Scream With Me Quotes

“American feminism and American horror have been—for more than half a century—allies on issues of domestic abuse”
― Eleanor Johnson, Scream with Me: Horror Films and the Rise of American Feminism

“When you’re reading a book or viewing a sculpture at a museum, you’re doing it, in effect, alone. Nowadays, when we watch movies, we often stream them in our homes, also alone. But in the 1970s, when the films that are central to this book were released, when people watched films, they watched them together, in a pop-up community of filmgoers at a movie theater. When you watch a film in the theater, and you see someone next to you crying, it affects you. And when you watch a horror film in the theater, when you hear everyone around you screaming or groaning, or see them jumping around in their seats, that affects you, too. Cinema has an amplifying effect on affect, on emotion, on an audience’s empathy with the main characters on the screen.”
― Eleanor Johnson, Scream With Me: Horror Films and the Rise of American Feminism, 1968-1980

“In horror, by sharp contrast, we do not get our catharsis. Instead, we get what I call the horror hangover. Things end messily and chaotically, with a sense that the horror hasn't ended - and that maybe it never will. When we leave the theater after seeing a horror film, we feel nervous as we walk up the steps to our house. We wonder if someone is lurking in our apartment. There is no sense that order is restored, no sense that we are safe now; the unease lingers. Horror stays with you, keeps you hyper-vigilant against threats, keeps you in a state of activation and vulnerability, for some period after the film is over. And in some cases, the activation and vigilance and vulnerability stay with you a long time. That's the point, in fact, of horror.”
― Eleanor Johnson, Scream With Me: Horror Films and the Rise of American Feminism, 1968-1980