Mar 15
"Needful Things" stands out among the many horror pieces criticizing and caricaturing 80s American materialism in that... It is one of the rare ones that doesn't have a case of people getting it massively wrongly and the piece retrospectively becoming material for the most toxic ideas.
It is not the only one, far from it, but I looked in a row at "American Psycho", "They live!" and "Needful Things", and the latter just stood out a lot in term of "audience reception".
Mind you, it might be because nobody remembers or caught that the book was written, per Stephen King's word, as a hate-book denouncing the 80s' consumerism. Nowadays people just take it as yet another "Devil wrecking havoc and buying souls" story.
#needful things#80s hatred#80s materalism#when you know it is there the subtext becomes massively obvious#charming guy sells you stuff that inflames your dreams and desire to the point of obsession#but in truth it is literaly glamored junk and worthless#and then he uses all this craze and mercantile system to create and sustain a deadly war#King was never quite subtle with his caricatures but his audience as a whole tend to miss the subtext a lot of times#reminding me of a lot of people missing why the Overlook is compared to a WASP hive#consumerism#80s