Stephen king discusses his opinions on horror movies and society in his essay “why we crave horror movies”. King simply states three reasons why we would choose to watch these types of movies. The first being that we watch them to show that we can, to prove that we are not afraid. We also go to reestablish our feelings of essential normality. The feeling we are all just normal people living in a normal society compared to those found in horror movies. The last reason King says we go see horror movies is just to have fun, but he asks what kind of fun is it to watch others menaced or killed.
King believes that we all must be mentally ill and that we all have the potential to be a serial killer or whatever horrible thing you can imagine, but wat
...ching these horror movies more or less feeds these “negative emotions” not wanted by society. In feeding the negative emotions it subdues them, so we won’t have to let them out. I believe King’s ideas, however interesting they might be, are just another type of fiction written by a horror writer. I would have to disagree that all of society is mentally ill and that we all have to watch these horrible things so we don’t do them ourselves.
To me it seems that King is just trying to scare us into thinking that society is a bunch of creepers like he scares us with his other types of literature. If anything I believe horror movies would give some people ideas to do these horrible things. Much like how you hear about video games causing violence
with children in the media. If we think about this how King proposes, the more kids play these violent video games the less violent they become because they are getting all the violence out of their system while playing the games.
But what I see it doing is showing kids a new way to express themselves, with violence. Sure, we all might think to ourselves sometimes how crazy it would be to do these things found in horror movies, but I think it is crazy to need to watch these horror movies to prevent us from committing these acts. That should not be the prescription you take to subdue the gators King describes as trying to get out. You would want to seek medical help or even talk to a psychiatrist.
The last thing you see someone trying not to kill doing is watching horror movies. If they are sane enough they would seek this help elsewhere. Watching horror movies does not subdue our imaginary little serial killers in us all, it makes us more violent as a society. I do agree with King that “all you need is love” but forget having to feed those imaginary gators. The need to subdue these negative emotions is just a matter of fiction written by a very convincing horror author.
- Media Violence essays
- Domestic Violence essays
- Violence in Video Games essays
- Gun Violence essays
- Video Game Violence essays
- Violence Against Women essays
- Youth Violence essays
- Ambition essays
- Anger essays
- Betrayal essays
- Boredom essays
- Confidence essays
- Courage essays
- Desire essays
- Disgrace essays
- Doubt essays
- Empathy essays
- Fairness essays
- Fear essays
- Feeling essays
- Forgiveness essays
- Grief essays
- Guilt essays
- Happiness essays
- Harmony essays
- Hate essays
- Honesty essays
- Honor essays
- Hope essays
- Humanity essays
- Inspiration essays
- Kindness essays
- Laughter essays
- Loneliness essays
- Lost essays
- Loyalty essays
- Need essays
- Passion essays
- Pressure essays
- Pride essays
- Regret essays
- Respect essays
- Responsibility essays
- Sarcasm essays
- Shame essays
- Suffering essays
- Suspense essays
- Tolerance essays
- 12 Angry Men essays
- A beautiful mind essays
