this is an excerpt from my current read.....
" basically people who love horror moviesare people with boring lives. they want to be stimulated, and they need to reassure themselves, because when a really scary movie is over , you're reassured that you're still alive and the world still exists as it did before. that's the real reason we have horror films- they act as shock absorbers- and if they dissappeared altogether it would mean losing one of the few ways we have to ease the anxiety of the imagination. and i bet you'd see a big leap in the number of serial killers and mass murders."

That's so familiar, what's your current read?

jsu finished In th Miso Soup. what peeked my interest was the idea of horror being a buffer. i often wonder what draws me to the genre, but, i have no answers beyond " yeah, horror!" i thought i may get some good reasoning here

Ah ok, we were just talking about Ryu Murakami on your Japanese horror thread, I should have made the connection. Glad you liked it anyway, but don't expect the same from his other books. For me I think In the Miso Soup is always going to be his best. I'd highly recommend Piercing though, but for different reasons, ;)

I find that anything I've read by him sticks in my mind for a long time after.

Why do we like Horror? Because it's escapism, maybe? But then why do we want to excape there?

I think most of us here could probably go on for hours about why we like ‘Horror’ and the reasons for going ‘there'.
I think it’s important to remember what ‘Horror’ is and where it comes from. I’m dipping in and out of Alan Moore’s book ‘Voice of The Fire’ at the moment and it made me realize that the first Horror stories were actually moralistic, religious lessons really.
Stories about the dark, strangers, things in the woods and death, of course, were all ways to understand the world; when people were together in numbers, though, these fears were more easily confronted so telling tales in groups was a cathartic response as opposed to something so serious.
If you think about Fairy tales they’re usually Horror stories at heart; Hansel and Gretel, Snow White, Little Red Riding hood, again usually trying to convey a lesson of some sort.
I’m not saying the passage in the novel is wrong but, for me, personally, liking Horror is also treading water where I can’t see the ocean floor, if you know what I mean!
As Terence McKenna said about going into the unknown, you don’t have to encounter a behemoth or something that will destroy you, rather, come face to face with something that challenges your world view.
Obviously, he was talking about psychedelics, but the lesson is the same, lol.

so in essence, we simulate an experience to test our fortitude and limits. to teach without actually being the brunt of the lesson? maybe to have some understanding of impulses that we ourselves don't respond to ? i am always most intrigued when i find myself feeling compassion for someone classified as evil, as if there is a whole other line of logic that i would never follow, or can't relate to. not so much the "vigilante" attitude, but maybe the intelligence and distance it requires to perform such atrocities.

I'm not sure if we simulate specifically horrific experiences so as to understand a point of view that we don't share, although, an argument could be made that, in essence, that's what philosophy and knowledge is about in some ways.
I remember whan I was 17 (It was a very good year!) a priest who taught sociology in the college I attended lambasted me for reading 'Swan Song', calling me a sadist and such things so I'm always defensive about my love for horror now that I'm older because I believe that there is a fundamental need for the emotional training (?) or at least the empathy that it definitely brings out in me. I didn't have the experience or understanding that I have now regarding the value of horror and how it is a method of bringing us face to face with our fears and allowing us to progress past them.
Maybe thats a long winded way of saying what you summed up in your last few lines, Kelly.

We had a discussion about this very thing last year at HA. I think what it boiled down to is that we read to understand what frightens us, to get a grip on our fear of the unknown, and it's also titillating to get scared. Or at least it is for me.

I love to read or see something that might even just have a chilling effect on me. When a writer or director can reach down into the pit of my stomach and give a yank, I love it. Hope that makes sense. :)

Tressa wrote: "We had a discussion about this very thing last year at HA. I think what it boiled down to is that we read to understand what frightens us, to get a grip on our fear of the unknown, and it's also ti..."

you know there really is nothing like being so affected by a film or book. that holds true for all genres, but seems to happen most with horror. its funny, the thought process that you go through after seeing a really scary film, first , just the fear, then the reasoning, then the relinquishing of power. man, you can't beat it

I like that roller coaster feeling of being thrilled and scared, but horror for me is a controlled fear. I can always turn off the movie or put down the book if it gets to be too much for me. You can't do that to real life horrors. Horror for me is a way to experience thrills, chills, and fear without being in any real mortal danger.