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Dan writes, in part: > As an aficionado of horror and editor of both a book and a special > edition of Film and Philosophy on the subject, I might suggest that your > cavalier dismissal of an extremely popular and thought-provoking genre is > rather closed minded. Not everyone likes horror, or kung-fu splatter films, > and if you don't by all means don't go see them. Well, popularity doesn't mean good, as McDonald's hamburgers proves. And I don't see how dismembering people provokes thought beyond "glad it wasn't me." True, it might remind us of our mortality, yet all I need to do is pick up the paper to get plenty of reminders. I don't understand why people need such points (about mortality) hammered home (through the literal hammering of people's heads?) unless it arises, as I have said, from a state of numbness and dissipation: so inured are they to the horror of life that they need a jolt to remind themselves of the blood that runs in their bodies--the thrill of it all-- or it may be that normal life just doesn't cut it and they need a constant flow of "extremes" (ask any recovering addict). Part of my complaint is that much of North American society is so afraid of bodies and sex--things which are inherently natural, but which are, unlike a lot of violence, deeply repressed (or, on screen, mixed with violence as a warning, eg, killing sexually active teens in horror movies). While these may be reflections and commentaries on "society," I wonder that we need to sit through hours of Hollywood films to understand these points. I do not advocate censorship or self-censorship; rather, just a greater awareness of things that have more to do with profit and capitalism than they do with the thinking person and, dare I say, entertainment. Horror films strike me as a kind of lowest-common-denominator: a lazy way to make a point, and in this they strike me as deeply anti-intellectual (and yes, that is a comment on American-inspired consumerism). Certainly, there are exceptions (Hannibal et al), but let's round off the category, please. Andrew