While many American Horror Story seasons have come and gone since its fifth, Hotel, in 2015, something about it makes it remain among the standouts of the by now iconic horror anthology we’ve come to count on with each passing year. And no, it isn’t just the hooey, wooden performance Lady Gaga delivered that somehow didn’t get her the same kind of critics’ lashing as Madonna has for, oh, just about any acting endeavor. Nor was it the creepy, spectral presence of such entities in the hotel (loosely based off the notorious Cecil—renamed to “Stay on Main”—in Downtown LA) as the Addiction Demon. No, what truly haunts about American Horror Story: Hotel is the idea that some are doomed to stay stuck in the same place forever…
Of course, we’re not just talking literally. For, as “Liz Taylor” (Denis O’Hare) says to Detective John Lowe (Wes Bentley) on the elevator in the first episode, “Checking In,” “I can see the pain in your eyes. It’s very familiar. You’ve lost something, and now you’re frozen in time. Can’t move forward. Can’t go back.” This is, in part, how the Hotel Cortez attracts so many lost souls—“unwitting” or not—like John. As though the establishment is beaming out a tacit “Batman signal” for damaged goods (in which case, the “logo” is instead probably a junkie’s needle). Among the first of the fresh blood to join a new generation of trapped egos is Gabriel (Max Greenfield), another hopeless junkie just like the hotel’s patron saint of such things, Sally McKenna (Sarah Paulson).
In fact, one might say Sally is the second-in-command to the hotel’s ultimate ghost, James Patrick March (Evan Peters). As the architect of the Cortez, March constructed the building with the primary intent not of impressing outsiders with its Art Deco decadence, but with the need to create a maze-like storage unit wherein he could dispose of the many bodies he so relished torturing and killing. At his side is the faithful and trusty “head of housekeeping,” Mrs. Evers (Mare Winningham, in one of her best roles), there in life and in death to clean up his bloody messes with her dexterous hands. She’s sort of like a Lady Macbeth type… if Lady Macbeth was a member of the help. March and Mrs. Evers set the precedent for the innumerable subsequent ghosts of the hotel who cannot leave or move on. Many of them, indeed, do not want to move on—for it would mean truly going into the unknown. And, as it is said, better the devil you know than the one you don’t. That’s certainly the case for someone like Sally, who has become the eyes and ears of the institution perhaps even more than Mr. March, Liz Taylor and Iris (Kathy Bates) combined. Incidentally, it was Iris, presently the front desk attendant, who pushed Sally out the window of the hotel in the first place.
While it was a bit extreme, it was her reaction to Sally shooting her son, Donovan (Matt Bomer), up with heroin and practically killing him. But, like most at the hotel, death is just a beginning for Dono, taken in by The Countess (Lady Gaga) and remade into one of her many “children.” And yes, many of those include actual children. Like little Holden (Lennon Henry), the long blonde-haired son of John and his wife, Alex (Chloë Sevigny). As it happened, it was after a two-day bender that John spent at the Hotel Cortez in 2010 that March instructed The Countess, his erstwhile wife (the two were married in the 30s), to take Holden for herself so that he might be able to finally push John over the edge to do something, let’s say, very specific. In short, to lose all control. Which he does. Much to Sally’s delight—all too happy to oblige him in his most debauched “underlying” urges…underlying no more.
In the meantime, plenty of other murders at the hands of the ghosts (especially Sally) furnish the hotel with its lust for souls that will never leave it. Making it a sort of Angeleno purgatory. And yet, the real crux of AHS: Hotel is to elucidate that being trapped does not merely pertain to a physical location. The location, in the case of most spirits and/or people stuck at the hotel simply gives the excuse to surrender fully to that stuckness and blame it on the Cortez. And when you are trapped in a place—whether physically or emotionally—you can’t help but become, as Liz Taylor noted, “frozen in time.”
For The Countess and the one that “made” her, Rudolph Valentino (Finn Wittrock), who turns out to be the driving force behind most of what happens in the series, the entire point of their existence is a result of just that: wanting to remain frozen in time. Being that both were actors in Golden Age Hollywood, it’s only natural that they should fall prey to the seduction of this “ancient virus,” which, appropriately, F. W. Murnau (a.k.a. the director of Nosferatu) gives to Valentino, who, in turn, passes it on to The Countess. Sustaining immortal beauty, however, is really more important to Valentino, much more famous than The Countess (nothing but a bit player in the endless stream of movies about Ancient Rome) and increasingly aware that, with the advent of the talkies, his career is soon to be over.
His “ex”-wife, Natacha Rambova (Alexandra Daddario, before The White Lotus), too, must be taken into consideration in the “sharing” of the virus, for The Countess cannot expect to have Valentino without the caveat of Rambova’s constant presence. While this entire plot is in keeping with Ryan Murphy’s fondness for revisionist Hollywood history (resulting in another show of his called, what else, Hollywood), it’s also key to reiterating the essence of this particular AHS season. Which is, of course, that there are those who might find it sad and pathetic for a person to want to remain trapped in time in order to never move on, therefore never really change. And there are those who, quite frankly, don’t give a damn if that’s how they’re viewed. So long as they can remain forever young and beautiful. One way to do that without supernatural circumstances at play, to be sure, is not to get married or have children. Practices that fuel the entire capitalist machine and its “love” propaganda.
Fortunately, the ilk that checks into a hotel like the Cortez isn’t about to capitulate to such a trajectory. Instead preferring to address their own “baser” needs. The ones that render them anachronisms as time wears on, and everyone else of their generation “grows up” (read: conforms to convention).
