October is my absolute favorite season: colder weather (not this year, though), leaves change colors, my birthday, and one of my favorite holidays, Halloween. With Halloween comes much controversy, and one of these controversial things is horror. Whether it is a movie about ghosts or a haunted house, people wonder what it is that draws us in to experiencing these things. In our reading for this week, Carroll, discusses the paradox of horror. Basically, she explains that horror as a genre has something repulsive about it, yet people are still filling theaters and buying Stephen King novels all the time. This give and take that horror is is just a paradox.
To connect this back I want to discuss the two films I viewed this week–
Poltergeist and
The Blair Witch Project. I am interested in these because Blair Witch does not scare me in the slightest yet there were many parts of
Poltergeist that had me wanting to cover my eyes. Having to look past the terrible special effects that an 80s movie brings, the writing was terrifying to me, but I loved the entire experience. I believe another reason I do not think that
Blair Witch Project is particularly my favorite is because there is no resolution at the end that ties it in a pretty understood bow. Does not having clear resolution mess with the explained paradox. It makes me uneasy which takes out of the satisfaction I get when I watch horror movies.
I believe to further explain how we can be simultaneously repulsed and enticed to something is the issue of control vs. not having control. When watching a horror film, reading a scary book, and going through a haunted house, you know deep down that there is no harm that is going to happen to you, and with this guarantee, you feel in control of your own fear. Though, I know some people who do NOT feel this way; I have friends that I cannot get to go through a haunted house, and have a slight irrational fear in play. They are solely repulsed by horror. I would never, though, put myself in a scary situation in which I did not feel that I controlled the situation.
To end, I would like to discuss my own fear. I am not in any way extremely fearful of ghosts, demons, and aliens, but I am afraid of existential issues, dying young, and car accidents. I would not love to put myself in a situation to experience those fears, so that in that way is not a paradox. So it makes me wonder why those that aren't deeply afraid of common scary movie themes why they cannot get through a film when I can, and I can enjoy it.
Hi McKenzie,
ReplyDeleteI really love your point about control vs not having control. This is a common theme of movies that I find to be more horrifying than actual films that are put into the genre of horror. A movie that you typically would not consider horror, but is horrifying to me is Interstellar. And the entire reason I find it to be so horrifying is because of the uncontrollable aspects of being out in space, such as black holes, the pulls of planets,spontaneous combustions, etc. This is a movie that I cannot get myself to sit all the way through. I saw it once and it was awful and then tried to see it again with my family and the experience was still completely unnerving. What one finds to be "horror" seems to be in the eye of the beholder.
I think that what you were talking about how we don't have horror movies about the things that you listed as your fears is because those things are more or less typically in indie films and aren't popularized. I think that it's harder to depict those fears in a thrilling way. I think that those types of fears are slower and hard to instill. Not to mention the difficulty in making money from it. However like with the Poltergeist, I think that the one point that Carroll neglected and why it does fall through in a way, is how some view horror movies with complete indifference and draw no desire or curiousity in that particular subject but watch to find the discrepancies and logical errors within the film. In simpler terms, they watch it and don't care about learning anything about the subject and aren't thrilled by it, but just to talk crap about why people shouldn't believe anything like that could happen or why they have no reason to fear it. Forgetting that people are aware it's not real logically, but it's the possibility of it happening to them that is scary.
ReplyDeleteControl is a good point. We are less likely to feel completely terrified in situations that we do not have to experience and that we are in control of. Like with death, people may be more comfortable if they could choose how and when they died but the spontaneity and realness of death makes the fear undesirable and not entertaining at all. I also find the Bliar Witch Project just as frustrating because of the no resolution in the end.
ReplyDelete