Finding Hope in the Horrors

 

(Godzilla 1954)

When it comes to art, I specifically like to create things in the film medium. Horror is the broad genre I especially like to work in, although I haven't made much of it at all in my film projects. Horror should be used to not only frighten the consumer, but to make them uncomfortable after the experience of viewing it. 

As much fun as it is to give an audience a short-term thrill with horror tropes, confronting your audience with uncomfortable and difficult topics for them to ponder after-the-fact is what the genre is all about. Being given the opportunity to use a visceral genre and not using it to make your viewer explore an uncomfortable or disturbing topic does a disservice to both the audience and the genre. When done tastefully, horror art can give life to a lot of difficult but productive conversations about societal and personal fears that need to be talked about. A prime reason that the original Godzilla film resonates with me so much is because it manages to both show the horrors of the atom bomb while being an entertaining monster film. It succeeds in starting a dialogue while being engaging with casual audiences too.

Ultimately, my goal as an artist/filmmaker IS to entertain, but more importantly I want to get people thinking about challenging topics such as identity, personhood, existence, and human limitation. I used to aspire to make slasher horror movies just for fun, but as I expanded my understanding of the genre I found out what I really wanted to do with it. Hellraiser comes to mind when I reflect on my history. I have viewed this movie from my past outlook to my current one. This franchise brings a lot of topics to light that are interesting to think about and it does so in a very visceral way. Under all the blood and painful looking injuries, Hellraiser is ultimately exploring the human relationship with forces in the universe that we don't and can't fully understand. The human fear of mortality, suffering, and being confronted with a being that can't be understood by normal people. 

There are other things I want to accomplish using the horror genre though. One being to get people to question the things they find comfort in. I absolutely love media that calls into question why certain things are digestible to the general public while other things are not. Although not a movie, Outlast 2 makes for an interesting video game about things that are accepted by society when coated with an acceptable shade of paint. I'd like to incorporate some of that into my own work. I want to explore hypocrisies in the world and maybe get people to look at things outside of the status quo with a different mindset rather than writing it off immediately.  

"Character no longer is shaped by only two earnest, fumbling experts. Now all the world's a sage." - McLuhan 

We're in an age where creators can reach unimaginably large audiences and shape the way that people view the world and I want to take advantage of it. I want people to be open to viewing and embracing the scary things in life because to me, finding light in dark places makes life much more enjoyable.