The Many Lives of The Purge

With a worldwide box office of more than a half-billion dollars, The Purge franchise has become one of the top horror franchises in film history, with many reviewers wowed by the concept of the series and differentiating on the execution. With five films and a TV show (and another film possibly in the works), the series seems unstoppable. The franchise’s main concept taps into underlying tensions throughout America. The vast differences between the films are largely due to the ever-changing casts, including actors, writers, and directors, so that each film has its own unique commentary, sometimes getting right at the nerve of social issues that seem to be best discussed in fictional worlds’ metaphors and parables.
Acclaimed film and television critics and horror scholars such as Dale Bailey, Jason V. Brock, Chesya Burke, Lisa Morton, Katherine A. Troyer, and Kevin J. Wetmore give a wide range of analyses of just what The Purge films are saying about modern-day America and the world. Essays in the collection examine politics, violence, Trump, Freud, class issues, feminism, race, and more.

Writer and actor Ron Riekki has won several screenplay awards including best sci-fi/fantasy from the International Family Film Festival, best comedy from the Los Angeles Film Awards and the Nuclear Pen Award from the GenreBlast Film Festival.

Kevin J. Wetmore, Jr., is a professional actor and director whose previous books have covered topics ranging from Star Wars to Renaissance faires. He is a professor and chair of the theater department at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, California.

Edited by Ron Riekki and Kevin J. Wetmore, Jr.
Format: softcover (6 x 9)
Pages: 231
Bibliographic Info: notes, bibliographies, index
Copyright Date: 2024
pISBN: 978-1-4766-8791-9
eISBN: 978-1-4766-5247-4
Imprint: McFarland

Introduction: Cyclical Trauma and the Purge Series’ Gun Fetish
Ron Riekki 1
Producing The Purge: An Industrial History of Blumhouse’s Most Politically Charged Franchise
Todd K. Platts 11
The Purge as Panopticon: Screen, Self, and Other
Dale Bailey 24
Trump’s Purge of Decency: How Donald Trump’s Legacy Opens the Door for the Purge Series
Chesya Burke 38
The Greatest Danger Lies Within: A Lesson from The Purge
Michelle Leigh Gompf 51
The Uncanny Horror of The Purge: Freud and the Carnivalesque
Paul J. Patterson 64
“This is our home”: The Nostalgic Horror of The Purge (2013)
Katherine A. Troyer 75
Preventing a Revolution: The Purge and The Hunger Games
Valerie L. Guyant 86
Purging ­Hyper-Invisibility: The First Purge and the Work of Art in the Age of Digital Reproduction
Mattius Rischard 98
The Moral Foundation of The Purge: Moral Decisions, Disengagement, and Emotions
Mark Alberta and Steve Krahnke 112
Eat the Rich: Class Consumption, Politicoreligious Identity, and the Purge Series
Jason V. Brock 125
“Thank God I’m a feminist”: Centralized Patriarchal Capitalism and Fractured Women’s Resistance in The Purge TV Show
Lauren Gilmore 135
Fear of a Black Staten Island: The First Purge
Brian Brems 145
“You’re on your own now”: How the Art of the Haunted Attraction Transforms and Extends Audience Experience of The Purge Franchise
Lisa Morton 156
Thank You for Your Sacrifice: Ritual and Sacrifice in The Purge Universe
Brandon R. Grafius 169
Exploring American Anti-/Racism and Black Female Representation in The Purge TV Series (2018–2019)
Tiffany A. Bryant 179
Purging the Surplus: Precarity in The Purge Franchise
Melissa C. Macero 191
American Horror Stories: Lehman Brothers, the Housing Crisis, and The Purge
Fernando Gabriel Pagnoni Berns 204
Afterword: What Is America? or, the Entertainment Is the Warning
Kevin J. Wetmore, Jr. 215
About the Contributors 219
Index 223