Insect Politics and the Boogeyman: A Brutal Equation
by Dean Patrick
Recently, during the now full throttle of the Haunted Season, my wife recently asked what I thought was the most famous quote from David Cronenberg’s The Fly. I was thinking more along the lines of full scenes when she said, “Be Afraid. Be very afraid.” True, it’s a terrifying moment when Gina Davis’ character, Veronica Quaife, gasps it in horror after discovering what has happened to Seth Brundle (Jeff Goldblum’s masterwork).
But it is Goldblum’s desperate melancholy on insect politics that has most resonated with me lately thinking much on the nature of The Boogeyman himself. It takes place when Seth is undergoing a horrifying transformation into what he then calls himself, Brundle-Fly.
“Seth: Have you ever heard of… insect… politics? Neither have I. Insects… don’t have politics. They’re very brutal. No compassion, no compromise. We can’t trust the insect. I’d like… to become… the first… insect politician. I’d like to, but… I’m afraid.
Veronica: I don’t know what you’re trying to say!
Seth: I’m saying, I’m an insect…who dreamt he was a man and loved it. But now the dream is over, and the insect is awake.
Veronica: No, Seth. No.
Seth: I’m saying…I’ll hurt you if you stay.”
In this cold, unforgiving philosophy, brutality is the only rule. Insects operate on pure instinct, stripped of empathy or reason, driven ONLY by survival. For Brundle-Fly, this brutality becomes his guiding principle, the core of his new identity. He doesn’t kill out of hatred or anger, but because, like the insect, it is the only way to exist.
This stark absence of empathy is the Boogeyman’s defining trait, a brutal force that transcends the conventional boundaries of morality and sanity. This blog’s focus to ponder as All Hollow’s Eve comes hurling ever forward.
I’ll start with my own creation in my latest novel, The Harlot and the Beast, and one of its main boogeymen, Rex Brody aka Mister Boogie. Then we’ll dig into Max Cady from Cape Fear, Pennywise the Clown from IT, Patrick Bateman from American Psycho (film and novel), and Robert Louis Stevenson’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.
Rex Brody aka Mister Boogie
Brody is not one for philosophical musings or justifications. He is, at his core, an embodiment of torment. He murders to make a statement or settle a score; he does so as it’s his learned nature. His actions are driven by perpetual revenge and hatred from a tormented and abusive childhood that becomes a wrecking ball entirely detached from its ruin. His is a cold-blooded hunter who preys on those far far inferior to a professional skillset of physical combat as well as weapons mastery. For Rex, killing is as natural as breathing, a necessary exertion that exists beyond morality, a boogeyman who doesn’t hide in shadows…from anyone or anything.
His detachment from the human condition is one that is as ruthless as it is clinically precise. Like the insect in its black and white final conviction of whatever is in its path, Rex’s brutality becomes just as severe. He is a reminder that some evils exist simply because it needs to. No remorse. A Boogeyman aka Mister Boogie, stripped of any need for pretense.
Max Cady: Unfettered Revenge
Max Cady, played mercilessly by Robert De Niro in Cape Fear, is another worthy example of Brundle-Fly’s lecture, though his is born for revenge. Cady’s revenge is cold, almost reptilian, executed with a relentless determination that makes him overwhelming. He doesn’t merely want to destroy his enemies; he wants to obliterate their very existence and demoralize both morally and physically. Like an insect driven by an urge it can’t understand, Cady pursues his targets with a persistence that borders on madness.
He doesn’t merely want to destroy his enemies; he wants to obliterate their very existence and demoralize both morally and physically. Like an insect driven by an urge it can’t understand…
It’s a cunning and relentless brutality like a predator that won’t stop until it has achieved total domination. Pure insect. He is the Boogeyman who is right in your face with a presence that is suffocating, inescapable—a reminder that insect politics doesn’t need a dark alley or a deserted street to run unchecked. Sometimes, it sits on your backyard fence, smiling, waiting to strike.
Pennywise: Feasting on Fear
Pennywise, from Stephen King’s IT, is as close to the insect world as a Boogeyman can get. He feeds on fear, drawing power from the terror of his victims, much like an insect that thrives on torturing its prey before the final kill. Pennywise is pure predator, shape-shifting to become whatever will frighten his prey the most. He doesn’t just kill; he torments, savoring the agony and horror he inflicts, drawing strength from it.
Pennywise’s nature is a pure form banality, unfeeling and adaptable. Like a parasite, he draws life from those he terrorizes, leaving them drained and broken. He is an insect in every sense of the word—feeding, thriving, multiplying off the despair of his victims. A Boogeyman who doesn’t just want to frighten; but to consume, leaving nothing behind but husks and echoes of fear.
Patrick Bateman: Civil Brutality
Brett Easton Ellis’ Patrick Bateman of American Psycho is terrifying because he hides his insect politics behind a veneer of civility, wealth, power, and dazzling silk suits. Bateman is an insect in disguise, a chameleon who adapts to his environment, hiding in plain sight. He kills not out of necessity but as a twisted expression of his inner emptiness. For Bateman, brutality is both an escape and a release, a momentary reprieve from the hollow life he leads.
His violence is detached, methodical, and entirely rage driven. He is the Boogeyman who walks among us, perfectly hidden behind his designer clothes, thousand-dollar meals and drinks, manufactured appearances. He represents the brutality that lurks beneath the surface of the mundane, the insect that can strike at any moment because it’s bored, lurking beneath a mask of normalcy. He doesn’t need a dark alley or an abandoned house (though he does use them); his territory is the everyday, the seemingly safe.
Mr. Hyde: Unleashed Change
Finally, Mr. Hyde, from Robert Louis Stevenson’s classic representation of humanity’s darkest side. Hyde is Dr. Jekyll’s basest instincts personified, a creature of pure impulse and unrestrained carnage. Hyde’s actions are driven by a primal urge that has no concern for consequence or morality. He is, in essence, an insect given human form—consumed by the need to satisfy his darkest desires, unbound by any sense of conscience. Certainly, moral compasses are shattered.
Hyde is the Boogeyman that lives within, the part of us we keep buried beneath layers of facade. His brutality is unsettling because it reminds us that we all harbor the potential for the worst of actions. Hyde is not an external monster but an internal one, a reflection of the insect politics that lurk beneath our carefully constructed facades.
In Brundle-Fly’s world, the brutal raping of the norm is all that is followed; these villains are no different. Each of them—Rex, Cady, Pennywise, Bateman, and Hyde—embody Brundle-Fly’s terrifying realization that what he’s become through science has turned his world of logic and precision into acting on impulse and instinct. They remind us that beneath our layers of civility, there is an insect-like part of us that knows base survival, dominance, and fear. The Boogeyman isn’t just a monster under the bed or behind the dark corner; he is the reflection of our own base ugliness, a reminder that we may not be as far removed from the brutality of the insect as we’d like to believe.
“Be afraid. Be very afraid,” my fine readers.
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