 They shiver to the rhythm. Look out, they're totally new. I'm sure you're all wondering why I gathered you here today. So, as a horror fan, I love child's play. Obviously, who doesn't? It's the ongoing story about a serial killer who possesses a child's doll and then ends up wreaking havoc while looking like this. It somehow manages to be fun and weird and creepy and creative and violent all at the same time. It's just an instant classic. Which is why I'm surprised I haven't really seen many people talking about the social and political undertones of the story. And before I hear anyone going, oh my gosh, you're trying to make child's play political now? Bitch, in Bride of Chucky, a cop gloats about how he can plant drugs on anyone to arrest them for no reason. Everything's political. Get with it or get out of the way. So this video will be more of a film analysis similar to the character study that I did on Leatherface. Except this time, I'm going to be telling you my hot take about child's play. And this time we're going to structure it a bit differently. Instead of me presenting my thesis at the beginning and then giving evidence to back it up, I'm going to start by giving you as much context as possible so we can build to the final claim together. Okay, let's start by getting the story straight. So the first three movies are pretty simply the story of Chucky terrorizing a little boy. And in the fourth movie, Tiffany Valentine comes in, completely steals the show and changes the story of the franchise permanently. But my hot take is focused mostly on the character of Andy. So we will be turning our focus to the first three movies in the franchise. But I'm intentionally going to make this summary as vague as possible, cutting out a lot of scenes, a lot of details, literally just objectively describing the events of the film and even removing some of those events. This is so that we can kind of try to remove the story from our predetermined ideas about the franchise and really look at it as a standalone story. Also, this will serve as just a little refresher of the events of the first three movies, so spoilers, obviously. While I'm giving the synopsis, I want you to pay attention to how removing these details and descriptions changes the story fundamentally. Ready? Here we go. Child's play is at its core. The story of a little boy named Andy who's growing up in New York City with his mom, Karen Barclay. His dad is out of the picture for some reason or another and money is tight, but Karen is working as hard as she can to give Andy a good childhood. Then Andy turns six and a certain individual enters his life. And that's all, that's all we're going to say about it. I told you this was going to be vague. Fast forwarding a little bit and one night Karen is working late while a family friend babysits Andy. Once she finally arrives home, she's greeted with tragedy as her friend has died in a freak accident while Andy was asleep in his bed. Obviously this is devastating for her, but it's made worse by the fact that one of the detectives suspects that Andy might have had something to do with her death because he was the only one there at the time. But there's not enough evidence so the police simply leave. Also, in the time following his birthday, Andy spends more and more time with that one individual. In the time following this accident, Andy begins acting out more and more. He's displaying antisocial behavior, he's getting an attitude and he's caught skipping school. Not only that, but another horrific crime happens and once again there's evidence that Andy was there when it happened. The police question Andy again, but this time they notice a disturbing change in his affect and behavior. The little boy who not long ago was an average six-year-old is now compulsively lying, seemingly hallucinating, babbling and saying things that make no sense. Andy blames the certain individual for the crimes, but that's determined to be completely illogical and when he's accused of lying, he gets even more upset throwing a fit in front of the police. It's determined that at this time, Karen isn't able to properly care for Andy and so he's admitted into a children's psychiatric hospital. Desperate for answers, Karen begins to investigate on her own and makes the horrific discovery that maybe Andy wasn't lying. Meanwhile at the psych hospital, Andy's getting even worse. He's having panic attacks, he's still seeing and hearing things, he's having delusions of persecution and at times he's completely inconsolable. Eventually Andy does escape the hospital but not before leaving a trail of destruction in his path. This leads the police on a goose chase trying to find Andy and Karen. The two are found back at their apartment which has been transformed into an unrecognizable, disgusting mess. The movie ends with Karen being questioned and her simply saying that she now believes her son. At the beginning of Child's Play 2, we're informed that two years have gone by. Karen Barkley has been deemed unfit to have custody of Andy and she is now committed into a mental institution. Meanwhile Andy has been living in a foster care center all this time. It's established that since the first movie Andy's been doing a lot better and he hasn't been displaying any destructive or antisocial behavior. In fact he gets approved to live with a foster family that has a good track record. So Andy moves in with his foster parents, Phil and Joanne. They also happen to be hosting a teenage girl with a rough past and little hope for the future named Kyle. One thing that I won't skip over is Kyle and Andy's relationship. Despite how cynical and hopeless she is, she kind of takes a liking to Andy and two of them grow closer and they kind of form this sweet little friendship. Andy's barely done unpacking before things start going wrong. This new environment is filled with things that remind him of that one individual which triggers him to have panic attacks and meltdowns again. All of Andy's behaviors start regressing. He's struggling with his schoolwork, he's not connecting with any of his peers and he's starting to say things again that are nonsensical or outright lies. Then the aggression starts up. Andy's using profanity that a child his age shouldn't know. He's breaking things that he knows are valuable to his foster parents and even seemingly physically assaulting people. Finally, Phil the foster father is found dead in a freak accident and you guessed it, Andy was the only one there when it happened. At the end of her rope, Joanne makes arrangements to have Andy sent back to the foster care center. While all this mayhem is going down, Kyle gets confronted by the individual who demands to know where Andy is. Terrified by him, Kyle drives to the foster care center and seemingly kidnaps Andy. The two troubled kids then break and enter into a place where they know the individual will be. Now a lot happens here, but for the sake of being as vague as possible we're going to just cut to the end. The movie ends with Kyle and Andy, dirty and tired and hungry alone outside. Where are we going? Home. Where's home? Andy, I have no idea. Child's Play 3 takes place eight years later. Andy is now 16 and has been unable to cope in every foster family he's been to. At the end of the line, out of chances and out of options, he's sent to Kent Military Academy. Okay, side note, I don't know if this connotation really exists in other countries, but in the United States, being sent to military school is kind of code for either shipping your kid off to get them out of your hair or shipping your kid off to punish them for being bad. It's like a recurring joke in a lot of American media that a parent will threaten their kid, like, I'm going to send you off to military school or something. Like if you look for examples, you'll find a million. This is because military schools are known for being really brutal and strict and so if a parent doesn't have control over their child's behavior, they might send them to military school to whip them into shape. It's kind of like a scared straight situation. Wait, do other countries have scared straight? Side side note, scared straight was a movie that got adapted into a reality TV show where in every episode, a few juvenile delinquents spend the night in an adult prison to see what it's like. And then in every episode, all the actual prisoners take turns telling the kids about how if they go to prison they're gonna get raped and beaten every day and then the episode ends with the kids saying, I have learned my lesson, I am going to obey the law because I don't want to get raped in prison. When I say it like that, it's actually really fucked up. Wait, is the American prison system bad? Basically what I'm saying is that Kent Military Academy is Andy's last chance to fix his life before the system gives up on him. Over the course of the movie, he makes friends and has personal conflicts with classmates but for the sake of my argument, we don't care about any of that. The only new character that we care about is Tyler, this eight-year-old boy who's just hanging out at Kent Academy. He's a sweet kid who's mostly ignored and unsupervised by all the adults there. After enough, that individual shows up at Kent Academy once again trying to hunt down Andy but this time, they're met by Tyler, who immediately takes a liking to them and wants to be their friend. This is in part because Tyler gets ignored by most of the adults and students at Kent Academy and the individual is the first person who's actually paying attention to him. The individual decides to forget about Andy and shift their focus to Tyler, specifically commenting that they like that Tyler is younger than Andy. But not before visiting Andy one last time to tell him about their new younger friend. Andy is panic-stricken and desperately tries to warn Tyler about how dangerous the individual is but Tyler doesn't want to hear it. As Tyler spends more and more time with the individual, he starts to grow uncomfortable with how aggressive and possessive they are. Once again, we are skipping so much plot here but we're fast-forwarding to near the end. Tyler injures the individual because he's so scared. This causes the individual to get even more angry and lash out at him. Andy does his best to try to follow and save Tyler but after yet another catastrophic disaster, Andy is taken into custody by the police. He's at the end of the line. The fate of Tyler is left unknown. So, you know, I drink tea in every video I make and it's usually just in a mug or a glass or whatever I can find but I deliberately decided in this video to drink it out of a tiny teacup with a little plate. Because it reminds me of those little tea party sets that kids would play with with their dolls and since Chuckie's a doll, I thought it would be funny to be drinking out of this. And if you have something to say about how my hair turned out, you can actually keep that to yourself because I don't want to hear it. So I'm sure the main thing you notice during my synopsis is that I essentially completely removed Chuckie from the story. This is because I wanted to take out the paranormal element of it and just focus on the actions and relations of the human characters, particularly Andy. If you're observant, you might have noticed that when you remove Chuckie's characteristic of being a possessed killer doll, he starts to sound a lot more predatory. Specifically, he starts to sound like a child predator. Furthermore, the character of Andy starts to sound a lot more like a child who has been the victim of a predator. Really think about it. Andy is a lonely lower-class kid who just wants a friend. His mom works and so she can't supervise him all the time. He's the ideal target for someone to take advantage of. And the abrupt changes in Andy's personality and behavior mirror that of a young child who has been traumatized. A child who just experienced something confusing and scary and painful that they can't understand. Panic attacks, becoming paranoid, doing badly in school, being unable to make friends, getting aggressive, swearing, breaking things. All of these sound a lot like a child who's trying to cope with a lot of pain. The moment that really solidifies this idea for me is in Child's Play 3 when Chuckie goes to Andy to brag about how now he has a new target and Andy says, I'm not gonna let you get away with this. I'm not gonna let you near that kid. Could it be any more clear? You also probably noticed in my synopsis that a lot of the things that I described as being Andy's actions were in reality Chuckie's actions. That was intentional. I wanted to show what the story looked like from the adults surrounding Andy. All of his teachers, foster parents, foster care workers, the police, even his own mother saw these red flag behaviors and didn't do enough to help him. And therein lies the true horror of Child's Play. Let's talk about the scene that for me is hands down the scariest scene in Child's Play, possibly in the entire franchise. It takes place in the very first movie when the police are interrogating Andy for the second time. And he just keeps insisting and insisting that it wasn't him, the doll did it, the doll did it, and he's just sounding crazy. And finally his mom grabs him by the shoulders, looks him in the eye and says, Nobody believes you about Chuckie. I get chills every time I watch that, every time I think about it. It just, it always gets me. Andy is telling the truth and his mom, literally the only person he has in the world, looks him in the eyes and tells him that the truth isn't going to work. Just the helplessness in that. This gets to me so much because this is the experience of so many kids who are victims of physical or sexual abuse. They're almost always abused by someone who is a caretaker or should be a trusted adult. A teacher, a step-parent, a priest, a babysitter, someone who is way more likely to be believed by other adults than a child. Especially a child who has a reputation of being a bad kid. It is such a common experience for a victim, especially a young victim, when they're brave enough to actually tell someone about the abuse they endured to be talked to like they're crazy or delusional or just being annoying. What do you mean your step-dad touched you? Stop making things up. I know her. Are you sure he actually did that or did you maybe imagine that happening? Stop lying, you're just looking for attention. This theme carries over into Child's Play 2 where, at the end of the movie, the only character who believes Andy is Kyle, another kid who's already been identified as a lost cause, another kid with no credibility. When you really step back and look at just the events of the first three Child's Play movies, it's almost funny how the possessed serial killer doll is the least scary part of it. The scariest part is the system. The story of Andy Barkley is a story of a troubled, lower-class kid displaying early signs of mental illness and acting out, which results in him being shuffled around the foster care system until he's eventually arrested. Does that sound familiar at all? Child's Play is the story of the school-to-prison pipeline, wherein, since disadvantaged children are more likely to end up in prison, it's essentially determined that it's not worth wasting resources on them. It turns into a self-fulfilling prophecy wherein a child is determined to be a lost cause, and so everyone gives up on him. And then when that child ends up dropping out of school or turning to crime or getting arrested, everyone in the system gets to just shrug their shoulders and say, I told you so, some kids just can't be helped. The story of Child's Play is so quintessentially American, it blows my mind every time I see it. It's a bureaucratic nightmare from the perspective of a child. It's the story of how adults traumatized, neglected, and then gave up on him. This is really why I end up coming back to Child's Play as a franchise. It's like, yes, the killer doll is fun. Yes, it's funny. Yes, it's weird and creative and whatever. But I like that when you look deeper into it and really think about it, that's where you find the true grim reality of the story. Anyway, I just wanted to say thank you for watching and for hearing me out. Also, I want to say thank you for bearing with me, because I know that the subject matter of this video is a lot heavier than the stuff that I usually talk about. Thanks for letting me talk about serious stuff, because I think about stuff like this all the time. I've had a lot of fun doing it, because I always have a lot of fun overthinking things. If you have your own thoughts on the Child's Play franchise, please comment them down below. I'd love to hear them. As always, thank you so much for watching. Subscribe if you want to. Don't if you don't. So please take care of yourself, and I will see you next whatever I decide to upload. Cheers! So I had the plan in mind that today I would get into the makeup and outfit and whatever, film the video, and then shower in the evening. I just got finished doing that. Getting the makeup off, that was easy. I used products that I always used, like I know that some of them might stain, but like they'll all come off with makeup remover and whatever. Getting the orange shit out of my hair? When I tell you I almost died, I was fighting for my life in the shower. The water just kept running orange, like I couldn't wash it enough. I started crying at one point. I was like, this is just how I look now. This is just my fate. Even after the shower, even after I shampooed multiple times, I literally blew my nose and orange came out. I cleaned my ears, the Q-tip was orange. I'll never be free. This stuff, be wild, whatever, I got it because it was cheap. I don't know if I did something wrong or just if I used like a ton of it and that made it hard to wash out, but this beat my ass just now. And I don't know if I'll ever be the same person after this. Anyway, I survived. I made it through. I just wanted to put out a little PSA, reminding you all to stay safe out there. I'll be fine though, don't worry.