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Impact of tv and films in society
Analysis of a horror movie
Impact of tv and films in society
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More handpicked essays just for you.
Impact of tv and films in society
Analysis of a horror movie
Impact of tv and films in society
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
In “Our Zombies, Ourselves” author James Parker speaks to moviegoers and monster fans about that slow-moving creature of horror known as the zombie. In the essay, he attempts to uncover the reason for the zombie’s sudden and extreme popularity. To do such a thing he unearths the history of the zombies in film, literature, video games, and other media, and he sheds some light on their real origins – which all lead him to the conclusion that zombies are popular because of their “ex-personhood” (345). Throughout the essay Parker uses analytic language peppered with metaphors, description, and colorful references to some of the latest and greatest depictions of zombies, which help to bring the essay and the monsters to life and keep the audience’s interest.
The American obsession with spectatorship is a phenomenon created by the inaccessibility of timely and relevant knowledge. This oddly leads to an increase in the demand and likeability of terror. In her piece “Great to Watch”, Maggie Nelson explores the origins of this fascination with horror and gives an
Alfred Hitchcock’s film Vertigo (1958) was voted the “best film ever made” by the 2012 British Film Institute, and for good reason. The plot is elaborate and intriguing and the cinematography is legendary. On top of this, the characters, like good characters should, all have their own needs and wants that are evident in the film. The needs of these characters affect each other and they affect the story and they all follow one common theme: control. Our protagonist, John “Scottie” Ferguson’s wants and needs differ greatly throughout the film, but his only constant is his yearning to get over his acrophobia, or fear of heights.
In the article “Why Do We Crave Horror Movies” King shows the idea of why humans crave to watch horror movies. To watch horror movies, people show to others that they have no fear of these things. King’s argument is that the horror films is a way for people to get the sense of normality. King believes that “We also go to re-establish our feelings of essential normality; the horror movie is innately conservative, even reactionary” (King 16). Re-establishing our feelings of essential normality allows us to release our emotions and enjoy our time watching horror films.
In their chapter, Developmental Differences in Responses to Horror, Joanne Cantor and Mary Beth Oliver established three categories of fear inducing stimuli and events that are regularly seen in frightening media. They created the three categories after reviewing research on the issues of real life fears and the effects of frightening media on viewers. All three of their categories can be found in this week’s film It Follows. The film focuses on a young woman, Jamie “Jay” Height, and her struggle to end a curse that will claim her life unless she passes it along to another unsuspecting individual through sexual intercourse. Cantor and Oliver’s first category is the frequency of danger and injury.
The distinguishing of the progressive horror wave from other horror movies (which can be seen as the alternativeness) is completed by the actions of their creators and the innovation they bring to the time’s cinematography (which makes them autonomous) and by the themes represented in a innovative way (making them authentic). Wood succinctly describes it by comparing it in opposition to a Hollywood horror movie by words such as low budget, unpolished, non-bourgeois exploitation, bad family, traditional values negated, and, what is the most important, parent figures destroy
Evelyn Rodriguez Kenneth Brewer Exploration of the Humanities Short Writing #2 After reading Zinoman’s article “The Critique of Pure Horror”, the article discussed multiple theories of the aesthetics as to why the audience likes horror films. With that being said the one theory that seems to be the most persuasive in explaining why audiences continue to watch horror films, time and time again. Would have to be the theory that Carroll proposed to as being “that the pleasure of horror [films] is due not to whatever psychic substratum the monster represents, but rather the peculiar curiosity it inspires [within the person.]” (Zinoman) This theory stood out to me because it explains that horror films are a way to feed the human curiosity that everyone has. Horror films give the audience a rush of adrenaline and curiosity.
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.
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
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
You wake up at three in the morning, shaking in a cold sweat with the fading nightmare of a knife being plunged into some body part and a pool of your blood congealing on the floor. Now, this clearly isn’t the most pleasant way to wake up, regardless of your age. However, there’s a different stigma to horror films depending on how old someone is when they decide to watch them. Parents are concerned that their children will watch horrifying and gruesome films and television programs, slowly becoming more violent and aggressive to the point at which they “snap”. Young adults find the horror genre as an outlet for emotions that society deems unacceptable.
What does director Tim Burton’s Edward Scissorhands and Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1994), directed by Kenneth Branagh, have in common— a mutual underlying story; but their differences are what makes their tales all the more special. Edward Scissorhands is a retelling of Frankenstein, but with a slight twist. In Edward’s case instead of lacking companionship like Frankenstein’s monster, he lacks hands; and is received rather well by the surrounding community. Ironically, in both tales the characters share the same desire to be love; this ignites the question – why do humans want to be love? Are we only important as we are loved?
Stephen King’s birthplace is Portland, Maine. His parents are Donald and Nellie Ruth Pillsbury King. Stephen King is a university of Maine graduate, he graduated with a B.S. in English and a minor in dramatics. King has several major achievements for his literary masterpieces. King is most known for writing novels, short stories and screenplays; not many people know about the children’s book he published.
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.
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