less justified, but still. People who relentlessly bullied her, pressured her into sex and cheated when she said no, who insulted her, physically assaulted her, made her life at camp a living hell.

Angela, to me, is much closer to a character like Carrie. A sweet girl who was ruined mentally and emotionally by endless abuse and mistreatment from the people who are supposed to care for her and empowered herself in the only way that people are taught they can: violence. She (and Carrie, as I mentioned) is a tragic figure. Pitiable, lovable, but not to be feared for an understandable retaliation.

To avoid things like Angela's massacre, then we must not only be better to each other, but teach people that there's power in other places than the edge of a knife.