Dissecting the X Trilogy
☆ Introduction
Happy Halloween from the author of Hysteria, everybody! I hope all of you guys are having a good week leading up to the spookiest holiday of the year. Last year on Hysteria, I talked about the movie Lisa Frankenstein. It was one of the first-ever movies I wrote about on here, and one of my first blog posts ever, actually! This year, I wanted to do something a little more extensive while keeping Hysteria's Signature themes of feminism, femininity, and punk-rock-ness, so I'm talking about the X trilogy! If you haven't seen Pearl, X, or MaXXXine, I highly recommend watching Pearl; I believe it's free on Hulu. Not only is the film itself amazing, but it establishes the recurring themes of aging, beauty, and fame, and you don't really need to watch X or MaXXXine after that (though I do recommend them as well!). In this episode, I'll give a basic rundown of each movie's plot, then dive deeper into the themes that come up. I'll also be talking about each movie's aesthetics and theming, because I think that is where they excel! A quick content warning for some gory scenes I'll describe, as well as brief mentions of sexual assault. If that's not something you're comfortable reading, I recommend checking out last year's post on Lisa Frankenstein. With all of that out of the way, let's get started on this thrill-packed story that spans from World War I to the eighties.
☆ Plot Summary of Pearl
Pearl is the daughter of two impoverished German immigrant farmers and the wife of Howard, an upper-middle-class man working as a farmhand for her parents. For almost the entire movie, Howard is fighting in WWI while Pearl tends to the farm animals and cares for her parents, especially her sick father, amid an ongoing flu pandemic. Pearl is easily distracted while doing her chores by her outlandish fantasies about becoming a movie star. Her mother is demanding and strict, often criticizing Pearl for her lack of discipline. She also mutilates small animals and has a violent outlook on life. Considering the absence of her husband, Howard, Pearl becomes interested in the cinema's projectionist, whom she meets after watching a moving picture of women dancing. She forms a short-lived sexual relationship with him; he shows her what would soon become considered an early form of pornography and tells her he will take her to Europe so she can star in movies. Pearl asks permission to attend an audition to become a chorus dancer at her church, and her mother calls her a failure; Pearl sets her mother on fire and locks her in the cellar. The next morning, she stabs the projectionist to death with a pitchfork after he admits he won't take her to Europe. She also smothers her father. After attending the audition with her sister-in-law Mitsy, which she has extensively practiced for, she does not get the part. Devastated, she returns home with Mitsy and confesses to her crimes, from being unfaithful in her marriage to murdering her parents. She then murders Mitsy and, in her madness, prepares the farmhouse for when Howard returns from war, and props up the corpses of her dead family at the kitchen table. The film ends with Mia Goth's pained face smiling at the camera:
☆ Plot Summary of X
X has a little bit less substance than Pearl in my opinion, even though there are more characters to keep track of. The film essentially follows four couples, taking place in the seventies: Lorraine and RJ, two young, amateur filmmakers; Maxine and Wayne, with Maxine wanting more than anything to become a star and Wayne being a director in the pornography industry; and Bobby-Lynne and Jackson, both "actors," with the latter being an ex-Marine. They travel through rural Texas in a chainsaw-massacre-esque van, en route to Pearl and Howard's farmhouse, where they intend to film a pornographic movie in the guest house, unbeknownst to the homeowners. Pearl and Howard are in their 70s/80s; they have little to no stamina, but both are blinded by bloodlust, and Pearl is also blinded by regular lust. The crew runs into a lot of speed bumps while trying to film the video, which ultimately leads to all of them dying in horrific and gruesome ways at the hands of Pearl and Howard, except for Maxine. Pearl even remarks that she was different and likens Maxine to her younger self, constantly admiring and touching her inappropriately. The film has recurring themes of televangelism, including brief TV snippets of a preacher who is revealed to be Maxine's father. The end depicts her driving away in the van they arrived in, and crushing Pearl's head with the car as she leaves.
☆ Plot Summary of MaXXXine
MaXXXine takes place in the mid-eighties, and Maxine Minx works at a VHS store and a strip club after escaping Pearl and Howard; she has had a successful career in adult films and wishes to pursue less scandalous roles, so she auditions to be the lead in a horror movie. She gets the part, and not long after, commits her first murder of the film on a man who is following her late at night. Remember how in X they were taping an adult film? They never stopped taping it, and a mysterious patron at the strip club where she works has a copy of the tape. Throughout the movie, Maxine's friends and her roommate continuously try to get her to attend parties in the Hollywood Hills, and they die shortly after attending these parties. Their dead bodies resurface with Satanic symbols branded onto them. After finding her friends' bodies, Maxine learns these murders were committed by her highly religious father, seeking to create a snuff film to demonize the film industry for its corruption and sin. Her father tries to perform an exorcism on her by tying her to a tree, surrounding her with congregation members, but two detectives arrive just in time to shoot and fatally injure the group, allowing Maxine to escape and threaten to kill her father with a pistol. She envisions herself as a wealthy, talented, successful movie star overcoming lifelong, terrifying tribulations. She shoots and kills her father, never feeling more relieved in her life. Also, she's blonde now.
☆ So...What Does it Mean?
The X trilogy works beautifully not only as a cohesive storyline spanning nearly a century but also as a dramatized representation of modern Americana. Thematically, it links the struggles of isolation, disease, relationships and sex, mental health, immigration, drug use, and much more! Of course, each movie addresses a certain set of issues, but two specific ones that I think help link everything together are religion and sex, and how they often clash. I find it interesting that pornography is depicted as the poor man's cinema. Obviously, Pearl is not a good person and a serial killer (who knows how many people she killed over all these years), but was she in the right to seek out a more fulfilling life in the way that she did? Yes, and no, I presume. I think dealing with a vegetable father and lifelong trauma from an abusive, apathetic mother obviously heavily contributed to her psychotic state. Her youth, her dreams, and her aspirations of becoming more than a farmwife were essentially stolen from her. We can infer that she and Howard had no children and lived there in Texas for the remainder of their lives. I also think it's worth mentioning Pearl's distorted and neglected relationship with sex and her own sexuality. She obviously approaches it, as well as relationships in general, from an unknowing/inexperienced perspective, which can make her seem naive until she becomes too comfortable, prompting discomfort in the other person. For example, she begins a friendly, flirty, and sexual relationship with the projectionist until he slightly wanes in interest in her, at which point she murders him with a pitchfork. Mitsy sympathizes with her and tries to become her friend, at which point Pearl becomes incredibly and brutally honest, and when Mitsy is uncomfortable because of this, Pearl murders her. It's a miracle she didn't kill Howard, but clearly, he is also bloodlusted. Of course, she eventually becomes what she hates because she chases away the group of young adults filming in X. Overall, I think there's a lot to pick at, and I'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments below. I think this trilogy definitely has something for everyone...I'm not really a fan of the whole 80s vibe in MaXXXine, but I absolutely adore X and Pearl.
☆ Let's Talk About Aesthetics
As you may know, I’m a big fan of rural American Gothic, so I love how it's portrayed in Pearl and X. I find Pearl to be especially proficient with the theme of isolation horror: she meaningfully interacts with very few people due to her own mental issues and the ongoing pandemic, and seeing this played out in rural Texas made it all the more believable and creepy. I think the mystique and danger of Southern Gothic settings are a playful contrast to the forced sex appeal the films try to create. In some scenes, sex is portrayed as loving, fulfilling, and a way to seek deep connection with another person. In others, the horror feels right at home: the bedroom walls are yellowed with smoke, the bed frames rusted, the passion is an act, and the only way the movies' titular characters truly fulfill their desires is by killing.
Below, I have created some mood boards using various images I found on Pinterest and Picsart. I really love how a lot of aesthetic themes of the South and general dinginess span over all three movies; though, I would say aesthetically, MaXXXine is a departure from what Pearl and X do best. It feels glitzier, not only because of the clear time shift to the eighties, but also because, thematically, it makes sense. Maxine has moved to Hollywood, taken up neon green windbreakers, and left the farmhouse to rot after it has harbored so much evil within its decade-long lifetime.
☆ Conclusion
I hope you all enjoyed this semi-deep dive into the X trilogy! I know a lot of people connect with these movies, which is so exciting because I feel they represent weird girls very well. I know a lot of people love Pearl, but I think X is my favorite--I really enjoy psychosexual slashers that contrast religious imagery with gore, and you should know by now that I stand ten toes down with rural Americana horror. Nothing beats it!
Happy Halloween from Hysteria to you. What are you guys going dressed as? I'm going to be Strawberry Shortcake from the 2009 animated series!! Be safe out there! Dress warm, and don't forget to check your candy for razor blades.
Spook ya later,
-Mila
Which movie is your favorite?
- Pearl
- X
- MaXXXine
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