Word: slashers
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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What is it about violence that we find so alluring? The cult of the slasher film, once considered a perverse, transgressive genre, has morphed into the unapologetic torture-porn fad. The genre of television detective drama has collapsed into gore-fests like those featured on “CSI.” Violence has become the stuff of the banal, and yet retains its mystic and exotic appeal. Valentin Groebner, one of Germany’s up-and-coming historians, takes a look at this phenomenon, grounding it centuries ago in the visual culture of the Middle Ages. Groebner?...
Then came Jason. In 1980, Paramount Pictures released Friday the 13th (tagline: "Fridays will never be the same again"), a slasher flick about a series of murders at a summer camp. Apparently Jason, born on Friday the 13th, chooses that date to take revenge on oversexed campers much like the ones who allowed him to drown in Crystal Lake. So much for trust falls and lanyard-making. Friday the 13th grossed almost $40 million at the box office and inspired a long-running franchise: Friday the 13th Part II; Friday the 13th Part III; Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter...
...with President Obama's election is not to say that he has made it change. That may be a taller order for a President than rescuing an auto industry. Cultural trends have a life span, and some of the Bush era's--reality TV, say, or terrorism dramas or slasher movies--may just be tired out. Bush didn't create them, but they helped set and capture a tone in the country after 9/11: wary, on edge, in your face...
...posits an incredibly simpleminded causal relationship between music that has violent narrative in it and actual violent action. Hip-hop takes the bigger weight for this problem than anyone else. And the reason it takes such a big weight is not because it's any more violent than slasher movies or than horror movies or action movies in general but because there is a denial about the violent world that we created in post-1960s black America. These are communities whose stability has been profoundly disrupted. And when you destabilize communities, violence always goes...
...lots of tacky costumes, sugary candy, and, of course, horror movies. For those of you disappointed by “Saw V,” perhaps a little throwback is the remedy. This year marks the 30th anniversary of the original “Halloween,” the slasher movie that created and set the standard for most of the stereotypes seen in modern horror flicks. Besides, there have been enough “sensible” killers like Jigsaw and Hannibal; nothing beats a completely ruthless psychopath massacring scores of frightened, corrupt teenagers. So grab your shot glass...