As many fans of horror films know, there are two typical endings in this genre: the traditional ending – when good beats evil and everything returns to normal – and the teaser – when the evil survives. I read a study about this subject conducted by psychologists Cynthia M. King and Nora Hourani. Their goal was to try and determine which of the endings audiences preferred and whether their preferences were determined by their incentive for watching the films.
Regarding incentive King and Hourani cite a 1995 study that specifies two main categories of horror movie viewers: thrill and gore-watchers. Thrill-watchers, according to this study, “...enjoy being scared by horror via their empathy for film protagonists” (King and Hourani 4). The two then hypothesize that thrill-watchers will prefer more traditional endings because of their empathy for the victims. Gore-watchers, on the other hang, exhibit less compassion for the victims and instead watch horror movies because they enjoy “...graphic portrayals of blood, death, and even physical torture” (King and Hourani 4). For this type of viewer, the psychologists hypothesize that a teaser ending will be preferable because it leaves open the option of a sequel and, thus, further destruction. At the conclusion of the experiment, King and Hourani’s first hypothesis was supported while the second wasn’t. They found that, as an overall rule, viewers prefer traditional endings.
This article really stuck with me. As a non-viewer of horror films, the limited knowledge of their plots that I have comes from my friends and their opinions. The majority of the films that I’ve heard about are either the classics, like The Shining, or the series, such as the Saw and Scream films. Based on my knowledge, I would have expected teaser endings to be much more successful and enjoyable because they leave room for future films. The article also really interested me because it provided summaries of various theories as to why people enjoy horror films, a question that I have always had. I really want to do further research on the subject for another blog.
Works Cited
King, Cynthia M., and Nora Hourani. "Don’t Tease Me: Effects of Ending Type on Horror Film Enjoyment." Media Psychology 9.3 (2007): 473-92.
Friday, April 2, 2010
An Interview
For this blog I decided to ask my friend, Kenna Graziano, her opinion on horror films. She is an avid movie watcher and loves scary movies. Here are a few questions that I asked her:
1)What is your favorite horror film and why?
“Scream... cause it satirizes the horror genre while still being a horror movie, so there’s still plenty of tension and suspense and gore... but there’s like... the kids kind of know that a murderer is out there and that they should follow the rules of a horror movie.... so it picks up patterns of other horror movies that are actually true.”
2)Why do you enjoy scary movies?
“... I started out watching scary movies as like a challenge to myself, [because] I used to be like terrified of them... so my friends and I were like ‘okay we’re gonna start watching.’ And we did. And it is less about being scared now because you’re so desensitized, and it’s more about the adrenaline rush... I dunno, it gets your heart beating and you get really into it.”
3)I’ve always wondered if people are actually just not afraid of what goes on in horror films or if they just enjoy being scared... can you comment on that? Do these movies actually scare you and you like that, or are you just desensitized to the material you’re viewing? Or something completely different?
“Well... there are some movies that like really scare me (i.e. Amityville Horror)... um... well you don’t get desensitized to the suspense but you get desensitized to the gore... so it’s still scary but it’s not unwatchable...”
4)Do you enjoy being terrified?
“Yeah, I guess... if you’re with other people its kind of like a group... I dunno.... you don’t feel like scared cause you know it’s a movie and like Freddy is not going to jump out of the next corner... part of it is like it could happen... but when you’re watching it your heart starts going and you get really amped up.”
This interview was actually extremely helpful for me. I have never really understood why people would ever want to watch scary movies, but after listening to my friend talk about her reasoning behind enjoying them they don’t sound as bad. Also, it’s one thing to do research and read about the adrenaline rush that many people experience at the end of horror movies, but to listen to a friend talk about their own experiences made it all seem a little bit more real. I sometimes find it easy to disregard things I’ve read if I have no personal experience with that subject, but listening to a friend who I trust talk about overcoming her own fears made it seem more legitimate. Listening to her talk about becoming more desensitized to the material was also really interesting and that’s something that I definitely want to try and do some research on for another post.
Works Cited
"Horror Films." MacKennan Graziano. Personal interview. 20 Mar. 2010
1)What is your favorite horror film and why?
“Scream... cause it satirizes the horror genre while still being a horror movie, so there’s still plenty of tension and suspense and gore... but there’s like... the kids kind of know that a murderer is out there and that they should follow the rules of a horror movie.... so it picks up patterns of other horror movies that are actually true.”
2)Why do you enjoy scary movies?
“... I started out watching scary movies as like a challenge to myself, [because] I used to be like terrified of them... so my friends and I were like ‘okay we’re gonna start watching.’ And we did. And it is less about being scared now because you’re so desensitized, and it’s more about the adrenaline rush... I dunno, it gets your heart beating and you get really into it.”
3)I’ve always wondered if people are actually just not afraid of what goes on in horror films or if they just enjoy being scared... can you comment on that? Do these movies actually scare you and you like that, or are you just desensitized to the material you’re viewing? Or something completely different?
“Well... there are some movies that like really scare me (i.e. Amityville Horror)... um... well you don’t get desensitized to the suspense but you get desensitized to the gore... so it’s still scary but it’s not unwatchable...”
4)Do you enjoy being terrified?
“Yeah, I guess... if you’re with other people its kind of like a group... I dunno.... you don’t feel like scared cause you know it’s a movie and like Freddy is not going to jump out of the next corner... part of it is like it could happen... but when you’re watching it your heart starts going and you get really amped up.”
This interview was actually extremely helpful for me. I have never really understood why people would ever want to watch scary movies, but after listening to my friend talk about her reasoning behind enjoying them they don’t sound as bad. Also, it’s one thing to do research and read about the adrenaline rush that many people experience at the end of horror movies, but to listen to a friend talk about their own experiences made it all seem a little bit more real. I sometimes find it easy to disregard things I’ve read if I have no personal experience with that subject, but listening to a friend who I trust talk about overcoming her own fears made it seem more legitimate. Listening to her talk about becoming more desensitized to the material was also really interesting and that’s something that I definitely want to try and do some research on for another post.
Works Cited
"Horror Films." MacKennan Graziano. Personal interview. 20 Mar. 2010
Horror and the Family
As I mentioned in my previous blog, horror films generally contain one of two themes: the body or the family. For this entry, I am going to focus on the family and the systematic destruction of it in many scary movies.
To begin this discussion, I am going to draw on a quotation from Robin Wood’s essay “An Introduction to the American Horror Film.” Though this work is older – it was published in 1985 – much of what was true then remains to this day. When the subject of the family emerged, Wood wrote “...the connection of the Family to Horror has become overwhelmingly consistent... whether the family itself is regarded as guilty...or innocent” (Wood 208). The family, in Wood’s view, then is either the creator of some awful monster or helpless victims.
Movies such as Night of the Living Dead focus on the theme of familial destruction. In this example, flesh-eating ghouls destroy a family. As each member is individually eaten and reanimated, the family slowly turns on each other with the daughter converting her mother, who, in turn, then converts her husband. Family, in our society, is the group of people with whom we are supposed to feel most comfortable. We turn to our families for safety and support. The modern horror film shows the crumbling of that support system during a time of immense fear when, one could argue, that it is most needed.
Philip Brophy also notes this trend in scary movies. Brophy does not comment on instances of the family being innocent victims, but rather on the group as “...the object of the horror and us being the subject of their demise” (Brophy 7). The audience, in Brophy’s stance, is afraid of the family, and thus takes pleasure in the destruction of it.
Whether seen as victim or perpetrator, the modern horror film has removed the sense of security that once came with the notion of family. The family is now something to be feared and destroyed rather than a sanctuary from the violence.
The destruction of the family seems to make more sense than the destruction of the self. Americans are becoming less and less concerned with family unity and more concerned with individual aspirations. The destruction of the family within horror movies seems to mirror, in many ways, the loss of family values that is occurring throughout our society.
Works Cited
Brophy, Philip. "Horrality – The Textuality of Contemporary Horror Films." Screen 27 (1986): 2-13.
Woods, Robin. "An Introduction to the American Horror Film." Movies & Methods (1985).
"Night of the Living Dead (1968) - Synopsis." The Internet Movie Database (IMDb). Web. 07 May 2010..
To begin this discussion, I am going to draw on a quotation from Robin Wood’s essay “An Introduction to the American Horror Film.” Though this work is older – it was published in 1985 – much of what was true then remains to this day. When the subject of the family emerged, Wood wrote “...the connection of the Family to Horror has become overwhelmingly consistent... whether the family itself is regarded as guilty...or innocent” (Wood 208). The family, in Wood’s view, then is either the creator of some awful monster or helpless victims.
Movies such as Night of the Living Dead focus on the theme of familial destruction. In this example, flesh-eating ghouls destroy a family. As each member is individually eaten and reanimated, the family slowly turns on each other with the daughter converting her mother, who, in turn, then converts her husband. Family, in our society, is the group of people with whom we are supposed to feel most comfortable. We turn to our families for safety and support. The modern horror film shows the crumbling of that support system during a time of immense fear when, one could argue, that it is most needed.
Philip Brophy also notes this trend in scary movies. Brophy does not comment on instances of the family being innocent victims, but rather on the group as “...the object of the horror and us being the subject of their demise” (Brophy 7). The audience, in Brophy’s stance, is afraid of the family, and thus takes pleasure in the destruction of it.
Whether seen as victim or perpetrator, the modern horror film has removed the sense of security that once came with the notion of family. The family is now something to be feared and destroyed rather than a sanctuary from the violence.
The destruction of the family seems to make more sense than the destruction of the self. Americans are becoming less and less concerned with family unity and more concerned with individual aspirations. The destruction of the family within horror movies seems to mirror, in many ways, the loss of family values that is occurring throughout our society.
Works Cited
Brophy, Philip. "Horrality – The Textuality of Contemporary Horror Films." Screen 27 (1986): 2-13.
Woods, Robin. "An Introduction to the American Horror Film." Movies & Methods (1985).
"Night of the Living Dead (1968) - Synopsis." The Internet Movie Database (IMDb). Web. 07 May 2010.
Horror Films and the Body
Though there was the occasional horror film in Europe, the genre didn’t really catch on in the United States until the 1920s. From then on, Hollywood has continued to produce movies whose sole purpose is to terrify viewers with horrific plots, sickening twists, and gruesome violence. The themes and motifs found in these movies have shifted as new technology has become available and popularized, allowing for more realistic images. Several common themes have emerged from the progression of the genre: the destruction of the family and the destruction of the self. In this blog, I will focus on the later of the two.
Many horror films show a complete disregard for the human body. A key example of this is The Exorcist, one of the few horror films I can claim to have seen. In this movie, a young girl named Regan McNeil is possessed by the devil. Throughout the film, the viewer is subject to graphic images that feature complete disregard for the human body and its limitations. The well-known visual of the twelve-year-old twisting her head around in a complete 360-degree turn is just one such mind-boggling example.
Philip Brophy also notes this phenomenon in his essay “Horrality – the Textuality of Contemporary Horror Films”, using an example from 1982’s The Beast Within, when a creature literally breaks out of a young boy’s body, leaving his massacred body on the bed. Brophy states that “The contemporary Horror film tends to play not so much on the broad fear of Death, but more precisely on the fear of one’s own body, of how one controls and relates to it” (Brophy 8). These movies can take our small fears of possession, aliens, diseases, etc. and blow them up into full-scale nightmares.
In some ways that is the beauty of the horror film – it can take our worst fears and make them seem real. That’s also one of the reasons many people, myself included, so strongly dislike scary movies. We live in a society that is extremely focused on individuality and being strong. Americans are always focused with being the best, looking the best, having the best, while many modern horror movies are about the destruction of many of those values that we hold so dear. The ability of a movie to destroy something that is culturally so important is mind-boggling.
Works Cited
"The Exorcist (1973) - Synopsis." The Internet Movie Database (IMDb). Web. 07 May 2010..
"Horror Film." Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Web. 06 May 2010..
Brophy, Philip. "Horrality – The Textuality of Contemporary Horror Films." Screen 27 (1986): 2-13.
Many horror films show a complete disregard for the human body. A key example of this is The Exorcist, one of the few horror films I can claim to have seen. In this movie, a young girl named Regan McNeil is possessed by the devil. Throughout the film, the viewer is subject to graphic images that feature complete disregard for the human body and its limitations. The well-known visual of the twelve-year-old twisting her head around in a complete 360-degree turn is just one such mind-boggling example.
Philip Brophy also notes this phenomenon in his essay “Horrality – the Textuality of Contemporary Horror Films”, using an example from 1982’s The Beast Within, when a creature literally breaks out of a young boy’s body, leaving his massacred body on the bed. Brophy states that “The contemporary Horror film tends to play not so much on the broad fear of Death, but more precisely on the fear of one’s own body, of how one controls and relates to it” (Brophy 8). These movies can take our small fears of possession, aliens, diseases, etc. and blow them up into full-scale nightmares.
In some ways that is the beauty of the horror film – it can take our worst fears and make them seem real. That’s also one of the reasons many people, myself included, so strongly dislike scary movies. We live in a society that is extremely focused on individuality and being strong. Americans are always focused with being the best, looking the best, having the best, while many modern horror movies are about the destruction of many of those values that we hold so dear. The ability of a movie to destroy something that is culturally so important is mind-boggling.
Works Cited
"The Exorcist (1973) - Synopsis." The Internet Movie Database (IMDb). Web. 07 May 2010.
"Horror Film." Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Web. 06 May 2010.
Brophy, Philip. "Horrality – The Textuality of Contemporary Horror Films." Screen 27 (1986): 2-13.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)