Last night at a Halloween party, I noticed a millieu of people dressed as religious figures, including the Pope, an archbishop, some wayward clergymen and a few nuns as well as angels, devils and iterations thereof.
It made me think back to a comment I made to my friend the other night as we drove home after seeing The Grudge. To me, it seems like when things are really weird in the world--with wars; presidential administrations gone awry; and a jittery economy, we tend to focus on all things "spiritual"--regardless of what that means to us as individuals and I used this as an example: do you ever notice that some of the best horror movies are made during some of the lowest points in history? When things happening in the world leave people feeling about as insecure as they do when they sit through stories about the supernatural?
To be more specific, The Exorcist came out in 1973--the same year that OPEC hiked oil prices tremendously in retaliation for Western countries' involvement in Yom Kippur War; Nixon resigned after the Watergate scandal; and granted, the Vietnam war ended for U.S. troops--but only after 23 years of wasted involvement and nearly ten years of outrage and derision from Americans. According to "InfoPlease" the Violent Crime Rate in the U.S. was 41.5 per 1,000--which was double the Violent Crime Rate 10 years earlier.
I'm not saying The Grudge was as good asThe Exorcist;but it was definitely one of the better scary movies I'd seen in ages. Forget about the slasher movies like Scream or its lame-ass sequels...I enjoy movies that touch on the supernatural--"spirits" that could quite possibly exist, like ghosts and demons. Both movies did quite well at the box office, too--so it isn't just that filmmakers are picking up on the scary vibe. People are flocking to see movies about things they aren't sure are real.
Maybe watching scary movies helps us deal with all the scary things in the world that are real; but just like the victims in these films, we have no control over who's going to do what to us next.
Please get out and vote tomorrow. It's your right to choose who's in charge!
1 comment:
Music trends tend to follow the news, too. Bad times = good music. Look at the late '60s, the early '90s. The past few years have been good musically, too.
Granted, this doesn't explain the rotten '70s and disco. There were good horror films then, though.
Poppy
Post a Comment