BBK: A History of Horror

Throughout the history of the horror genre we can see how cultural influences have effected horror productions and themes.

 

Daniel Cohen suggest that audiences enjoy films that 'scare' them because certain cultures create and ascribe characteristics associated with monsters and villains that are perceived as 'scary' to their most deep-seated fears from their subconscious and perhaps puts a face to the concerns they carry with them in day to day life.

 

Due to the cultural relevance of these monsters that audiences associate with, when analysing horror media texts these films can give insight into the anxieties and fears of the contemporary culture as a generalization in order to find trends of these cultural anxieties through the horror genre.

"Nosferatu" (F.W. Murnau, 1922)

This can be seen in the German film 'Nosferatu' (1922) was made shortly after the First World War and was a major influence on the representation of vampires. In the text the vampire is presented as an 'invader' that comes from 'elsewhere' this theme can be contextually associated with the current economic crisis Germany was facing causing mass poverty, at the time of the films production disease and sickness had started to spread through Germany due to a flu pandemic that was believed to have been spread by rats. Count Orlok's appearance in the text can be likening to that of a rat and would directly relate to the deep-seated fears of the current cultural climate.

When looking back through the Horror genre we can see how films have changed based on their cultural influence around the decade, for example at the start of the 2000's Hollywood realized the potential in far eastern horror pictures that were manly based around monsters and ghosts which were then converted to western a platform for western audiences this began an era of remakes with films such as 'The Ring'(2002) an adaption of Japanese horror film 'Ringu'(1998) becoming a hit in the western world.

Another subgenre that has become notably popular over the last decade is 'torture porn' which focuses around graphic gore and extreme violence and nudity this can be seen in productions such as the Saw franchise as its popularity has led to seven sequels so far, this shows how audiences have adapted to horror and how their tolerance of violence in cinema has grown in the twenty first century and how producers are having to find new more extreme ways to scare or repulse audiences.

"Funny Games" (Haneke, 2007)

The influence of technology in modern culture is more than it has ever been, our pluralistic media landscape allows us to be constantly communicating in the 'global village' of the internet, this has spurred a new subgenre of horror film as audience adapt to the ease of communicating instantly at any time we have opened ourselves up for a new range of anxieties and fears. Films such as 'Funny Games'(2007) take advantage of this examining horror with no communication to the outside world, an anxiety that is prolific in modern culture. The lack of human empathy in the villains in this film along with other films such as 'The Strangers'(2008) who's masks separate them from the protagonists have opened another aspect to the psychopath subgenre as audience seem unsettled by the unknowing.

The Horror genre can adapt to allow it to tap into each generation’s preoccupations and concerns and its metaphorical approach can be used to deal with ideas and issues which audiences can associate with and use to embody anxieties they carry.