Jason Voorhees: Neurodivergent Icon?

I was working the day that it happened, preparing meals. Jason should’ve been watched every minute! He was … he wasn’t a very good swimmer.

—Pamela Voorhees, Friday the 13th

What would he be like today? An out-of-control psychopath? A frightened retard? A child trapped in a man’s body?

—Friday the 13th Part 2

He was so grotesque, he was almost inhuman …

—Friday the 13th Part 3-D

It’s perhaps a tad controversial to suggest that ’80s slasher icon Jason Voorhees is an interesting prism through which to view how the representation of neurodivergence has evolved in media. I mean, it’s not like I wanted a hockey-masked spree killer (or, from a different point-of-view, a neurodivergent boy whom distracted camp counselors allowed to drown and whose grieving mom subsequently fought to prove her kid mattered as much as the other children) to be one of the first characters I related my own neurodivergence to at the movies. But that’s the problem when you’re grasping at straws for representation and so much of what is on screen is tropey or trucks in harmful stereotypes. In good news, there’s been a real uptick in authentically presented neurodivergent characters in television and books in recent years. To help keep that evolution going and improving, it’s worth taking a closer look at what’s come before.

Earlier this year, my kids and I (along with the rest of the planet) binged the new Netflix show Wednesday. Wednesday Addams, the Addams Family’s precocious/murderous daughter, has long been, if not autism-coded, then a brusque rejector of social mores who is often befuddled by the emotional needs of others. No longer a side character, Wednesday is centered in the new show and given psychic abilities, opening the door to further discussion of her possible neurodivergence. In episode five, she has this exchange with her mother, Morticia, about her newfound powers:

WEDNESDAY: Sometimes when I touch someone or something, I get these violent glimpses from the past or future. I don’t know how to control it.

MORTICIA: Our psychic ability resides on the spectrum of who we are. Given my disposition, my visions tend to be positive. That makes me a Dove.

WEDNESDAY: And for someone like me? Who sees the world through a darker lens?

MORTICIA: You’re a Raven. Your visions are more potent, more powerful. But without the proper training, they can lead to madness.

There’s that loaded word spectrum. Take away the supernatural aspect, and this could be a conversation about any inherited neurobehavioral disorder, particularly those, like autism, that children can express differently than parents. For instance, my daughter and I are both autistic. Some of our traits overlap, others don’t. We related right away to the exchange but were hardly the only ones to have done so.

Neurodivergent and neurotypical people alike see themselves in this version of Wednesday. People copy her outré dance moves on TikTok while celebrating her air of detachment and economy of speech. This Halloween will be filled with even more Wednesdays than usual. To have her as a positive model of neurodivergence is progress as for too long a single book like The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time or a movie like Rain Man  has monolithically overrepresented neurodivergence in media, often through a neurodivergent character who won’t ever really fit in.

That doesn’t mean Wednesday is perfect. It engages with the longstanding trope of highlighting one aspirational neurodivergent aspect over all others—in this case, her skills of perception. Wednesday follows in the footsteps of the many neurodivergent or autism-coded detectives who precede her (Lisbeth Salander, Monk, Newt Scamander, House M.D., the Benedict Cumberbatch Sherlock Holmes, Temperance from Bones, Stephen King’s Holly Gibney, etc.), redeeming her traits that are off putting to neurotypical characters by solving a mystery and having her peers see past their own prejudices to tolerate her neurodivergence.

This may come as a shock, but this isn’t quite how it works in the real world. Anyone looking for a reality check should sift through the forums on LinkedIn, where neurodivergent folks routinely vent their frustrations at the glass ceilings they encounter in their careers, obstacles often related to social interactions or other causes related to expressions of their neurodiversity. As a screenwriter, I don’t know how many times I’ve left a meeting on a high thinking it went great only for my manager to call later and ask if I was “sick” or “having an off day” as those I met with found me awkward or inscrutable. Not everyone gets their village to meet them halfway.

So, I’m not a Wednesday Addams. I’ll never launch a dance craze or be a standard-bearer for goth fashion. But where can someone like me go for neurodivergent representation in the horror space? Are there other stealthy, blade-wielding, torture-employing, nighttime woods-haunting, socially inept characters (with eternally devoted mothers) out there? Enter Jason Voorhees.

It’s hardly revolutionary to say that neurodivergent folks watching a movie might identify more with the outsider looking in than with the neurotypical characters. Since I was a kid, I have loved and identified with Universal monsters like the Wolf Man or Frankenstein’s monster, another pair of forest-loving, human-avoiding loners whom others find lacking in the social skills department. Being the ’80s, it wasn’t much of a leap to graduate from Frankenstein fandom to Friday the 13th, which features that other silent, lumbering, unkillable monster, Jason.

Though I’ve never felt like slaughtering horny camp counselors, I often prefer isolation. I definitely mask. My senses get overloaded. I have trouble with social interactions. All of these are traits I associate with Jason. But before we dive into him, let’s start with the first movie, in which the killer is Jason’s bereaved mother, Pamela Voorhees.

The setup to Friday the 13th (1980) is simple: a summer camp, closed due to the drowning death of a young boy, Jason, and subsequent murder of two counselors, is reopening twenty years later. As the incoming counselors prep the site, they’re murdered one by one by an unseen killer revealed to be the drowned boy’s long-grieving mother. It’s the dead boy’s birthday, and she’s celebrating by avenging her son on counselors who remind her of those who were supposed to be watching over her child when he died. It’s not pure revenge, however, as it’s made clear early in the movie that during previous attempts to reopen the camp, mysterious fires broke out and the water was poisoned. What Pamela is really doing is trying to prevent a tragedy like the one that happened to Jason from happening again.

In a flashback to Jason’s drowning, the audience sees that Jason is hydrocephalic, a disorder in which there’s an excess buildup of fluids in the brain. This has altered the shape of his head and, we’re led to believe in subsequent movies, contributed to his neurodivergence. The franchise’s mythology has always been muddy about precisely what was wrong with Jason before he went into the water. Even more confusing, the early movies “monster up” the hydrocephalic misshapenness of Jason’s head, while later movies mostly abandon the hydrocephalic plotline and render his face more decayed and zombie-like. All we know for certain is that Pamela had a neurodivergent child, his appearance was grotesque and inspired fear, and it’s probable that counselors ignoring his special needs led to his drowning in the first place.

One of the most persistent tropes of neurodivergence in the media is that these characters are a burden to their families and others. Dustin Hoffman’s character, Raymond, in Rain Man is locked away in a mental institution by his father, and his existence is kept from the rest of his family. In The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, the main character, Christopher, is abandoned by his mother, leading his emotionally manipulative father to create the fiction that she died. In Stephen King’s Mr. Mercedes, Holly Gibney’s mother describes her own neurodivergent daughter as “emotionally retarded,” infantilizes her, and keeps her hidden away from others.

Pamela Voorhees does none of these things. Rather than hide her neurodivergent son away, she takes a job at a camp in the woods where he’ll be away from those who might make fun of his appearance and around camp counselors who, one might hope, would have experience with neurodivergent kids. Given that we see in later movies how Jason’s senses can become overloaded, perhaps she’s also brought him there as he prefers the quiet and isolation. Also, camps are based around routine. If it was Pamela’s goal to create an environment in which a neurodivergent child could thrive, she almost succeeded.

Unfortunately, she couldn’t accomplish it on her own, and Jason slipped through her fingers. As a counselor empathetically puts it in Friday the 13th Part 2, “Isn’t that what her revenge was all about? Her sense of loss? Her rage at what she thought happened? Her love for him?”

So, is Pamela really a kill-crazy maniac? Or a grieving mother who not only didn’t see her neurodivergent son as a burden but was willing to go to any lengths possible to prevent the tragedy that happened to him from happening to anyone else? I’d suggest the latter and that, murderous shenanigans aside, Pamela Voorhees is a more positive portrayal of the parent of a neurodivergent child than many others in media.

Which brings us to Jason. First off, is he actually neurodivergent? I could have identified with Jason for any number of reasons without him being autistic, especially as there is a long list of related traits and characteristics associated with (the overly broad, nonmedical diagnosis of) neurodivergence. The best we can do is analyze Jason through a checklist of a few traits common to neurobehavioral/neurodevelopmental disorders. For authenticity’s sake, I’ve stuck to ones I express myself.

Social disconnection (def.: the inability to connect socially with others): Check. The low-hanging-fruit answer is that, yes, Jason kills people when he comes across them rather than interacting with them. But, in addition to this, it’s mentioned in Part 2 that Jason is a known quantity around Crystal Lake and simply leaves people alone who don’t enter “his wilderness.” He lives off “wild animals and vegetation” and by “stealing what he needs.” These behaviors imply his social disconnect could be by choice.

Hyperfixation (def.: an intense focus on one activity to the exclusion of all others): Check. There’s no way around this one. Jason’s hyperfixation is revenge. He literally does nothing else except come up with tricks, traps, and other exotic ways of killing people who invade his space. He doesn’t take breaks. He doesn’t have other hobbies.

Masking (def.: conditioning oneself to suppress behaviors to fit in): Check. And no, not because Jason literally wears a mask in the movies. Jason’s face, which we’re allowed quick glimpses of in most of the movies (though he looks different each time), is terrifying. So, if Jason’s goal is to scare people, why does he hide his true visage away, first under a canvas bag and then under a hockey mask unless a part of him is looking to hide his authentic self from others with the protection of a false face?

Sensory overload (def.: when one overwhelms the brain by taking in more sensory information than it can process): Check. Jason is “defeated” in Friday the 13th Part 2 and Part IV: The Final Chapter with variations on his being tricked into seeing his mother (Part 2) or a version of himself (Part IV). In both instances, Jason freezes, which is one way the brain can respond when overwhelmed. His would-be victims get the upper hand and temporarily vanquish him, effectively using his neurodivergence against him.

Cognitive inflexibility (def.: a need for predictability and order to avoid anxiety): Check. On a macrolevel, routine and repetition are baked into the Friday the 13th franchise’s DNA. In the second through fourth entries, which span only a few consecutive days, Jason does the same thing over and over again. He watches, plots, and picks off a few outliers in the daylight. Come nightfall, he slaughters everyone who is left. Even as a zombie in later entries, he returns to this strict regimen.

Selective mutism (def.: an anxiety disorder that makes someone unable to communicate in certain situations): Check … maybe. The only time we hear Jason speak is in flashbacks when he’s drowning, to call for his mother. As an adult, he never speaks, though perhaps this is because we’ve never witnessed interactions with someone he trusts. The reason it’s a “maybe” check is because selective mutism can also be a response to trauma, which Jason most certainly experienced after witnessing the death of his mother.

Stimming (def.: a repetitive physical movement or behavior that can relieve anxiety): No check here as we simply haven’t seen Jason stim. This absence is just another example that the traits and behaviors expressed by one neurodivergent person aren’t necessarily the same as those expressed by another.

So, does all that mean Jason is neurodivergent? I think so, though is it autism? ADHD? Dyspraxia? I mean, you could pour him through the American Psychiatric Association’s DSM-5 autism diagnostic criteria (persistent deficits in social communication, restricted/repetitive patterns of behavior, symptoms present in early developmental period, symptoms that cause significant impairment in function and disturbances not better explained by intellectual disability or developmental delay), but there’s not enough information, really, and my goal here is a fun, clickbaity article to get people thinking about neurodiversity in media, not a dissertation.

Maybe a better question is, am I reading too much into this? Is Jason’s neurodivergence actually a real part of the franchise? That’s easier to prove.

Paramount rebooted the franchise for the first time with 1985’s Friday the 13th Part V: A New Beginning after Jason was killed at the end of Part IV: The Final Chapter. It’s notorious for being the one without Jason; the hockey-masked killer slaughtering teens in this one is revealed to be a paramedic, Roy Burns. Roy is revealed to have gone on a copycat killing spree of teens and camp counselors for the exact same reason as Pamela Voorhees: his neurodivergent son, Joey, is butchered by another kid at a juvenile rehab facility due to counselor negligence (I mean, they did give an unsupervised and extremely volatile patient an ax).

So, yes, avenging neurodivergent kids whom single parents wrongly believed would be safe with trained professionals is baked into the franchise. An entire article could be written about the franchise’s disdain for therapists in general (looking at you, Part VII: The New Blood), but that’s for another day.

Let’s not kid ourselves that this isn’t a problematic take, of course, tongue-in-cheek or not. Autism and neurodivergence creep around the edges of negative news stories, most recently with Nashville school shooter Audrey Hale and the young Michael Jackson impersonator Jordan Neely, killed on the New York subway. In May, an autistic boy in Harlem was arrested by the police after a teacher reported him for saying during a class discussion on movies that he identified with Christian Slater’s character J. D. in the dark comedy Heathers, a (yes, problematic) character with whom teens have been identifying for decades as the movie wants you to identify with him … until you don’t. I only had to chaperone a single middle school field trip to hear seventh graders using autistic as an insult, a stand-in for my generation’s retard. A quick search of any social media site will show autistic used as a pejorative. Do we really need to make the claim that a movie monster is actually neurodivergent? Isn’t there enough “othering” going on?

Absolutely, but as I wrote up top, grasping at straws for representation is the surest sign that those in media need to do better. Though the Friday the 13th franchise slowly left the “frightened retard” aspects of Jason behind as the series became more playful and self-aware, there is still the ending of Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan to consider. While attempting to kill his last two would-be victims, Jason is swallowed up by toxic waste being flushed through a sewer. His skin is melted off, and he dies. When the sludge recedes, there isn’t a zombified corpse left behind but instead the unmarked body of young Jason himself with no sign of hydrocephalus. It is the most peaceful of Jason’s ends. The next movie brought in a new mythology involving a demonic worm, moving his motivation away from tragedy and revenge to mere evil and leaving his ever-evolving, oft-problematic neurodivergence in the past.

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