Friday the 13th: BETTY vs. Jason

Betty eats your brain (or worse!); Jason just obliterates it.

Classic, relentless psychopath Jason Voorhees meet your match--if there is a lesbian music event, BETTY will be there like a machete to a virgin’s loins. For me, more horrifying than AFI's Friday night showing of Friday the 13th: Part III is the fact that dykes invariably get the same tired line-up when it comes to pride events. Will there be acoustic guitar and overwrought lyrics? Spoken word? A played-out lesbofest-circuit headliner? I understand there are people who go in for this sort of thing, and that’s fine, totally your Bobby Brown prerogative--but when it saturates the scene, like the blood of horny teenagers, it’s frustrating and creates this monolithic stereotype of dyke culture.

So when I saw that D.C.’s own BETTY were the draw band for this Friday’s Women's Pride Party at the 9:30 Club, it was as predictable as the cadenced, slow approach of a homicidal maniac. Who does not collectively groan through the L Word theme song, and/or was completely baffled that BETTY-members had so many cameos (and a fucking sex scene--ugh!!!) in seasons two and three? So why do we keep bringing them back like an ad nauseam slasher sequel?

When it comes to BETTY vs. Jason, I’d much rather throw my money away on jubilant gore that gender fucks the set-up all the way to the Final Girl end formula.


Last year, I read Carol Clover’s “Men, Women, and Chainsaws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film,” and it was like realizing the secret behind why I like field hockey so much--horror is fucking gaaaaay. Here, let me take my big phallic weapon and make vaginal gashes in your body. Ok, now you get my knife away from me and gash me up. Horror is like a big old gender circle-jerk. Sexually repressed dudes with mommy issues, girls staving off sex for survival--I used to think this was all just a link in some heteronormative morality tale, until I realized that horror and gore is so enjoyable because it literally splits the gendered body wide-open. Through the monster, we reframe our bodies, and our meanings of gender. Awesome gothic queer theorist Judith/Jack Halberstam says that

“ . . . monsters are always in motion and resist the interpretive strategies that attempt to put them in place. The monster always represents the disruption of categories, the destruction of boundaries, and the presence of impurities and so we need monsters and we need to recognize and celebrate our own monstrosities.”

I’d much rather be celebrating weirdness and the disruption of dyke categories, this Friday, but I’m willing to compromise. In fact, seeing how AFI’s not even showing the actual 3-D version of Friday the 13th III, it’s not so hard to give up seeing the classic on the big screen. Plus, musical tastes aside, the 11 pm-til you stumble home side of the Women's Party looks rather enjoyable--you not only save ten bucks on admission, you also get to skip right to the evening’s dessert--performances by Natty Boom, E-Cleff, and first ladies djs junebullet, k la rock, et al.

So BETTY, your reign of terror is temporarily avoided. No, I didn’t try to fight you on your own turf, because your tenacity (and wardrobe) leads me to believe you are indeed members of the undead. However, if anybody ever has plans to turn The Land at Michigan Womyn’s Fest into a full-scale reenactment of Camp Crystal Lake, I would be there with a feather earring and Cris Williamson t-shirt, and I will own you, ladies of BETTY.