hi there!
we’ve made it to the end of this lil series! If you’ve read one post or some or all of them, or if this is the first you’ve read, thanks for checking it out.
This is going to be another shorter post since I’m exclusively discussing the music choice in Little Death’s killing spree scene. I wanted to give the song its own spot in this series simply because I really loved it. Let’s get into it!
If you read part 2, you might remember that I referred to the scene where Little Death slashes their way through the campground as a scene of “rebirth”. I would like to go back to that idea and discuss it in regards to the music that plays during that scene. I think the song choice here is excellent, both in terms of atmosphere (a 90s rock ballad over a killing spree? Awesome…) and in terms of the song’s thematic significance to Little Death’s character.
Camp Miasma uses Counting Crows’s “A Long December” for this scene, and for me, this song choice gave this scene a certain feeling of bittersweet emotional release. The two recurring lines hit the hardest for me when thinking about Little Death’s murder and subsequent return:
“A long December / And there’s reason to believe / Maybe this year will be better than the last.”
Isn’t this the hope for many transgender and gender non-conforming individuals — that there will be a future better than the present, one that is more accepting and optimistic? I can really only speak for myself as a trans American, but I know the feeling of looking towards the future with equal amounts of dread and hope. This song is full of grief and yearning for better times, but I also get a distinct feeling of hope for the future when I listen to it. And personally, I think it is absolutely vital to believe that there are better times in store for us all. Having hope can be painful because it sets you up for potential disappointment, but hope prevents stasis in times of oppression and crisis. It stops you from being willing to roll over and give up, because you know that things should and can be better than they are.
Thematically, this song choice was also interesting to me. The song takes place at the end of December. Winter is the season where continents freeze over and plants shrivel into sticks. It’s a time of death, but it’s also a time of renewal; it makes way for growth in springtime. Consider the Death tarot card. It gets interpreted in a lot of movies as a card of, well, death, but if you look at Death in the iconic Rider-Waite-Smith deck, you’ll see a yellow sun rising over the horizon in the background. Death in tarot, in the seasons, and in Camp Miasma does not simply mean a body floating in the water. Death is a symbol of the past making way for the future. New beginnings; a fresh start in a body more suited to carry you. Transformation.
Leave a Reply