'Saw' & the Subjective Morality of Carnism

Oct 22, 2020

"Of all the creatures ever made, [man] is the most detestable. Of the entire brood, he is the only one . . . that possesses malice. He is the only creature that inflicts pain for sport, knowing it to be pain. The fact that man knows right from wrong proves his intellectual superiority to the other creatures; but the fact that he can do wrong proves his moral inferiority to any creature that cannot."
-Mark Twain

Game Over

Saw is a series that debuted in 2004 with seven original films, plus a quasi-prequel, Jigsaw, released in 2017 and an upcoming ninth installment, Spiral, set to be released in 2021. The original Saw is considered one of the first movies that revitalized contemporary splatter films, which are known for their intense physical violence. What sets this series apart from the ones that followed, which focus more on violence for the sake of violence, is its marriage between grotesque gore and psychological torture. Because of this, the Saw series is known for its complex, albeit slightly convoluted, timeline and twist endings, often with multiple twists and turns in the climax of each film.

The series documents antagonist John Kramer's distorted sense of morality as he places victims in traps; these traps require the victims to physically harm themselves and/or others in order to survive. Because the traps are so dangerous, the victims are often killed in the process of attempting to escape or die because they are too afraid to even try. After each death, John removes a piece of skin from his victims in the shape of a puzzle piece to portray that a piece of them was missing -- that "missing piece" is the cause of them being placed into the trap, generally a criminal or immoral act, which ultimately made them unable to defeat the game -- gaining him the sobriquet "Jigsaw."

But are Jonh's actions justified? Is his twisted belief system not so twisted after all? And what can we learn about our society from his view of the world?

Subjective Morality

Subjective morality is the belief that right and wrong can differ from person to person. However, we can clearly see from John's actions throughout the films that morality isn't subjective when there are victims involved, and, therefore, is never subjective because our actions always impact someone, even if we can't see it.

There are certain things that, to humans, are objectively good or bad (or perhaps it's more of an issue of better or worse). Because when John takes morality into his own hands, he is ignoring the values of his victims, who believe they are worthy of moral consideration regardless of their ability to win his game, and of society as a whole, which, generally, condemns violence as a means of punishment or education.

What Is Murder, Really?

John frequently claims that he isn't a murderer -- in fact, he says that he despises murderers -- and yet he places people in situations in which they could be killed. Though he dies in the timeline of the third and fourth movies, he still plays a major part in the plans and traps for later victims, and in some of those traps, for one player to win, the other must die (*cough Saw VI cough*). Sometimes, the person he's trying to teach a lesson isn't playing the game at all, like in Saw II, when he puts Detective Matthews' son in the trap to punish Matthews for being a dirty cop. (Though, ultimately, Matthews' egotism leads him into the original Saw trap room.) Regardless of John's fast-and-loose definition of murder, that is the only way to define what he does, even if he's not the one in the game.

John Kramer's perception of what is and isn't murder is exactly like a carnist's perception of what does and doesn't make them a killer. Because they aren't the ones jailing, breeding, raising, molesting, mutilating, transporting, shooting, or stabbing the animals they eat and use for other purposes, they don't believe themselves to be morally culpable for these actions. In fact, they think they should be completely absolved of any blame for their participation in animal abuse at animal exploitation facilities (while they continue to support those institutions).

"I Want to Play a Game"

John's ever-popular catchphrase sheds light on his perception of his actions. His predilection for these violent games arouse from his wife's miscarriage, cancer diagnosis, and subsequent suicide attempt. When he overcame death, he had an epiphany: Others needed to experience that same fear to realize that their life is precious, and they should take the opportunity he gave them to turn their lives around and make something good of themselves. To him, as the game master, as the researcher, this is nothing but a game, but to his victims, his lab rats, this is life and death. And those who lose, in his eyes, therefore didn't deserve to live because they didn't have the will to win the game.

But who is John Kramer, an average man with an average life, to decide who gets to live and die? Who is he to manipulate his disciples into believing that his way is the right way, and who is he to decide who does and doesn't deserve to play his games? After all, some of the victims in the games are determined cops and FBI agents, hapless employees of a ruthless health insurance executive, and other innocent acquaintances of himself or his victims.

God Complex

Humans, much like John Kramer, believe ourselves to be masters of the planet, to be the ones charged with domination over all other species and even the resources within the earth. For our own reasons we attempt to justify with God or intelligence or whatever else, we commit similar acts of violence upon other animals, even upon the other humans we task to do our bidding. Animals, right at this very second, are in traps of human creation, but they, like some of Jigsaw's victims, have no chance of escape. There is nothing wrong with them, nothing about them that makes them worthy of being tortured and murdered, but we kill them all anyway because of our own warped sense of morality.

John's Ironic Trap

Before his death, John Kramer had metastatic colon cancer, which we learned in How Not to Die (an ironic title in this case) is, along with other digestive cancers, one of the fifteen leading causes of death, killing more than 100,000 Americans every year. Ultimately, the cancer led to an inoperable tumor developing in his brain, which would have killed him if Jeff from Saw III hadn't gotten to him first.

However, two major studies published in 2012 found that "the consumption of both processed and unprocessed red meat was associated with an increased risk of dying from cancer and heart disease and shortened life spans overall." The science behind this association is that heme iron, a form of iron found in the blood of animals, is carcinogenic, and the excess iron gets trapped in the body and is then absorbed by the intestines.1

I'd like to think that there would be no Saw movies if John Kramer simply didn't eat meat and therefore wouldn't have developed colon cancer. However, the sick irony of this situation is that John was not only a carnist, but he actually owned a rundown slaughterhouse: Gideon Meatpacking Plant. In fact, he and his wife Jill were going to name their son Gideon after this investment. However, with Jill's miscarriage and the cancer diagnosis, the plant became his Jigsaw headquarters where he worked on new traps and was even the setting of the Saw III game. Perhaps he got those very realistic pig masks from some of the leftover corpses in the building.

What to Learn

To anyone with a conscience, it's easy to see that John Kramer's vigilantism is completely unethical and wrong. Though some of the survivors of his games may agree with his philosophy, all he did was encourage them to commit the same crimes upon others that he did to them, like a cult of disturbed vigilantes. (And we see in the Saw: The Final Chapter support group scene that most of his non-brainwashed survivors are forever traumatized by the experience.) What we can learn from John's actions is that it is never our choice to take the lives of others or to cause them pain to teach them a lesson, even though it may be more effective than doing it in a less extreme manner. The best way to live in alignment with our values is to cause as little suffering as possible to all beings.

be conscious, be kind, be vegan

Sources

[1] How Not to Die: Discover the Foods Scientifically Proven to Prevent and Reverse Disease by Dr. Michael Greger

The Saw Series