"Why We Crave Horror Movies," by Stephen King

As you read, Stephen King's "Why We Crave Horror Movies" argues a pretty grand assumption on the human species.

Relating to argumentative elements how the King approaches his argument.

Consider

1) Is his argumentative approach weak or strong?

2) What evidence does he have?

3) How are you, as a reader of this argument, either slightly convinced or unconvinced?

Refer to three terms, as seen in The Argument Power-Point.

Why We Crave Horror Movies

By Stephen King

I think that we're all mentally ill; those of us outside the asylums only hide it alittle better - and maybe not all that much better, after all. We've all known people whotalk to themselves, people who sometimes squinch their faces into horrible grimaceswhen they believe no one is watching, people who have some hysterical fear - of snakes,the dark, the tight place, the long drop . . . and, of course, those final worms and grubsthat are waiting so patiently underground.When we pay our four or five bucks and seat ourselves at tenth-row center in atheater showing a horror movie, we are daring the nightmare.Why? Some of the reasons are simple and obvious. To show that we can, that weare not afraid, that we can ride this roller coaster. Which is not to say that a really goodhorror movie may not surprise a scream out of us at some point, the way we may screamwhen the roller coaster twists through a complete 360 or plows through a lake at thebottom of the drop. And horror movies, like roller coasters, have always been the specialprovince of the young; by the time one turns 40 or 50, one's appetite for double twists or360-degree loops may be considerably depleted.We also go to re-establish our feelings of essential normality; the horror movie isinnately conservative, even reactionary. Freda Jackson as the horrible melting woman inDie, Monster, Die! confirms for us that no matter how far we may be removed from thebeauty of a Robert Redford or a Diana Ross, we are still light-years from true ugliness.And we go to have fun.Ah, but this is where the ground starts to slope away, isn't it? Because this is a

very peculiar sort of fun, indeed. The fun comes from seeing others menaced -sometimes killed. One critic has suggested that if pro football has become the voyeur'sversion of combat, then the horror film has become the modern version of the publiclynching.It is true that the mythic "fairy-tale" horror film intends to take away the shadesof grey . . . . It urges us to put away our more civilized and adult penchant for analysisand to become children again, seeing things in pure blacks and whites. It may be thathorror movies provide psychic relief on this level because this invitation to lapse intosimplicity, irrationality and even outright madness is extended so rarely. We are told wemay allow our emotions a free rein . . . or no rein at all.If we are all insane, then sanity becomes a matter of degree. If your insanity leadsyou to carve up women like Jack the Ripper or the Cleveland Torso Murderer, we clapyou away in the funny farm (but neither of those two amateur-night surgeons was evercaught, heh-heh-heh); if, on the other hand, your insanity leads you only to talk toyourself when you're under stress or to pick your nose on your morning bus, then youare left alone to go about your business . . . though it is doubtful that you will ever beinvited to the best parties.The potential lyncher is in almost all of us (excluding saints, past and present;but then, most saints have been crazy in their own ways), and every now and then, hehas to be let loose to scream and roll around in the grass. Our emotions and our fearsform their own body, and we recognize that it demands its own exercise to maintainproper muscle tone. Certain of these emotional muscles are accepted - even exalted - incivilized society; they are, of course, the emotions that tend to maintain the status quo ofcivilization itself. Love, friendship, loyalty, kindness -- these are all the emotions that we

applaud, emotions that have been immortalized in the couplets of Hallmark cards and inthe verses (I don't dare call it poetry) of Leonard Nimoy.When we exhibit these emotions, society showers us with positive reinforcement;we learn this even before we get out of diapers. When, as children, we hug our rottenlittle puke of a sister and give her a kiss, all the aunts and uncles smile and twit and cry,"Isn't he the sweetest little thing?" Such coveted treats as chocolate-covered grahamcrackers often follow. But if we deliberately slam the rotten little puke of a sister'sfingers in the door, sanctions follow - angry remonstrance from parents, aunts anduncles; instead of a chocolate-covered graham cracker, a spanking.But anticivilization emotions don't go away, and they demand periodic exercise.We have such "sick" jokes as, "What's the difference between a truckload of bowlingballs and a truckload of dead babies?" (You can't unload a truckload of bowling ballswith a pitchfork . . . a joke, by the way, that I heard originally from a ten-year-old.) Sucha joke may surprise a laugh or a grin out of us even as we recoil, a possibility thatconfirms the thesis: If we share a brotherhood of man, then we also share an insanity ofman. None of which is intended as a defense of either the sick joke or insanity butmerely as an explanation of why the best horror films, like the best fairy tales, manage tobe reactionary, anarchistic, and revolutionary all at the same time.The mythic horror movie, like the sick joke, has a dirty job to do. It deliberatelyappeals to all that is worst in us. It is morbidity unchained, our most base instincts letfree, our nastiest fantasies realized . . . and it all happens, fittingly enough, in the dark.For those reasons, good liberals often shy away from horror films. For myself, I like tosee the most aggressive of them - Dawn of the Dead, for instance - as lifting a trap doorin the civilized forebrain and throwing a basket of raw meat to the hungry alligators