For nearly seven years, American Horror Story has plastered our televisions (and computers, and phones, and tablets. . .) with images of our worst nightmares. In the six previous seasons, we have seen everything from ghosts to nazi doctors, from horrifyingly disfigured clowns to glamorous vampires.
So with the September 5 premiere of the seventh season, I was surprised to see that showrunner Ryan Murphy decided to make this season's monsters all seem so. . . real.
Despite the Cult subtitle, "horrifying reality" seems to be the actual theme of this season. Real footage of a real politician saying really awful things opened the episode. (As if we could ever forget that Trump actually said that he could "stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and [not] lose any votes."
Thanks for reminding us of that horror story, Murphy!) We see cruelty and violence against minority groups, much like the horrors that we really witness on the news daily. Homophobia runs rampant. Mental illness is a constant struggle. Parts of the United States were literally plagued with random groups of creepy clowns in 2016, much like the clowns of this season. It's all too real, but also really good.
The villain of the season seems to be Kai Anderson, a blue-haired, racist man (brilliantly, horrifyingly portrayed by Evan Peters) who seems to thrive on the chaos of fear. "The revolution has begun," he shouts as Trump's projected win is announced on election night.
He fills his blender with cheese puffs, then uses the dust to paint his face while styling his hair to look like Trump's infamous hairstyle. He claims, "fear is currency!" He harasses people outside of his "straight, white male" bubble (a lesbian couple, a group of Latino men, his sister), and threatens local politicians when they disagree with his "fear is currency" theory, saying, "there is nothing more dangerous in this world than a humiliated man."
This statement is especially chilling, considering the horrifying number of young women who have been murdered for simply turning down a date with a man. Overall, Kai is an absolutely terrifying nightmare of a person.
On the opposite end of the political spectrum is Winter Anderson, Kai's sister (portrayed by the always-flawless Billie Lourd).
Winter is a caricature of the right-wing ideas about liberals. She left college to campaign for Hillary Clinton. While watching the election results, she says, "If I get pregnant now, where will I get an abortion?! What is wrong with CNN for not giving us a trigger warning before they announced the results?"
Later in the episode, she says that her proudest moment was "when Lena Dunham retweeted [her]." Even though there seems to be a satirical setup for her character, Winter definitely seems to have a sinister side, similar to her brother. Despite their obvious political differences, and the fact that she admits that he scares her more than anything else, the two seem to share a close bond. While babysitting, she introduces a child to "the dark web," and makes him watch videos of people being murdered, convincing him that it's like, "vaccinations for your brain."
She's definitely twisted, and worth keeping an eye on.
Along with Winter on the liberal side of the spectrum, we have our main protagonists; Ally and Ivy (played by Murphy staple Sarah Paulson and the adorable Allison Pill) are a married couple with a young son named Oz.
On election night, the couple watches the results come in as their neighbor blames people who cast "protest votes" for Jill Stein, saying, "I hope every one of those voters who decided it was a good time to cast a protest vote are happy when that psycho gets us all killed!" Later, it is revealed that Ally was one of those protest voters because, she says, "as much as I hate him, I didn't trust her [Clinton]."
After the election, Ally's world seems to cave in. All of her phobias - fears that she was sure had been pushed down forever after meeting Ivy - come rushing back. The list of fears is fascinating: "Clowns, confined spaces, blood, particles in the air, the dark, that coral thing that has been staring at me since I came in here," she says, while pointing at decorative faux coral on a bookshelf. "You have a fear of coral?," her therapist asks. "No, " she says, "It's the holes. It's repulsive." And two of these fears seem to plague her more than the others. She sees clowns, whose masks appear to be covered in the kind of holes that terrify her, while grocery shopping.
They follow her through the dairy aisle, have sex in the produce section (yes, it's every bit as disgusting as one might imagine), and chase her on a scooter. She escapes by throwing bottles of rosé at the one on the scooter, only to face another clown inside her car. The panic causes her to crash her car into a light pole.
When the police investigate it, they find no evidence to show that there were ever any clowns there - not even a single witness besides Ally. All of the election-fueled anxiety has, of course, put a strain on Ally and Ivy's marriage.
Even a romantic date night isn't safe, because Ally sees horrifying holes in her food, and a clown in the restaurant. Once they get home, they are greeted by police cars, sirens, and "crime scene" tape: the neighbors from across the street, the same couple that watched the election results with them, have been brutally murdered.
Their son Oz (who was being watched by Winter) claims that he saw a bunch of clowns get out of an ice cream truck and go into the neighbor's home, but Winter says that isn't true. She then shows them a "Twisty the Killer Clown" comic she found in Oz's room. The episode ends with Ally waking up in the middle of the night to a loud noise, then rolling over, expecting to see Ivy, but instead finding the clown that chased her on a scooter in the grocery store. This leaves the viewers to question everything they saw: are the clowns real, or is Ally just going crazy? Furthermore, is what's happening in the world real, or are we all going crazy?
If the rest of the season is anything like "Election Night," then we are in for a wild ride. Right now, it looks like this season will be free of the supernatural spooks that filled previous seasons, traded in for exaggerations of real-world horrors. It was like my worst nightmare, things that I am scared could actually happen. Except, I must admit, I actually enjoyed this reality-fueled nightmare, and I can't wait to see what horrors come next.
