Read Paul Zak's essay, "How Stories Change the Brain." Jeremy Adam Smith explores the science of the story. We’re exaggerating and dramatizing fears, but in the drama we control what happens, not nature. In our early evolutionary history, wild animals jumped out of the bushes, making us feel tiny and afraid and edible-and so in horror movies those animals become gigantic, as in King Kong (1933) and Godzilla (1954). Why do we so compulsively tell and listen to these stories? By turning our fears of injury and illness and death into fantasy stories, we can exert some measure of control over them. In a zombie flick, the dead rise from their graves and try to eat our brains.įrom the GGSC to your bookshelf: 30 science-backed tools for well-being. In ghost stories, death is some kind of emissary from the afterlife, walking among us. In the slasher film, mortality is a knife-wielding maniac. In this case, the thing that makes me feel small is death itself, personified by the vampire.ĭeath is the great theme of the horror genre, and, in these movies, death comes in many forms. When the vampire descends on his victims in the classic Nosferatu (1922), the scenes inspire awe in me-that is, a feeling of smallness in the face of something much greater than myself. I, on the other hand, love a good one I often find them beautiful. My partner refuses to watch most of them (vampire movies excepted), because they just make her too tense.
Why, then, would anyone want to watch horror movies? Many people don’t. Thus, they tend to highlight the worst in humanity, not the best. Their job is to show us situations that elicit fear and revulsion. Horror movies are supposed to be horrible.
0 kommentar(er)
