Rick: "OH! I know what this is. You've been able to sustain world peace because you have one night a year where you all run around robbing and murdering
each other without consequence." Alien Hick: "That's right!" Morty: "What!" Rick: "It's like The Purge, Morty!" Hey Wisecrack! Jared here. And today we're talking about future America's favorite pastime Purging At first glance, the Purge seems like
your typical horror film. A decent concept "Any and all crime will be legal for 12 continuous hours." Questionable acting. *questionably acts* and all the violent carnage you can ask for. But perhaps the scariest thing about the Purge isn't the creepy masks and rapist with bad teeth but the way it highlights the dehumanizing policies
of our current social landscape. With a closer look The Purge can be considered a commentary on our sociopolitical existence. A thinely veiled allegory for America's corrupt politics rigged economic systems and culture of violence. Welcome to this Wisecrack Edition on The Philosophy of The Purge Summer: "Like the movie, 'The Purge'?" Rick: "Yes, I..I need you to take th~" Summer: "That movie sucked. Rick: "Oh my God! Hold on." The Purge isn't entirely unlike other ritualistic festivals like Mardi Gras, Carnival, or even Halloween. Sure The Purge is more murder and theft and less dancing and feasting before Lent but they're essentially the same concept. Designated times where people
can violate social norms. "The Purge is Halloween for adults!" It may seem like these events are a way to undermine the power law and religion have over people. But it's actually the opposite. They reaffirm these social structures. The "NFFA" or the leaders that sanction the ritual aren't actually challenged by The Purge. On the contrary the chaos of the night leaves people longing for the return of law the next day. It's kinda like a "Purge hangover". If a ritual like carnival exists to make people accept the tenants of Christianity, The Purge exists to make the people accept the tenants of the ruling social ideology. This societal order can best be described in one word: Neoliberalism Ruling leader: "To another successful year of the festival." "Pitting poor people against each other
for thousands of years!" *arrogant applause* The politics of disposability The basic idea of neoliberalism is that the government should hop off the market nuts and only craft policies that promote the free flow of goods and protect corporate interest. Each movie reflects a different facet
of the neoliberal economy. The way characters deal with The Purge brings to focus the conditions of their
respective economic class. The original Purge is about the impact of the event on an upper middle class suburban family. The Sandin's have " 'burb " problems: A sketchy looking homeless guy infiltrates their gated community, their neighbors can't keep up with the Joneses so they try to kill them out jealousy, Grace: "You made so much money off of us and then you just stuck it in our faces." their daughter is hooking up with an older dude that tries to kill daddy Sandin, and their son is creepy as hell. The Purge: Anarchy focuses on the economic problems of a working class family: Eva Sanchez can barely make ends meet, can't afford medicine for her father, and desperately needs a raise. Tanya: "You're really gonna ask her tonight?" Eva: "I have to...I can't afford his medicine much longer." The inner city is full of Purge traps, gangs roaming around in taco trucks, dirt bikers kidnapping people, every apartment shown involves either: attempted rape or domestic violence, government officials round people up in 18 wheelers, and people are abducted for some sort of remake of the Running Man. Y'know. Detroit on a Tuesday. If you compare the settings of the first two films they can be understood as a metaphor for white flight. The retreat of upper class white folks from the cities to the sheltered poverty-free suburbs. This abandonment exposes those left in the inner city to disproportionate amounts of: crime, homelessness, and poverty or in the case of the films Purging. Liz: "We're downtown!" "Everyone comes downtown to purge, Shane!"
Shane: "heeey, heey~" For the Sandin's, the idea that they even have to deal with violence against the poor is unacceptable, because... James: "Things like this are not suppose to happen in our neighborhood." The Purge: Election Year is about the consequences of holiday on small business owners. Joe finds out that the premiums for his Purge insurance
are going up for no reason. Joe: "Why you raisin' my rates now?" "do y' Today~ Do you know what today is!?" Something common when there are no government checks to stop insurance companies from "doin' you like that." Joe: "They just raised the premium on my
Purge coverage." "By thousands!" "The day before the damn Purge." "If I don't pay it by tomorrow, I have no Purge coverage for this store." Marcos: "They can't do that." Joe: "Yeah, well they just did it." Taken as a whole, these examples not only illustrate the injustices of The Purge but of our economic system in general. James: " 'kay kids. Now I know bad things do happen tonight." "But we can afford protection." "So we'll be fine, just like always." People who prosper under neoliberalism benefit from The Purge. And those who get fucked by neoliberalism also get fucked by The Purge. The upper middle class largely profits from murder night The Sandin's gaudy home remodel is paid for by security home systems sold to people based on the Fear manifested by The Purge. Grace: "You know your husband sold a new security system" "to almost every home in this community." But the working class... not so much. Since Eva Sanchez's boss won't give her a raise they can only protect themselves with a couple flimsy 2x4s. Now that Joe can't afford Purge insurance Joe: "I just have to protect this place myself." He has to spend Purge night guarding his deli with little more than a shoddy rolling steel door. And eventually loses his life because of it. Put another way The Purge exposes how neolibral economics breeds a politics of disposability. Something explained by thinkers Henry Giroux and Brad Evans. In the original Purge suburbanites view entire groups of people as superfluous, disposable. It's the reason the bloody stranger is referred to as "swine" and "filth" by his foil, the "polite stranger" "Mister and Misses, the man you're shelter is nothing but
a dirty, homeless, pig." It's how James Sandin justifies incapacitating and torturing his house guest. He is merely a means to saving his family. It isn't until the bloody stranger volunteers to give himself up that James Finally sees him as fully human and decides not to turn him over to the freaks. In The Purge: Anarchy, the unchecked price of medication forces Papa Sanchez to "sell" his life to the rich so his family can be eased of economic hardship. Papa Sanchez: "one hundred thousand dollars will be transferred into your accounts, my darlings." As a disposable object his life is more valuable to his family than as an actual person. Eva: "It's how the wealthy Purge, baby. They buy poor and sick people and they take them in their homes and they kill them where they're safe." Or perhaps Rick and Morty say it best: Rick: "This girl is one of your poor people and I guess you guys felt like it was okay to subject her to inhuman conditions because there was no chance of it ever hurting you. It's sorta the sociopolitical equivalent of say a 'suit of power armor' around you. But now things are even out sooo... Arthricia?" Giroux and Evans argue that people become disposable under an economic system that is characterized by privatization of things like: Healthcare, the deregulation of banks, and the erosion of government safety nets like social security and welfare. Dante: "For the past twenty years the NFFA has taken to legalize murder to decrease the poor population which in turn keeps the government's spending down. Less welfare, less healthcare, less housing." If The Purge stands as a one night reference point for the terrors of such policies then shutting down medical and police services makes sense. 'Cause government policy can't possibly be more
lax than that. All of this is justified under the banner of
economic growth. Cali: "They're keeping the population down by getting rid of people like us, to save money." The elderly infirmed poor and so-called "non-contributors" are sacrificed so that the economy can grow unhindered. Dante: "These are the real victims of The Purge. People that the NFFA are trying to eliminate so that they don't have to take care of them anymore." This elimination of the population is actually paralleled in the real neoliberal economy: people unable to afford Epipens, people stuck eating ramen and the dollar menu for 20 years, or people exposed to contaminated drinking water, pollution from coal factory plants, and nuclear waste. Neoliberalism exposes those same populations
to slow death. Instead of actively Purging them it just sorta lets them die. This justification for The Purge isn't based some new fancy economic idea. It goes all the way back to 1798 in a book titled "Essay on the Principle of Population" by Reverend Thomas Robert Malthus
(a.k.a Reverend Run). Malthus argued that because production would be unable to keep up with demand a growing population would create
massive food shotages. His solution: Employ laws that keep birth rates low and death rates high. Things like famine, disease, and wars. Big Daddy: "Unfortunately the citizens aren't killing enough. So we supplement it all...to keep things balanced." This is echoed in The Purge: Election Year by Caleb Warrens, head of the NFFA: "Idealistic pigs! They want the impossible. Everyone to HAVE. SOME cannot have. NOT enough to go around." But does this logic hold up? For Friedrich Engels of the hip-hop duo "commie much beard" Malthus had it all wrong. The issue isn't increasing population it's an economic system that doesn't value workers. Malthus was putting economics above people. Essentially Engels argued that Malthus' model was nothing more than an excuse
to be a dick to poor people. With their over the top Purge ceremonies the NFFA clearly have more than economic concerns on the mind. They take "being a dick to poor people" to the next level. "AAAAAHHH!!" "BORN!" "AGAIN!!" Neoliberal policies are confusing in the abstract. There's a bunch of economic theory and political jargon you're suppose to know. But the genius of The Purge is the way that it uses "murder night" to viscerally expose how this kind of economy generates profit in a predatory manner. Carmelo: "Profit making is not the essence of democracy. Wake up people. Wake up!" The privilege make money hand over fist on: weapon sales, insurance, private body guards, and home security systems while the poor have to fight to simply survive. Conclusion The Purge movies may present an opportunity to peek into a not-so-distant dystopia. Except most of the main characters don't enjoy Purging much. The Rick and Morty episode about Purging provides an interesting counterpoint. Rick's sick enjoyment of the brutal violence says more about audience than the films. Rick: "If there's a video online with someone getting decapitated, you don't click on it? Morty: "No! Wh~Why would I do that? "You do that?" Rick: "I don't. Because it would bore me. I see sh*t like that for breakfast, Morty." Sitting in front of any of The Purge movies puts us in Rick's position. "Oh my god! This is f*cking awesome! Morty! This is really cool!" Perhaps the reality is we're the murder tourist. Perusing through each sequel excitingly waiting for a titillating peek at something
shocking and new. After all: Does anybody actually remember any of the characters of these movies? Liz: "We don't even know your names." Do we all go see the next Purge movie because we can't wait to see what happens next with the new founding fathers? Or perhaps the success of The Purge films reveals what most of us already know: People like watching violent shit because... well sometimes it just feels good.
/r/badphilosophy
So close, just got to replace Neo-liberalism with capitalism.