On a personal level, I have never, ever, enjoyed the experience of watching horror movies. Although, per our in-class discussion on Monday, the concept of ill-rational and rational fear brings a very interesting point into why and how people of our age continue to watch horror movies so regularly.
In the essay “The Paradox of Horror” Carroll notes that people watch movies in the horror genre because of the unrealistic factors that it entails. This is the factor that makes the sub-genre of paranormal horror so sensational. For an everyday sensation, having complete fear of in an unrealistic situation like a non-physical threat as a ghost, witch, or apparition that by day-to-day standard is completely unrealistic.
This, yet again, leads into the conversation from Monday of the topic of irrational fear vs. rational fear. But, unlike ghosts, goblins, and whatever comes from movies like Paranormal Activity, comes the film Funny Games (2007). This film is a wild ride, literally and figuratively. Funny Games shows the completely rational fear of human violence for no distinct reason. As Carroll again distinguishes, “[that monsters, ghosts and the like], do not defy predication, but mix properties in nonstandard ways. They are not wholly unknown, and this is probably what accounts for their characteristic effect—disgust” (9). In viewing a film with a monster is creature as the root of the fear, people become afraid of what they think and have seen happen before.
For the film Funny Games, the fear lies in two rather average looking boys who show no human compassion. And unlike an (almost) predictable non-human monster, these boys show the rational fear of another human beings’ harm upon another. Most notably, when the father of the family being terrorized by these boys asks: “Why are you doing this?”, the boy's response with nothing other than: “Why not?”. This demonstrates the true terror that this film entails; there is no predictability and no reason upon this terror. In movies like The Blair Witch Project and others like it as monster and creature horror films, the viewer is in a constant state of curiosity for what, why, and how these actions are occurring to the protagonists. But for both The Blair Witch Project and Funny Games, these questions never get fully answered. The viewer is to be more scared after the films ends because the questions of reason of motivation and implication of terror are never answered fully.
This idea becomes practically terrifying when one realizes that nothing is exactly stopping these scenarios from happening to the viewer. The film is made to show an incredible realistic family and situation that precedes the terror. As it is common practice to critique the actions of protagonists in horror films, the actions displayed in this film show nothing unrealistic from the main protagonists. This becomes terrifying for a viewer because the victims of this terror become completely defenseless in the face of terrorization and eventually, death.
Honestly, I have always found movies with actual humans, rather than monsters, super scary. You can obviously walk around at night and safely know a zombie won't come through your door. Like, yeah, it's super creepy that someone came up with that concept, but at the end of the night, you're not going to experience that goblin or ghoul.
ReplyDeleteBut humans? We're constantly interacting with them and constantly dealing with the social aspect of our lives. Is it guaranteed that something like the Purge can't happen? Or in the case of your movie, that two little kids scroll into your life and want to mess with you? I mean, we all hope not, but people are killed every day by people they know. Neighbors suddenly decide they don't like you or wives decide to up and kill the person they're in love with.
What happens when something scary in real life happens, though? I think that Carrol's theories could obviously weaken. Taking your movie as an example, what if you were in their place? Would you want to continue these games just to figure out what's going on? Or would you rather try and get the heck out of there? It's starts to get a little shaky when applied to reality, but movie-wise, I think that this theory is incredible. We really do actively seek for reasons behind things and when we don't get them, we get disappointed and think "oh it's not scary." Just like the Blair Witch Project!
Without that real-life feel and humanistic antagonists, that you do finally meet in the end, you might not have had the thrill you did while watching it! It's definitely the end that we all crave, even if we're too scared to open our eyes fully.