zombie

While Josef does lie throughout the series at almost every turn, I don't think everything he says is a lie. Not entirely. Throughout the series I noticed sexual themes were consistent, namely ones of assault. Tying to family specifically. I think Josef most certainly was abused by his family from a young age, the exact details of who and what happened are much more murky. I have some ideas however.

Firstly I don't think the woman we see in the Creep Tapes mother episode and Angela are blood related to him. Not likely anyways, it's not impossible, but I lean more towards that they aren't. I think Josef seeks these people out in order to try and replicate what he went through. To replicate those relationships, just in a way where he can control the details. He can fill gaps that are perhaps too painful to recall with false memories. Yet it's just similar enough to act as a sick comfort. It hurts in some ways, sure, but it's familiar. That's what he knows. It's a stinging pain that he can control. Yet he can't ever seem to let go.

With Angela more particularly he seems almost reluctant about the relationship. It's unhealthy. Who would've guessed? None of his "relationships" he forms are. However I noticed with her he seemed especially reluctant to really engage with her. He tries to ignore her phone calls, trying to get to the point in the kitchen and leave, being pressured into drinking by her, being pressured into doing sexual things, drugged by her, and all of that. She notably has to either pressure him or trick him into doing what she wants.

You could maybe argue with Josef it's a weird thing between the two, that maybe they're both into it, but I personally don't think that's the case. It's a mutually abusive relationship. In the end of the episode when he's trying to leave the distress feels very real. There isn't any victim to put a show on for. Just himself and his camera. Footage only he'd ever see presumably. Before he goes in to see her at the start he has to talk himself up about boundaries.

With his "mother" he seemingly has a lot more control. As by what Angela implies, she is an old woman, presumably one that's suffered from some mental illness, that Josef has tricked into believing that she's his mother. He's also tricked himself into believing that too. She is implied to not be the first either. He is seeking out old women in deteriorating health to manipulate into a substitute for his mother. It seems that the relationship with his real mother was emotionally incestuous, at the very least. She also may have ignored what was happening to him and encouraged more dangerous behaviors of his. That really is just speculation however. I don't think the relationship he orchestrates with these old women is an entirely accurate portrayal of what it was with his real mom. It just gives an idea.

Then Josef is seen with victims to be sexually aggressive, or at least threatening. The movements he makes with the peachfuzz mask, the hypothetical/threat he gives to Sara in the car, and typically putting them in a position of voyeurism.

He flashes Sara outright, he has people film him in the bathtub (granted you could argue that's more neutral and not inherently sexual), and Aaron stumbling upon him when he's asleep. He also tells Aaron the story of him supposedly raping Angela (I'll get back to that story in a bit.). Yet he never fully crosses the line, he dances around it, taking a step or two over. However his threats when it comes to sexual things never follow through. Not that I know of. Obviously nothing else he does is good nor does that redeem it. I just think it's interesting that it's such a pervasive topic he brings up with people continuously.

The rape story he tells Aaron, I don't think it's true, at least not in the way that he tells it. I think he was the victim. I think he's spinning or even misrembering it to where he's the aggressor instead. A way to reclaim power over that situation. To be more specific I think his dad raped him with the wolf mask at some point, with him getting defensive at the idea that he brings up in the Creep Tapes solidifying this idea a bit. I think he may have also suffered abuse from his actual sister Angela and that's melding together with what his dad did to make the story that Aaron is told. Either way I think something definitely happened there regardless of who was the exact person who did it.

Speaking of the wolf mask. I think peachfuzz is a reminder of it. A vessel for that trauma. My friend pointed out most of Josefs more sexual behavior occurs when he has the mask on, or it is tied to it heavily. In the first movie once more with him growling with it on and moving his hips suggestively, him tying the assault story to it, him moaning peachfuzzes name, and the threat he gives to Sara in the second film while he's wearing it.

Then in the Creep Tapes he has a conversation and bickers with it over co-dependence. It poses false memories at him which he gets upset at yet accepts. Calling itself his brother. He wants to do his murders without it. But what does that entail exactly?

I noticed in the Creep Tapes peachfuzz is less prevalent. Or at least less of how it was used in the first movie. It's used as a prop, put on briefly to terrify, or put on a corpse's face. You don't see much of the behavior with it from the first two films. It's not entirely gone, don't get me wrong, however it's not as heavy in the tapes. It exists in a different way within the series than it did before. I wonder if Josef wanting to do a kill "without" peachfuzz maybe meant that. It's taken a backseat.

Josef is still Josef, with or without it he still crosses boundaries, he still kills, and still obsesses over his victims. He's still emotionally "intimate" with people in a way that's inappropriate. He just doesn't display that particular part of him as much anymore in his killing routine. This of course all just my interpretations from a very unreliable narrator of a character.