Upon reading many of the blog posts this week relating to COVID-19, I noticed a lot of us talked about the dystopian genre or various works of literature we were reminded of. In the class Deviant Forms and Bodies with Professor Nevison, we’ve talked a lot about how different monsters reflect different cultural and societal fears. It made me wonder how the horror genre will change in the upcoming years, and I found some articles that I thought some of you might be interested in reading.
One talks about the surge in home invasion movies in 2016, fueled by xenophobia.
This one talks about how people are watching more pandemic movies in the wake of the corona virus.
This one discusses the various types of antagonists one might see in a modern horror film.
Lastly, this one talks about horror movies throughout the decades and the social fears they represented.
I think they’re all interesting reads, especially the last one, and I think they might be worth thinking about as we move forward.
Raven: Thanks for these links. In the Washington Post article, the writer offers this quote from a professor: “’One of the great things about horror is it allows us to experience heightened emotions. We can experience fear and tension and suspense, but we have control over it,’ said Lindsey Decker, a lecturer at Boston University who studies horror films. ‘We can hit pause any time we want — we can fast forward. We have control over our experience of that fear, which I think is very comforting.’” This is, I guess, much like the common understanding of catharsis. But I often wonder if that explanation fully expresses our fascination with art that provokes “fear and tension and suspense.”
I wonder if people are watching these movies as “research” incase the worst happens. Or perhaps it’s one way of trying to see the light at the end of the tunnel in order to make it out of this craziness with your head still screwed on tight. We currently don’t see an end to this, but in movies, at least we know there is an ending because we know how long the film is.
I like to think that watching horror movies will prepare us in some way for the worst case. I watch horror movies more than I would like to admit. I like to think that they are, in a sense, “research.” They give us the worst case scenarios without us having to physically be in the situation. Movies can be used for research even if they are not academic or educational. It is a way to watch others be pushed into the craziness that we imagine, without us having to be under that same amount of stress and panic. In this case, it seems we are in the middle of the horror movie without any way to fast forward to the ending.
Raven,
It’s really interesting how you thought of this. I wonder if it plays into the hysteria many people have been facing during the outbreak, especially with watching more pandemic movies. I’m sure there will be a lot of new nonfiction pieces based off of this pandemic in the near future.