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Note
on
What Horror’s About
Most
people who enjoy horror films don’t care about why they like them, and
why should they? I think my first verse probably sums up the reasons which any
cracker-barrel psychologist could come up with. The good and evil twins, Jekyll and Hyde, pacts with the
Devil, are central; we’re naturally fascinated and horrified by the
cruel, libidinous monster inside us.
The plot concerns bringing the monster out and watching him do
his stuff. The fourth verse
trots out the fairly harmless though probably false Freudian explanation
you might get in a TV documentary, that the monster is doing what
everyone wants to, namely tear down the morality created by the old
team:
... to penetrate the guard
of
the sex and status planet his dad defined.
But
in the last verse I get even more folksy and suggest that horror
reflects all the things we’re ashamed of, among which is our fear of
growing old, our fear:
... simply of ageing, of looking old and tame,
with
no prospect except smaller talk with one’s wife.
There’s
nothing about village hobgoblins
embodying the peasant’s fear of Nature, but that was an oversight.
Ruminative poems can be boring but they pass muster if they have
a lick of wit and are gossipy enough.
Grendel’s Mother: in the Old English epic set in 6th
century AD Denmark, the hero Beowulf the Swede slays the monster Grendel
and later Grendel’s mother, but not until after both have pulverised
the hall and the men of Hrothgar, Beowulf’s host.
Alan
Marshfield
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