Enjoying Horror
The Objectives:
- Explore the psychological and emotional curiosity for and impact of horror art on individuals and society
- Analyze the unique aesthetic qualities of horror art.
- Understand and utilize some basic principles of film and television analysis.
Artifact (original post link):
I love watching or reading horror genre. I enjoy being horrified and scared. While watching horror genre, I always regret watching them, but I love them after watching or reading them. One of the articles that I found is “Why Are We Drawn to Horror Films?” by Lauren Suval. This article talks about the author’s experience about the Horror films and thoughts about why people are drawn to Horror films. The author states that there are various purposes for people to watch horror film. The purposes are that people may want to distract themselves from daily routines of life, that they may want to counter social norms, that they seek adrenalin rush, and they hope to indirectly experience frights from a distance. This article also touches on one’s childhood. With growing up experiencing horror film movies, there are fears and thoughts of the supernatural resided inside of our consciousness. With these experiences (the author expressed these experiences as ‘movie monster’) people are attracted to experience fearful emotions from a safe and secure remove. In addition, the author gives an emphasis on personality factors as well. There are two threat-related types: repressors and sensitizers. Repressors are the one that like to approach or confront the fears, which enjoy watching horror film movies. On the other hand, sensitizers like to escape or deny the attraction from the horror genre. The author concludes the article by saying the pleasure from horror film movies can be embedded in fear and peaks of adrenaline, while offering just enough emotional distance.
In this week’s reading, Carroll, the author, states “[Monsters thus] arouse interest and attention through being putatively inexplicable or highly unusual vis-à-vis our standing cultural categories, thereby instilling a desire to learn and to know about them. And since they are also outside of (justifiably) prevailing definitions of what is they understandably prompt a need for proof (or the fiction of a proof) in the face of skepticism. Monsters are, then, natural subjects for curiosity, and they straightforwardly warrant the ratiocinate energies the plot lavishes upon them.” (Carroll Page 281) This statement is related to one of the purposes that the Lauren talked about: that people may want to distract themselves from daily routines of life. People know that the scary things from movies are not real, but they get scared of the unreal things. Nevertheless, people are curious about how the scary things are come from, and they get out of their daily routines of life by exploring new scary adventures.
Second article that I found is “Why Do Some Brains Enjoy Fear?” by Allegra Ringo. This article questions ‘what happens in our brains when we’re scared? Is it different when we’re scared “in a fun way” versus being actually afraid?’ The author says that we have to be in a safe spot to really enjoy a scary situation. The author also says “These senses are directly tied to our fear response and activate the physical reaction, but our brain has time to process the fact that these are not “real” threats.” Ringo also says “things that violate the law of nature are terrifying.”
In this week’s reading, Carroll says “All narrative might be thought to involve the desire to know – the desire to now at least the outcome of the interaction of the forces made salient in the plot. However, the horror fiction is a special variation on this general narrative motivation, because it has at the center of it something which is given as in principle unknowable – something which, ex hypothesi, cannot given the structure of our conceptual scheme, exist and that cannot have the properties it has.” (Carroll Page 281)
According to these two opinions from each author, horror genre draws audiences by taking them to unknown objects, which is the ‘movie monsters’ by bringing them to recognize and confront the unknowable things and setting the plots to let the audiences concentrate or mistake the unreal for the real.
Reflection:
Although I love watching horror genre movies, I have never thought about the factors that attract me to watch them. In the article named, “Why Are We Drawn to Horror Films?” by Lauren Suval, Lauren states that the fright or horrified emotions come from early childhood experiences. Back in the days, I loved watching the movie Child’s Play series. Even though I mostly closed my eyes during watching, I wanted to watch them so bad. I guess I was one of the types who wanted to indirectly experience frights from a distance because I only watched the movie when there were many people such as my siblings or cousins.
As growing up, I consider myself as repressor, I do not get scared easily when watching horror movies, and I enjoy feeling scared while watching. Regardless, the reason why I love watching horror genre movie is, I think, to distract myself from daily routines of life. When I was back in Korea attending high school, it was mandatory to study until 10 pm every weekday. I was stressed from doing so. Whenever I felt stressed, I watched a horror movie and it made me feel relieved.
Future Goals:
I now know that everyone has a purpose of watching horror movies whether they recognize it or not. There are certainly the makers of horror film who insert meanings or have purposes of making them. Thus, rather than just watching horror movies without knowing what my purposes are and what the purposes of makers are, I will watch horror movies with knowing the purposes and enjoy them.
Click here for the YouTube video link that recommends horror genre movies.
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