I've been putting a lot of thought into the mechanisms of the horror film lately. My Deadpit addiction has basically made it impossible to ignore the terrible state of the genre anymore. What's going on? Why are the horror films today all torture films and remakes? Why aren't they effective at all? Can the genre be saved through an artistic movement or rejuvenation, or will this shit just continue until people stop paying to see these worthless acts of cinematic monotony? No matter how bad the films might be, isn't it better than in the 90s when horror was basically dead? These are the questions I'm struggling with. The main one, though, is why do older great horror movies work, even today, and newer ones not so much? Is their a formal or narrative answer?

I can't claim to have really covered much ground in my research yet, but I have gotten some ideas of how terror can be communicated through film. Fear. The fears of the audience, represented on-screen (preferably in an abstract fashion) can be a vital component of the horror experience. I arrived at this point while watching Nosferatu for an essay. In Nosferatu, the horror is not derived necessarily for what Count Orlock is physically capable of, necessarily, but the fears of the audience that he is made to represent. I noticed three major motifs through the film: the monster as feminine, the monster as an immigrant/foreigner and the monster as darkness. All of these addressed concerns of the prospective audience, pre-existing fears, transposed into a fictional cinematic narrative.

Now, I think that the problem with American horror films today is that, through industry economics and the political climate, its near impossible to make a horror film in such a manner. It seems to me that horror has some relation to the state of the society; the more homogeneous the society is the more effective a horror film might be made for it. In the 1930s, during the great depression, Americans were more united than not against economic distress. This climate allowed the Universal monster films to be huge successes.

After WW2, political cultures diverged, and the horror film dissipated; at best it lived through sci-fi with its nuclear scare films- the monster as the atomic bomb or its after-effects. Then the 1960s and 1970s arrived, and horror as gore entered. This fundamentally upset the dynamics of the classic horror film. The terror need not be extracted, because it could be shown on-screen. Seems that the greatest fear present in these films is the fear of death or the fear of pain- realized on-screen without the obligation for subtext and metaphor.

Not to say all of these films are without, though. Certainly the films of Romero, Cronenberg, Polanski, Cohen, etc. address other fears. Fear of government, fear of consumerism, fear of powerlessness, fear of the body, fear of isolation etc. But do the majority of Carpenter's films do so? Texas Chainsaw Massacre? Friday the 13th? A Nightmare on Elm Street? If they do, I can't find it. The smaller films were able to exist as they were because of the independent system that was viable enough to sustain them.

Nowadays, it seems like such films aren't being made at all anymore. I think the cultural divide might be the answer. Most filmmakers probably tend to be liberal. They're probably not looking to either make a film whose views they wholly disagree with, or one that will turn away 50% of those that come to it. Outside of the mainstream or outside of the horror genre it does still happen occasionally, but then only from a liberal perspective. The problem there is that liberal's fears are not easily abstracted. Even something really good like Homecoming is basically just taking the situation and recording it.

I believe that conservative's fears are much more apt to sustain a classically designed horror film. It's much easier to speak to their prejudices and bigotries in an abstract manner that would be artistically revealing. A horror film could be made, I believe, that could subtextually cast the monster as the illegal immigrant, the monster as the non-Christian, the monster as the gay/lesbian/bi/trans person, the monster as the woman with agency. This horror film would be morally despicable but probably very effective with its target audience. Which is a fucking shame.

I'm not quite sure where I'm going with this, just kind of throwing out whatever thoughts come to my head. I'm afraid that in today's climate it might take a wretched film such as this to revive horror. And open the doors for progressive rebuttals to redeem it.

Tags: movies
Current Mood: thoughtful