Reflection So Far

This class has been a real joy for me so far. The discussion forum we have every Monday is structured enough that we generally stay on the topic of that day, but I never feel held back in something I want to or feel compelled to say. Talking about fear in terms of horror films has been especially interesting since I hope to work behind the scenes in filmmaking in the future. Our discussions in class about what scares us connected well to the horror movies we watched outside of class. I personally realized that there is no scientific formula in the creation of scary movies that is guaranteed to frighten people. Each director has his own take on horror and fright, and watching American Nightmare solidified this through the interviews of many film directors. When the Texas Chainsaw Massacre director detailed his creative process, he defined true fear as the events in life that we are afraid to fully open the door to; ideas that we shun and hide away at the onset because they seem to put everything we are certain of in question. I found this insight very relevant to the entire Culture of Fear discourse we’ve studied so far this semester.

 

             In Hall’s “The Work of Representation,” the author brought up the idea of traffic lights representing different ideas, such as red meaning Stop and green meaning Go. These colors mean the same things even globally where the spoken language changes. This concept made me think about fear. There are certain codes in horror films that invite the emotion of being afraid—someone jumping into the frame from the darkness, a sudden movement or deranged look from the perpetrator. Such signifiers do not need to be translated according to which country they are shown. However when it comes to being truly afraid from a movie days, months, or years after viewing it, the fright goes deeper than a sudden jolt on the screen. The fear becomes realized in the conscience, deep down in one’s self where it actually becomes a part of you. The movie Sixth Sense did that for me. It forever changed the way I view the afterlife and I now feel that the spirits of those who passed surround me daily. I believe that fear from an outside source is accomplished only when accessing that deep emotional pool in people’s minds. The nightly news does it every day when they tell us our world is filled with monsters. Everything in this course connects back to that ability to make people question what they thought was certain and unchanging in their lives. It is a topic that never fails to intrigue me and I look forward to the rest of this semester’s studies.