Horror to Culture

A friend of mine started a page devoted to horror. It’s a worthy project from someone I know who has both a depth of knowledge on and a genuine love for the subject, as do I; so, when Mike asked if I would like to contribute, I was grateful.

At first I didn’t know if I would be able to drum up material and told him he could repost this article I did on John Carpenter’s The Thing. However, I love watching movies with my kids, and horror is our favorite genre, so it wasn’t hard to find inspiration for this new endeavor.

For instance, most recently I penned an article on a difficult subject—that disturbing and unnecessary scene in the book IT, which the makers of the miniseries and movies were wise to omit.

You know the scene I’m talking about!

Or do you? Well, you can find out here.

I also urge you to check out Mike’s podcast on Stephen King, as well as his excellent article on the Bachman books.

Aside from our recent venture into King’s repertoire, I also penned articles on what I like to think of as the philosophy of horror.

In my article The Host and the Parasite (Which is Art?) I dive into the world of the modern horror host and ask just how far back the trope really goes. I also wonder about the distinction between art and entertainment.

I give my own short but ultimately incomplete answer. It’s still an open question, and my aim is to explore the implications with my readers, not to assail them with pedantic declarations.

(Though I do so enjoy pedantic declarations!)

I also recently caught the movie Night Swim with my kids and wrote a review which you can find here. But, of course, being me, it’s not really a review but a discussion about why we horror hounds should prefer a bad movie to a mediocre one, a subject I also delved into on Vocal, with my walkthrough of the 90s stinker Split Second.

(I hope I won’t be chided too much for my enthusiastic endorsement of Kim Cattrall’s enduring effect on my adolescent libido. I promise I’m not a pig, but I still oink sometimes…)

This is just the beginning of my work for Horror to Culture, and I hope that some folks will come along for the ride and ruminate with us on just why we should want to witness such unsavory things. An open discussion is always rolling in the public Horror to Culture facebook group.

For my part, I have long treated my love of horror as an exercise akin to a mystical meditation on death. Why? To come to terms with life! Buddhists, for instance, will meditate on the subject as a gateway to accepting impermanence.

Also, I shouldn’t want to be like an EMT who faints at the sight of blood, and I have experienced enough real-life horrors to be all too familiar with the urge. I may be queasy, but I will stay awake, tend the wound, and, if luck or fate will have it, stop the bleeding.

There is the comedic element as well. There’s no ribald jest in a modern horror film that wasn’t already tried and true in the fables of any culture. A closer look at the folk tales of history will bear witness to as much brutal humor as romance, terror, or heroism.

Nevertheless, I submit that life is beautiful in all its diamond facets. Horror stories are often moral tales in which people fight evil rather than succumb to it; and when all the violence is over, we are often left questioning:

Who is the real monster?

That’s the one that seems most important to me. For if we know not where evil lies, how can we fight it?