‘Fear Street’ Shines a Light on Horror’s History With a Patriarchal Society

A woman fearful she’ll lose all she holds near and dear. A man with a knife or an ax or a couple of lacerating words as his weapon. That’s usually how most horror flicks start. The woman runs for dear life only to not run fast enough. The killer catches her; cue the opening title sequence and creepy theme music.

Directly or indirectly, a wide swath of horror focuses on the ills of living in a patriarchal society, one where women are punished for being a little different and for either having sex or not having sex with the right person. For those of you who’ve seen Fear Street—and you’re on this site, so let’s hope so—the Netflix trilogy culminates in an exploration of how that same patriarchy ruined so many lives. In some cases, well, many cases, the patriarchy sacrificed lives all in the name of maintaining the status quo. 

At its core, the Fear Street trilogy summates how a particular type of men creates their own myths and narrative at the expense of any strong woman in their path. And if you bring out the magnifying glass, it’s easy to see that theme echoed throughout horror for several decades. 

If it wasn’t apparent by now, there be spoilers here for the entire Fear Street trilogy.

Fear Street Part Three: 1666 is the tale of Sara Fier, the chief villain behind the evil machinations of the first two installments. Or so we thought. Sarah isn’t the big bad. She’s actually not bad at all. Like so many women after her, Sarah falls prey to the whims of two selfish and envious men. In particular, Solomon Goode is the reason for the brown stuff hitting the fans in Fear Street parts one and two. Horror media of the past sixty years dabbles in similar footprints. Movies like Rosemary’s Baby, Ginger Snaps, It Follows, and The Witch wear their “patriarchy is the root of all evil” badges on their sleeves. Women get led astray, vilified, or blamed for all of the ills in the universe by a society that wants to see them powerless and voiceless. 

In those flicks and others like them, women exist as objects. Their only purpose is to bear the burdens placed on their shoulders by a bunch of dudes fresh out of fucks to give. In all cases, those fucks were absent at birth. They were bred by a society that told them the world was their personal golden goose. Solomon Goode and his descendants embody this entitlement. Goode even does the whole evil guy monologue thing where he says witchcraft is his path to obtaining everything he was promised, including love. The moment he realized Sarah had eyes not only for someone else but *gasp* a woman at that, well, it was easy for him to make the young lady a target and scapegoat for his witchy deeds. Hell hath no fury like a fragile male ego.

Horror has no problem delving into the bruised psyche. Sure, Billy Loomis is a psycho who blames his girlfriend’s dead mom for his family’s issues, but he’s also killing because said girlfriend won’t have sex with him. Freddy Krueger, possibly the most enormous male ego in the game, goes to pieces when Nancy Thompson refuses to acknowledge him and has the unmitigated gall to turn her back on him. Everything horrific that happens in Paranormal Activity results from one guy who can’t admit his girlfriend is right and he is dead wrong. Which later leads to him just being dead. What every instance in horror has in common, including Fear Street, is strict adherence to society’s “rules”: The man must, and will always will, be correct. And a woman’s first priority is to cater to the male ego, making him feel like a true king of the castle. Even if he’s done nothing to sit anywhere near the throne, much less on it. Sadly, this is necessary if the man is holding a knife to her throat. 

Sarah and the love of her life, Hannah Miller, are only in this awful situation because the latter refuses to sleep with a guy too horny to function. When the townspeople ask for proof of witchcraft, this guy tells a whopper of a lie because he can’t accept the fact someone told him “no.” How many women met the bloody end of Jason’s machete or suffered because they weren’t interested in the local asshole? The Slumber Party Massacre series tackles this idea of impotent male rage through its killers and their use of phallic murder weapons. The first movie even has an erectile dysfunction sight gag that, unfortunately, rings more accurate today than it did all those moons ago. Like The Slumber Party Massacre, Fear Street traffics in what happens as a result of men feeling inept. In the case of the former, not only do dozens of people die but an entire town gets discarded and punished as a result. 

Part of what keeps this whole thing going—the “thing” in this context is a patriarchal society—is a lust for power. Men engineered the rules in ways to ensure they stay in control from one generation to the next. Perhaps Fear Street’s most horrific moment is when young Nick Goode doesn’t have young Ziggy Berman’s back about what really happened at Camp Nightwing. That one fact of complicity hits almost as hard as Kate becoming slice bread in Fear Street Part One: 1994. 1666 explained why, as Nick was only playing his part to maintain Shadyside and Sunnyvale’s respective status quo. He and every male in his family benefitted greatly from these Shadyside kids supposedly going crazy and homicidal. It’s why Sunnyvale looks like an ad for a Pleasantville sequel while Shadyside looks, well, shady.

Whether it’s Dr. Frankenstein, Dr. Herbert West, or any of the men in Society, the evil that men do for power has no boundaries. It doesn’t matter if their actions are as overt as playing God or as subtle as lying through omission; the goal is always the same. There’s a cliché saying about absolute power that applies to every example horror provides, and Fear Street is no different. These men aren’t concerned with the greater good—no pun intended. They’re worried about taking care of themselves first and foremost, by any means necessary. 

History is written by the winners. No doubt someone who committed an awful act or two on their way to “victory” penned that phrase. The Fear Street trilogy shows how true that saying is, as a woman and her descendants are tarred and feathered for centuries by victorious men. In an obvious indictment of our patriarchal past and present, Fear Street Part Three: 1666 examines the origins of a world gone toxic, all in the name of propping pitiful men into powerful positions they didn’t earn and damn sure don’t deserve. Leigh Janiak’s trilogy joins the ranks of horror classics that tell us the real boogeymen are the ones living next door, patrolling our streets, and yeah, even running the country. 

Satan ain’t got shit on them.