Cruelty: Interchangeable Themes In The Texas Chainsaw Massacre

Cannibalism and Animal Cruelty: Interchangeable Themes in Texas Chainsaw Massacre

In Hooper’s 1974 film The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, we uncover themes of animal cruelty and cannibalism that parallel each other throughout the entire film. We are repeatedly reminded of the cruel punishment that animals endure in slaughterhouses. This social critique serves to remind the audience that humans are mammals just like the animals we consume. The film makes us question society and ourselves as to why we are complicit in slaughtering animals when we purchase and consume them. The film suggests that slaughtering and consuming humans is parallel to the way animals suffer cruel punishment for our consumption. For the purposes of this paper, I will analyze several scenes which incorporate the two themes and compare how they closely align to one another throughout the film.

In the opening scene, we are struck by the tone in narration and the chilling scene of a decomposed body hanging on a stick. The narrator explaining the scene is horrified and it is

When Sally’s boyfriend Jerry enters the home, he discovers Pam’s body inside the freezer. Then, he is hit with a sledgehammer. As the hitchhiker previously stated, “(t)hey died better that way”, and again, we notice the interchangeable theme of cannibalism and animal cruelty (Hooper, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre). When Sally and Franklin decide to go look for their friends who never seemed to return, they discover the horrors that their friends have experienced. Sally then witnesses her own brother Franklin ripped to shreds with a chainsaw by Leatherface. Horrified by the watching her own brother die, she screams and runs to escape her impending doom. In the end, she is the only survivor of the massacre that took place in the rural Texas home. With her life spared, the seemingly dysfunctional family of cannibals will hunt elsewhere to find their next