Horror Movies
No popular genre has proven more reflective of America's unpredictable cultural mood swings than the horror movie. At the same time, no popular genre has proven more conducive to the expression of idiosyncratic nightmare visions than the horror movie. If these claims seem contradictory, even vaguely paradoxical, that is hardly surprising. For the horror genre consists of a group of texts as diverse as they are numerous, as controversial as they are popular, as conservative (or progressive) in their overt messages as they are progressive (or conservative) in their subtler implications. But although the horror genre may be lacking in firm boundaries or essential features, its rich and storied history, which spans the entire twentieth century, exhibits a remarkable degree of coherence. There are at least three reasons why this is so. For one thing, what appear at first to be utterly dissimilar entries often turn out upon closer inspection to conform in crucial ways, whether formally, stylistically, or thematically. For another thing, as is typically the case with pop cultural phenomena, market forces have dictated that the most commercially successful entries would each spawn a host of unimaginative imitators. This in turn has led to a fairly reliable boom-and-bust periodization of the genre.
This page contains 201 words.
Horror Movies article
Read the rest of this article.
This article contains 3,087 words
(approx. 10 pages at 300 words per page).
Order our Horror film Article
