Whatever one might think about the basic premise behind The Purge, there can be no doubt about the fact that it has become one of the more recognizable horror movie franchises of recent times. As a result, while there doesn’t seem to have been much information revealed about the sources of inspiration for the masks used in the movies, one can’t help but wonder what led to their creation.
What Might Have Inspired the Mask From The Purge?
For starters, the use of masks by people seeking to cause terror isn’t exactly an uncommon practice. In fact, people in the United States should be familiar with the Ku Klux Klan, who are remembered in pop culture for their white hoods as well as their white robes. However, it is interesting to note that the first incarnation of the Ku Klux Klan wore a wide range of costumes for the purpose of concealing their identities, while their most iconic look wasn’t popularized until the release of The Birth of a Nation resulted in the start-up of the second incarnation.
Based on this, some of the reasoning for the masks in The Purge should be clear. First, the masks serve to conceal the wearers’ identities, which is useful in both an in-setting sense and an out-of-setting sense. In-setting, the masks have a hindering effect on the cycles of revenge that should be widespread in the United States of The Purge because the victims and their families have a harder time figuring out who victimized them. Out-of-setting, the masks are useful for preventing the viewers from seeing the wearers as full-fledged human beings, which makes them more threatening by making them seem like faceless monsters.
On top of this, the masks are useful because they are intimidating. On their own, full-faced masks can be pretty creepy because they look like human faces but are not wholly there, thus resulting in what is called the uncanny valley effect. However, when full-faced masks are deliberately designed for intimidation, the effect is that much greater. Moreover, it is interesting to note that putting on a mask can put their wearers in a separate state of mind as well, which seems like the sort of thing that would prove very useful in a setting with something as ridiculous as the Purge. After all, it is not a coincidence that ancient religious rituals sometimes featured people wearing masks representing religious figures of various sorts, thus making them stand-ins for them.
With that said, one can’t help but wonder whether the masks in The Purge were influenced by Guy Fawkes masks as well. For those who are unfamiliar with the name, Guy Fawkes was one of the English Catholics who conspired to blow up King James I of England, with the result that the English-speaking world went on to celebrate the foiling of the conspiracy for a few centuries by burning effigies of the man. In more recent times, the Guy Fawkes mask has become associated with political protest because of its use by the main character in V For Vendetta, which in turn, resulted in its adoption by Anonymous and other anti-establishment groups. Curiously, the violence of the people wearing masks in The Purge have been re-purposed for usefulness to the state, but to be perfectly fair, that sort of thing isn’t exactly unknown in real world history.
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