What am I doing here? Does the world actually need another horror blog? Probably not, and yet here we are…
But why?
Do I have a unique perspective? Maybe, but certainly not based on my identity markers. The world really is not calling out for another white, straight, cis, male horror blogger. But we all, as individuals, have individual perspectives to offer, right?
I’ve long appreciated academic readings of horror texts, such as the work done by Carol J. Clover, Noel Carroll, or Robin R. Means Coleman, but I’m also really not an academic with the scholarly chops to offer some groundbreaking new theory.
I’m just myself: a person who loves the genre and who loves thinking critically about the things I love, who enjoys dwelling both in the atmosphere of something delightfully chilling, and dwelling in a reflective mode, seeking to understand how I feel and what I think about what I’ve just seen/read/experienced/felt/thought.
I hope that’s enough, but I suppose we’ll see…
So let’s start with the eternal question, “Why horror?”
No—that’s silly. Whoever you are, you wouldn’t have come to a horror blog if you are actually puzzled by how anyone could enjoy this kind of content, could take pleasure in being scared, grossed out, disturbed, shaken, haunted, or appalled.
So, to rephrase, “What do I love about Horror?”
-I’ve always craved intensity and extremity in artistic experience. I want work to get to me. If I go to the theatre, I want to witness something that tears me open and leaves me raw, after which I have to struggle to put myself back together again, hopefully changed, hopefully better. I want the same from a good horror film.
-I love the creative drive and horror is full of it. From the most pretentious art-house fare to the cheapest, sleaziest grindhouse flick, this is a genre where people take risks, try new things, are willing to push the envelope, and possibly fail. I’d rather watch a lousy horror movie where someone got excited about a bad idea and executed it terribly, where the plot and characters are paper thin, but someone has put so much thought, artistry, and love into figuring out how to best display a bucket of viscera than a mediocre but safe police procedural.
-I love how open horror is to layers of meaning, to symbol, to more than base naturalism. Someone (I wish I remembered who) once wrote that ‘where there’s a monster, there’s a metaphor.’ On one level, I take pleasure in stories, characters, situations that are more than real. On another level, I love (and this is where it often gets academic) how easily horror texts can serve as a lens through which to view the society, the time and place, and the people that the text came from. When you’re dealing with images of what scares people, what upsets them, what upends a depended on status-quo, even a failure of a film can be a really valuable artifact in terms of social analysis.
-Finally (for now), I love the inherent tension of finding cinematic pleasure in terrible things (in terms of content, but also quality). I love a good time. I love the perverse impish glee of getting down into something awful and thrashing about, of chasing the dragon of a really good scare, of having my own boundaries pushed (from the comfort of my sofa), of the joy of figuring out how to do something, show something that has never been done or shown before, of the nasty, childish impulse to really get a rise out of the viewer/reader.
I love Horror.
And I’m going to write about it.
I hope that’s ok.