I've
explained in previous posts that people watch horror movies as a way of coping with
actual fears or violence in the world in which we live. That is a sound theory
when you examine various decades in which horror movies were produced. But now
I want to take a different approach and attack the question from a more
specific psychological angle, independent of time and era.
Acknowledging Reality
This theory
combines several points I discovered in my research for this topic, all of
which acknowledge the relationship of what we're watching on screen to what we
consider to be reality.
The first
point is made by director Tom McLaughlin (One
Dark Night) in the excellent documentary, Nightmares in Red White and Blue.
He claims we are drawn to the gothic elements of many horror
movies. The gothic period was a simpler,
classier time, but there was another, darker side you wanted to explore. Clinical psychologist Glenn Walters wrote
about how horror movies generally stick to an almost Victorian moral code: the
girl who has sex will probably be killed, as will the teenager who picks up a
hitchhiker.
Walters
further says that horror movies appeal to people who like predictability and
acknowledge the ethical relativism between them and reality. There is usually no question about who the
bad guy is and, despite the body counts, horror movies tend to have
(relatively) happy endings. So, horror
movies (the outcomes, at least) are certain; there are no doubts. Reality is random; you can't control it.
In his book,
"Why We Watch: The Attractions of Violent Entertainment",
psychologist Jeffrey Goldstein leads us into the second point while he
elaborates on this certainty in horror movies.
He says that horror movies must provide a just resolution in the end:
the bad guy gets it. In Nightmares in Red White and Blue,
George A. Romero says that with horror, we get to upset the apple cart in ways
we cannot do in real life; but, at the end, we get to set it back up
again. The consequences in a horror
movie do not extend to reality.
There's also
the point that we watch horror movies because we want to be distracted from our
mundane reality. Herein lies a paradox:
we know horror films aren't real, we watch them because they aren't real, yet
we want them to look like they're
real. How often do you hear as a
criticism of a horror movie that the special effects are fake? It seems we want scary movies to come as
close to reality as possible without crossing the line into actual
reality. No matter what happens on screen
we want to (and know we will) walk out safe.
Finally, our
very perception of horror may depend on where it is rooted in our reality. John Carpenter says (again in Nightmares in Red White and Blue) that
there are two kinds of horror movies: external and internal. Both are based on the location of the
horror. One is external with creatures
who aren't like us. The other is
internal with the evil right here in our human hearts. This may differ from person to person. What scares you most: the unknown or the
known? The answer probably depends on
your perspective of reality.
Well, I've
cobbled together somewhat of a theory here.
This makes five that I've presented during my Countdown to Halloween. But I still haven't answered the question of
why I, Jeff Owens, love horror movies.
In one final post regarding the topic, sometime between now and next
Wednesday, I'll finally try to get to the bottom of that. I hope you'll join me…
Source:
Why Our Brains Love Horror Movies
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