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Stephen King Why We Crave Horror Movies Essay

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Stephen King, New York Times best selling author in the genre of horror, creates an ominous yet lighthearted tone in “Why We Crave Horror Movies” to appeal to a wide variety of people, but especially towards fellow fans of horror, through the use of comparisons, dark humor, and informal language. King uses these strategies to explain why we crave horror movies; they are an outlet for the monsters, or rather the negative thoughts, that high within the crevices of our mind. King compares horrors movies to roller coasters in that “a really good horror movie may surprises a scream out of us,” similar to the way a faster turn or drop on a roller coaster does. Although the drop is expected, it still yields a rush of adrenaline. Horror movies are a sane way to get the same rush of adrenaline, but also a way to shine a light into the darkness that is deep within, when ordinarily these emotions would be suppressed to seem more sensible to the outside world. King also relates that horror movies have become “the modern version of the public lynching,” because although the suspense and the mystery of horror movies …show more content…

Although many murderers kill for the wrongs that have been done to them, some of the most infamous killers with the highest victim counts did it merely for fun - and because they could. King emphasises this throughout the essay, and provides dark humor through the joking contrast of “a truckload of bowling balls” and “a truckload of dead babies,” in an attempt to reveal the sameness of humanity. While there are many differences to the two, the recipient is left wondering what the punchline to the joke was. There is no definite answer, but eventually someone, somewhere would come up with an answer that would entice an unwilling

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There are multiple people who are intrigue and love horror movies without knowing the reason. In Stephan Kings essay, “Why We Crave Horror Movies” he does his best to find an answer to the question “why do people crave horror movies?” Throughout his essay he came up with certain key points to answer the question. At the beginning of his essay, he makes a bold statement that “we are all mentally ill.” He motions that people just watch horror movies to portray their fearlessness while suppressing their true emotions.

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Recently, I’ve finished reading a horror novel by Stephen King which he published in 1981 and won the British Fantasy Award in the next year. ’ Cujo’ is the first ever Stephen Kings novel that I’ve read and I have to say I enjoyed reading it despite my early negative feeling about this work. As you already know, I will use the example from ‘’Cujo’’ to explain the concept of externality, ad to be more precise, this essay will be about negative externality. When I was deciding what film or novel to use as a source of externality for this essay I had many ideas but none of them were perfect. My aim was to find a story with an externality in it’s heart

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In the passage “Why We Crave Horror Movies,” author Stephen King claims that people watch horror movies in order to satisfy the natural evil that resides in all of us. Kings claim is proven to be true while regarding people who like horror movies. Kings claim is also biased because he fails to represent people who do not enjoy horror movies and feel no need to watch them. In his writing, King claims that there is a natural malice that resides within everyone. King argues that emotions and fears lead us to do certain things and control what we do.

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In the articles of “Why Do We Crave Horror Movies” by Stephen King and “My Zombie, Myself: Why Modern Life Feels Rather Undead by Chuck Klosterman, both author argues have similar ideas to why the human being crave horror movies because of the emotions we get from them. In the articles of “Why Do We Crave Horror Movies” by King and “My Zombie, Myself: Why Modern Life Feels Rather Undead by Klosterman, both argue that horror in life is in need to bring the sense of humanity. Both King and Klosterman agree that horror is there to test people’s fear and their emotions.

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In Stephen King’s essay “Why We Crave Horror Movies,” King is conveying that because we are human, we are insane. We may not be in asylums, but that does not mean we are not insane, it just means we hide our insanity better than others. By watching horror movies we are just asking to have the constant nightmares. However, we watch horror movies to prove to others that we can watch them, and sometimes we watch them so that we feel normal compared to the people in the film. Other times we watch the movies for enjoyment, which is a very weird enjoyment since we are watching people get killed.

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People either love or hate horror movies, there is no in-between or question about it; each person knows exactly how they feel. However, most are not educated or have ever thought about how powerful these movies are or what they can do. Horror movies have immense power and influence over a one’s psyche and the effects on the mind can happen consciously or unconsciously. The monster in the movie Oculus, an evil, haunting, and calculating spirit trapped within an antique mirror, destroys the lives of a family by corrupting the parents of two young siblings and framing the mother and father’s murder on the pre-teen son. The mirror serves to help the audience cope with their own ideas about themselves and the present that they live in by allowing

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How it affects us, our emotional muscles. It may be that horror movies provide psychic relief on the level because it is an invitation to lapse into simplicity, irrationality and even outright madness extended rarely. “But anticivilization emotions don't go away” (king,Why we crave. 3) this explains why some people think this way. King thought about “ if we share a brotherhood of man, then we also share an insanity of man.

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However, film critic, Robin Wood, argues that ‘since Psycho, the Hollywood cinema has implicitly recognised horror as both American and familial’ he then goes on to connect this with Psycho by claiming that it is an “innovative and influential film because it supposedly presents its horror not as the produce of forces outside American society, bit a product of the patriarchal family which is the fundamental institution of American society” he goes on to discuss how our civilisation either represses or oppresses (Skal, 1994). Woods claim then suggests that in Psycho, it is the repressions and tensions within the normal American family which produces the monster, not some alien force which was seen and suggested throughout the 1950 horror films. At the beginning of the 60’s, feminisation was regarded as castration not humanization. In “Psycho” (1960) it is claimed that the film presents conservative “moral lessons about gender roles of that the strong male is healthy and normal and the sensitive male is a disturbed figure who suffers from gener confusion” (Skal, 1994). In this section of this chapter I will look closely at how “Psycho” (1960) has layers of non-hetro-conforming and gender-non conforming themes through the use of Norman Bates whose gender identitiy is portrayed as being somewhere between male and female

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