--- On Tue, 8/26/08, Gregg Redner <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Perhaps I am off base here, but I have always read movies
> like 'Night of the Living Dead', 'Texas Chain
> Saw Massacre' and 'Invasion of the Body
> Snatchers' as growing subconsciously from the collective
> American public's neurosis and fear during times of
> public unrest.
If you donīt mind, Iīd like to nail you on your first phrase. I wouldnīt be so stubborn, if I didnīt care.
Would it be misunderstanding you completely if I retermed it this way:
In times of external crisis (Vietnam, oil crisis, signs of communist ability to compete), a wider audience is longing for horror films, because they consciously produce an imagery reflecting a seemingly more accurate worldview that also allows an emotional response to something that is too complex in real life?
Yes, itīs a rhetorical question but that would allow avoiding operating with the subconscious which is most likely doomed to be a dead end. There are no chainsaw killers popping up on the margin of a Hollywood narrative due to the subconscious, but they are exclusive to horror films.
We still have the question of the missing 9/11 movies unanswered, my guess would be that the problem of the images with the planes hitting the towers were not only staged and meant to be seen, seemingly negate the binary of attacker and victim (like in the Laurie Anderson song "O Superman") but also imitated the image producer Hollywood. I canīt imagine a Hollywood film being able to make sense of or overwrite these images or repeat them anymore. So, the horror has to be located elsewhere - in the past, respectively in the form of remakes.
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