I read an interesting article last month detailing a move on China's part to ban "Horror" films in their country. The broad description of "Horror" is stated as "wronged spirits and violent ghosts, monsters, demons, and other inhuman portrayals, strange and supernatural storytelling for the sole purpose of seeking terror and horror.". Apparently it has to do with trying to "control and cleanse the negative effect these items have on society, and to prevent horror, violent, cruel publications from entering the market through official channels and to protect adolescents' psychological health.". The discussions and comments on the few sites I've looked at are generally incensed and offended at the censorship. I, on the other hand, wish we'd have something similar here.
I've mentioned my feelings about the horror genre in the past and feel like spending a bit more time here discussing the conflicts I have with it. I'll go on record as having been a big fan of movies like "Halloween","Alien", and even though I walked out on it when i first saw it, "An American Werewolf in London".
Examining the reason I walked out of "An American Werewolf in London" might be a good place to start. If you've seen the film, it's relatively tame by today's standards, but at the time of its release, it was as cutting edge as they got. And the "cutting edge" that caused me to leave the theatre and await my friend outside was the slicing of the main character's throat in what ended up being a dream sequence, within a dream sequence.
It freaked me out, big time. And I was appalled at the violent depiction of the act of cutting a throat. Nowadays, we see far more disturbing images in prime-time TV commercials. In fact, recently, while exercising at the gym and glancing over at the TV screen of a nearby treadmill, I caught a segment of one of the many "CSI" shows. In this scene, they showed, in horrifically graphic detail, the corpse of what was once a beautiful young girl. Her face was sunken, pale, and botched, with significant bruising and scarring all about. It was an horrific image of a brutal crime against a human being. And the most disturbing thing is the knowledge that these images are shown every week on numerous shows in numerous fashions.
There was a time, not too long ago, that our society has much less tolerance for so graphic a depiction. In fact, just going back to the 60s, and the release of Alfred Hitchcock's "Psycho", you find a culture that was in strong opposition to the murder taking place in the shower. It was considered completely over the top, and something that simply went too far. Yet in the last 50 years, the line of good taste has all but been erased. And with the advent of "Reality TV", I'm hard pressed to imagine that executions and actual deaths might end up being broadcast for the entertainment of the masses. And of course, to sell cars and beer.
Remember the movie "The Rock"? I do. Vividly. I saw it with some friends one evening, and I was taken on a wild, exhilarating roller-coaster ride of suspense and action. I'd just begun dating somebody at the time who had strongly held religious convictions, and took her to see it a week or two later. After doing so, we had a rather heated discussion/debate in the parking lot about the violence in the movie. She found it greatly disturbing. I didn't think it was any big deal whatsoever. And so the conversation went, with her arguing that the degree of violence portrayed only served to desensitize the audience and our society to violence on the whole. I could not have disagreed more. It was 'just a movie' and nobody "really took the violence at face value". We went back and forth about it for some time, agreed to disagree, and went our separate ways. And only then, with the pressure to defend my position out of the way, did I really start to think through the arguments, the movie, and the concerns about the impact of so many movies and so many deceptions. And damned if she wasn't right. It was not about that one specific film, but about an entire trend, genre, and general "pushing of the envelope" that had been taking place over many years.
The line ahead is the line we crossed so many years ago. We're staring to lap it. It's not healthy, it's not necessary, and it's certainly not "entertainment".