After writing some of these posts, the thought occurs to me that someone who watches the sheer number of horror movies that I do is quite possibly the worst person to judge how much gore might be appropriate in a movie. When it comes to gruesome scenes, I can only say what I find disturbing and what I think other people might have trouble with. I must admit, thought, that when it comes to movie blood I'm quite jaded. (OTOH,and you can ask my wife for backup on this...real blood still makes me squeamish.)
I'll share what prompted this post. While watching "An American Werewolf In London", I found myself chuckling at a shot in the Piccadilly Circus attack scene where someone's head goes flying off into the street. Then I caught myself, and just wondered how far from normal I may have come to find something like that funny. Granted, I'm not saying the head looked particularly real...but it's the sort of thing that regular people wouldn't find funny, right?
I msut admit that I've had to build up a certain level of psychic resistance to seeing some terrible things depicted on celluloid. My father passed on his love of the genre to me at a young age, and Fangoria magazine was an early reading staple in my youth. Also, some of the movies I saw at an impressionable age were definitely not what a majority would consider appropriate. Clockwork Orange, for example, should probably not be seen by anyone whose age is still in single digits...but let's just say I was ahead of the curve, and not always by my choice. (Now, I have to admit that I keep finding Kubrick's film funnier and funnier every time I watch it.)
So, is movie violence and bloodshed real to me? Obviously not...if I had let myself see it as real, I think the resulting shock would have been one of those sanity-breaking moments that Lovecraft was so find of writing about. That's not to say I don't flinch occasionally, but my buttons are in different places than some might expect. I expect that other people who watch a lot of horror are in a similar place, but I do have to pause when I think about movies and consider that while -I- wasn't bothered with the various acts that resulted in arterial spray, other people might be.
There's not exactly a point to the post, save to muse on the issue and to help pass on fuller info on yours truly. I do believe that a certain part of transparency is required so that readers can know what my own biases are and adjust accordingly. So there you are...adjust accordingly. ;-)
I was raised on horror and sci fi from a very young age too, also introduced by my father. As a result, movies that rely merely on gore for shock factor really don't impress me. The whole Saw franchise is clearly meant to be disturbing, but I find I'm not even bothered that it doesn't disturb me much at all. Perhaps its because gore represents death in horror, and death in horror is perhaps the most inevitable trope there is. Oddly enough, Blair Witch scared the crap out of me the first time I saw it, and I'm not ashamed to admit it. I bought into the suspense and fear of the unknown. That to me is scarier than arterial spray any day.
ReplyDelete