10.1.2024 Ginger Snaps
Paired with the story "Help Me Follow My Sister into the Land of the Dead" by Carmen Maria Machado!
Film: Ginger Snaps (2001), dir. John Fawcett
Story: “Help Me Follow My Sister into the Land of the Dead” by Carmen Maria Machado
Start the month with two tales of spooky sisters! Cult Canadian classic Ginger Snaps explores the growing rift between goth siblings as the older girl, Ginger, is bitten by a werewolf on the night she gets her period, and Brigitte is left trying in vain to bring back the sister she knew as Ginger blazes a path of sex and violence through their suburb. Pair it with Carmen Maria Machado’s “Help Me Follow My Sister Into the Land of the Dead,” which tells another grim story of sisterly connection through a bleak Kickstarter campaign.
WATCH, READ, THEN VENTURE FORWARD for spoiler-ful analyses of these texts… if you dare!!!
Ginger Snaps (2001)
The bloody heart of this weird, campy, Canadian film is the relationship between two genuinely weird sisters, Brigitte and Ginger, who, for most of their lives, have been bound together in their own macabre little world. In the second scene in the movie (following scene one, which depicts a DOG DEATH RIGHT OUT OF THE GATE(???)), we see the girls posing for a series of photos which they share with their classmates for an assignment; in each one the girls are dead or dying, often through acts of suicide.
(BRIEF TANGENT: As someone with a lot of experience teaching…what is going on with this school?? Where is the rubric for this presentation, and why was it possibly fulfilled by a series of students killing themselves??? Why didn’t the teacher shut this down immediately and refer these kids to counseling??? This will NOT be the last time I have problems with the school staff; WATCH THIS SPACE!)
The sisters are outcasts, in part by choice. They lean into their strangeness and mock their peers for being basic and Suburban, and for not being cool like them and having a suicide pact in place before entering 4th grade. (Also for being, and I believe this is a direct quote, “cum bucket-y date bait”!)
Everything changes on a fateful night during which (1) Ginger gets her first period, and (2) she gets attacked by a werewolf in the woods. For the first time in their lives, the sisters’ paths have diverged dramatically; Ginger, due to her Rapid Onset Adolescence as Symbolized by Werewolf-ism, becomes quickly interested in sex, violence, and drugs, leaving Brigitte to scramble around for a “cure” as she tries in vain to restore her sister to the girl she once was (including, in a scene that perhaps best captures the weird, early ‘00s vibe of the movie, trying to cure her using a silver belly button ring!).
Hijinks ensue, people die, teachers let random vans drive right onto the lawn (??), a kid kills a werewolf with a van and then says confidently that it had a “human circumcised dick” (???), and all of this is interwoven with equal parts social commentary on the horrors of teenage girlhood and pure, gorey chaos.
Ultimately, Brigitte is forced to grapple with the fact that a pact made by two spooky girls trying to survive the suburbs through goth bravado is very different than the realities of killing or dying, and that, once someone has changed in a fundamental way, it may be impossible to get them back.
“Help Me Follow My Sister into the Land of the Dead” by Carmen Maria Machado
Ah, Carmen Maria Machado, my queen of spooky speculative fiction! I already loved this story, and its parallels to Ginger Snaps make it a perfect pairing; both stories feature twisted sisters whose lives have been, in some way, rent apart, leaving one abandoned and grappling in the void for her other half.
This story is, in addition to being a fun, creepy read, a satirical exploration of the way that crowdfunding platforms like GoFundMe and Kickstarter have, due to the real-life nightmare of late stage capitalism, become filled with tales of daily tragedy as people use them to raise money for food, disaster relief, and basic healthcare.
Read More!
Want more Carmen Maria Machado? (Of course you do!!!) Check out her book of short horror Her Body and Other Parties or her gorgeous speculative memoir In the Dream House!