Artifact #5 Enjoying Horror

Objective

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.

The two additional reading I read both indicated that the reason why people are enjoying watching horror is because of adrenaline rush, being distracted from mundane life, vicariously thumbing our noses at social norms, and enjoying a voyeuristic glimpse of the horrific from a safe distance. Besides that, New York University neuroscientist Joseph LeDoux also suggested during the interview saying “fear is not merely a biological reaction, but an emotion derived from both deep-seeded evolutionary factors as well as newly learned cautions”. Somehow, human imagination will relate the scene happened in the movie with real life, which can strongly affect human’s emotion. In this article “The Enjoyment Theory of Horror: A Response to Carroll”, Berys addresses an opinion about why people enjoy watching horror films.The main ument claimed in this article is the idea of ‘impossible beings’ which first mentioned in Carroll’s article. The idea of ‘impossible beings’ or ‘monsters’ as Carroll mention, is used to link the structure of horror movie and people’s attraction. However, Gaut has different opinion, he states that ‘monsters’ is not a standard for people to “understood in the sense of impossible beings…”. He believes that the attraction to horror comes from the fascination of evil and our inherent connection with it between the realms of fiction and everyday life. Gaut gives us interesting way to approaching the answer which different from Carroll. Ultimately, both authors admit that curiosity is the catalyst behind our fascination towards horror.

Reflection

Firstly, I have to say I am not a big fan of horror movie. The only reason I will try to watch a horror movie is because my friends ask me to watch it together and there should be more than 5 people have the same requirement at the same time. Personally, I feel scared when I am watching the horror movie is because it is so close to the real life (like Fink mentioned in his report). After I turn off the TV, I can’t help myself imaging and suspecting that same thing in the movie could happen in my apartment like some non-human creature is watching me in the dark. This makes me terrified. In the meantime, I don’t know how to enjoy the adrenaline rush and I hate anything that jump onto the screen in extremely sudden. Most importantly, the sound effect performing in the horror movies are super scary but if you turn off the sound, it will make the auditor feel safer (at least it works for me). Those sharp sound and voice will make people feel really uncomfortable and exaggerate the feeling to create certain atmosphere. However, even though I personally don’t like this kind of movie, but we have to say more scared the auditors are, more successful the horror movie is. That is the way how they are entertaining people.