In all of the analyses of Halloween (2007) that have appeared recently, it’s interesting to note how few of them discuss Michael Myers’s first victim.  Certainly Michael’s boyhood rampage at home as well as the later set pieces that are derivative of the original Halloween (1978) contain more grist for the mill, both dramatically and cinematically.

However, the killing of the schoolboy on his way home is in many ways the key to writer/director Rob Zombie’s intentions.  The scene signals not only Michael’s descent into homicide, but also speaks of a deep class rage that in turn informs much of what is to come. Yet this first killing seems to create few ripples in the movie itself.  That is, before the audience, or Michael, has a chance to reflect on it, we are already caught up in events that seem to reduce it to mere prologue.  However, this is a kind of subtextual sleight-of-hand, with our quickly moving past this episode quite revealing in its own way:  as if the movie itself, in a form of repression, has no memory of the deed or what motivated it.  Perhaps I’d have to re-view Halloween more carefully to know for sure, but is Michael ever even tied to this murder?  After all, it would not be difficult to do so, given the fact that there were witnesses to his altercation with the victim earlier that same day.

Said altercation of course was prompted by one of the standard reasons boys fight—one taunts the other about his mother. Yet it’s revealing that intertwined with the sexual ridicule in this scene is a pronounced element of classism.  Specifically, Michael’s bully doesn’t simply discuss whether his mother would perform certain sex acts, but does so with a line of questioning typical of a paying customer.  And from his perspective this is “logical,” as Michael’s mother is a local dancer/stripper.  Again, Zombie’s script does not shrink from the psychosexual humiliation Michael feels over this fact (and other issues throughout the film), but also does not hesitate to add an important dimension of class shame to the mix.

  The emblem of this social embarrassment takes the form of a newspaper advertisement featuring Michael’s mother, complete with fetching photograph.  That is, she is publicly on display as a commodity.  All doubts about how critical this issue is to Michael’s psychosis are laid to rest when he retrieves the clipping just prior to deliver the killing blows, as if the presence of the former justifies the latter.

Of course killing the bully doesn’t change the fact that the ad still exists in the public realm or, for that matter, the sheer fact of what Michael’s mother has chosen to do for a living.  But until he is reminded of these unpleasant truths, and similar ones, Michael can pretend that he is a middle class, suburban child like his schoolmates. What he cannot do is face the root cause of his rage, because to do so would bring his biggest conflict out of repression and into the open:  his love/hate of his mother. Consequently, he displaces his anger toward her onto everyone else, and they pay the price.  The script, by the way, in essence does the same thing:  the mother’s suicide is triggered by Michael’s gratuitous killing of the nurse (herself an inattentive mother surrogate).  In this way, as if being allowed to live what other children may only indulge in as a guilty fantasy, Michael gets to cause his mother's death and yet not feel guilty about it.

One astute review of the film I’ve read drew attention to a contradiction that in retrospect seems obvious:  the Myers family lives a “trailer park” lifestyle but does so in a comfortable, two-story home in a white-collar neighborhood.  “Why didn’t I notice this?” I wondered.  Upon further reflection, I realized that this apparent incongruity is actually critical to understanding the crisis of socio-economic identity that Michael experiences.  That the Myers family is “passing” for middle class is in large part what the movie is about… and also what makes it recognizable as the distinct work of Rob Zombie.

In part three, we’ll take a look at the one-man class war Michael Myers wages as an adult.