Mark Twain once stated, “You can’t depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus” (Brainy Quote). Despite the imaginative challenges children are faced with in reality, they are able to cope with the advantage of time and mental resilience. Stephen King in his essay, "My Creature from the Black Lagoon" from the Wake Tech English 111 Reader, compared the idea of imaginative strength in children and in that of adults to see who would better fit the horror genre audience. Stephen King recalls one particular time from his past that sends shivers down even the hardest of spines. King recalls the time he attended the rescreening of Richard Carlson’s My Creature from the Black Lagoon at the age of seven and what he recollects from the …show more content…
King chooses to compare the minds of a child and an adult to see the different resilience levels when exposed to the horror genre. He describes his findings as a paradox, “Children, who are physically quite weak, lift the weight of unbelief with ease” (PP 118). King assumes because the mind of an adult is mature it can handle the horrific depictions within the horror variety yet children seem too be able to withstand the pressure. King backed his theory by analyzing Walt Disney’s movies and their impact on a child’s imagination. Walt Disney’s movie Bambi is what Stephen King pinpointed when comparing the toll of horrific events in children and adult minds. King questioned adults about what was most terrifying about a movie when they were younger and they stated, “Bambi’s father shot by the hunter, or Bambi and his mother running before the forest fire” (PP 119). Another aspect King unveiled was the Doppler Effect and that, “A part of ‘growing up’ is the fact that everything has a scare potential for the child under eight” (PP 119). The cognitive imagination does not stop developing it just suppresses certain mental functions to draw a line between what is real and what is not. Horror novelist mask the tension with comedy yet with one swift motion it, “Knocks the adult props out from under us and tumbles us back down the slide into childhood” (PP …show more content…
I realized after analyzing this essay that even in the darkest depths of my mind I too am trapped in my own Black Lagoon. A Creature that haunts me from my childhood lingers in and out of my subconscious thought. As a child you never succumb to the thoughts of your biggest fear because it could change at any given moment. Your biggest fear as an adult stays with you and drains you mentally, physically, and emotionally. The Creature you adopt as an adult plays against your weak imagination and weighs you down into the depths of your ceaseless Black
I have provided a clear evaluation of his essay in an organized way using the appropriate standards of evaluation. In understanding why humans “Crave Horror Movies” even when some people get nightmares after watching them we find the importance of our emotions and fears. We find those emotions and fears form a body of their own which needs to be maintained properly in order to remain healthy. We see how emotions can be controlled though viewing horror movies. Stephen King’s “Why We Crave Horror Movies” is a well written essay with convincing analogies, comparisons, and urban humor.
Everyone is afraid of something. Not necessarily to the point of phobia, but every individual can be driven to madness through the worries of the question, “What if”. In The Illustrated Man by Ray Bradbury, Bradbury writes a series of sci-fi short stories that tell generally gruesome and horrible futures or dark takes on the present. However, while the overall theme of The Illustrated Man may be a theme of fear, Bradbury demonstrates his theme in completely different ways between the stories, especially “The Veldt” and “The Concrete Mixer”.
The mind is a very powerful tool when it is exploited to think about situations out of the ordinary. Describing in vivid detail the conditions of one after his, her, or its death associates the mind to a world that is filled with horrific elements of a dark nature.
The article Why We Crave Horror Movies by Stephen King distinguishes why we truly do crave horror movies. Stephen King goes into depth on the many reasons on why we, as humans, find horror movies intriguing and how we all have some sort of insanity within us. He does this by using different rhetorical techniques and appealing to the audience through ways such as experience, emotion and logic. Apart from that he also relates a numerous amount of aspects on why we crave horror movies to our lives. Throughout this essay I will be evaluating the authors arguments and points on why society finds horror movies so desirable and captivating.
Human beings play a very important role in earth system and make huge impacts for the earth’s environment and other creatures on this planet. Why human beings can be so powerful and most dominated species of the environment? As the dominated species, human beings are so different with other animals. Susan Blackmore as a famous writer and parapsychology, she tries to find that why human beings are so unique and shows some her ideas about human intelligence in her essay “Strange Creatures”. Meme is a very important way transmit human thinking and behavior and it is also shows the highly intelligence of human beings. Meme will also influences how people think and guides human beings become a very unique group on this planet. As one of the complex
A person’s motive to watch gore and violence is fueled by their desire to explore and familiarize themselves with situations and emotions that could possibly be all too real. In Gerard Jones’s essay “Violent Media Is Good For Kids” Dr. Melanie Moore, a psychologist, supports this claim by stating: “‘Children need violent entertainment in order to explore the inescapable feelings that they’ve been taught to deny, and to reintegrate those feelings into a more whole, more complex, more resilient selfhood’” (374). Adults function in the same manner and also need violent films to explore those feeling that are locked away inside. By bringing them to the surface, we can confront those feeling and then grow accustomed to them. An example of individuals watching film to
No matter the type of media in which they are presented, most great works of horror make use of some imagery to elicit the fear present within people. This is perhaps most easily done in the world of cinematography, as scary movies and television present an actual picture alongside sound. When combined effectively these two elements nearly immerse an individual in a horrific experience. Writers however find themselves with a greater challenge, for they must rely on the reader’s imagination to invoke a sense of terror. At times authors of horror will choose to write with imagery that is incredibly specific, and which describes to readers frightening situations for them to envision. This could be through descriptions of unsettling events, or it could involve the construction of a disturbing atmosphere. However while such examples possibly contain the most horrifying concepts imaginable, they are reliant on the idea that a reader will in fact treat the explained occurrence as scary. Other macabre imagery is stated in such a way that much stays unknown. This type does not outright tell readers what they should picture or feel in their mind; rather it prompts them to think of some situation based on what they consider fear provoking. It still is considered imagery because the diction stimulates the senses; it simply relies on human thoughts to fill in the specifics. This makes for a very effective type of terror since at its root it demonstrates that humans always find ways to fear the unknown or what they do not understand. In an attempt to create a genuine piece of horror, and therefore unsettle or perhaps even scare the readers of his poem, Howard Phillips Lovecraft wrote “The Messenger” ...
He uses this and a logical tone to coerce the audience’s trust. It is a cheap tactic for “establishing ethos.” All we know about King is that he writes in the horror/thriller genre what we don’t see is King explaining where his information comes from. He doesn’t share where his research came from, or whether there were any studies done on this particular topic. King’s only example of how this applies to real life include Jack the Ripper, The Cleveland Torso Murderer, and a ten-year-old child. His examples are slim and we have no actual proof that they snapped because they couldn’t release their violent, murderous tendencies through socially accepted outlets. We have no way to test his credibility and so his essay becomes ineffective and less like a serious academic argumentative essay than a joke. The anecdote about the ten-year-old is equally questionable as the child in question is an unknown subject. King introduces the joke without any reference as to who the child was or in what context the joke came out. For all the audience is aware the child could have been open to very vulgar materials which would naturally corrupt it’s mind, or that the child was put up to tell Stephen King the joke as a result of King’s reputation. Another aspect that brings me to the conclusion that King’s essay is ineffective is that he never sourced the critic. The one quote King shares
Poole writes this piece in order to expose the truths of American history. He wants his readers to know the good, the bad, and the ugly and wants them to have their history not just be a part of their past but rather, a piece of them they will carry with forever. He also aims to show that the monsters of are past are not just a figment of our imagination; they are a connection to history. Chapter one focuses on both the repulsion and obsession that Americans experience when confronted by monsters or the unknown. Poole reveals that monsters have been around since the beginning of time and are a result of the fears and anxieties found within society. Chapter two emphasizes that the fears of exploring new worlds along with mysterious stories of
King owes his success to his ability to take what he says are “real fears” (The Stephen King Story, 47) and turn them into a horror story. When he says “real fears” they are things we have all thought of such as a monster under the bed or even a child kidnapping and he is making them a reality in his story. King looks at “horror fiction...as a metaphor” (46) for everything that goes wrong in our lives. His mind and writing seems to dwell in the depths of the American people’s fears and nightmares and this is what causes his writing to reach so many people and cause the terror he writes about to be instilled in his reader.
Thesis: While organized throughout “The Rats in the Wall,” H.P. Lovecraft reveals the categorical contamination of the narrator through animal and human, reality and fantasy, and truth and lies at the end of the story.
We all have cravings, be it for snacks or sweets, there is always something we desire. We crave horror in the same way. In Stephen King’s essay, “Why We Crave Horror Movies,” he argues that people need to watch horror films in order to release the negative emotions within us. King believes that people feel enjoyment while watching others be terrorized or killed in horror movies. King’s argument has elements that are both agreeable and disagreeable. On one hand he is acceptable when claiming we like the thrill and excitement that comes from watching horror movies; however, his views regarding that the fun comes from seeing others suffer cannot be agreed with because the human condition is not as immoral as he claims it to be.
The mind’s subconscious is a complicated and touchy subject for some, it goes without saying that few speak of it and tend to leave it undiscovered. More and more in daily lives we tend to do things without knowing why or even stopping to think twice about it. People tend to view horror or violence as a bad omen. Violence is always something the concerned mother or protective family tend to steer their children away from. But what if it is truly beneficial for our children to be exposed to doses of violence or for people to experience a good horror movie and it be ok? These matters are discussed in “Why we Crave Horror Movies” and “Violent Media Is Good for Kids”.
Monstrous creatures reside behind closed eyelids. The stroke of a pencil on paper or the line glowing on a computer screen releases them, bringing them to life. Worlds and scenes put on pages, constantly changing and hardly set in stone. Inspiration comes from those around me, the people I talk to and the experiences I have- all of this develops what goes on in the depths of my computer or lingers in the memory of others I’ve spoken to. My bed is littered with the soft bodies of monsters in video games or movies, that others have shared and input their own ideas. Colored creatures from the past stand with them, codes attached to the string that had once been wrapped around the sometimes-neon animals now in a small bag on my desk. The screen
My 8-year-old son loves horror stories and scary movies; his favorite movies are the Friday the 13th movies. My 6-year-old son is different than most children, he has chronic PTSD and very high anxiety. My 2-year-old, he just goes with the flow of things, and until recently, really showed no reaction to ghost stories or scary movies. All my children react differently to what they have seen or heard when it comes to scary stories. They all enjoy the thrills they get during the story, but later during the night or even into the next evening everyone is very jumpy. Some ways my children are affected by hearing or watching scary stories are: getting scared of the dark; lack of sleep, not understand how something happened or why the event happened, having hallucinations; seeing and hearing things not there. There can also be long-term effects that children can have, due to horror stories. For example, when I was very young I used to love thrillers. My mother and her friends were watching a movie called "IT", and the wonderful parent that she was; let me stay and accompany her and her friends while watching their movie. Long story short, I am still currently DEATHLY scared of clowns and getting my hair stuck in the bathtub