I hear this is a pretty common perception amongst us [redacted] survivors, but it feels like most people grow up into adulthood and just forget how hard it was to be a kid and how rotten it felt when adults treated you like shit. Like I try my best to always be nice to and patient with kids b/c I may not remember much of my adolescence but I sure do remember how low it felt to be a tiny helot with no agency or advocacy.
Shout-out to everybody who is or used to be a child. That shit stinks on ice.
Adhd? Nah nah. It’s a CPU problem, my dude. My processor is super outdated and doesn’t have nearly enough threads to process daily functions. Keeps having to restart tasks, because it doesn’t have enough power to keep track of multiple things at a time. That’s why I get distracted so easily. No other reason.
happy first day of october !! i will be shovelling fistfulls of dried leaves in my mouth, writhing & communing w the damp cool earth, and letting the waning autumn light pierce through my body like a lance from the divine <3
omg so we have 1 seeing dog and 1 blind dog and whenever there’s a toy they both want, the seeing dog takes it and just…stands very still. immobile. she KNOWS he will try to wrestle it from her but she has figured out that if she does not squeak it, then he will not find it. leading to this.
“god….grant me the strength to not squeak the squeaky toy”
changes and trends in horror-genre films are linked to the anxieties of the culture in its time and place. Vampires are the manifestation of grappling with sexuality; aliens, of foreign influence. Horror from the Cold War is about apathy and annihilation; classic Japanese horror is characterised by “nature’s revenge”; psychological horror plays with anxieties that absorbed its audience, like pregnancy/abortion, mental illness, femininity. Some horror presses on the bruise of being trapped in a situation with upsetting tasks to complete, especially ones that compromise you as a person - reflecting the horrors and anxieties of capitalism etc etc etc. Cosmic horror is slightly out of fashion because our culture is more comfortable with, even wistful for, “the unknown.” Monster horror now has to be aware of itself, as a contingent of people now live in the freedom and comfort of saying “I would willingly, gladly, even preferentially fuck that monster.” But I don’t know much about films or genres: that ground has been covered by cleverer people.
I don’t actually like horror or movies. What interests me at the moment is how horror of the 2020s has an element of perception and paying attention.
Multiple movies in one year discussed monsters that killed you if you perceived them. There are monsters you can’t look at; monsters that kill you instantly if you get their attention. Monsters where you have to be silent, look down, hold still: pray that they pass over you. M Zombies have changed from a hand-waved virus that covers extras in splashy gore, to insidious spores. A disaster film is called Don’t Look Up, a horror film is called Nope. Even trashy nun horror sets up strange premises of keeping your eyes fixed on something as the devil GETS you.
No idea if this is anything. (I haven’t seen any of these things because, unfortunately, I hate them.) Someone who understands better than me could say something clever here, and I hope they do.
But the thing I’m thinking about is what this will look like to the future, as the Victorian sex vampires and Cold War anxieties look to us. I think they’ll have a little sympathy, but they probably won’t. You poor little prey animals, the kids will say, you were awfully afraid of facing up to things, weren’t you?
I’m like one hour from going to bed so my take is not going to be extensive but my guess is that the social anxiety this is reflecting is the surveillance state. And the fact that private companies (i.e. not just the state) are also doing a ton of surveillance. And even the fact that the way we often use social media – less so Tumblr, which has some anonymity still – is basically internalising that surveillance and performing for it at all times.
It seems like there are two modes going on here: “avoid being perceived by the horror” (Bird Box, A Quiet Place etc) and “perform correctly so that the horror can’t get you” (your trashy nun example). Both of them arise from surveillance logics; one is “avoid being surveilled or it will Get you”, the other is “you are being surveilled, perform correctly or it will Get you”.
And with regard to the social elements it’s all reflecting, I mean – have you seen the state of things? It’s extremely difficult to avoid being surveilled! A monster where you have to not look at it is fucking easy mode by comparison!
(Pretend I cited Michel Foucault and Erving Goffman; they’re relevant but also it’s bedtime.)
Ooh yes, and breaking it down like this made me think:
- fear of observation (surveillance state)
- fear of not performing correctly (purity culture and evangelical backlashes)
- fear of confronting existential threat (climate change)
my contribution to this extremely salient and clever discussion is to say: I think we should call this subgenre panopticonsequencehorror
“biblical angels” you do realise there are angels in the old testament that are literally just regular looking guys, right? you do know that the hallucinogenic incoherent descriptions are in like. two books. and the rest of the time angels are just guys. you know that, right?
and I’m not saying don’t have fun with weird angels. I’m saying, either the eldritch forms are for special occasions, or the society of the angels is Many-Eyed-Many-Winged-Interlocking-Circles, Four-Faces-Six-Wings, and Mike.
