Horror
I love horror movies and books. Have for a long time. I think one of the things I enjoy about it so much is that a lot of what we see or read in the horror genre is an extension of our current culture and worries.
Slasher flicks in the seventies often focused on the sin of a rampant youth. The druggies and horny teens getting ganked one after another while the innocent virgin escaped.
Enviromental horrors like Prophecy (mutant bear one, not evil angel one) were a result of our fears about DDT, mercury in the water and other polutions.
The Excorcist, Rosemary's Baby and The Omen tapped into a feeling of religious dread, where magazines proclaimed God Is Dead, but we still felt the need for a protector and a fear from the evil his opposite cultivated.
I've noticed the evil, inbread, mutant hick is a big thing nowadays. The Graves, The Hills Have Eyes I and II, the Wrong Turn series and a few books I've read recently all focus on the frightening and horrific monsters that live up in them thar hills, just waiting to rape our women and eat our flesh once we take a step our of our safe suburban homes.
My take? We have become such an urbanized society that we fear the rural. It's foreign. Not a place where even our grandparents lived. We look at folks who live lives so differently than we can imagine and we picture them as subhuman, monstrous.
Unfortunate.
Slasher flicks in the seventies often focused on the sin of a rampant youth. The druggies and horny teens getting ganked one after another while the innocent virgin escaped.
Enviromental horrors like Prophecy (mutant bear one, not evil angel one) were a result of our fears about DDT, mercury in the water and other polutions.
The Excorcist, Rosemary's Baby and The Omen tapped into a feeling of religious dread, where magazines proclaimed God Is Dead, but we still felt the need for a protector and a fear from the evil his opposite cultivated.
I've noticed the evil, inbread, mutant hick is a big thing nowadays. The Graves, The Hills Have Eyes I and II, the Wrong Turn series and a few books I've read recently all focus on the frightening and horrific monsters that live up in them thar hills, just waiting to rape our women and eat our flesh once we take a step our of our safe suburban homes.
My take? We have become such an urbanized society that we fear the rural. It's foreign. Not a place where even our grandparents lived. We look at folks who live lives so differently than we can imagine and we picture them as subhuman, monstrous.
Unfortunate.