- What's up, guys.
Michael here.
The locked down, messed up era of the pandemic
has made many of us reach
for our televisual comfort foods
to stay sane.
For some, that means endless reruns
of the West Wing or The Office.
For others, it's the nice
core antics of Paddington Bear or Ted Lasso.
Anything that allows us
to disappear into a gentler,
more optimistic world.
- You know, I think that
if you care about someone
and you got a little love
in your heart,
there ain't nothing
you can't get through together.
You know, what I'm saying?
- However, we're also way too messed up
as a species to deal
in a totally wholesome way,
which may explain why the last two years have also been an
absolute boom time for horror.
That's when I start to buy my Halloween stuff.
What am I not supposed to buy my Halloween stuff?
Really?!
- We've seen the continued resurrection
of classics like Halloween,
modern reimaginings of The Invisible Man,
and viral sensations like Squid Game.
Clearly we can't help
but dive into the most nightmarish fiction,
even as the real world feels something like a horror movie
of its own.
- Hello? (echoing)
- Now, for those of us who like me,
absolutely do not partake in spooky content.
This seems like a masochistic response,
but as I've been surprised to learn,
it's actually a tried and true way to respond to trauma
on both a personal and societal scale.
Allow me to explain in this wisecrack edition,
why we watch horror in horrible times.
And spoiler alert, scary movies are scary.
Sometimes people die in them and ghost.
Now by March of 2020,
the pandemic had taken a hold over much of the world.
Entire countries were brought to a standstill.
The streets were emptied and hospitals were overrun.
With a few notable exceptions,
Nobody seemed to have much of a handle on the situation and
in the midst of this waking nightmare,
in which every day seemed to bring some fresh hell.
Contagion became the most watched film in the U.S.
That's right after spending our days terrified of a pandemic
tearing our world apart.
We decided to spend the evening relaxing in front of a movie
about a pandemic tearing our world apart.
- She's overreacting, right?
- Not really, and stop touching your face.
- And sure, Steven Soderbergh simply does not miss.
And we should exalt him even in times of national tragedy,
but it's still fascinating that we collectively chose to
spend our free time freaking out about death germs rather
than enjoying say the relaxing charms of Oceans 11 or the
gyrating delights of Magic Mike.
But if we take a quick glance back across the history of
horror cinema, it's actually not that unusual.
In fact,
the genre's most fertile periods have been born out of the
most tumultuous and, often straight up terrifying of times.
Indeed you can chase that trend all the way back to the
early days of horror cinema itself.
See American horror films emerged in full force at the start
of the 1930s in the midst of the Great Depression.
1930 through 1934 would later be known as
the Golden Age of Horror.
At a time when everyone was flat broke,
what little cash they had when straight into
the coffers of Universal Pictures,
A fair trade for a few hours
being petrified by films like Dracula and Frankenstein.
- We belong dead.
The former as film scholar,
Robert Prechter notes was a fitting allegory for the
perceived fear of the day that the aristocrat was sucking
the blood of the common people.
Over the next few years,
Universal followed those up with classics
like the Invisible Man,
Bride of Frankenstein,
and the Mummy,
all of which were smash hits.
That's right.
They made a Mummy film without Brendan Fraser in it,
and people still turned up.
And of course,
other studios quickly hopped on
the burgeoning genres bandwagon
with Paramount's Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
making serious bank.
Similarly, RKO's King Kong became an
absolute monster of a monster movie.
Horror films of the time,
were according to film scholar, John Talson,
defined by their gruesomeness and brutality.
As scholar, David J Skal puts it,
this was a time when all of the promises of the roaring
twenties and the faith and progress
in science just crashed and burned.
He notes the popularity of the mad scientist figure as
a stand in for the experts and eggheads
who had failed to save the economy.
As well as the image of Frankenstein as a
stand-in for the abandoned proletariat.
But curiously midway through the thirties,
as the country emerged from the depression, the horror boom,
quickly fizzled out that's in part due to the more strict
enforcement of censorship via the Hayes production code.
Still,
there were almost no horror movies made in the U.S. between
1937 and 1938 and few being made anywhere else, either.
It seems then that people's hunger for horror was inspired,
at least in part by the hardships they were facing outside
the theater. And this isn't an isolated example.
The 1970s was also an era marked by anxiety and unrest.
At home, Americans were dealing with energy crises,
economic downturn and rising crime rates.
Don't even get us started on how this
decade is considered the golden age of serial killers.
And from abroad,
there were being beamed images of the savage violence and
incomprehensible terror, which was the Vietnam war.
With all this weighing on the collective consciousness,
The seventies produced another wave of iconic horror films,
which were hungrily devoured by their audience.
Movies like the Amityville Horror and The Exorcist
topped the box office for the respected years.
the popular horror films at the time, again,
reflected existing societal anxieties.
As Stephen King notes in Danse Macabre,
his nonfiction book on the horror genre.
The Exorcist isn't just about the devil.
Rather it is a film about exclusive social change,
a finely honed focusing point for that entire youth
explosion that took place in
the late sixties and early seventies.
Similarly, the New York Times notes,
how films like Texas Chainsaw Massacre
and Halloween had something important in common.
They had more to do with what was going on
outside the studio than inside it.
And this way they expressed the same horrors folks were
seeing unfold on nightly news.
And we've seen exactly the same phenomenon occur
in the last couple of years.
While the box office as a whole has been
throttled by lockdowns,
you'll still find the likes of The Quiet Place II,
The Forever Purge,
Malignant and Old amongst the recent top performers.
In fact,
in 2020 horror took home its biggest share of the box office
in modern history.
And the series like Fear Street and
Midnight Mass made major splashes. Plus,
Squid Game unexpectedly became Netflix' biggest ever debut.
A reported 111 million viewers tuned in.
They luxuriated in
its brutal commentary on economic inequality
and the deathly cut throat competition of global capitalism.
You can also check out our recent video on Squid Games and
depiction of the modern debt crisis.
So while it's highly debatable,
whether hard times toughened us up,
they certainly seem to make us horror fans.
So why are we drawn to slashers and creature features during
such difficult times?
Well, the answer might lie in how
our brains respond to these kinds of films.
That's according to Sally Winston,
Executive Director of the Anxiety and Stress Disorders
Institute of Maryland.
She explains that while watching horror films,
your heart pumps and the adrenaline flows
and your attention narrows in.
That's even though you know that
you're not really in danger.
- Behind you.
This basically means that we can enjoy the rush of a
good scare without the distress it would cause in reality.
And how much you enjoy this jolt
seems to depend heavily on how your brain is wired.
Rutgers Professor of Psychiatry, David Zald,
suggests that some people seem to be built
without brakes on the dopamine their brain releases,
allowing them to experience a serious terror high.
We also then get to ride a wave of relief as we recover from
each fright and remember that we aren't actually danger.
This is a phenomenon known as excitation transfer theory,
which suggests that the heightened state one stimuli puts us
into also strengthens the sensation that follows.
So basically the higher a movie raises our heart rate,
The more satisfying it is to feel it coming back down.
All of this also speaks to the idea of catharsis,
which we at Wisecrack talk about a lot.
Catharsis, a term first coined by Aristotle,
describes the way art allows us to
fully experience emotions by proxy.
- Expresses modern man and all his self pity..
- Anyway,
this only explains why we enjoy horror films in general,
not why we seek them out in terms of real life terror.
And the answer to that might be that these movies actually
make us better able to deal with fear in real life.
A Finnish study used a magnetic resonance image scanner to
monitor brain activity while watching a horror movie.
They found that as the movie builds tension,
the parts of the brain involved in visual and auditory
perception become more active
as we scan the screen for potential threats.
Then the shock we have been anticipating delivers.
That's when their regions responsible for emotion processing
and threat evaluation, fire up.
Those are the same sections you'd count on
when making a rapid high stakes decision,
like what to do when a dude starts
chasing you with a chainsaw.
(chainsaw buzzing)
in effect,
horror movies can provide a form of exposure therapy by
putting us in situations where we face our fears
in an environment of safety and control.
And it's one in which we can push a button
and make it all go away.
A recent study even found that people who suffer from
anxiety are paradoxically more likely to be drawn to horror
movies possibly for this exact reason.
Indeed extensive research has found this process hugely
beneficial for people suffering from anxiety, OCD, or PTSD.
It enables them to experience control over and better
process their fears, thus decreasing anxiety.
So at a time where we all have more reasons than usual
to be perpetually anxious,
it kind of makes sense that we would dive into horror films
to prepare ourselves.
- It could save your life.
- This idea was born out by a recent study
from the university of Chicago.
It was found that putting our brains and bodies through hell
voluntarily gets them in perfect shape for
a very involuntary event,
like say a mother** plague.
Measuring how a range of American adults
responded to the pandemic,
Researchers found that those with the predilection for
horror flicks generally coped better.
They displayed a higher degree of resilience and found
themselves more able to continue enjoying life in spite of,
you know, everything.
And this trend has continued throughout the pandemic with a
2020 survey of Now TV users finding that horror fans were
less daunted by the prospect of an imminent second wave and
well good for them and fans of pandemic related and
dystopian horror in particular,
reportedly also felt more prepared
for the realities of the panini.
After all these films,
provide them with a few pieces of practical advice,
stock up on essentials, aim for the head, et cetera.
What's more unsettling sites like empty supermarket shelves
and deserted streets likely didn't feel nearly as shocking
to connoisseurs of the genre.
As it turns out,
Even the end of the world is a lot less scary the second or
20th time around,
But it's not just what horror films do on an individual
psychological level.
It's the shared experience of collectively watching and
being haunted by the same nightmares.
Horror has always been an immensely social genre,
one of the reasons it performs so well at the box office
is that these are movies we want to witness together.
Even if it's only to laugh a little at the person who's
screaming the loudest.
It's usually me.
Watching something scary as part
of an audience taps into one of our most basic human
instincts to seek safety in numbers.
Viewing horror films in a group provides us with an added
layer of reassurance.
If the little girl from The Ring pops out of the screen and
tries to snatch us,
maybe she'll grab someone sitting in another row instead.
This theory of horror movies bringing us closer together
was even bolstered by a University of Alberta study in 2009.
In it people in a control group who watched
The Shining were more attracted to messages of communal
togetherness and affiliation than the control group
that watched Richard Linklater's Before Sunrise.
And that's really saying something because who among us has
not dreamed of communal togetherness
with Ethan Hawke and or Julie Delpy?
(gasp)
If you know what I mean,
once you've sat together and watched the Michael Myers use a
kitchen knife to nail a full grown human being to a wall
you've established a sense of community.
Even if that community disperses,
when the credits start to roll.
- I'll be right back.
So the world still seems to be crumbling around us,
but at least we have Freddy and Jason,
and now the masked crowd at the movie theater
to help us through the hardest times.
Naturally horror films will never be
everyone's idea of a fun Friday night.
For some people, the anxiety induced by the scares
simply isn't worth the relief that comes afterwards.
And if Disney musicals or 90s rom-coms
are the bomb you need to make it through
this crazy world, then go for it.
But for all you adorable freaks who love looking at blood
and guts horror might just be the psychological equivalent
of a weighted blanket
- (cheering)
One of us, one of us!
Gooble gobble gooble gobble.
But what do you guys think?
Will you be spending Halloween filling your eyeballs with
all the horror you can or does a quiet night of
Great British baking show sound more your speed?
Let us know in the comments.
Big thanks as always to our patreons for all your support,
check out our podcast, or I'll haunt your dreams.
Stab that subscribe button,
like it just had sex in an 80 slasher movie,
and don't forget to ring that bell and as always,
thanks for watching later.
(dubstep music)