Any good current horror movies or books/comic? It seems horror has been infected with wokeness. I saw an article about Jordan Peele doing Candyman. Sad thing is he could probably write a good story but he is obsessed with race. The fawning articles about him and Ava Duvernay are absurd
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I'm working on a theory for this, but I'll express some highlights. Basically, comedy and horror cannot be produced without certain insights into the human psyche.
Comedy's a bit easier to explain. It often revolves around absurdity and satire. The secret sauce is timing, which most directors fail to understand. A great script/routine is trash without the timing to sell jokes/gags. I don't think I'm the only person that's thought "That would've been way funnier if they had held back the punchline just a little longer".
Horror has some distinct subgenres, but I'm only going to refer more directly to fear. I have an interest in fear, so I love a good horror film. The foundation of fear is something like "This is wrong", then either followed by "I know why it's wrong" or "I don't know why it's wrong, but I am not eager to learn". There's a big difference between real life scares like almost dropping your keys down a sewer and outlandish scares like being confronted by a monster. I think part of the difference may be imagination/creativity; getting mugged can be pretty bad, but a creative person can imagine a mugging much much worse than the average guy's experience with it.
Some ideological soapboxing is practically a trope in the genre, but it's always able to be overlooked for the sake of the thrill. I'd be perfectly content to watch a horror film about how evil drumpf gassed mexican babies and bullied china pooh, IF the horror elements are spot on - but I'm suggesting that's impossible because our modern breed of ideologue is too caught up in their dogma to consider the feelings of other people.
So, simple explanation: horror is not being handled by people with imagination.
Edit, alternative angle: a lot of people are being emotionally repressed to the point that they lose understanding of humor and horror, among other things. Such a person would be unable to differentiate between their various emotions, effectively becoming emotional beasts that can only consider "is thing good? if no, then bad" with a side of wondering what daddy told them to feel.
Comedy also has to have some truth to it. It can exaggerate, but outright lies tend to fall flat.
Horror is best used to explore the darker side of the human psyche, what people are really afraid of.
As for your Trump movie example ... I can't express in words what I want to convey, so I'll just ask you to watch Genesis' Land of Confusion video, and tell me if it's humour, horror, or both. It's basically the 80s/reagan era version of your Trump story idea (keeping in mind that the media of the time loved to remind us every day how The Button was being safeguarded by a senile old man.)
I never really paid attention to Genesis outside the Peter Gabriel era, so this was my first time seeing this video. The pop references haven't aged well, but it looks like some Henson puppetry, so it was very obvious they wanted a satirical tone since it got the viewer prepped for seeing ugliness and helped stage up bits of humor. I wasn't cognizant back then, so I do wonder if Reagan had to deal with some of the shit Trump did.
I could put such satire in its own category, but now that I think about it, it's pretty close to the rare horror+comedy (dark humor). Though normal dark humor tries to get a laugh where a person is held in a serious outlook ("I shouldn't laugh, that man is dying"), a satire goes a bit in the opposite direction by trying to get the viewer to take a comical scene seriously (the scene in the video with the man preparing to eat his own tongue is farcical, but he basically just committed suicide on camera). So I'd say that that video is technically both humor and horror, even though most viewers probably don't get much of a reaction watching it.
What do you think of slapstick humor? I think there could be a connection with jumpscare-type horror. They're both things that can occur through one's normal day, and each forces a feeling to emerge briefly. I was reluctant to state the bit about comedy needing truth because I think slapstick may be an exception.
That's not Henson, actually, that's the puppets from a British show called Spitting Image.
Reagan did so have to endure what Trump did; his age, the jokes about him being an actor (see: Back to the Future), especially about being the opposite lead to a chimpanzee (the Bonzo movies, I think there were only two of them. Hell, Francis the Talking Mule had more than that.) Implications that he was senile (as is shown in the video), that he was a cowboy who'd be more than happy to send nukes up Brezhnev's ass, that he was prone to confusing movies with real life, AND accusations of being too friendly with the religious right and being quoted as saying he hoped we'd be the generation to see Armageddon ....
My grade 7 teacher apologized on behalf of his generation the day after the election and we're Canadian. Sound like the "pozzed" shit that just happened? And this was a guy who had his own paddle, and made everyone he used it on sign it.
Slapstick? Well, it's humourous when it's not you, and if the person isn't really hurt. Yeah, it can be funny to see someone fall on their butt, as long as all that happens is a sore-ish butt. It's a simple form of humour that can be understood without language, so you have prank shows like Just Kidding (from the Netherlands) and _Just for Laughs: Gags (from Montreal), not to mention Mr Bean. Hell, even other species seem to find jump-scares and slapstick amusing, when they do it to you. The Three Stooges were something of their own time, because movie effects and tricks were kind of new, and their slapstick utilized all of it.
Hm, I didn't think anyone else was putting effort into puppets back then. I'll see if I can find some of that Spitting Image show. I'll also look for those other shows you mentioned, as I get little exposure to foreign comedy.
Would you say the Reagan criticisms and mockeries were warranted? That'd be my next guess to differentiate between him and Trump.
This is an interesting point to me. I recently was introduced to the idea that humans are distinguishable from animals in our ability to have complex and intentional reactions to fear. An animal is practically limited to adrenal responses (fight, flight, freeze), but a human can break away from the responses a bit more cerebrally to engage in an informed strategy. You could then say that jump-scares are a bestial fear (and also that there are more ways to make humans feel fear than animals). Perhaps there's a similar explanation for slapstick and humor?