Karra Shimabukuro
The Bogeyman of Your Nightmares:
Freddy Krueger’s Folkloric Roots
Some ideas have become so universal that we no longer stop to
think about their origins. The dark man hiding in the shadows, the bogeyman under the bed, and the nebulous threat in the night punishing bad
children—these are all concepts we are familiar with. Perhaps we associate them in a vague sense with the fairy tales we read as a child. Later,
we may associate them with the horror films we watch as teenagers. Most
of us probably do not stop to think about the origin of these ideas or the
significance of these origins. Folkloric figures do not completely change
through time; they simply become reimagined, providing us a lens through
which to view our own world. These figures serve the purpose of presenting the fears of a time and place. In Nightmare on Elm Street (1984),
Freddy Krueger signifies the cultural fear of an unseen threat to children
present in the wake of the day care abuse scandals of the 1980s, while the
Freddy Krueger of Nightmare on Elm Street (2010) is representative of our
post 9/11 fears—that the narrative, the “truth,” cannot be trusted. In both
versions of Nightmare on Elm Street, Freddy Krueger is the folkloric bogeyman who serves not only to represent cultural fears, but also to present
a sense of justice.
Jack Zipes argues in Breaking the Magic Spell that “the folk tale
was (and still is) an oral narrative form cultivated by non-literate and literate people to express the manner in which they perceived and perceive nature and their social order and their wish to satisfy their needs and wants”
(7). He further states that “each historical epoch and each community altered the original folk tales according to its needs as they were handed
down over the centuries” (8). However, in seeming contrast to these statements, he also argues that mass media and the commercial interests of the
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culture it reflects do not accurately portray the intent, purpose, or stories
of the original fairy tales (140).
I would argue that Zipes is missing an opportunity on two counts.
The first is that his work makes a clear distinction between “true,” original
folklore and “less true” modern imaginings. The assumption that there is
only one way to read these tales (true or less true) disregards any modern reimagining as being valid or “true.” The second missed opportunity
is that he also draws a clear line between the cultures and societies that
originated these tales and the modern day. Zipes does not acknowledge
that any connections can be made between these older, oral cultures and
popular culture today. I argue that due to the intertextuality of today’s popular culture, the modern era most closely reflects the way folklore was
originally presented. If we substitute “oral-narrative” for popular culture,
then we have a new lens through which to view popular culture, that of
modern folklore. Further examining Zipes’ claim that the purpose of these
tales was for “people to express the manner in which they perceived and
perceive nature and their social order and their wish to satisfy their needs
and wants,” we can specifically look at examples of popular culture where
a group’s needs, wants, and fears are addressed: the modern day horror
film. The modern day horror film as a reflection of American culture’s
fears and cultural wants has been a focus of recent scholarship, most notably in Kendall R. Phillips’ Projected Fears: Horror Films and American
Culture, Horror Film and Psychoanalysis, and Carol Clover’s Men, Women and Chainsaws. This is not to say that all horror films are folkloric, as
not all popular culture is folkloric. However, it is worth examining certain
characters, themes, and motifs that occur through generations and across
socio-economic divides in order to analyze which aspects of folklore can
be seen in modern popular culture.
Analyzing folklore within films opens up a new avenue of research. Currently, the most similar scholarship found on this subject has
dealt with depictions of known folklore. While this is an excellent starting
point, and provides a framework, it falls short of the aim of this essay.
However, the current research can easily be applied to analyzing popular
culture for its folkloric elements. Amie Doughty states that
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Each time a new method of distributing story comes about, folktales
are one of the first types of stories spread, and each new medium
adapts and continues to adapt folktales to this medium, first as “faithful” representations—traditional versions—and then as revisions. (128)
Doughty goes on to state that there are also offshoots of the folktale tradition, such as specific tales that are revised in different forms, the presence of folktales in high fantasy novels, and finally, the path that this
essay addresses, whereby authors “create new tales that respond clearly
to the folktale tradition without revising a single tale” (140). These tales
incorporate elements from other tales, may have a modern or “non-traditional setting yet contain elements that are part of the folklore tradition and also comment on that tradition” (140). While Doughty specifically refers to the literary tradition of folktales, as has been shown in
film and culture studies, the same types of analysis can be applied to
other genres and media. The argument that modern popular culture can
be seen as new folklore is reinforced by Doughty’s argument that “Regardless of how folktales’ revisions are shaped, the main element that ties
them together is their intertextuality” (165). Just as, in the literary tradition, authors draw parallels to stories, characters, and elements known
to the audience of folktales, so does popular culture depend on the audience’s previous knowledge of texts, a matrix, as Will Brooker states,
that is made up of references in comics, film, text, and literature (88).
According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the term bogy/bogey,
from which bogeyman is derived, has only recently been found in literature—1840’s Witches Frolic in Ingoldsby Legends. There is some anecdotal evidence that reference to bogy can be found “in the nursery” and is related to the terms bog, bogle, and bug, all words with connotations of terror
(“[B]ogy”). A Dictionary of English Folklore defines a bogey or bogeyman
as “any figure deliberately used to frighten others, almost always children,
to control their behavior” (Simpson and Roud 28). They are also creatures
whose nature is not defined, where shape changing is a “standard feature,”
and who sometimes replace the Devil in agreement or deal stories (29).
In Germanic folktales and fairy tales, the bogeyman has been
identified with many names and titles such as bögge, Der schwarze Mann
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(the black man), or Krampus (the sidekick of St. Nicholas who stuffs
bad children into a sack and carries them off for punishment), and his
presence is tied to the disappearance of children, or child abuse or punishment. He is the dark man that lurks under the bed, or in dark places, to steal or punish children. He is also used to frighten children, or
serve as an admonition for acceptable, and unacceptable, behavior.
While bogeymen may appear across different cultures and genres,
Marina Warner in No Go the Bogeyman: Scaring, Lulling, and Making
Mock argues that there are common traits to be found in bogeymen across
the globe. Bogeys can become anything; they are usually defined more
for all the ways they change their shape than for any one shape (11); they
are often cannibals, or exhibit cannibalistic tendencies (12-13); and there
is a connection between bogeymen and ogres and the giants of Greek mythology, specifically a connection to fire and earth and their “frightening
pasts” (95, 96). Warner also states that as survival rates in children rose,
the bogeyman transformed into a child molester (38). There is also a connection between lullabies and the bogeyman: they served as a warning of
the dangers of the bogeyman (228). Bogeys seen today are often portrayed
as child-snatchers, child-killers, sexual violators of the young (285).
The line between bogeymen and devils is blurred in German
folklore with the two often appearing interchangeable. The folk tradition,
“contrary to the literary conception . . . [had] a more visual and concrete
idea of the devil” (Rohrich 23). Rohrich states that “whenever people
saw or felt anything sinful, the devil was considered to be present” (24).
If someone danced, or cursed, or committed any other sin, it was common practice for people to be warned that “the devil will get you.” The
trickster devil that often appears in folktales is both an embodiment of
the Biblical devil seen in “medieval theology” and the figure seen “historically and culturally” (Rohrich 27). The bogeyman functioned in the
same way for children as these devils did for adults, so it is important to
look at other similarities between them. Devils were often betrayed by
trickery by a human, sometimes characterized as a partner or seen as being in league with the devil (Rohrich 30). These devil characters were
associated with other pagan demons and with giants. One of the most
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common storylines is that of the devil’s pact: In the Grimms’ tales, there
is also the instance of Zeungungsweihe—when a child (deliberately or
not) is assigned to a devil (Grimm and Grimm No. 31 “The Girl Without
Hands,” 55 “Rumpelstilzchen,” 92 “The King of the Golden Mountain”).
Rohrich states that “devil legends and devil tales are now undoubtedly only historical material—they no longer belong to current folklore”
(22). I would argue that these tales of bogeymen have moved from literary
folklore to the modern day’s version of word of mouth—film and other
popular culture. This new folklore is generational, with tales being passed
down and retold for a new generation, and word of mouth has become the
intertextuality of popular culture. Certain major slasher film franchises—
Halloween, Friday the 13th, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and Nightmare
on Elm Street—are all stories that have been passed down, in continuing
franchises, and retold by and for a new generation in the recent remakes
and reboots of these movies. The characters of Michael Myers, Jason
Voorhies, Leatherface, and Freddy Krueger have many of the characteristics of folk characters, and are recognizable across cultures and classes.
Phillips states that “the essential quality of the bogeyman is his
(or, at times, her) relationship to cultural boundaries” (133) and that the
“bogeyman becomes an example of what happens to those who transgress the boundaries” (133). Phillips further goes on to argue that “[t]
he bogeyman, after all, has long inhabited the fairy tales told to children and, in this familiar format, his function has been as a threatening
punisher” (134) and that American culture of the 1970s, with its permissive nature, was primed for a bogeyman that would reinforce limits
and boundaries (132-133). While there are merits to Phillips’ argument,
there are also flaws. While the cultural scene of the 1970s can certainly be read as needing figures that imposed boundaries, the weakness of
the argument is the misreading of the function of a bogeyman in folklore. A better statement would be that while the cultural trends of the
time might have called for a bogeyman that was a reflection of a need
of boundaries, the slasher movie villains that appear in reaction to those
trends are not true reflections of the bogeyman. In order to understand
this distinction, we need to first understand how slasher films function.
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In Games of Terror, Vera Dika argues that slasher films are inherently rooted in the past. Both Michael Myers in the Halloween franchise and
Jason Voorhies in the Friday the 13th franchise commit acts in the present
because of events in their pasts. This looking back to the past is also seen in
both incarnations of Nightmare on Elm Street and can be viewed as a folkloric trope. In Nightmare on Elm Street “the ‘weight of the past’ in Nancy’s
house is the hidden crime that Nancy’s parents committed against Freddy”
(Christensen 36). Folklore often takes the form of cautionary tales, lessons
to be learned from past events, and this use is shared in slasher films.
In Halloween (1978), Michael Myers is a psychotic killer who
falls into the morality play trope of punishing teens for immoral behavior.
Jason Voorhies, from Friday the 13th Part 2 (1980) falls into the same
category. Both punish teens in their communities (Haddenfield and Camp
Crystal Lake), returning to the places of their youth and first crimes, and
there is a clear cause and effect to the actions of both killers: the offending
teens drink, smoke pot, and have sex and soon afterwards are killed by
either Myers or Voorhies. Phillips reads this as standing “in for the disciplining parental figure” (138) and that this punishing aspect represents a
“cultural return,” or desire for a return to a more conservative time (135).
While Phillips is correct in the statement that the bogeyman was often
a disciplining figure, Phillips misreads the purpose of the bogeyman as
bringing “cultural and moral chaos” (134) and states that Myers is different because his purpose instead is “punish the wicked” (135). This view
disregards the purpose of the bogeyman, which was not to bring chaos, but
was to enforce order, to punish the transgressor. The bogeyman often punished the children for the sin of the parents, ensuring that a terrible sort of
justice was carried out, and while the means may have been horrific, there
was a clear understanding of why these children were punished. Myers and
Voorhies punish the teenagers for their own actions, while Freddy Krueger,
in the role of bogeyman, punishes the teenagers for the acts of the parents.
Wes Craven’s Nightmare on Elm Street, with its release in 1984,
clearly built on the audiences of the slasher films Halloween (1978) and
Friday the 13th (1980, and Part 2, 1981). The film begins with Freddy
Krueger appearing in the dreams of several high school friends; Tina, Rod,
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Nancy, and Glen. Freddy’s appearances hint at a connection to the past,
and one by one he begins to kill the teenagers in their dreams, while their
deaths appear as if they were done with an invisible hand, beginning with
the bloody death of Tina in front of her boyfriend Rod, and continuing
with Rod’s death by hanging in his jail cell when he is arrested for Tina’s
murder. It is the third friend, Nancy, who becomes the film’s protagonist,
and discovers that Freddy was a child murderer that the teenagers’ parents
burned alive in the boiler room of the school. She then spends the rest of the
film trying to figure out how to stop Krueger, with Glen eventually becoming a casualty of Freddy, as he tries (and fails) to help Nancy with her plan.
Part of what sets Freddy Krueger apart from Michael Myers and
Jason Voorhies is that
ideologically, Freddy is an example of America’s political unconscious violently unleashed upon itself, manifesting everything that
is unspeakable and repressed in the master narrative (perversion,
child abuse and murder, vigilanteism, the breakdown of rationality,
order, and the family, among others), but still always present in the
collective unconscious of the dominant culture. (Heba 7)
Nightmare on Elm Street as a whole can also be classified as “other” by the
ways in which it departs from the slasher film formula in that “Freddy is a
killer who is not driven by psychosexual fury,” and that the Terrible Place
described by Clover is not in fact a physical place at all, but the human
mind, as well as the fact that “Nancy is able to defeat Freddy, but not by
resorting to phallic violence” (Christensen 30). The fact that Krueger can
be related to the collective unconscious, as well as the unspeakable and repressed, points to his nature as a reimagined bogeyman, and his characterization as “other” can also be read as a glance back to folkloric monsters.
Krueger is also coded as “other” against Myers and Voorhies in
that he kills for revenge, and takes pleasure in his kills, as evidenced in the
elaborate deaths of the teenagers, as well as the clever dialogue of Krueger
that becomes more pronounced as the franchise goes on (8). As Heba goes
on to state, part of what makes Freddy Krueger so terrifying is “that there
is no safety from him” (7); his supernatural nature, and his method of killing through dreams, as well as the protagonist’s inability to kill him, serve
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to prove that even though he may temporarily seem defeated, in the end
there is no escaping Freddy Krueger.
Nightmare on Elm Street (2010) has been described as a retelling
rather than a reboot when actually, it is neither. While many of the scenes,
as well as dialogue, in the 2010 Samuel Bayer production are the same
as the 1984 Wes Craven production, the overall narrative is radically different. The narrative of the 2010 production plays upon the audience’s
knowledge of the 1984 production, while also taking both the character
of Freddy Krueger, and his crimes, to a much darker place. This darkness
may be due, in part, to the time period. During the 1984 production, Robert Englund, who played Freddy Krueger in the original franchise, states
that:
“Wes wrote the most evil, corrupt thing he could think of. Originally, that meant Freddy was a child molester. Right while we were
shooting the first Nightmare, there was a huge scandal based around
an area of single parent yuppies in California known as South Bay.
Child molesters had descended . . . . On the spot we changed the
script from child molester to child murderer; mainly so Wes wouldn’t
be accused of exploiting the South Bay case.” (Robb)
I would argue that the portrayal of Freddy Krueger in the 2010 production
is darker for two reasons. The first is that in the twenty-six years between
films, the fears of the viewing audience have radically changed from more
concrete fears (threatened children) to more insidious ones in a post 9/11
world where who is the bad guy and who is the good guy is not always
clear. The character of Freddy Krueger in both incarnations illustrates that
the reimagining of the bogeyman can be made to showcase the fears of
multiple generations. The second reason may be a much more practical
one: that there are ideas and stories that can be told in 2010 (a decade that
saw the torture-porn of the seven Saw films [2004+] become popular), that
could be hinted at, but not completely told in 1984.
While many slasher movie villains appear to have some supernatural qualities such as speed or invincibility, they are nevertheless firmly
grounded in reality. Freddy Krueger, on the other hand, exists only in the
dream world. This “living nightmare” aspect that comes to life to punish
bad children/people is a main element of Krueger’s folkloric roots as a
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bogeyman. Specifically, Freddy Krueger is named as a bogeyman in Craven’s original Nightmare on Elm Street. After the opening scene, as Tina
discusses her dreams with Glen and Nancy, Nancy says “sounds like a real
bogeyman” and then goes on to quote the first line of the lullaby, “One,
two, Freddy’s coming for you.” Later, Nancy asks Glen “Do you believe
in the bogeyman?” And finally, Glen’s response to Nancy’s plan to catch
Freddy, and his role in it, is “great, I get to baseball bat the bogeyman.”
While Nightmare 2010 does not specifically name Krueger as a bogeyman, as with the original, he fits the characterization. Both imaginings of
Krueger are violators of the young, both punish the parents of the town
through their children, and both exist in the strictly supernatural world of
the dreamscape.
Warner states that bogeys can become anything; they are usually
defined more for all the ways they change their shape than for any one
shape (11). This can be seen in the original Nightmare and Nightmare
2010 when the outline of Freddy Krueger’s head and face push out of
the wall over Nancy as she dozes. It is seen again in the original when
Krueger stretches out his puppet-like arms towards Tina during the chase
scene near the beginning of the movie when Tina pulls his face off, later when Krueger appears as the hall monitor, and finally, when Nancy’s
phone morphs into Krueger’s tongue and mouth. Surprisingly, given the
difference in production values in the 2010 versus 1984 productions, the
original emphasizes this shape-shifting more than the remake does.
Bogeymen are shape shifters in more than just the physical sense;
the role they play also shifts to reflect current fears. As noted before, Warner indicates that with a rise in children’s survival rates, the bogeyman
transformed into a child molester (38) and that bogeys seen today are often portrayed as child-snatchers, child-killers, and sexual violators of the
young (285). In Craven’s Nightmare, Krueger is only described as a child
killer—twenty children are killed, and the parents tracked him to the boiler
room and set fire to it as justice. As mentioned, Craven supposedly made
this decision in light of “the rash of alleged abuse at day-care centers in the
1980s” (Alston); however, regardless of the reasoning behind the decision,
Krueger is still a threat to the teenagers in the 1984 production, even if it
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is the threat of violence and not abuse.
Nightmare 2010 takes the idea of Freddy Krueger as child molester and makes it the entire center of the movie. This is clear from the opening credits, with the focus on children playing games such as hop-scotch
and jumping rope on school grounds, the childlike handwriting used for
the credits, and children’s drawings interspersed amongst the credits—and
this emphasis continues throughout the movie. Knowledge of Krueger is
tied to the children, Badham Pre-School, and what really occurred there.
The first affected teenager the audience is introduced to, Dean, mentions
this in the opening scene, when he says his problems began when he and
his therapist began exploring his past, and that was when the nightmares
began, when he started to remember. Freddy also emphasizes that the children’s remembering is crucial to his power. He says to Kris (the mirror of
the Tina character in this retelling) “Remember me?” and later to Nancy,
the protagonist, “You don’t remember? You must” and “Your memories
are what fuel me.” Nancy’s mom states that she kept all of this from her
because “I wanted you to forget.” Later, Quentin (the mirror of the Glen
character) states that Krueger manipulated them into returning to the preschool so that they would remember. This focus on memory not only ties
to the oral nature of folklore, but the function of the bogeyman—to serve
as a lesson to others, which can only occur if people remember the story. It
also circles back to the fact that Krueger’s purpose is not just to punish his
victims, as Myers and Voorhies do, but to torture them. Both incarnations
of Krueger are the violators of children that Warner describes, although
how they violate children is different in each version.
While Craven’s version avoids the concept of Krueger as child
molester, and only states that he is a child killer, there is a sexual connection made between Krueger and Nancy, reinforcing the image of bogeyman as violator of the young even in the original 1984 production.
Once Glen is killed and Nancy’s unplugged phone rings, it is Krueger
on the other end who states, “I’m your boyfriend now.” In the Nightmare
2010 production, Jackie Earle Haley’s Krueger repeats this exact line, but
his portrayal is much more sexual. In Nightmare 2010 when Nancy says
“Fuck you,” his reply is “Oh-- that sounds like fun” and later when Nancy
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is trying to escape through a hallway that has become a swamp of blood,
he taunts, “How’s this for a wet dream?” Perhaps nowhere, though, is the
sex more explicit than at the end of the 2010 production, when Nancy has
purposely fallen asleep in order to try and bring Krueger back into the real
world. Nancy is dropped onto a bed, recalling both Tina and Glen’s deaths
in the original, as well as Kris’s in this version. This scene is not just sexual, but is sexual towards the younger version of Nancy, the pre-school age
Nancy. While it is the more adult-aged Nancy that is shown, she is dressed
in the white dress and patent leather shoes seen in the flashbacks of her
younger self. Krueger tells her that this dress was always his favorite, and
he makes references to “playing” as they used to. He suggestively runs his
claw glove up her thigh, and it is the child imagery that makes this a more
disturbing scene than the claw glove appearing between Nancy’s legs in
the bathtub scenes (in both the 1984 and 2010 version). Haley’s performance, particularly in this bed scene, reinforces the image of bogeyman as
child molester.
The twist in Nightmare 2010 is not that Freddy Krueger is portrayed as a child molester, but that the plot plays with whether Freddy was
ever guilty at all; the director seems to want the audience to ask whether
or not the narrative can be trusted. Given that Nightmare 2010 is a reimagining of the 1984 production of Nightmare on Elm Street, the assumption
is that the audience knows Freddy Krueger’s story and his guilt. However,
through both flashback scenes, and the way the story unfolds as Quentin
and Nancy try to discover the truth, the audience begins to doubt that the
narrative, both of the original film, and the one told by the characters within the 2010 film, can be trusted. Flashback scenes show Krueger as a kindly gardener who worked at Badham Pre-School, playing what appear to be
harmless games with the kids, who are laughing as they play. As Nancy’s
mother Gwen states, “He got along so well with the children,” “And you
all loved to play games with him.” This new narrative of Krueger’s backstory can be seen throughout the movie. For instance, once Nancy and
Quentin have experienced visits from Freddy Krueger, and are having a
harder and harder time staying awake, they begin to experience snippets of
Krueger’s narrative in their dreams—flashes to the boiler room/basement,
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the burned skin. However, nowhere is this more noticeable than partway
through the movie with Quentin. The scene shows Quentin participating
in swim practice at school, where he falls asleep while doing laps, experiencing what he calls “micro-naps,” a symptom of trying to stay awake too
long. Krueger pulls Quentin from the real life pool into the dreamscape.
However, Krueger doesn’t pull Quentin into the dreamscape to kill him,
as he did with Kris and Jesse; instead Quentin finds himself being shown
Krueger’s death in a wide view, almost omniscient shot. The parents are
shown as an angry mob, and Krueger, as played by Haley, shows a terrified
man who cries and proclaims his innocence over and over: “I didn’t do
anything.” The parents don’t just kill him, they burn him alive—a scene
described but never shown in the original. Quentin is removed from this
vision in the dreamscape only when his classmates and coach pull him out
of the pool to prevent him from drowning. When Quentin later confronts
his father, it appears as though he believes what he has seen, despite the
fact that the one rule with Krueger is that you can never believe what you
see in the dreamscape. He questions his father about Krueger, asking him
“How did you know he was guilty?” and the conversation quickly disintegrates as Quentin accuses him, stating “You killed an innocent man.”
However, as the movie later shows, all of this was simply a manipulation
to get Nancy back to the school, where she would eventually find not only
her paintings in the “cave” Krueger used to bring her, but also what the
audience assumes are incredibly graphic Polaroids that prove to all be of
Nancy. The manipulation was meant to get them to remember. This emphasizes the concept of the bogeyman as a torturer of children. Krueger’s
manipulation of the children is his form of mental torture, which makes
the truth of what Krueger and what he did even more traumatic. The concept of memory is closely tied to storytelling, and the importance of certain stories being told.
There is also a connection between lullabies and the bogeyman
as they serve as a warning of the dangers of the bogeyman, contributing
to both memory and storytelling (Warner 228).1 The lullaby first appears
in Craven’s Nightmare in the opening dream; three girls in white dresses
jump rope to it: “One, two, Freddy’s coming for you. Three, four, Better
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lock your door. Five, six, Grab your crucifix. Seven, eight, Better stay up
late. Nine, ten, Never sleep again.” Later, Nancy sings snatches of it in
the bath tub. The image of the three girls jumping rope to the lullaby also
closes the movie. Nightmare 2010 features as well the image of three girls
in white who are jumping rope, but here, they are placed on the property
of Badham Pre-School, so the implication is that these were actual children Freddy knew. Later in the 2010 production, Nancy also mentions the
lullaby to Jesse, the fourth in their teenage group (and mirror character
to Rod from the original). The lullaby here serves the same purpose as in
folklore: it is meant as a warning about the bogeyman and reinforces the
oral element of folklore.
Connections between bogeymen and the devil’s pact seen in German fairy tales and folklore are also significant. As Rohrich states, in the
Grimms’ tales, there is the example of Zeungungsweihe, when a child (deliberately or not) is assigned to a devil such as in Grimms’ No. 31 “The
Girl Without Hands,” where a miller inadvertently gives his daughter to the
devil in exchange for wealth, No. 92 “The King of the Golden Mountain,”
where a merchant makes a deal for riches with a black dwarf, in exchange
for what ends up being his son, and No.55 “Rumpelstilzchen,” where the
miller’s daughter promises her first born child to Rumpelstilzchen (Grimm
and Grimm). In each case, the parent is guilty of making a deal for which
they do not fully understand the implications. In both productions of Nightmare on Elm Street, the actions of the parents have inadvertently assigned
their children to Freddy Krueger. The children are paying for the sins of
the parents—their murder of Freddy Krueger. As Pat Gill argues, “The
monsters haunting the streets, dormitories, and dreams of the protagonists
are less figures of patriarchal control and punishment than the ogres of
childhood nightmares . . . which remain undiminished because no parent
comes round to dispel them” (17). The parents are complicit in the evils
that occur, as “they willingly sacrifice the children in their care, covering
up incidents and blaming the innocent in order to keep their jobs or to gain
power” (19). Once again, Dika’s model of the past coming back to haunt
the present is seen. While the actions of the parents remain in the past, and
they have no active role in confronting, or even seeing, Freddy Krueger
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in the present, it is still inherent to the plot that “[s]ome action in their
past has brought about this relentless evil force to wreak havoc among
their children” (Gill 17). While the parents in both versions of Nightmare
on Elm Street explain that they acted as they did and kept their secrets in
order to protect the children, the audience cannot help but notice that they
only act after the damage has been done (the child killings in the original,
the abuse in the 2010 production), and afterwards, keep silent only out of
self-interest.
In Nightmare 2010, the character of Quentin makes implicit reference to the children paying for the sins of the parents when he references the Pied Piper of Hamlin, who took revenge on the town by taking
their children. By taking revenge into their own hands, the parents of Elm
Street have inadvertently linked themselves and their children with Freddy Krueger. They have made a deal with the devil for which they do not
understand the consequences. Freddy Krueger is not only tied to the children, but takes his revenge on the parents through his mental and physical
torture of the children.
The torture and killing of the children in both versions is closely tied to place, the boiler room/basement where Freddy Krueger lived/
worked/died. Thus Freddy is related to the image of bogeymen connected
with fire and earth and in turn connected to the giants of mythology (Warner 95, 96). Freddy Krueger, in both imaginings, is closely tied with these
images—first with his burns, but also with his dreamscape. This imagery
appears in the opening sequence of Craven’s Nightmare as Tina stands in
front of a fire, in a boiler room/basement, surrounded by steam pipes. Later, Nancy also goes down to this boiler room/basement. There is a further
connection when Nancy’s mom tells the story of Freddy Krueger and reveals that she kept his glove in an old furnace/stove. In the original Nightmare, the boiler room/basement is connected to the place Freddy Krueger
was killed, but in the 2010 production, it is specifically stated that Krueger
lived in the basement of the pre-school, so there is a blurring of where
Freddy lived, versus where he was killed—the seemingly abandoned industrial park seen in Quentin’s vision. In Nightmare 2010, fire first appears
in the opening scene, as Dean walks through the kitchen of a diner. Freddy
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is described as “burned, melted” and frequently, the shots focus on closeups of Freddy’s claws as they create sparks when dragged along pipes in
the boiler room/basement. Freddy is tied to the fire of bogeymen/giants
past through his death, and tied to the earth with the boiler room/basement
being underground.
In both films, Krueger exists only in the dream world, the realm
of the supernatural, of the bogeyman. He is incapable of acting in the real
world, although sometimes the effects of his actions can be carried into the
real world. Wes Craven’s Nancy carries into reality a burn she gave herself
in the dreamscape boiler room; the lock of hair that Krueger slices off in
the dreamscape also follows her back to the classroom. However, in both
productions, Nancy is able to straddle the dream world and reality, as is
proven when it is shown that she is capable of bringing back something of
Freddy’s—his hat and a piece of his sweater.
Krueger’s power, however, lies only in the dream world; he can
only get to the children once they fall asleep. In both films, we never see
Krueger kill anyone in the real world. In the opening scene of Nightmare
2010 in the diner, Dean appears to slit his own throat with a steak knife as
Kris watches, Tina in the original is spun around the ceiling and then slit
open before falling dead onto the bed, as is Kris in the 2010 version. The
audience sees Rod get strangled and hanged by a sheet in the original, but
as if by an invisible force. Jesse’s (the Rod character in 2010) death flashes back and forth between the reality (in a prison cell after his arrest for
Kris’s murder), and the dreamscape (the boiler room). In the dreamscape,
Jesse sees children and the bodies of Dean and Kris in the boiler room. In
reality, the audience sees Jesse’s body sliced open, and his bloody body
simply falls to the floor in the locked cell. There is one more flashback
to the dreamscape as Krueger tells Jesse that the brain “lives for seven
minutes after death. We have six more minutes to play.” Again, this circles
back to the idea that Krueger’s purpose is not punishment but torture of
these children. It also reinforces Krueger’s connection to the supernatural
and bogeymen.
While the ending of both movies would seem to suggest at first
that Freddy can operate in the real world, this idea is eventually disproved.
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At the end of the original Nightmare, Freddy is apparently dragged into the
real world by Nancy, as seen in the complex booby trap end scenes. However, there are problems with accepting this interpretation. Freddy and the
body of Nancy’s mother disappear into the bed, which argues against this
scene taking place in reality. Also, Nancy is able to banish Freddy by stating “This is just a dream” despite words not having had an effect on him
before. This idea is banished for good when the closing scene shows that
Nancy never left the dream world as she and her friends are trapped in the
Freddy car, and her mother is pulled back through the window in the door.
Nightmare 2010 also plays with idea of Freddy’s existing in the real world,
but as in the original, disproves it. The climactic scene centers on Nancy
bringing Freddy out of the dreamscape and into the real world, where she
is able to cut off his hand and decapitate him before burning down the preschool with his body still in it. However, in the final scene, as Nancy and
her mother return home, Freddy appears in the mirror behind the mother
and pulls her through the mirror, which shatters and then reforms with the
mother’s blood on the outside, indicating that the dream continues. This
continuity is further emphasized as the credits roll to the lyrics “Whenever
I want you, all I have to do is dream” by the Everly Brothers. The implication is that Freddy Krueger can never be destroyed, that as long as people
dream, and remember him, the bogeyman will always exist. As Heba argued, “there is no safety from him” (7).
While at first glance it may appear as though Freddy could be put
in the same category as Michael Myers and Jason Voorhies, his characterizations in both Craven’s original and the 2010 reimagining show that
Krueger has deep connections to the bogeyman of folklore. He shares with
bogeymen the characterization of a child killer in Craven’s version, and
child molester in the 2010 remake. He harks back to deals made with the
devil in the Grimms’ stories, as the children were inadvertently traded to
Krueger through the past actions of the parents. The bogeyman as seducer
is seen in the references to The Pied Piper of Hamlin, and as Krueger punishes the parents of the town through their children. Krueger as a bogeyman character is also supported by his only existing in the strictly supernatural world of the dreamscape and characters’ ultimate failure to destroy
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him.
The definition of folklore is “stories of a community passed down
through generations by word of mouth” (Oxford English Dictionary).
Folklore in the modern world is very different than two hundred, or even
one hundred years ago. Technology has changed how we tell stories, and
global communication has redefined “word of mouth.” Furthermore, if we
expand our definition of word of mouth to mean popular culture, then it is
easy to see that horror movies and slasher movies in particular can be the
modern day’s answer to folklore. Ask anyone if they know who Michael
Myers, Jason Voorhies, and Freddy Krueger are—their stature would seem
to indicate their folkloric status. Once we have situated these movies in
this matrix, the opportunities for further research open up. Why do some
of these characters display traditional folkloric characteristics while some
do not? How do we situate this phenomenon within the larger context
of horror/slasher films as folklore? In what other ways do horror movies
function as folklore? How do they inform or influence other mediums of
“word of mouth”/popular culture? Finally, if “true” folklore is waning,
then studies such as this serve as a way to reinvigorate folklore studies
and make previously ignored connections between folklore and popular
culture.
Karra Shimabukuro
The University of New Mexico
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Note
Editor’s note: Compare, for example, the dream song in the Buffy the
Vampire Slayer episode “Hush” that heralds the approach of The Gentlemen—another set of characters who could be considered bogeymen.
1
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The Bogeyman of Your Nightmares: Freddy Krueger’s Folkloric Roots
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Karra Shimabukuro is a Ph.D. student in British and Irish Literary Studies at
the University of New Mexico. Her research focuses on the way folkloric characters are represented in literature and popular culture—specifically, the devil. She
frequently writes reviews for The Journal of Popular Culture and The Journal of
Folklore Research Review and is a regular presenter at the Popular Culture Association’s national conference. Her most recent work deals with the liminal space
of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and the paratext of its board game.
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