19 thoughts on “Is Horror”

  2. In the original HALLOWEEN Jamie Lee Curtis was the only responsible teenager. She was the one that survived, even after risking her life to save the kids in her charge. This is a conservative message.

    Other slashers took the responsibility down to virginity, or non sinner. If you had sex, or smoked dope, you were gonna die. This also could be portrayed as a conservative message.

    Of course in order to show the sin they fill the movie with T&A which sells tickets so it becomes sort of lost.

  3. The horror genre is catharsis for the anxieties of contemporary society. Vampirism = blood-borne disease. Aliens = refugees and/or International Communist Conspiracy. Zombies = ideological fantatics. Cthulhu/poltergeists = a Godless world. Terminator robots = machines taking our jobs. Slashers = parents of teenagers. Etc.

  4. Jeez. When I don’t have anything to say, I — well okay, I just say it in comment threads.

    But I’d have to be pretty far gone before I’d start pontificating on whether this or that pop culture genre is conservative or liberal.

  5. Don’t know if they are one way or the other–I have usually avoided the entire genre since I was a kid.

    I’m stupid enough to believe the good guy always wins. So, Dracula, yes, Freddie Kreuger, no.

    I don’t see myself getting too interested in it in the future either…

  6. “The horror genre is catharsis for the anxieties of contemporary society.”

    Unless you were being ironic, I think that really misses the point. Sometimes, a cigar is just a cigar–in fact, in genre fiction, it’s most often the case. People mostly try to be clever and subtly referential and postmodern with literary fiction. This neurotic urge to find hidden motives under every rock and behind every blade of grass is, of course, the bread and butter of postmodern criticism, so take that as you will.

    “Other slashers took the responsibility down to virginity, or non sinner. If you had sex, or smoked dope, you were gonna die. This also could be portrayed as a conservative message.”

    Difficulties of applying categorical labels aside, how is this a “conservative” message? Certainly the idea that the consequences of one’s behavior can be very real and very unpleasant is such a conservative message, but I think it desperately stretches the meaning to suggest that the archetypical killer is some sort of stand-in for a vengeful God who punishes wrongdoing. It absolutely smacks of having already come to the conclusion and then interpreting the data so as to support it.

    It also begs the question by assuming that these sorts of themes are “conservative” to begin with. Little wonder that those themes tend to be unpleasant or unflattering.

  7. Actually, vampires are about sex, and have been since at least Bram Stoker’s time. When all those legions of girls are lining up to see Twilight it isn’t because they have secret fears of anemia.

  8. No less an authority than Stephen King proposed the same idea, that horror fiction is “as conservative as an Illinois Republican in a three-piece suit.” And I think he’s right. Consider the plot of just about every horror story: something disrupts the course of normal life, bad things happen, and (sometimes) things return to normal at the end. In other words, horror is a genre in which change is bad, and the status quo is something to be defended.

    Note that many horror films invert this formula: it’s the status quo which turns out to be bad, and only revolutionary change can solve the problem (as in _The Stepford Wives_, _They Live_, and most of the “environmental monster movies” of the 1970s.

  9. Actually, vampires are about sex

    Yep. q.v. syphilis.

    Unless you were being ironic, I think that really misses the point. Sometimes, a cigar is just a cigar–in fact, in genre fiction, it’s most often the case.

    The vast majority of genre fiction is not ground-breaking. You have to look at the originals to see why they were copied ad nauseum.

  10. No less an authority than Stephen King proposed the same idea, that horror fiction is “as conservative as an Illinois Republican in a three-piece suit.”

    Indeed. IIRC, King also mentioned that horror was a way for people to transfer their anxieties from normal things people fear (like taxes, growing old, being alone) into more concrete forms (ghosts and monsters).

  11. I doubt today’s vampire fans are thinking about syphilis when they sigh over pictures of that Edward Cullen character. In fact, these days vampirism is almost seen as a cure rather than a disease — I mean what’s not to like: you get to live forever, have superhuman strength, do neat thinks like fly and shape change (depending on which vampire story we’re talking about); all you have to do is avoid the sun and subsist on a liquid diet, and most teenage girls who are into vampires do that already.

    PS: ghosts and monsters, being fantasies, are actually not “concrete” forms of normal fears, but fantastical representations of such. Well, except for Great Cthulhu who lies dreaming in the great city of Rl’yeh under the sea, who will rise one day and destroy all life on earth. He’s real. 80

  12. To understand vamps, read Strauss and Howe’s Generations. The modern vampire genre is Generation X’s portrayal of itself – people alienated by greater society who band together in loose associations with other alienated folks. Sometimes there’s a little gangland warfare with fellow vamps or other supernatural creatures (like lycanthropes).

    On another topic, I’d like to see a film where United Nations peacenik types appease the monster successfully. Would be a lot of laughs.

  13. I doubt today’s vampire fans are thinking about syphilis when they sigh over pictures of that Edward Cullen character.

    No, of course not, but like I said, vampires have come a long way, baby. Alan hits today’s modern vamp square on the nose:

    To understand vamps, read Strauss and Howe’s Generations. The modern vampire genre is Generation X’s portrayal of itself – people alienated by greater society who band together in loose associations with other alienated folks.

    BTB, do you read John Xenakis’s site? I find it most informative.

  14. I can think of counter-examples that play to liberal fears.

    There is a whole genre of horror movies where city folk go to rural areas and get murdered by the country folk, for instance: Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The Hills Have Eyes, and the like.

    A lot of your science-creates-a-monster type movies are lefty polemics wearing rubber suits. Radiation Bad! Science Bad! Atomic testing bad!

    Then there is the whole genre of “Mother Nature will kick your ass” movies: Jurassic Park, say, or anything with spiders.

  15. Haven’t seen the site. But I know my GenXers and my Stauss and Howe.

    GenXers are a “reactive” generation, dubbed “Nomads” by this site:

    http://www.timepage.org/types.html

    “The Nomads are raised in an unprotected environment and bear the brunt of the criticism as the spiritual event runs its course. They mature into risk-taking, alienated young adults and then are resigned to the role of pragmatic midlife leaders during the secular event.

    “Personality: bad in youth, lonely elder, pragmatic, savvy and practical but often amoral and uncultured.”

  16. FYI, I come from the preceding generation:

    “In each cycle of four generations there is one birth cohort collectively known as the Prophets . These cohorts are raised in the increasingly indulgent times following the euphoria of a resolved secular event. As they come of age creativity is embraced and new ideals emerge. Established institutions are challenged and the turmoil erupts into a spiritual event. Theirs is the job of elder leaders during the next secular event.

    “Personality: Stormy in youth, visionary as elder, righteous, austere, principled and creative but sometimes selfish and arrogant.”

    Having been born at the very end of my cohort (within days of the 1960 election), a little bit of the Adaptives rubs off on me – I take some pride in being politically incorrect for its own sake, but I’m a finger-pointing idealogue, so I don’t have to artificially boost my un-PC-ness for that purpose.

    Something else to think about: our President is an Adaptive. But is he a vampire? Have the DC blood banks been in short supply lately? Does Obama put garlic on his arugula? Can he see his reflection in the teleprompter?

  18. Alan, BO writes in his Audacity of Hope:

    I sometimes felt as if I were watching the psychodrama of the Baby Boom Generation — a tale rooted in old grudges and revenge plots hatched on a handful of college campuses long ago — played out on the national stage.

    As an Xer, it’s easy to spot my own kind. And yet what my peers frequently overlook is that despite their lack of leadership skills, Boomers, like their parents, have a great ability to compromise – that’s how they “get things done”, especially in politics. That’s why Clinton could turn on a dime after ’94 and invent triangulation. That’s why GWB was so gracious and consolatory towards all those leftists who hated his guts and literally threw eggs at him. Boomers both. Obama, OTHO, is a Nomad and a red diaper one at that. He’s reacting against all that jazz: “grab a mop”, and every mop in his shop happens to be colored Fabian Socialist because he thinks that’s Pragmatic. Don’t like it? GTFO.

  19. Yes Horror is a Conservative Genre, but not for any of the reasons listed above; (most of you people seem to have paid WAY to much attention in English Class).

    Horror is “Conservative” because there are defined moral norms, and clear moral lines. Dracula feeds of the blood of innocents. Zombies eat the brains of the innocent. Werewolves rip pretty much anyone and everyone they meet asunder. As far as Michale Meyers, Freddy Kruger, etc. there really isn’t a whole lot of moral “Gray Area” in there between the mass murdering hyper-violent slasher and his nubile young victims. There isn’t a lot of room for deconstructionist idiots to go around discussing the “moral relativism” between the Alien and the crew of the Nostromo, or the “moral equivelancy” between John Hurt and the alien larva that comes busting out of his chest.

    In short, there are good guys, (who, up until recently carried Crucifixes and crosses of all types as a symbol of the power of God) and clearly defined bad guys. Good and Evil are clearly and objectively defined. This alone make them philosophically conservative. Furthermore, the Horror genre always follows Edmund Burke’s principle, that “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing’, and in many cases you see people willingly sacrificing themselves in order to save others.

    So horror speaks to the most basic of Conservative beliefs, that there are clear and undeniable moral differences between good and evil, that these differences are objective not subjective in nature and must be faced- even if doing so is unplesant; and that individuals are ultimately responsible for doing so- in fact their fate depends on how, if, and when they face the challenge presented by the existance of very real and very merciless evil.

    If that doesn’t define how Conservatives view the world, I don’t know what does.

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