| HORROR AND WITCHES AND ZOMBIES OH MY! (69 views) | AUTHOR /
DATE |
| Halloween always pushes the horror film genre to the forefront. It's a shame in a way as All Hallow's Eve was a celebration of the harvest and a time to prepare for the next season. It did not involve terrifying witches, zombies!(recent topic)or anything of the sort. I won't go into why the holiday became so perverted.
We love to be scared! Choco's recent holiday with the roller coasters is an example. You don't ride those to be bored. Scary stories which were replaced by more hi - tech versions. Yet we don't want to chat with Charles Manson. We don't get a buzz when driving thinking about all those people who die in traffic accidents every day. Obviously we don't want REAL scary stuff but we want to be .......................
(fill in the blank)
What are we really looking for?
My best term is ....... teased | Cinema!
10/30/2009 7:00 PM |
| #2 | With traditional horror films, we want to be teased, as you say: Taken a short way down, knowing we can find our ways back, and then brought back up. In recent years there have been an increasing number of much more severe, graphic horror films: "Inside," "Martyrs" and a few others from France seem the most typical. I think the intent of these films might be twofold: The filmmakers want to prove that they've taken gore and terror (or just gore, or, very rarely, just terror) further than those who've gone before; or The filmmakers want to create an experience with which viewers can test themselves - "Oh, yeah - I could take it, but those weaklings can't. I'm a man (or "wild woman," or something or another)!" "Martyrs" has a great deal of both qualities: It goes much further than anything I've seen before, and I'm tempted to plump my chest and declare that I sat through the whole things with my eyes open.
In the end it's just good special effects. | Jeffrey Frawley
10/30/2009 7:19 PM |
| #3 | Thanks for your excellent thoughts Jeffrey. "Martyrs" hmmm? Maybe I should check it out.Although my "to see" list is awfully long. Hey I can use that as an excuse if I chicken out :)
I really liked the way you described traditional horror films, and why they are "safe".
| Cinema!
10/31/2009 1:07 AM |
| #4 | Most people whose opinions I know think it's a piece of nihilistic, exploitative garbage. I think it has some value, but am very much in the minority, but still at the end say, "Wait. What? That's where this was leading? I don't know..." Beware. | Jeffrey Frawley
10/31/2009 4:48 AM |
| #5 | The thing that scares me yet makes me laugh at the same time are protesters. "Halloween is an abomination". Thankfully they are waaaayyy in the minority. Either that or I don't get out much.
| XslaveX
11/4/2009 6:16 AM |
| #6 | I can't say why so many people feel they must protect us from exercising free choice. Blanket condemnations come not only from the religious right, but also well-meaning leftists (and probably some in the middle). I remember seeing an interview with Jane Fonda in which she pontificated about all that was wrong with Michael Cimino's "The Deer Hunter." After she had blasted it for inaccuracy, racism, sexism and several other -isms I can't recall, the interviewer asked her when she'd seen the film. Oh, she replied, not in exactly so many words, I didn't SEE it, but I KNOW - now, here's what else is wrong with it! to far too many people, freedom of speech and expression is freedom to agree with them. | Jeffrey Frawley
11/14/2009 8:10 AM |
| #7 | I think many people feel stressed when something is different or challenges their beliefs or cultural behaviors. If they don't have an automatic box or label in their mind they don't know literally what to think and usually label it as bad. It makes them uncomfortable....uneasy in their easy chair. Fear of the unknown isn't just in horror films. To stave off the unknown we have ruts and patterns people get used to and if and when something changes they fear what that unknown might be. So they latch on to their belief system, shut their eyes and keep on they way they were going. They feel if everyone would just do the right thing - which happens to be what they declare the right thing then everything would be fine! Jeffrey you said it very well -
"to far too many people, freedom of speech and expression is freedom to agree with them."
Very well said.
| Cinema!
11/20/2009 12:08 AM |
| #8 | In the words of some singer in "Team America" - "freedom isn't free. It cost folks like you and me." You walk into a church and shout out obscenities and get arrested for it, that is your fault. When you obstruct the rights of others, you have no rights. Freedom has it's limitations. It's how the world flows, like it or not. Unless you perfer entropy. | XslaveX
11/24/2009 8:33 PM |
