Shock Value - Jason Zinoman [106]
It is said that in periods of rampant horror readers and moviegoers like to experience imaginary horrors, which can be resolved and neatly put away. I think it’s more likely that in the current craze for horror films like “Night of the Living Dead” and “Sisters” the audience wants an intensive dose of the fear sickness—not to confront fear and have it conquered but to feel that crazy, inexplicable delight that children get out of terrifying stories that give them bad dreams. A flesh-crawler that affects as many senses as a horror movie can doesn’t end with the neat fake solution. We are always aware that the solution will not really explain the terror we felt; the forces of madness are never laid to rest.
For Kael, the art and pleasure of movies, not just horror, were inextricably connected to the forbidden, the taboo, and a hint of the disreputable. It’s confusion, not catharsis, that draws us in. Easy answers and cheap comforts belong in school. We sit in the dark at the theater for other reasons. It’s too simple to boil down the appeal of horror to one reason, but it is undeniable that many adults like these movies not because they are good for them, but precisely because they aren’t. The roots of this attraction may be found in the innocence of childhood. Adults forget just how vulnerable they once were. Kids are constantly reminded of their own helplessness and dependence on others, and they are willing to believe in the most preposterous notions and all manner of mysterious creatures. The surprising newness of everything is not just shocking, but also gives them the purest kind of enjoyment. Just observe a child playing peek-a-boo or jack-in-the-box, often their first games, and you will know what I mean.
It’s easier for children to be scared. Kael understood the implication of this for adults. In “Trash, Art, and the Movies,” her most fully articulated statement of aesthetic principles, published only a few months after Night of the Living Dead opened, she argued that when you are young you can find something to enjoy in almost any movie. Once you have seen the same genre conventions many times, however, it becomes more difficult. Her argument builds to an optimistic conclusion as aging audiences then raise their sights to work of greater ambition. “Trash,” she announces in a twist of a final line, “has given us an appetite for art.”
It’s a nice thought, but if Hollywood in the 1970s taught us anything, it’s that trash actually gives us an appetite for bigger and better trash. The Last House on the Left didn’t send hordes of audiences to the art houses to see The Virgin Spring. Many people also love horror movies precisely because they want to see the same conventions over and over again. The ritual is what satisfies. What Kael means by terms like “trash” and “art” is often hard to pin down, and the same thing is true of the best horror movies. They straddle the line between art and trash, occasionally leaning one way or the other, always one wrong move from toppling over to the other side. The scariest New Horror movies are in-between.
WHY WE want to watch those awful movies remains a tough question to answer, but the New Horror gave us more reasons to do so than ever before. Rosemary’s Baby, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, Carrie, Halloween , and Alien belong in the top tier of American horror, followed close behind by Jaws, The Shining, The Hills Have Eyes, and Dawn of the Dead. A few of the movies discussed in this book are more influential than great (The Last House on the Left,