Horror is NOT a Negative

The guy in this video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6St5R2bYMOY&feature=youtu.be&fbclid=IwAR2bDBY7BlWa57TJW2RKkoV1YTU9zZpn30Q0BXRF5mkc6tzMF0puE–08OM)sounds a little bit like Ben Stein, but he’s way cooler than Ben Stein. (Not that that’s saying much. It isn’t hard to be cooler than Ben Stein. All one really needs to do is NOT be Ben Stein.) The former guy, the one from the video, has done a scientific study of Horror. He does a good job of explaining what Horror does and why it works. It’s kinda common sense stuff, in my opinion, but he makes it sound clinical and respectable and stuff. But there’s one thing he’s dead wrong about. He says that Horror movies are created to make the viewer feel “bad.” Created to give a negative experience. Oh, no no no no no. He doesn’t get the true Horror mark, the Monsterkid, at all, if he believes that.

I am not scared by Horror movies. Not ever. I do not find them horrific. They do not make me feel bad. They make me feel happy. Maybe it’s just me and I’m just a sicko who always roots for the monsters, but I don’t think so. I mean, I might well be a sicko, but I don’t believe for a minute that I’m the only one.

See, what Horror really does, the function it serves, is to make the truly frightening stuff, the horrors of the real mundane world, less frightening. That’s why it is necessary for our species. But unlike all the real world garbage we have to face, we know that the stuff we see in movies isn’t real. It’s just real to us. That’s why we aren’t feeling “bad” when we watch it. We’re smiling. Always. (Unless it’s an Eli Roth movie, in which case we’re likely lamenting the two hours of our life we just wasted watching it.)

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Categorized as darkness

By The Evil Cheezman

Purveyor of sacred truths and purloined letters; literary acrobat; spiritual godson of Edgar Allan Poe, P.T. Barnum, and Ed Wood; WAYNE MILLER is the head architect of EVIL CHEEZ PRODUCTIONS, serving up the finest in entertainment and edification for the stage, the page, and the twain screens, silver and computer. He is the axe-murderer who once met Andy Griffith.

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