Popcorn Disability: Mark in 'Friday the 13th, Part 2'

He's not the final girl. He's not killed first. He's just Mark!

Popcorn Disability: Mark in 'Friday the 13th, Part 2'

Welcome to this installment of Popcorn Disability, where I look at disability through the lens of popular culture. If you want to read the full story consider becoming a paid-subscriber. Not only do you get access to the awesomeness below, but you’ll be able to read every paid post including our monthly watch diaries, disability stories, and more. I also cross post these over at The Film Maven Patreon where you can subscribe, at the same price, without supporting Substack itself. Subscribe and show your support for independent journalism.

An interesting article is still interesting no matter when it comes out, or at least that’s what I’m saying to justify putting out a piece about Friday the 13th on Monday the 16th. That’s a future franchise! But in all honesty, the horror genre has always been hospitable to disabled characters and storylines, whether that’s actual characters with disabilities or significant disabled coding in the narrative. Isabel Christine Pinedo writes in Recreational Terror: Women and the Pleasures of Horror Film Viewing that “much as the horror film is an exercise in terror, it is simultaneously an exercise in mastery, in which controlled loss substitutes a loss of control.”