Musings on the Candy Mare EDIT* · 7:56am Oct 28th, 2014
As will be little surprise to those that regular read my blog, I am a huge horror fan. I am absolutely fascinated by horror and major horror characters. As such, from time to time I'll read about popular horror movie characters and those who have portrayed them in movies. Today I randomly came across an interesting tidbit from Kane Hodder, of Jason Voorhees of the Friday the 13th series, who had said that the hockey masked murderer he famously portrayed had his limits. There's a bit in Jason Takes Manhattan where he was scripted to kick the dog of one of his intended victims (presumably killing the canine in the process). You see he said that while Jason might be a killing machine, he has lines he won't cross. He's not the kind of person who would kill a helpless animal, nor would he murder a child given his own unfortunate experiences as an adolescent at one Crystal Lake. To him there were only two kinds of monsters. Apparently this would eventually become the basis for his portrayal in Freddy vs. Jason as a somewhat sympathetic figure, despite being a mass murderer.
In Freddy vs. Jason, it was said, Freddy was a representation of pure, unrelenting Evil with a capital E who wasn't above any depravity. Jason, on the other hand, was the wounded victim out purely for revenge, though be it a vengeance with a wobbly and easily manipulated aim. That got me to thinking about the Candy Mare. (Again, if you've been reading my blogs you'll be aware I've been focusing a lot of attention on Something Sweet to Bite thanks to the recent reading by Emogak.)
The argument, as it's boiled down to it's most simplistic, is that of Dracula vs. Frankenstein's Monster. You see while Dracula has been written many a tragic back story, he has always been a fiend of pure evil, who wasn't above tossing a baby to his hungry brides and laughing at the torment of the mentally ill. He is a sadist, pure and simple, who thrives of the suffering of others. The Monster, on the other hand, is originally an innocent who is abandoned by his creator. A twisted, ugly creature, he is born into a world that automatically fears and shuns him for how he is created. In short order, he decides to revenge himself on his creator and then eventually he vows to make the entire race of man suffer as he has suffered, cold and lonely without succor or pity. While Dracula isn't above murdering babies and Frankenstien's Monster freely kills a child and frames his creator, the Monster doesn't exult in the suffering of others, rather he's lashing out at a world that hates him.
The same can be said of Freddy and Jason. Freddy was evil long before he died, a sadist and a pervert, his untimely demise only gave him a a chance to pursue further the terrible deeds he had already practiced in life to greater degree. Jason, by contrast, was an innocent victim of neglect, and later the warping of his destiny by his vengeful mother.
So where then does the Candy Mare fall? Is she pure evil or a vengeful victim?
It's true that she was an innocent before she fell into Lemon Drops clutches. Her first 'evil' act after her first 'rebirth' being to revenge herself on her tormentor. But she goes on in short order to take vengeance on the rest of ponykind, in acts of mischief and misdeed, in murders most cruel and callous cannibalism. It's true that she even eats children in manners both extremely torturous and sadistic, laughing at their pain and relishing their bloodied flesh. While she may have started out as a creature not unlike Jason, a spirit driven by vengeance, she ends up more like Freddy.
But I'm not sure that's entirely true. Her time as Lemon Drops 'guest' leaves her broken physically, mentally, and spiritually. There is a time there when perhaps she could have been saved, when she might have not gone down an extremely dark and twisted path. Instead she is put down like a monster and condemned to a living hell. When her second 'rebirth' comes, instead of being driven by vengeance, she is driven by hatred and fear. She doesn't want to go back into the dark, she doesn't want to die. It's an understandable emotion, one you can easily sympathize with, but it's also one that drives her to heights of depravity from which there is no coming back. She is still mischievous, given to giving her victims the semblance of a chance when it pleases her, but she is almost dogmatic in her pursuit of her chosen food to sate her unyielding hunger and assuage her boundless fear.
No...I deny that the Candy Mare is pure evil. She is still a victim. But she is a victim that refuses to ever be a victim again. She will rend and tear the world to shreds before she would ever dream of yielding to the dark. She will live and live and live, and she will devour any that stands in the way of her survival.
She is a broken fragile thing, but she is not so broken that she will not bite.
EDIT:
I was a little tired last night so I think I got a little unhinged there towards the end. I've decided that it's foolish to think that monsters can only fall into two binary categories. Yes there are those that are motivated by vengeance and there are those that are motivated by concepts that would be considered sadistically immoral. There are lodes more motivating factors however, from simple curses to full scale galactic invasion.
That's why if I felt the need to pigeon hole the Candy Mare, she'd probably be more along the lines of The Shape, from Halloween. The Seemingly mundane but unknowable horror (that may or may not be unwillingly cursed). The originator for this archetype would probably be the Wolf Man. "Even a man who is pure and says his prayers by night may become a wolf when the wolfsbane blooms and the yellow moon is bright" you get the idea. The difference between him and The Shape is that he only had to worry about killing his loved ones and slaughtering innocents three days out of the month. Michael Myers on the other hand became an emotionless killing machine at the tender age of six, and what he started with his sister never stopped. Now I'm not going to get into the murky origins of what made him The Shape as that varies depending on which movie you want to count as canon, but an important part about him is that his motivations are vaguely defined, and capricious at best.
That was something important to me about the Candy Mare. I know I've explained a lot about how she operates and what motivates her, especially in the sequel, but there are things that I've left intentionally vague. I've never touched on what causes the fog that presages her (and the other candy ponies) coming, I've never explained why her life stealing power takes the form of jack-o-lanterns, nor have I really explained the exact mechanisms of either of her resurrections (though those at least I hinted at strongly.) While her motivations have become a little clearer, she's still something of a little girl at heart, as likely to let someone go, or just lead them on a merry chase as she is to simply snuff them out like a bug.
She is a cursed individual, be it through magic or simply the tortures she endured, she can never be normal again. What choice does she have but to embrace her new, alien nature? That's why I don't really think it's fair for her to be lumped in with the likes of Freddy Krueger, even if she is every bit as cruel, sadistic, and insane as that would entail. I guess in that way she's a little like the girl from The Ring as well, though the original Ringu version rather than the Americanized one.
I dunno, I guess I'm just babbling now so I'll stop. :p
You know, I find movie serial killers with very tragic past to be the most interesting, because there are times where you can't help, but feel a little sorry for them, despite all the horrible things they did. Like Jason Voorhees and Micheal Myers, because these are character who had very tragic childhoods. Jason because of his deformity was pick on and made fun of by other children and camp staff didn't do jack shit about it and because of their negligence. He almost ended up drowning in Crystal Lake and only got worst for him later on. And then you have Micheal Myers, who had a lived in a very dysfunctional family and was always bully at school. these two things along with other factors of his life, only made his early signs of a serial killer much worst.
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Generally speaking I feel the same way, but I do have one caveat. I dislike when there is an effort made to give an already established character a more tragic back story after the fact. Case in point would be Michael Myers. Originally he was meant to be an ordinary little boy from an ordinary little suburban family who one Halloween just brutally murdered his older sister for no rhyme or reason. That idea, that concept of a six year old just completely dispassionately dismembering a loved one for no discernible reason was bone chilling. Rob Zombies retcon of him being an animal torturing little kid who was bullied at home and at school just kind of ruins the character. It makes him too human, to the point that later in the film it's difficult for me to take the new Shape seriously despite his brutality. (Don't get me wrong, Tyler Mane was alright, but he wasn't the blank slate I'd expect of Michael Myrers. He had more of the kind of rage and physicality that Kane Hodder brought to the role of Jason.)
But yes, I do prefer sympathetic killers. I think a good example would be Leatherface. Even in the first movie he had this weird kind of innocence. There's a great scene where, after he's killed one or two teens, he just starts looking around the house and out the window, furtively and in a clear state of distress. It's like 'Where do these kids keep coming from! Did I miss any? What the heck is going on!" He seems as disturbed about the teens being there as they are about him chasing them. And his family clearly mistreats him. The whole Sawyer clan are pretty much bastards except for Leatherface himself.