Though the 2016 election was a surprising turn of events for people all around the world as the unexpected candidate Donald Trump snatched the Republican nomination from out of nowhere then created the greatest electoral upset in nearly a century; it is not as surprising as finding a Lovecraftian horror infesting the woods near your where you live. Though maybe for some of you it was. Here author and fellow blogger Matthew Quinn lays out how some of his characters from his recent novel, The Thing in the Woods would most likely have acted if this story were set ten years further on in history during an election year. Being set in rural Georgia (a state which Trump carried with over 50% of the vote) it is easy to see how the ages and occupations of these characters set them out in support of nefarious goings on, or bias them against it and how such biases can be used to make excellent conflict in stories. I'll let Mr. Quinn take it from here and show you what he means.
The 2016
presidential election was, at least in part, a generational conflict. A
significant chunk of Donald Trump's support came from older, more
traditionalist people who disliked recent cultural and economic changes. Fears
of "cultural displacement" motivated members of the white working
class to vote for a man one would think
resembles a particularly boorish boss instead of a champion of the little guy. A
great many self-identified Christians supported Trump despite his
history of rancidly un-Christian behavior for much the same reason.
On the other
hand, the
Democrats dominated the younger vote in 2016. Millennials much more diverse racially than Baby
Boomers. Millennials are also
much less likely to be Christians (or members of any faith for that matter)
and much more open to interracial
relationships, homosexuality,
etc. Finally, millennials are
less likely to serve in the military and less open to flashy overt patriotism
than their elders. Trump's electoral victory has been described as a
backlash from the older generation of Americans against a rising
"coalition of the ascendant" that's more ethnically diverse, more
secular, etc.
Although The Thing in the Woods takes place
in 2010, many of these cultural and generational fault lines were already in
place, as
British science fiction writer Chris Nuttall pointed out. We see this
generational conflict reflected in many characters.
*Phil Davidson-
Phil is the (human) antagonist of Thing.
He's a decorated junior officer from the Vietnam War (good), the owner of a
local barbecue restaurant (good), and the high priest of the local Lovecraftian
cult (very bad). He still despises hippies
and although not personally racist (he
disdains "white trash" who stirred up "racial crap" in the
Army during the war), he's an authoritarian
who murdered civil-rights activists at the command of the previous high priest
a generation before. He finds the films Borat
and Bruno disgusting, not from
religious opposition to homosexual behavior (Lovecraftian horrors don't care
about such things), but due to his old-fashioned ideas of masculinity and
propriety. Although there's much to admire about his devotion to his nation,
community (he pays above-market wages to his employees to support the local
economy even though this harms his competitiveness), his
support for having children after marriage and not before, and his
disdain for overly-permissive parenting, his murderous authoritarianism
rather dwarfs all of that.
If he voted in
the 2016 election, he would have despised Trump as a
draft dodger and a
man prone to dishonoring women, but at the same time he would view Clinton
as the
avatar for all the cultural and economic forces he abhors. I imagine he would have
voted for a business-class type like Marco Rubio, Jeb Bush, or Chris Christie in the Republican primary or even fellow
Vietnam veteran Jim Webb in the Democratic, held his nose to vote for Trump in
the general, and wished he could feed him to the Lovecraftian horror he
worships with every obnoxious Tweet.
*Sam Dixon-A
private soldier during the 1991 Gulf War, he's in his 40s and works at the
local sheet metal factory. He's part of the cult headed by Phil, but he's not ruthless
and overbearing like Phil, nor cruel and racist like Deputy Bowie or Jeffrey
Reed (we'll get to them later). For example, his basic empathy (and the
abuses he'd seen against Pakistani guest workers in the Persian Gulf) leads
him to reject the latter's prejudices against Indians. However, he's also a
Baptist (despite being in the cult) and takes pride in his military service, so
he'd likely vote for Trump for the same reason many Christians and veterans did despite not approving
of Trump's bullying ways, gross behavior, foul mouth, etc.
*Deputy Charles
Bowie-One of the cult's enforcers, a deputy in the county sheriff's office who's
in his 50s or 60s. A rural white cop who begins the story by kidnapping a
homeless African-American man to be sacrificed, he's not going to be a fan of stronger
state or federal oversight of local police forces and he's going to want
the Sheriff's Office to have
all the high-powered goodies it could get its hands on. He's going to vote
for Trump based on police-officer tribalism with a helping of white tribalism
and straight-up racism, although his helping isn't nearly as big as Jeffrey
Reed.
*Jeffrey
Reed-Another cult enforcer, he's around Sam's age and works behind the counter
of a gas station. He's even more of an authoritarian type than Phil, is
extremely racist, and prefers to solve the congregation's problems by murdering
them. If Phil is Don
Corleone, Reed is Luca
Brasi. The fact Clinton was for all intents and purposes the minority-group
candidate would be enough to make him vote for Trump. Low as he is on the
socioeconomic ladder, he
might also be concerned about job competition from immigrants, although
given who
owns and operates large numbers of gas stations, he's probably employed by
one.
*Amber Webb-The
female lead of Thing and a high
school senior. In terms of social class she's small-town bourgeoisie like Phil
(to whom she's actually distantly related) rather than working-class like
Bowie, Sam, or Reed. She's also a devout Methodist, so demographics would tilt
her toward conservatism. However, unlike other members of her small-town girl
posse, she has no objection to interracial relationships and she's in the
community theater, which
is probably more liberal than the wider town. Furthermore, she probably
empathizes with Hillary Clinton as a woman who could become president and, given
how her jerk-jock ex pressured her into sex, she probably despises Trump. I imagine in the primaries she would have supported
somebody more moderate like Marco Rubio, Ben Carson, Jeb Bush, or John Kasich,
been tempted to vote for Clinton, and probably left the presidential section of
the ballot blank like somebody I know who didn't like Trump but didn't want
taxes raised.
*James Daly-The
male lead of Thing and also a
high-school senior. James hails from Buckhead, the wealthier white section of
Atlanta proper, and he was in the Boy Scouts, which might predispose him to
conservatism on economic and cultural grounds. However, although he'd identify
as a Christian, of the characters listed he's the least religious. His close
friend from Atlanta is Jewish, he isn't bothered at all by two of his
Atlanta-transplant friends being in an interracial relationship (Indian boy,
white girl), and part of his disdain for Edington is based on the (false)
assumption the residents are all racists. However, much of his attitude is
driven by class prejudice against Edington's "rednecks." He'd be a
toss-up, but of all the characters listed he probably be the most likely to
vote for Clinton, especially given how he's a protective big brother to his
younger sister and Trump's attitudes speak for themselves.
So although The Thing in the Woods is a straight-up
small-town horror tale, the historical context in which it was written (off and
on 2007-2014) and set (2010) play a major role in the characterization. And
although I was not consciously aware at the time, that context would soon
become extremely, extremely important.
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