#Slashtag# #1

Hello Good Reader,

      I'm pleased to announce that Mr. Noel Graham will be contributing his comic strip, "#Slashtag#" to the Deaditorial Weekly. Keep and eye out for his wickedly funny toons every week! For his first installment, Jason on ice!

Castrated Monsters and the Decline of the Horror Industry

Hello Good Reader,

     I'd like to first welcome you to the Deaditorial Weekly. This blog is dedicated to a wide range of topics including horror movie reviews, thoughts on the genre in general, true tales of the weird and unexplained, and anything that moves me to petition you for attention. 

     I'd also like to put my cards on the table regarding how this blog will be written. What you will find here will be a mix of opinion, stories as they have been passed on to me, and generally a slanted, biased perspective. When second hand facts are presented as such, I will do my best to portray them as accurately as possible, but ultimately it's going to be a weekly dose of whatever I damn well please. So what does all of this rambling mean? Basically, this. If you find that your blood pressure is rising as you're reading a post, or perhaps something I've said here cuts across the grain of your entire existence and everything you stand for, I applaud you. Congratulations. You're alive and you probably have a good idea of what makes you you, Good Reader. Having said that, I don't care. 

Not even a little. 

I hope you enjoy this page, now let's get to the good stuff.

The Castration of the Monster

     I'm not sure when it started. The decline of the horror industry. I remember being a kid, too young to understand the major underlying themes woven throughout all of those rows of horror movies at the local video store. The cover art itself was worth the price of the rental, and one could spend hours there before settling on the best looking movie. Because that's all we did as kids, we went for the the flashiest cover. It was like strolling through the oddities tent at the carnival. With each step there was a new and twisted horror, our eyes binging on the high contrast junk food of 7x4 inch cardboard masterpieces. They always had one thing in common, however. The Monster, be he man or beast, through whatever imagining the writer and director were inspired, was allowed to live where he belonged. In the shadows. It held true in the movies themselves as well. There was a dark place, a place that smelled the way your cellar did when you were a kid, a place where flashlights went out and only came back on when they hit the ground and rolled away. In this place, no one could hear you scream, and if they did, they weren't long for this world either. This was where the Monster lived. He thrived there. A perfect ecosystem that he knew better then you did, and if you happened to find yourself there, well, there's our food chain. It was where the Monster belonged. 

And then everything changed.

     

     There are two undeniable things that are true of the Monster and how he MUST be treated. The first is that if you're going to kill him, you're going to need to kill him all the way. If you don't, you're only allowing the possibility of a terrible sequel to slip in to the backseat of the police cruiser as the kindly Sheriff Bumblysnatch comforts you with a scratchy army blanket before driving you out of the woods, bruised and bloody, but generally "OK." 

     The second truth is that if you cannot or will not commit the Monster to memory, then you must let him do what he does best. You must allow him to slip back into the shadows. Vampires cannot survive in sunlight, and they do not sparkle. I'll do my best here to try not to be led astray by just how much of an abomination Twilight is, but it bears repeating . . . Vampires hate the sun and they do not sparkle. They loathe the sun because it is a contradiction to everything they are. Those beloved fiends rise from the grave seeking that which makes us unlike them. Blood. It is forbidden fruit for the damned. There's that food chain again. But it's dangerous, ultimately there are risks. Should the first rays of dawn creep over their shoulder, you're going to have a clean up on aisle three. They do not sparkle, however,  because it's just tacky.

     Twilight isn't the only transgressor here, however. There is a wide sweeping phenomenon that is taking place in your hometown even as I write these words. It's what I like to call "The Tap Dancing Monster." Lately, more and more, we're seeing our Monsters treated like trained circus monkeys. It's the same every night. Shadows slink along rows of seats, a cascade of popcorn falling like snowflakes against the alien blue-glow of cell phones as they settle themselves. They're there because they want to feel an emotion that most of us don't experience very much anymore. FEAR. The art of the horror movie is and always has been that you can feel the exhilarating rush of adrenalin that walks hand in hand with the moments precipitating the snuffing of your mortal candle in a safe and controlled environment. The lights go down and the chattering becomes unified silence as we wait for the first credits to splash across the screen. There should be a low orchestra swell, perhaps a single sawing rhythm of a baritone note from a cello. This tells us that we are no longer safe, that the fun is about to begin. Everything is as it should be. But somewhere along the way, regardless of what kind of Monster we're there to see do its thing, something goes wrong. The lights come back up a little and we can suddenly see our neighbors faces. We can see them shoveling overpriced, stale popcorn into their gaping mouths. We cast our eyes back to the screen, and there's our Monster. But he doesn't look right, in fact, we're not really sure what we're seeing. He doesn't look the same as we remember him. He moves gracefully, like smooth digital water and we can see all  of him. His eyes are bright and fresh, but there is a distant sadness hiding there, though he does his best not to let us see. The hot lights are on him now and someone snaps their fingers in the wings. Our Monster begins to dance. He goes and goes. Look at him now, he's done a split. But the man behind the curtain wants more, so he prods our Monster. And off he goes again, dancing like the dickens. He has tears in his eyes now, because he wants to stop, but the audience doesn't care too much. They've bought into it. They want to see that Monster dance and they don't want him to stop until they've gotten their tickets worth. A closer look reveals that the Monster is in shackles, the clink of chain more than just macabre sound effects. He's bolted to the floor and the man from the wings watches him closely, a shock collar at the ready in case our Monster needs to be reminded of who owns him. Finally, our Monster breaks down. All of this light really isn't good for him. What's worse is he can hear the audience laughing at him. "Look at how fake he looks, how funny" they say. And thus our Monster is left castrated, for all to see him in his moment of weakness and shame.

     That was a lengthy demonstration, but I believe, wholly necessary. It is time to let our Monsters go back to where they belong, at least for a little while. The Monster's lair is aptly titled, because that's where he's supposed to go, where he's supposed to tap into what fundamentally makes him who he is. The vampires have been forced out in the sun for too long. They have a shimmering varnish that keeps them from exploding because we'll need to use them again. Our audience likes them now and would hate to see anything happen to them. 

     The truly terrifying element of a zombie film is that it is a snapshot of what the world would look like if something went terribly wrong. To look for any longer than only an instant, as in The Walking Dead, we no longer see a world plagued by the living dead, but a recurring cast of malformed characters that begin to feel natural and common place. The zombie apocalypse should be as startling as a slap in the face, not as familiar as your favorite daytime soap opera. 

     Werewolves are beholden to the moon, and when the change begins, the result is something that resembles neither man nor wolf, but something in between. To ask anything less of them is an insult to the curse that started the whole thing off thousands of years ago. 

     As this trend continues, another has emerged from the crowd to lord over the masses as the new terror. The One True Terror. It is referred to by many as "Torture Porn," and appropriately so. This genre is part and parcel with the downfall of the horrorscape. Remember when I said that we watch horror movies because they allow us to experience fear in a controlled and safe setting? Well, our friend Mr. Torture violates this law. If you don't believe me, screen a torture flick side by side with the news. We've already realized that type of fear in our daily lives. It doesn't belong in our safe place. 

     So in summary, Good Reader, if our Monster is to be slain, we can move on, because he will go down in the annals of infamy. He can be proud there, and we can be proud of him. But should he get a stay of execution, let him slip away and become one with the shadows again. It's better to know that he's out there, somewhere, in the darkness.