In order to remember Wes Craven as the radical horror director that he was, we must first acknowledge the genre itself as one that can be subversive and provoke audiences with uncomfortable, nightmarish realities—perhaps even a warning of things to come if society does not reconsider its present. Craven stated that his movies were “a source of a public nightmare, […] reflect[ed] something that is already there.” As a result, The Last House on the Left (1972), The Hills Have Eyes (1977), A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984), My Soul to Take (2010), and his film tetralogy Scream (1996–2011) confronted aspects of racism, class struggle, and middle-class suburban privilege and hypocrisy through violent and oftentimes raw images. From his debut, Craven broke social conventions by distorting the American Dream, which held that the nation would provide equal opportunities to achieve success. Since the Founding Fathers of the United States, American philosophy has focused on understanding human determination and individual effort as the main forces required to prosper. Consequently, this philosophy placed responsibility solely on citizens’ decisions, which “served as a powerful vehicle for blaming those who did not succeed.” Social injustice and class struggle permeated several of Craven's film stories. His criticism of the hegemonic ideology also complicated the naturalization of the dichotomy between normalcy and monstrosity. Social hierarchy was rooted in middle-class values (higher education, religious beliefs, private property, rationalism, and laws), which led to protection of the status quo and the exclusion of those individuals who deviated from it. Nevertheless, the Collingwoods (The Last House on the Left), the Robesons (The People under the Stairs, 1991), and Springwood's neighbors (A Nightmare on Elm Street) violate the rules that uphold their position in order to protect themselves and even their suburban groupings from immediate menaces (killing their daughter's killers, cleansing society from working Black people, and murdering a child stalker, respectively). In acting rashly, however, they make the future even more dangerous for new generations, and their often criminal acts come back to haunt them. Thus, Wes Craven exposes the establishment's hypocrisy; these characters despise criminals for their cruel acts and their inability to adapt to social rules but, in the end, they all turn to violence as a (perhaps short-term) solution.