Fictional Horror

Spooky season is quickly approaching, unlike the slow yet, somehow always on time strides of the typical slasher film villain. It has me thinking a little bit about that but not so much what you might suspect would be in anyone's thoughts on the subject. Allow me to elaborate.

Most actual serial killers have a background of having suffered some frontal lobe damage or other physical trauma. These things are often worked into the background for the fictional killers but it usually doesn't mean that it's an explanation for why they often walk in a slow lumbering manner yet manage to catch up to some screaming fully panicked athletic teenager who the killer is now fixated on to terminate. Some claim it's simply to add to the dramatic effect and it seems to work so maybe that's all it is but see how this can make the seemingly least capable seem the most threatening? There's almost a subliminal message there.

Typically, real life killers and fictional ones suffered bad upbringings. The difference between the most notorious fictional and the most notorious real life killers is that the real life monsters, managed to blend in long enough to be wolves among sheep. They were cunning and highly manipulative and appeared normal, popular even.

It's quite the stark contrast between what goes down in reality and what is written in fiction on this particular subject. Though I can see how that may help with defining fiction a bit more and making it more palatable than the raw true stories that take place. It ends up being more campy and outlandish I suppose.

Personally I'm not a fan of special needs people being demonized in horror flicks. Yes, they add in trauma and bad upbringing or some otherworldly assist but Michael Meyers, Jason, and Leatherface...were FIRST teased or abused because of their differences from "normal" kids. . .

It's not enough to see the jock get butchered. We need it to feel validated but why use special needs as an excuse?

In fiction we are okay with something petty like someone who is just really annoying gets the axe. That makes us say he deserved it, but who is dealing that fantastically imagined sense of justice? It's someone with no regard for what happened to any victim other than himself. Ex: Jason getting revenge on the kids who let him drown by killing some new batch of kids at the camp? Really? How does he ever actually feel avenged? He doesn't, so he keeps on killing. Since writer's do know this, they like to add some magical connection and make it more of fantasy than reality but the reality is, the stigma about being at all different, remains. Outcast, weirdo, that guy/girl no one wants to invite to anything except for a good laugh.

Fact: Most serial killers blend in. Ex: Ted Bundy, John Wayne Gacy, Joseph James DeAngelo...he was ederly before he was found out and he was most concerned about his roast in the oven when the police came to read him his rights. Just the nice neighborhood elder who kept a tidy front lawn but a score of victims in his past.

It might be a rare indulgence for some but a common habit for others to view things often labeled inappropriate for certain audiences. Some horror films have become urban legends in themselves and labeled cursed movies. Ex: The Exorcist and Poltergeist .

So we should be very aware that this is a conditioning, watch enough horror and you become conditioned to thinking in very influenced ways. You may not even realize it, but it's exactly what happens.