We are the things that were and shall be again: Repetition compulsion and the attraction of horror films (original) (raw)
Related papers
Horror films: tales to master terror or shapers of trauma?
American journal of psychotherapy, 2007
The authors review the literature of cinematic-related psychiatric case reports and report the case of a 22-year-old woman who presented with intrusive thoughts of demonic possession and flashbacks of the film The Exorcist. Cinematic neurosis may be considered a form of psychological crisis shaped by exposure to a film narrative that is emotionally and culturally significant to the individual. The structure of horror films are examined from the perspectives of trauma theory, narrative theory, and borderline personality organization theories, using the film The Exorcist as an example. Within this framework, the horror film can be seen as a cultural tale that provides a mechanism for attempting mastery over anxieties involving issues of separation, loss, autonomy, and identity. An individual will identify with narrative elements that resonate in personal life experiences and cultural factors embedded within the film, which carry levels of either stress that will be mastered, or act as...
It has been said that fear is one of the most powerful and ancient emotions in the human race. It should come as no surprise then that horror as an art form has existed for centuries. Throughout history horror has let humans externalize their fears. It is my conjecture that the artists who make horror films and literature have, unintentionally, found a way to let people expose themselves to their very real fears by means of sophisticated metaphors. The aim of this study was twofold. First, I sought to demonstrate that horror is a reflection of the fears of the society and culture in which it was created. Secondly, I intend to show that it acts as a sort of subconscious, prolonged exposure that helps people deal with their societal fears. This study contained two main elements to test this hypothesis. The first is that participants monitored their fear levels in vivo while watching scenes from six different horror films. This was to test to see, first, if there was indeed an increase in fear from the start to the end and, second, if the end of each clip would result in a decrease in fear. This would indicate that the participants experienced some type of relief from their fear. The second element is that the participants were asked to retrospectively explain what made each scene scary. This was left vague to prevent influencing the answers, but the goal was to see if participants were relating these horror scenes with the real life fears that are represented in each of the films. The participants not only experienced a sense of relief at the end of each scene, but there was also some indication in the case of The Crazies that this may be because people are associating the film with real life fears. This study has shown that those who watch horror experience a type of relief after each scene, even if that scene does not bring about relief on its own. This is because horror is not an emotion that can be sustained during prolonged exposure. If viewers experienced a decline in horror after only 10 minutes in each scene, it is logical to assume that the decline would be even greater after the entire film was over. If audiences are experiencing this relief in the theater, it is also logical that they are experiencing this relief in their everyday lives.
Horror films a necessary evil paper
Crossing Boundaries and Fear, Horror, and Interface, 2007
Abstract: The gruesome reality of horror films and the cruel reality of everyday life reside in the image; a parallel universe, which may be retained from the torrent of images of the spectacle in a hyperreal global society. The catharsis one hopes to experience when attending horror films suggests that there be an emotional and intellectual clarification of one’s everyday existence. How this is done however, appears to be contrary to the world slipping into a consumerist, technocratic global world. The purpose proposed in this paper is a notion that horror films offer a re-examination, through a catharsis, which offsets the pragmatic and materialistic ideologies of a technocratic, global world, and hence, presses for reflection of the carnage framed in not only of aspects of the objective, descriptive world, but also of aspects of one’s inner world: how to understand and value through an art form, what is happening in real life, and to believe in the intrinsically good of oneself and the greater community.
Horror films and its effects on children, adolescences and adults
There are a lot of fears and phobias in modern life. Some fears we got from bad life situations, others are from our childhood. In my work I will try to explain how horrors can influence on human mind and leave some marks, good or bad. Maybe you heard that horrors are not properly for children or violence scenes cam make teens crueler. The relationship between children and horror is fraught with tension, with children typically assumed to be vulnerable, impressionable, and in need of protection from horrific media . But sometimes children like watching horror movies and violent show. There are some interesting facts about mind perception and effects of films and books that we afraid and like at the same time.
The proliferation of North American horror films in the 21st century has engendered an increase in critical and academic response which has almost exclusively focused on the conventions of mainstream horror cinema. That is, films sanctioned by classificatory bodies, released through mid to large production companies and exhibited via selected to wide theatrical releases. While academic work, drawing from film and cultural studies, has provided a much needed engagement with the popularity and themes of contemporary U.S. horror they have tended to exclude marginal or ‘hidden’ horror film examples. Therefore, working from Antonio Lázaro-Reboll’s work on the ‘archaeology of horror’ put forward in The Spanish Horror Film (2012), this paper (which is part of a monograph on the subject) will similarly seek to “reintegrate marginal filmic and cultural practices” (p.7) into 21st century U.S. horror. Within the paper an account of the aesthetic and thematic strategies of the films will be provided which will work toward supplying a definition of the term hardcore horror. A number of filmic examples will be given (such as films by Fred Vogel, Shane Ryan and Lucifer Valentine) and areas such as production, marketing, and consumption will be addressed. The importance of looking at hardcore horror is that these films operate outside of normative filmmaking practice and in doing so provide a wider examination of the cultural field of U.S. horror in terms of how it is made and experienced. The paper will hope to provide a redefinition of the boundaries of the genre within the context of contemporary U.S. horror, so that overlooked horror films and their revisions and alterations of commercial production, marketing and consumption practices can be included. In turn, this will help to better understand the interface between filmmaker and audience (and scholar), especially when it comes to cultural representations of and experience toward horror.
Screams on Screens: Paradigms of Horror
2014
This paper offers a broad historical overview of the ideology and cultural roots of horror films. The genre of horror has been an important part of film history from the beginning and has never fallen from public popularity. It has also been a staple category of multiple national cinemas, and benefits from a most extensive network of extra-cinematic institutions. Horror movies aim to rudely move us out of our complacency in the quotidian world, by way of negative emotions such as horror, fear, suspense, terror, and disgust. To do so, horror addresses fears that are both universally taboo and that also respond to historically and culturally specific anxieties. The ideology of horror has shifted historically according to contemporaneous cultural anxieties, including the fear of repressed animal desires, sexual difference, nuclear warfare and mass annihilation, lurking madness and violence hiding underneath the quotidian, and bodily decay. But whatever the particular fears exploited by...