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Horror

Today I learned that the Mean Green Mother from Outer Space from Little Shop of Horrors was Levi Stubbs1,2 The follow up reading and holiday got me to thinking a bit more about horror as a genre.

My dad pointed it out while watching the movie because Levi Stubbs was the lead singer of The Four Tops and a voice I heard a lot of growing up3. Every year we watch a new movie at my dad's house around Halloween weekend because we travel for a tennis tournament and it's a good pre-holiday visit time. "Tough Titties"... for whatever reason I remember that line being cut out of our high school production version. I wasn't in it, but I was in a drama class with some of the cast so I went to see their production with the big rented puppet plant. The musical aspect really just epitomizes the pulp fiction writing. Last year we watched The Rocky Horror Picture Show which was based on the same sorta pulp fiction and a bit of Frankenstein. Same deal there though... mostly humor and music because I've never really cared much for horror.

During one of my conversations with my dad last weekend, we were discussing the recent mass shooting in Maine and he said "violence in movies and videos games is to blame", which was part of the impetus for this essay. Research suggest that folks derive pleasure from the horror genre for the brain's chemical excitement mainly because we possess a protective frame of safety, control, and most importantly for this essay... detachment. This is evidenced in research that suggest that richer people enjoy the horror genre more because lacking financial resources degrades the psychological protective frame and it's easier to feel detached from the fear5.

Figure 20 from Charles Darwin's The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals (1872) 6

I remember seeing Faces of Death which I thought was real in 5th grade. Other movies that stuck out from my childhood were Halloween, The Omen, and Children of the Corn. In retrospect, only the later two were scary and I think Carpenter's slasher was mostly his music compositions. I read a couple Steven King books and short stories collections. I'm still fond of his social criticism like Quitters Inc. or Trucks. However, I equate the vast majority of the horror genre to cheap thrills akin to action thrillers and porn. Stephen King's rise in popularity can be tied to his essay Children of the Corn which first appeared in Penthouse magazine78.

Aliens, monsters, murderers, ghosts, and zombies don't really do it for me, but I do like dark psychological and spiritual themes in art. My mom used to ask me to turn off the depressing Pink Floyd music. Shakespeare's Othello is horror and Frankenstein alongside of the vast majority of horror fiction originated in folklore, mythology, and religion. The Epic of Gigamesh, Brothers Grimm, or John of Patmos' Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse from the Book of Revelation are good examples. Apartment 7A is an upcoming prequel to the movie Rosemary's Baby which will fall into the long line of evil horror. A bunch of horror franchises like Halloween are now in the double digits. John Carpenter said Escape from New York was inspired by Watergate and the paradox of the genre is that it provides relief from real-life horror which may explain why some of the golden eras of horror films have been some of the most tumultuous in real life. Japanese horror films after the atomic bombings of 1945 mainly consist radiated mutants like Godzilla, Spanish horror was most prolific under the real life terror of Franco, and The Third Reich banned horror films under the guise of a moral panic.10.

The moral panic of America in the 1980s is easily tied to the rise of QAnon with the exact same apocalyptic underpinnings10. Although real life horrors have been found to be more contagious than violence in film or video games, there is evidence of their effect. It's a chicken and egg thing to me and I think the strongest correlation seems to be the sense of detachment. It's the same reason I body slammed my friend through our glass coffee table after attending a wrestling event. I think that the attention economy of the information age is the real culprit of sensational news headlines, films, games, and other media. Vacines being 'microchipped' really started when 20 million people tuned in to watch Geraldo Rivera ask Ozzy Osbourne if he felt bad during his two hour primetime "documentary" Exposing Satan's Underground11. The fear sparked by this and the murder of Adam Walsh was literally the only time I experienced violence at my home because my parents were so upset when my friend and I took too long getting home from school because I failed to tell them I was walking. In retrospect, I sympathize with their worry, but I blame mostly Geraldo.

Although the dualism of opposing forces is in most religions and philosophies, I agree with the Catholic church that Book of Revelation is not a prophecy and tend to sympathize with the more nondualistic traditions.12 Opposition is just a form of balance and the various "isms" in our society are polarizing. I just think it's difficult to understand obtuse or infinite and easier for most to understand with clear divisions. The interplay of spiritual and physical is much more like a dance of light and shadow than the opposition of light and darkness. I think people like horror films because it gives them the ability to say "that thing is the monster and not me" through detachment. The roots of horror are steeped in the idea of fearing the nebulous other. I personally don't enjoy the thrill or relief of detachment in horror be it fiction or non. So next halloween, consider the real life horror of gun violence or supporting child slave labor via the bag of chocolate bars you and everyone else just bought. The plant wins in the original Little Shop of Horrors film and two endings were shot for the 1986 film. The happier ending was included only because the darker one tested poorly with audiences. Next year I think we'll watch Beetlejuice.

  1. Mean Green Mother from Outer Space - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mean_Green_Mother_from_Outer_Space
  2. Little Shop of Horrors - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Shop_of_Horrors_(1986_film)
  3. Levi Stubbs - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levi_Stubbs
  4. Little Shop of Horrors - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Little_Shop_of_Horrors
  5. The Psychology Behind Why We Love (or Hate) Horror - Harvard Business Review - https://hbr.org/2021/10/the-psychology-behind-why-we-love-or-hate-horror
  6. The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals - Charles Darwin - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Expression_of_the_Emotions_in_Man_and_Animals
  7. Children of the Corn - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Children_of_the_Corn
  8. John of Patmos - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_of_Patmos
  9. Horror Film - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horror_film
  10. Satanic panic - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satanic_panic
  11. ( 2021 ) It's Time to Revisit the Satanic Panic. The New York Times- https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/31/us/satanic-panic.html
  12. Nondualism - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nondualism
  13. Beetlejuice - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beetlejuice