Masks (or, Why Danger Days is Relevant and Really Fucking Deep)
[I wrote this a while ago, but I stumbled across something that talked about a similar thing and I remembered I never posted this. Please let me know what you think.]
Masks are all over the Danger Days universe. The Killjoys wear personal customized masks. The workers at Better Living wear those weird hoods with the smiley-face logo on them that makes them an ultimate symbol of a homogenized workforce. And the Draculoids are defined by their masks, and the implications of that are criminally ignored in the fandom. Mousekat is something Party Poison appropriated from a BLI kid’s TV show, but later gets stolen back by the Director.
There weren’t really any masks prominently featured in any previous albums, and masks by definition hide your face and therefore your identity and emotions. There’s got to be something there.
Bear with me and I’ll give you the rundown on my interpretation.
The Original Killjoys and Masks:
Masks hide your face. I’ve seen a lot of people interpret this as getting rid of an old identity. But my personal interpretation is more like repressing your emotions or hiding who you are or some aspect of yourself in order to cope or adapt to your current situation.
In the comics, the new generation of Killjoys really embraced the mask thing. Have you noticed Val wears his a lot? Also notice when he wears it. The more violent and radical he gets, the more he wears it. The Vs seem to embody the spirit of the old Killjoys but with none of the heart or soul. I started to see the masks as this bastardized symbolism that was misinterpreted. Consequently, bastardization of symbolism was a theme Gerard talked a lot about in interviews about Danger Days (mostly the whole vampire look being commercialized and also misinterpreted).
The Girl tries to get Party’s mask (which may or may not have been implied to be a fake or replica, as evidenced from the vending machine ads in the comics) but Val wants it too. He’s more interested in the power and symbolism the mask holds than the memory of the person who was once behind it.
Drac Masks and Forced Fear:
No one in the bandom really talks about that fucking loaded symbolism of the Drac masks. I’ve seen some people think that it’s reversible. It’s implied that it isn’t. (it is eventually reversed in the end, but that involved some magic-shit with a spiritual bomb releasing souls, so it doesn’t happen easily.) It seems to be a “fate-worse-than-death” type-thing, as we saw Madam Director threatening Korse with it.
I know that what exactly the masks do is just one panel of the comics, but they essentially turn you insane because you see everyone and everything as a threat. They destroy your soul with fear. They make you hurt those you love because they force you to be afraid of them. BLI uses fear as a form of power, just like many governments (past and present) have. They create an ideologically homogenous group of people, terrified and ready to hurt, kill, and obey orders.
Mob Mentality and the Younger Killjoys:
The only difference between the Dracs and the mob mentality of the (younger) Killjoys is that they run on over-zealous corrupted idealism, like that obnoxious kid in your class who read Nietzsche once and now thinks he’s better than everyone and tries to turn every conversation into how government/religion/society is the Ultimate Pointless Evil ™. (Bonus points if they keep asking “yes but is ANYTHING REAL????”) There’s an interview where Gerard compares the Vs to a bunch of teenagers who watched A Clockwork Orange and got the wrong message, and that feels pretty accurate. Oh, except Val grew up in a violent and unstable environment and is so paranoid he kills first and asks questions… never, really.
In a crowd, you have relative anonymity and heightened confidence in your actions from the people around you. But you also may do things you would never dream of outside of that crowd. (Side note: this is why that particular aspect of psychology/sociology terrifies me like nothing else. Also, see “Teenagers” for G’s view on youth mob mentality.) It doesn’t just dehumanize you to yourself, though. It dehumanizes you to others. If you can’t see someone’s face, you can’t interact with them, or know how they feel, or empathize with them.
The Girl and Restoration of Humanity:
So the world’s all going to hell in a handbasket made of tumbleweeds and a Drac mask, right?
“Thanks, Sarah, I love having no hope!”
Wait a second, bear with me:
Did you notice how The Girl doesn’t have a mask?
I mostly interpret this as her being too young. She’s not indoctrinated with the same ideology of the zones youth yet, nor under control of the corporation. There’s a certain innocence to childhood but also a kind of wisdom. Kids haven’t incorporated various societal ideas into their subconscious yet. They’re still processing and questioning things inherently. The Girl questions things and makes her own decisions. When she learns to shoot, she gets a makeover and joins the fight. But she doesn’t make a mask like you might expect. She chooses not to.
(Side note: I often view The Girl and Val as proxies for us. Val is who G worries we might become, and The Girl is who he hopes we might be. Yeah, that’s right: G thinks you can save the world. Don’t forget that.)
This actually parallels to the original Killjoys (and their pre-bastardized ideology). In Na Na Na, Party Poison has, like, four different ways of covering his face. The other three have at least two if I remember correctly. “Die with your mask on if you’ve got to” says Dr. D. Right? Well… not quite. In Sing they aren’t wearing masks. They face the enemy head-on. They’re not hiding from BLI or themselves. They decide to be nothing more but nothing less than who they are.
In the ending of the comics, The Girl restores all the souls to the people who’ve been Drac’d. The Drac masks come off. They are themselves again. But the masks also come off the young mob of Killjoys. Everyone who was about to slaughter each other looks around and starts seeing former enemies as individuals, realizing that they are all humans. They’re not just threats. With the masks off, they are people who fear and cry and fight and love. (Side note: this very similar to the ending of “V for Vendetta”. Worth checking out if you’re curious.)
Yes, the ending might have been rushed or weird or abstract. But here’s the thing: G had all the power of a writer—a god in his own world—and he didn’t bring dead people back to life, like we all would have wanted. We must move forward and make the best of what we have.
I think this is because he knows that we can’t go back in time to fix things. Cherri never got over his guilt at not going with the original killjoys on their rescue mission and letting them die alone. But he eventually decides to fight again to protect The Girl. By doing so, he symbolizes finally letting go of his past in order to try to protect the future.
By having the masks come off, Gerard wrote and ending where, instead of bringing life back to the dead, he brought living people back to humanity.
Please take a minute to let that sink in.
For all the nihilism of a post-apocalyptic world where “the good guys die and the bad guys win” the ultimate ending is hope for the seemingly impossible: that we will stop fearing and hating each other.
So take a deep breath. Think for yourself. Think about other people as individuals. Break the mob mentality.
Take off you mask.
