Scammers target those who fear death; this blockbuster scary movie shows how
For the inaugural episode of my new podcast, I spoke with the director and writers of the 2023 hit movie, "Saw X," about healthcare and capitalism.
Powerful bad doctors are scamming us — and “Saw X” shows how we are all in danger.
If you are reading this article, one day you will die. More likely than not, you fear dying, and perhaps even hope to somehow beat death entirely.
For these reasons, my interview/review of a scary movie called “Saw X” is painfully relevant to your life. In the opening episode of my new video series “Back Seat Socialism,” I put “Saw X” and the entire “Saw” franchise in direct conversation with the most powerful science official in America.
When interviewing the director and writers of “Saw X,” I read aloud a quote by President Donald Trump’s NIH director, Dr. Jay Bhattacharya. Earlier this month I interviewed Bhattacharya about his new role leading the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the government’s most important medical research agency. Kevin Greutert — who directed “Saw X” along with two other “Saw” installments (including “Saw VI,” which like “Saw X” satirizes the US healthcare system) — described the Bhattacharya observation I quoted as “very disingenuous.” I had said I believed in Bhattacharya’s good faith despite disagreeing with him on science and politics. Bhattacharya is a man who, like Greutert, I call my friend.
What did Bhattacharya state that evoked such a response from a respected filmmaker?
“If you just echo what everyone else believes, it may advance your scientific career, but that points to a problem in the culture of science,” Bhattacharya said. “We ought to value truth, right? If we can have a culture of truth, then we're not trying to destroy a scientist simply for the fact that they don't agree with the consensus. We shouldn't be destroying a scientist simply for being wrong.”
Laughing, Greutert’s colleague co-screenwriter Pete Goldfinger said he agreed with the literal meaning of Bhattacharya’s statement “wholeheartedly,” pointedly adding the reservation that he doesn’t think Trump and his top officials, including Bhattacharya, sincerely believe any of it.
“I find it very disingenuous,” Greutert noted. Although a la Goldfinger these officials “state the way it should be,” the director said that the Trump administration is pushing out climate scientists and vaccine experts even though “almost every real medical professional thinks vaccines are fantastic; 95% or more of climate scientists [over 99%] think that climate change is real and probably caused by humans.” He described Bhattacharya’s response to my question as “totally hypocritical,” with Stolberg concluding that “they're almost taking the rhetoric and using it as a shield against scrutiny. They suggest they're saying ‘What we think is the right thing,’ but it's really just in order to protect [them] against us actually digging deep.”
The director of “Saw X” connects his movie to contemporary politics.
Greutert then asked me if I’d read Bhattacharya’s recent editorial in The Washington Post announcing that he is ending mRNA vaccine research. I had not, and I was deeply disappointed at the news: Along with traditional vaccines, the mRNA vaccines averted roughly 2.5 million deaths during the pandemic and saved approximately 15 million life-years.
“It's not because it's medically wrong,” Greutert said. “He says that it was developed under Trump and it saved millions of lives, and it was really great, but because [President Joe] Biden mandated that Americans get this vaccine, he made them distrust the whole process, so… now they have to throw it all out and find some other way to create vaccines until Trump can figure out how to win back the trust for the vaccine that they developed before. It's insanity!”
In addition to using mRNA vaccines myself during the COVID-19 pandemic, I’m familiar with mRNA vaccines because in 2020 I interviewed Dr. Katalin Karikó, the Nobel Prize-winning scientist who (with Dr. Drew Weissman) co-invented the lifesaving drugs. While traditional vaccines train immune systems to fight pathogens by injecting a body with dead or weakened versions of the bugs, mRNA vaccines infect human cells with a “messenger” version of RNA that trains them to produce proteins like those found in a given disease.
Karikó saw the potential in this concept as far back as 1989, but because the medical establishment refused to take her seriously, she would not be vindicated for decades. Recalling her ordeal to me, Karikó spoke of being unfairly demoted and fired, to say nothing of ridiculed. Because she is a Hungarian immigrant living in the United States, Karikó even risked being deported.
“I want young people to feel — if my example, because I was demoted, rejected, terminated, I was even subject for deportation [at] one point — [that] if they just pursue their thing, my example helps them to wear rejection as a badge,” Karikó told me. “‘Okay, well, I was rejected. I know. Katalin was rejected and still [succeeded] at the end.’ So if it helps them, then it helps them.”
As I contemplated Greutert’s response in the context of Karikó’s experiences, I saw a surprising surface connection between what happened to Karikó and the story of the antagonist from “Saw X,” Dr. Cecilia Pederson (Synnøve Macody Lund). Both are intelligent European female doctors who faced rejection from an intolerant medical establishment, and who criticize mainstream doctors for that reason. The key difference, of course, is that Karikó is a legitimate scientist acting in good faith while Pederson — played by Lund with a deliciously insidious and calm sense of cunning — is a malicious scammer.
When I shared this observation after the interview with the “Saw X” storytellers, Josh Stolberg — a co-writer of “Saw X” — agreed with me.
“That's a really interesting connection,” Stolberg said. “Cecilia Pederson pretends to be an anti-establishment crusader, and talks about trying to offer hope for those who are let down by the system... but just like the healthcare system, her motives are all about profit, not helping people. Not healing.”
He added, “I didn't know much about Dr. Karikó until I read that but it feels like she might be the kind of anti-establishment worker that DESERVES respect, one that is grounded in trying to find a truth, as opposed to Cecelia, who is not trying to challenge the system in a real way but to manipulate people and exploit the weak and desperate.”
“Saw X” is about how we are all going to die — and that means we are all vulnerable to being exploited.
Every installment in the “Saw” series is, in one way or another, about what the weak and desperate will do to save their own lives. The series is so skilled at doing this that it received a particularly appropriate compliment from Mary Elizabeth Williams, my erstwhile Salon colleague who survived a cancer diagnosis (melanoma) and has written extensively and with acclaim about her experiences.
“Oh, ‘Saw’ is the greatest franchise about the shit of our healthcare system ever,” Williams said.
“Saw X” begins with the sights and sounds familiar to billions of hospital patients. The blinding flashes from fluorescent lighting and MRI machines, the ominous buzzes and thuds of medical equipment. Like all great medical dramas, you can practically smell the antiseptic ER room odors through your screen.
Even before the plot directly confirms our antihero John Kramer (Tobin Bell) is dying from an inoperable brain tumor, sensitive audience members can intuit his fragile mortality. From start to finish, “Saw X” contemplates what it means to die. That may not seem unusual in a horror film, given that characters die all the time in this genre. Yet unlike the vast majority of its peers, the “Saw” franchise ponders the meaning of life. Its core premise is that dying people tend to be desperate and thus will, in order to survive, undergo terrible torture and do unthinkable wrongs to others. As the franchise’s titular Jigsaw Killer, Kramer forces dozens of unwilling participants to undergo extreme torture and/or murder-based “games” which, once “won,” will not only do justice to those they have wronged. In theory, as Kramer puts it, they’ll also empower the victims to remove their inner obstacles and make positive changes in their lives.
“Saw X” helps us understand how we can be tricked by demagogues like Trump and scammers like Pederson.
I thought of all this when speaking with director Greutert and co-writers Stolberg and Pete Goldfinger, the three storytellers behind this blockbuster flick. Released in 2023 to widespread critical and audience acclaim, as well as amassing a lucrative 10-to-1 budget-to-profit ratio (grossing $125.3 million on a nearly $13 million budget), “Saw X” is the story of how Kramer was conned by Pederson into believing she could use an experimental treatment to cure his fatal brain tumor. After learning he was deceived, Kramer recruits his closest associate Amanda Young (Shawnee Smith) to force Pederson and her associates to undergo a series of vicious games in the dual names of justice and potential redemption. While punishing his victims, Kramer correctly notes that they successfully took advantage of him for one reason: He wanted to feel hope.
The so-called “Pederson method,” like all medical cons that promise to save lives, played on how millions harbor valid skepticism and resentment toward the medical establishment. Pederson succeeds in duping people because the medical establishment so often fails to adequately deal with their health problems.
In short, it isn’t only scientists who resent the medical elite, although there are many stories of unfair professional reprisals against people like Karikó and Bhattacharya himself (who faced blowback after co-authoring a 2020 document that — among other, more controversial claims — correctly warned widespread lockdowns would hurt vulnerable communities). There are much more pervasive problems with the medical establishment. All of us who are not wealthy will at some point (and perhaps often) pay more than we can afford for drugs and treatment, risk receiving prescriptions (such as opioids) that turn us into addicts because they profit Big Pharma and encounter incompetence born as much from corruption as overwork.
“‘Saw X’ definitely speaks to a truth that a lot of Americans now know kind of firsthand, that our healthcare system is built first and foremost not to heal people, but to make money,” Stolberg said. “It's no different in our film. John is targeted by this fraudster offering a miracle cure. John buys it because he's vulnerable and he's desperate. He's willing to do anything he can to live, like we all want to live.”
Stolberg’s next observation, whether he realized it or not, was less about the “Saw” universe than about the real-life death panels we all face.
“What happens is that, when the system leaves people to fend for themselves, you realize that this kind of life-saving treatment, which we all believe should be a right, becomes more of a commodity,” Stolberg said.
When the gore and torture are over, and the smoke has cleared, “Saw X” is a parable about not allowing valid skepticism to turn you into a gullible mark.
“I'll always get behind the person who seeks truth... even if they're wrong sometimes... I mean, that's science,” Stolberg said as he compared the Karikós, Bhattacharyas and Pedersons of the world. His objection isn’t to people who take controversial stands out of genuine conviction, but those who are motivated by greed and/or pride to spread outright lies.
“The world ain't flat and global warming is real,” Stolberg said. “Unfortunately, scams erode the trust that people should have in science.”
Not only are scammers unable to help their victims when it comes to their problems; quite often, they aren’t even able to help themselves. If there is any comfort in the otherwise dire message of “Saw X,” it is that bad people are so selfish and disloyal, their own character flaws can cause them to destroy themselves. There are Oscar-baiting dramas that don’t make this point as beautifully as “Saw X.”
Stolberg elaborated on this.
“One of the things we wanted to highlight at the end of ‘Saw X’ is that villains (or people who build their power by exploiting people and are motivated by greed) rarely feel loyalty to each other,” Stolberg said. After explaining how this applies to the motion picture’s finale (which I dare not spoil), Stolberg concluded “whether it's politics or crime, power is all about creating fear and betrayal is pretty much guaranteed.”
He concluded, “So, yes, ‘Saw X’ definitely dramatizes this in a very bloody and disgusting way, but the truth is there.”
Greutert’s thoughts on the pervasive lack of loyalty among Trumpers is so on point, it’s worthy of closing this article.
“Well… in Soviet Russia, we’ll never know how many people from [Joseph] Stalin’s own government were killed by his orders, often for incomprehensible reasons,” Greutert said. “Unless ‘The Cruelty Is The Point’ is a reason, which seems to be the case with Trump’s government. Some say 70% of Stalin’s handpicked people were murdered by him. I don’t envy anyone in MAGA for many reasons, but mostly because ultimate betrayal by Trump seemed to be as universal a certainty as the laws of gravity itself.”
Back Seat Socialism Podcast Episode 1
Back Seat Socialism
Back Seat Socialism is a column by Matthew Rozsa, who has been a professional journalist for more than 13 years. Currently, he is writing a book for Beacon Press, "Neurosocialism," which argues that autistic people like the author struggle under capitalism, and explains how neurosocialism - the distinct anticapitalist perspective one develops by living as a neurodiverse individual - can be an important organizing principle for the left.