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[writing] horror
Mar. 24th, 2009 12:43 am
I was looking for some story notes I made awhile ago and stumbled on a conversation I had with Sarah back in 2007 (probably May of 2007) about horror movies. I'd like to think about this more, so I'm noting the thoughts I had here, which were part of a much larger conversation about horror and horror ratings and why people claim that movies + violence = good and video games + violence = bad:
There's a theory that trends in horror movies relate to how safe people feel in the world. Horror movies mostly focus on monsters (of whatever type) when people feel safer with other humans. When reality, when what people are doing to each other, starts to be more frightening than the unknown, horror movies go back into the torture/survival horror, and to the extreme horror films.
It's a reflection of the fears of the potential audience.
I don't think the torture/survival horror movies are *supposed* to be scary. There's a comment to that post which says that Hollywood is off-base because we (as a society) see so much damage inflicted on humans in real life that we don't find it frightening in the movies. I don't think it's supposed to be frightening, though; the appeal of such things is the reflection of life, the way that the horrors of reality are contained in a controllable media. We can't stop the war, for example, but in the movies, it's a contained source and we can choose to see or not to see. It also gives us a way to approach these ideas without having to deal with the idea that *real people* are getting hurt.
I'm not saying that Hollywood is setting out to show that these parts of humanity are wrong. Hollywood is trying to make money. That's it. It's a business.
However, we can analyze the way people react to what's being made.
---
That same conversation has a number of insights into the Along the Road Home universe and characters and reminded me of what I love about that story. Someday I will return to it, when I have the proper distance and skill to write it.
There's a theory that trends in horror movies relate to how safe people feel in the world. Horror movies mostly focus on monsters (of whatever type) when people feel safer with other humans. When reality, when what people are doing to each other, starts to be more frightening than the unknown, horror movies go back into the torture/survival horror, and to the extreme horror films.
It's a reflection of the fears of the potential audience.
I don't think the torture/survival horror movies are *supposed* to be scary. There's a comment to that post which says that Hollywood is off-base because we (as a society) see so much damage inflicted on humans in real life that we don't find it frightening in the movies. I don't think it's supposed to be frightening, though; the appeal of such things is the reflection of life, the way that the horrors of reality are contained in a controllable media. We can't stop the war, for example, but in the movies, it's a contained source and we can choose to see or not to see. It also gives us a way to approach these ideas without having to deal with the idea that *real people* are getting hurt.
I'm not saying that Hollywood is setting out to show that these parts of humanity are wrong. Hollywood is trying to make money. That's it. It's a business.
However, we can analyze the way people react to what's being made.
---
That same conversation has a number of insights into the Along the Road Home universe and characters and reminded me of what I love about that story. Someday I will return to it, when I have the proper distance and skill to write it.
