--- On Wed, 8/27/08, Shaw, Dan <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> My problem with political analyses of horror films is that
> they seem to miss what we enjoy about horror per se, and
> hence don't address the uniqueness of the horror genre.
> I don't deny that some horror films have political
> import, but I suspect that that import is a sidelight to
> horror-pleasure and not implicated in its essence (if you
> will excuse the expression).
It might do many horror films more justice, if one simply replaced the word politics by ideology. Many horror films can be perceived as relatively uninterested in day-to-day / historically identifiable politics, because they tend to automatically take the subversive, counterideological point of view, being what otherwise would be called paranoid or psychotic. Not directed against a particular ideology, but as in the case of the Body Snatchers, simply against the dominant, official ideology. (Ironically, both readings - conformism and communism might have been factually correct, if one considers Tinbergenīs economical observation, that the two superpowers started to become more and more alike in term of economics in the 70s.)
A remake of They Live could very easily be imagined with the dogmatic messages replaced by something else, because itīs basically only the idea of putting the sun glasses on that matters (which has the enjoyable aspect of something anarchic very close to the kid with the x-ray specs, and I believe the joy in many other cases is derived from the fact that the individualīs point of view isnīt presented as psychotic but as superior to the rest, like when a single person is the only one to actually witness the monster).
The Black Cat would work as well with another war as a backdrop, the Videodrome "scumshow" possibly likewise with a fundamentalist propaganda show.
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