Stephen King

In his essay “My Creature from the Black Lagoon,” Stephen King focuses on the effect that horror movies have on kids, but he doesn’t present any scientific explanation for why kids re the perfect audience for horror. For example, he writes, “Children who are physically quite weak , lift the weight of unbelief with ease” . When there is a statement like this, there should be some kind of backup, such as a scientific experiment that someone conducted earlier, to prove your point. Also, the way King formulates sentences makes it difficult to read and understand for the reader. Although this is a great narrative, he discusses many topics in this essay for which he doesn’t have expertise and doesn’t include any sources to support his points. Also, the language that he is using might be difficult for readers to understand and there is no thesis statement in the introduction, which makes it difficult to understand his main point at the beginning of the essay. The first paragraph lacks a thesis statement, which shows that King isn’t following the format of scholarly essays. There is something that looks like thesis: “in this sense, kids are the perfect audience for horror. The paradox is this: children, who are physically quite weak, lift the weight of unbelief with ease” but it is located all the way in the ninth paragraph. A well- written essay should always have its thesis in the introduction, because it tells the reader the summary of the argument and the main point of the essay. Also, a good thesis helps you to limit your focus to a more specific subject. Limiting your focus also helps to develop ideas, examples and evidence for the paper, which makes it more organized and easier to read. There can’t be a good essay with out a thesis statement, because the thesis is your way in the essay, your understanding of what the essay is going to be about. In addition, King’s style of writing makes it difficult for readers to understand, mainly because of his word choice and the way he structures the sentences. He assumes that all of his readers know what all of the words that he uses mean.

For example, “My mother and Milt were talking, perhaps passing a Kool back and forth”. He uses the word “Kool,” but how is the reader who doesn’t smoke supposed to know that Kool is a brand of menthol cigarettes? He uses many specific terms that the average person simply doesn’t know, and this fact makes it difficult to read his essay. Another good example is, “But one of the Doppler effect that seems to occur during the selective forgetting that is so much a part of “growing up”. Not everyone knows what the “Doppler’s effect” is; after looking it up on the internet it turns out to be “an increase (or decrease) in the frequency of sound, light, or other waves as the source and observer move toward (or away from) each other.” The main purpose of any narrative is to connect to the reader and make them understand the story and to make them comfortable reading it, but King is trying to do completely the opposite. It seems as if his goal is to make the reader confused. As a matter of fact, he talks about many subjects in which he doesn’t have any expertise and there are no sources that would back him up. A good scholarly essay should always include a Works Cited page, in which the writer would include all of the sources that he used for writing his essay. For example, “In this sense, kids are the perfect audience for horror. The paradox is this: Children who are physically quite weak, lift the weight of unbelief with ease”. With out any research, he proposes that kids should watch horror movies. My guess would be that he doesn’t know that kids’ nervous systems is still developing, and we shouldn’t mess it up by letting them watch horror movies. Harrison and Cantor of the University of Wisconsin did a study of 150 college students regarding the effects of watching horror movies when hey were children. They found that directly after watching horror movies 52% reported disturbances in areas such as sleeping or eating, as well as increased anxiety. One third reported avoidance of the dreaded or depicted situation and 25% reported obsessive thinking or talking about the frightening situation. However, even more disturbing is that one in four students (25%) experienced such “lingering effects” a year or even years after viewing the disturbing movie.

The study that Harrison and Cantor conducted at the University of Wisconsin, is a good and reliable source, because they did a set of experiments to find out weather the horror movies are harmful for kids or not. As it turns out, horror movie can harm kids, and in most cases they do. This shows that King didn’t bother to conduct any research or a set of experiments to ensure that what he is writing is true. Many people all over the world read his narratives, and his opinion might affect them, and the outcome of this might be that parents would allow there kids to watch horror movies. This might lead to different problems in kid’s nervous system, and as a result they will grow up in fear of something that they saw in a horror movie. Let kids live in their imaginary world, where there is no violence and problems. Moreover he has a very broad focus; it’s very difficult to understand the main idea of the essay. This happened mainly, because of his late thesis statement, which really confuses his readers.

He first began his essay with his own life story, in which he talks a lot about his hildhood and how he watched Creature from the Black Lagoon. After that he switches from telling us a story, to his opinion about who is a perfect audience for horror movies. A good essay, hould be consistent, because if you go from story telling to your opinion, you might lose your This essay would make much reader, and it might change readers understanding of the es more sense, if he would take the main idea of his story and just include it in his introductory paragraph along with his thesis, because he includes many things such as names of his mothers boyfriends, cigarette brands and car names which are not needed to prove his point about horror movies. In conclusion, Stephen King wrote a good narrative, but it lacks many components that a good scholar’s essay should have, such as a strong and affective thesis in the introductory, sources, and diction that would be easier to apprehend without looking it up on Google. As a result, this made his essay difficult to read for an average person and to understand it, because for most of the time he is using a very specific terminology. It’s very crucial for writers to understand that essay or a narrative is written for readers to understand and be comfortable reading it.

Books and movies say a lot about our culture or the time we live in. Superheroes or ordinary people from the movies or books faced off over the same issues of making the choices that we face in the real world every day, and they find the answers neither easy nor simple. The Stephen King’s novel “Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption” (1988) and the Marvel’s movie “Captain America: Civil War” (2016) isn’t about violence or abuse of power. It’s about choice. The film resonates the novel in many ways. All human beings received from God our main privilege – free will and freedom of choice. Freedom and Hope, in the final analysis, is the essence of man’s being and existence. It’s a foundation for all the rest human virtue: love, honesty, self-sacrifice and friendship. One of the best and unlike King’s novel, as well as Marvel’s film, touching the same themes of freedom of choice and friendship. Neither book nor movie will remain indifferent by the result of these captivating themes.

In Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption, King demonstrates that he can get free from the genre he prevails and create a remarkable piece of modern literature in completely different genre. The horror here is not of the supernatural kind, but of the sort that arises out of realization than decades of a man’s life have vanished into the same unchanging daily prison routine. In the interview Frank Darabont, creator of Oscar-nominated adaptations of two Stephen King novels, The Shawshank Redemption and The Green Mile, said, ”there’s a real thread of humanity and humanism in King’s work. King loves people; you can see it in his writing. He loves their nobility and their foibles; he loves the ways in which they can excel and the ways in which they can crumble and fall. He loves the good side and the bad side. He is an analyst of the human soul, if you will, as all the best storytellers are”.

The book portrays all the possible choices that someone may think of and act to implement one. Throughout the novel Andy Dufresne, one of the leading characters, was punished for the double murder he did not commit and he withstand and did not break. He remained sane after years of assault from the Sisters Gang, after months of solitary confinement, after forcing laundering the warden’s illegal transactions, and even after his emerged hope on a new fair trial was shattered. Andy should have broken within a week of prison, the way it treated him, but he remained sane for years in Shawshank without complaint. He had actually proved that in life regardless of all awful situations, we do always have two choices either we “get busy living or get busy dying” (p.).

This novel about holding on to a sense of personal worth in extreme circumstances. At the end, it really didn’t matter whether or not Andy committed the crime. He says Red, ”My wife used to say I’m a hard man to know. Like a closed book. Complained about it all the time… That don’t make you a murderer. Bad husband, maybe. You can feel bad about it if you want to, but you didn’t pull the trigger. Andy Dufresne : No, I didn’t. Somebody else did. And I wound up in here. Bad luck, I guess.” (p.). Obviously, a bad luck paid a visit there, but not only. He was there with the gun outside of the house at the night of the murder. He had the idea in his head to kill them. This story shows that major life lesson is not only about what you did, but mostly who you become and what you do to redeem yourself.

We are looking at Shawshank through Red’s eyes. That’s his story. King uses Andy only as a vehicle for Red’s story of retribution. Red is facing his own choices. Unlike Andy, who cling to the hope from the beginning and always was internally free, Red personifies cynicism and hopelessness. The daily grind of trying to survive in prison has forced Red to accommodate himself to his environment. He knows prison life, he knows warden, the prisoners, in fact, he became ”a man who knows how to get things” (p.). After Red was released from prison after decades being institutionalized, at the most important point in his life, he decides to follow Andy, he chooses freedom. That was a very hard choice for him. Freedom provides the ultimate test. And it comes down again to: “Get busy living, or get busy dying .” Red chooses the way of his friend Andy. He chooses hope. In fact, here are the last lines of dialogue in the novel: “I hope Andy is down there. I hope I can make it across the border. I hope to see my friend and shake his hand. I hope the Pacific is as blue as it has been in my dreams. I hope. That’s his redemption.

Despite different contexts of the King’s novel Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption and Marvel’s movie Captain America: Civil War, the same central theme of choice can be traced easily. Captain America: Civil War basically drops the political plot for the personal one, hence the introduction of Bucky. This film one of the best releases from Marvel. It’s funny, dramatic, spectacular, emotional, catchy and down-to-earth at the same time. Film has very intricate narrative structure, but surprisingly easy-to-follow. Apparently, Marvel, commit to shift away from superhero action movie to it’s hybrid with the different genres to help the audience to relate themselves with a heroes. Just like the characters onscreen, the men and women in the theater get to choose who’s right and who’s wrong, and ultimately who’s won and who’s lost. The themes of choice, guilt, and accountability are infallible because they have implications not only for government and religion but also for people’s daily lives in terms of the ways we manage our private guilt and responsibility.

In the story, major disasters involving superheroes lead the US government to pass legislation requiring all heroes to register with and reveal their secret identities to the government in order to become accountable for their actions. Iron Man leads the push to support the new legislation among the superheroes, while Captain America leads a resistance effort against it. They debate the pros and cons of the legislation and its impact on liberty and security. Neither hero is dogmatic about their opinion; each hero sees the benefits of both liberty and security but draws the line between them in a different spot. The true heart of the film is not in this polemic, it is in the characters. The superheroes we know due to the circumstances had to fight, draw lines and take stands, and all of them face a very difficult choice. Every single character decision in this movie is deeply personal, deeply emotional. The emphasis on personal choice carries through to the end of the movie, which resolves the physical conflict between Captain America and Iron Man, but not their ideological one.

Captain America is dealing with the choices that connected with individual loyalties. He has a strong loyalty to Bucky and putting his faith in his loyal friends rather than in a democratic or international body. When Bucky is blamed for a terrorist attack in Civil War, Captain America refuses to believe Bucky is truly responsible. He makes it his mission to get to him before the authorities can, while Iron Man decides to help the government catch Bucky.

In the article ”Captain America: Civil War is the emotional pinnacle of superheroes movies” Emily Asher-Perrin points that this version of Captain America ”postulates that the true way to be “the greatest” American is to be an individualist, albeit a truly empathetic one. Steve Rogers really isn’t much of a team player in a universal sense; he’s not a “good little soldier”; he’s only a good leader when backed by a crew that is well-suited to his particular way of doing things. He’s anti-establishment at a fundamental level, which is a refreshing thing to reinforce in a hero whose origins are bound up in nationalism. So he fights to rescue his best friend—who deserves a second chance—at the expense of every other relationship he has forged, because it’s the right thing to do”.

The great illustration of Steve Roger’s individualism is his letter to Stark: ”Tony, I’m glad you’re back at the compound. I don’t like the idea of you rattling around a mansion by yourself. We all need family. The are yours, maybe more so than mine. I’ve been on my own since I was 18. I never really fit in anywhere, even in the army. My faith’s in people, I guess. Individuals. And I’m happy to say that, for the most part, they haven’t let me down. Which is why I can’t let them down either… So no matter what, I promise you, if you need us – if you need me – I’ll be there.”

The Black Panther faces a series of , most importantly whether to capture or kill his father’s assassin. He can salvage the theme of vengeance being self-destructive. It is very obvious that vengeance is driving T’Challa. At the end, Black Panther does show some forgiveness rather than vengeance.

The Winter Soldier is the most tragic figure in Civil War specifically because of his lack of choice. Injured and left for dead during World War II, Bucky Barnes was rescued by Hydra and molded into a brainwashed robotic assassin. In Captain America: The Winter Soldier, he’s mostly presented as a silent, remorseless, and unstoppable killer. In Civil War, we see the actual mechanics of his programming, which is activated by a series of keywords. Once spoken, Bucky is helpless to resist, no matter who says the words or what they want him to do.

Spider-Man’s backstory isn’t seen and is only referred to obliquely in a brief dialogue scene between Tony Stark and the new Peter Parker. Peter never mentions Uncle Ben; instead, when Tony asks Peter why he became a hero, he says “When you can do what I can do and don’t, and the bad things happen, it’s your fault.” Peter doesn’t say that great power comes with great responsibility, because this Peter doesn’t see it as a responsibility; he sees it as a choice. He chooses to fight, which explains why he accepts Tony Stark’s offer to join his team even though he’s wildly inexperienced and totally unprepared for a fight with professional soldiers like Captain America, Hawkeye, and the Falcon.

Iron Man is driven by guilt not grief. In the article of Matt Singer The theme that ties everything and everyone in THE THEME THAT TIES EVERYTHING AND EVERYONE IN ‘CAPTAIN AMERICA: CIVIL WAR’ together” writes, ”What’s impressive about the Civil War, which is surprisingly consistent on a thematic level, is the way all of its myriad subplots and side characters connect back to that central idea of choice. Not every hero has real bearing on the Sokovia Accords; not every character makes a meaningful impact on the ideological battle between Cap and Iron Man. But each one reflects in some way on the importance of personal choice and freedom in our lives.”

After I read the novella Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption by Stephen King and see the movie The Shawshank Redemption, based on the book, I have to denote some differences and similarities. In general, the movie is very loyal to the book but I believe that the most important aspects are as follows. For example, they are similar in the timeline. In the movie we can observe with clarity the 40’s environment, old fashion car, the shoes of Andy, and his custom is related at that time.

Even though in the movie no date appears in the beginning we can infer the time, later Red speaks the date in what Andy arrives at the prison. In the novella, the date is stated in the beginning “When Andy came to Shawshank in 1948, he was thirty years old…. ” (King 5). Another similarity is the dialogue in the trial. Both are very similar, for example, in the book we can read “But this revenge had been of a much colder type. Consider! the DA said at the jury. Four and four! Not six shots, but eight! He had fired the gun empty…and then stopped to reload so he could shoot each of them again!

Four for him and four for her…” (King 7). In the movie, the lawyer uses the same words of the novella when describes that Andy reloads the revolver for killing his wife and his lover. Of course, the dialogue is fixed from the novella to the movie highlighting the most important aspects of the trial. Another match is when Andy meets Red in the prison yard. Both, the movie and the novella, display the dialogue between Andy and Red, it uses almost the same words _“I _understand that you’re a man who knows how to get things. ” “I agree with that I was able to locate certain items from time to time. (King 16). Of course, we can appreciate the artistic way to put in the movie the essence of the novella. Even though in the movie the dialogue is simpler in the book is full in detail and expressions. Another passage with similarities is when Andy and his co-workers are doing the job over the roof and listen Byron Hadley speaks with his partners about the 35,000 dollars that he received as inherit of his dead brother. Andy is approaching him and saying _“Do you trust your wife? ”…”Boy”, Hadley said,” I’ll give you just one chance to pick up that pad. And then you’re going off this roof on your head. (King 33). It is almost the same dialogue that the characters use in the film. It is very remarkable the part when Red reminds the event explaining how they felt at that time. “That’s how, on the second-to-last day of the job, the convict crew that tarred the plate-factory roof in 1950 ended up sitting in a row at ten o’clock on a spring morning, drinking Black Label beer supplied by the hardest screw that ever walked a turn at Shawshank state prison. ”(King 37)_. In the movie he finishes the narration felling like a free man tarring a roof of one of their own houses, arguing why Andy did that.

For him, he did it just to feel normal again. It is pretty similar when you read the book. Of course, the novella has much detail that it can’t fit in the length of a movie. Like I said in the beginning, the film is very loyal to the novella but I notice some differences or parts that you don’t see in the movie and you don’t read in the book. For example, one thing can be the physical traits of the protagonists. Andy Dufresne is described in the novella as follows “. He was a short, neat little man with sandy hair and small, clever hands. He wore gold-rimmed spectacles. (King 5). In the movie, Andy is characterized by Tim Robbins. We know that actor. He is tall, handsome, and don’t use any kind of spectacles in his performance, at least not in the beginning. Another is Red who is performed by Morgan Freeman. That actor is black but in the novella. Red is a white Irish man with red hair. “A kid had come in back in 1938, a kid with a big mop of carroty red hair…” (King 45). Another difference is Brooke Hatlen, the librarian, the novella tells us about his parole in 1952. He never threatens to cut the throat of another prisoner in order to avoid being parole like we observe in the movie.

The novella states that Brooksie died in an indigent’s home in 1953 “_I heard he died in a home for indigent old folks up Freeport way in 1953… (King 39. ). In the movie Brooks suicide later that he got freedom. He doesn’t know how to live outside the prison and take his life away. It is only happening in the movie, not in the novella. At the time when Andy become a new librarian the warden of the prison is a man called Stammas_ “He began to write to the State Senate in Augusta in 1954. Stamas was warden by then, and he used to pretend Andy was some sort of mascot. ”(Kings 40). In the film, Norton is the warden throughout the movie.

This character in the novella is multiple, Norton was the last one in the novella but in the movie, he is the only one. In the novella, Samuel Norton resigned three months after Andy’s escape but in the film, he is killing himself with a gun. Another difference is Tommy Williams, a professional thief arrives at Shawshank in 1962 not in 1965 as the movie shows us. He has a wife and a three years old baby boy, not a baby girl like in the movie the narrator does. In the film when Tommy discovers that he knows who killed Andy’s wife and his lover, Sam Norton killed Tommy to avoid set Andy free.

Consequently, he could speak about Norton’s monkey business when he is releasing from the jail. In the novella Norton transferred Tommy to a minimum-security prison: At that, Andy fell silent. He was an intelligent man, but it would have taken an extraordinarily stupid man not to smell deal all over that. Cashman was a minimum-security prison far up north in Aroostook County… Norton had almost surely dangled all of that under Tommy’s nose with only one string attached: not one more word about Elwood Blatch, not now, not ever…(King 61-62).

Another variation is something that I noticed immediately when I read the passage of the book on page 44. The novella speaks about Normaden, an Indian prisoner who was the unique cellmate Andy had. In the movie, this character never appears, only in the novella. “_But in all that time Andy never had a cellmate, except for a big, silent Indian named Normaden (like Indians in The Shawshank, he was called chief), and Normaden didn’t last long. (King 44)_. I think that character has not a great impact on the movie to put in on the screen.

I have noticed more differences between the book and the movie but I have to remark the last one. The ending of the movie is pretty different from the novella. In the film, the end is an encounter between Andy a Red in a beach in Mexico, but in the novel, the ending is Red traveling to Zihuatenejo, the place that Andy mentioned Red when he was in prison: I hope Andy is down there. I hope I can make it across the border. I hope to see my friend and shake his hand. I hope the Pacific is as blue as it has been in my dreams.

I hope. (King 101) I have to conclude that the movie is artistically adapted to communicate the essence of the novella. But I prefer to read the novella. It is more plenty of details and some parts of it are not included in the movie. However, I like the movie too. It is pretty similar but I understand that is quite impossible to put on the screen all of the details we read in the book.

Works Cited

King, Stephen. Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption. U. S. A.: Viking Press, 1982.

Danse Macabre, he views Lovecraft as a major impact in the field of dark horror fiction writing and also acknowledges the fact that King himself considered him as a major source of inspiration, which was embedded In his style of writing. When he reminisces about how he got Introduced to the genre, he states that his first pick of the countless texts happened to be one of Lovecraft’s short stones. King mentions, that although many consider this writer as a hack. hat could be clearly seen from his writings is that “the man himself took his work eriously*’ (Danse Macabre 1 17), Based on the excellent horror works that Lovecraft produced, Stephen King shares the belief, that the most powerful horrors could only work, if the reader felt the weight of the size of the universe and the contradictory size of one individual, and these works implied such not mentioned forces so powerful, that they could “destroy us all If they so much as grunted In their sleep” (Danse Macabre 80).

This, as a matter of fact, Is the basis for all xenophobic tales and serves as a basis tor creating the scary atmosphere and which Lovecraft efers to as ‘cosmic fear’. We have established that a working piece of macabre is one that has the ability to create a connection with our feeling of fear. However, this cannot stand by itself and it is the writer’s responsibility to portray these embodiments.

A great amount of imagination is essential from the reader’s part for the piece of horror to work, King however looks at imagination both as a blessing and a curse (Danse Macabre x), since people with a massive Imagination are the sanest, most down-to-earth people, they are clear on the dangers posed on our everyday Ilfe rom almost any direction. King refers to this phenomenon as ‘seeing in darker spectrums’ (Danse Macabre x), which is a healthy outlook on the world, healthier than the so-called ‘ostrich policy’, where one acts as if the problem is non-existent.

That is why he Jokingly mentions readers of horror as ‘sick, but lively puppies’ (Danse Macabre x). Accepting the fact that threats are all around us one makes it easier to go on with life, since this can be viewed as accepting our mortality and not being clouded by delusions of Invlnclblllty. However, merely reallzlng the dangers Is not ufficient, one has to watch out not to go to extremes: because neither could work, both ends of the extreme reject something vitally important to our everyday life.

That is why it is Imperative to find a balance between reality and imagination. And since readers of horror have a pretty stable mindset despite the topics they are reading about, we can agree with King when he calls readers of horror saner the average person (Danse Macabre Why Horror Is Needed To some extent every person needs horror In their life according to King. He believes that by exposing ourselves to unreal and fearful scenarios through different media, e exert a therapy that is most beneficial to our healthy mindset.

King mentions in his foreword of his short story collection Night Shift, that many view the love of horror as an unhealthy obsession. He calls it ‘slowing down and looking at the accident’ syndrome (3), because people are curious by nature, always looking for stories and answers, even though they may not find one. And when the time comes that one has to Tina tne answer, It may not De solved alone.

I nat Is wny Klng says tnat norror fiction is a ‘safety valve, a kind of dreaming awake’ (Danse Macabre x), which means hat it is used to let pressure out, since as he says ‘the world of our normal lives looks ever so much better when the bad dream ends’. We take refuge in make-believe terrors, we know evil is lurking around and seeing it come to life reassures us of the fact, that we are not paranoid and there are other people out there who think alike about the dangers in our everyday lives. It is a battle one has to fght with a real life emotion by oneself.

But a horror fiction can only work if the reader is personally touched. ‘They grope into our subconscious minds, and find the things so terrible we annot articulate them and confront them’ (Danse Macabre xi), which is in Stephen King’s opinion a definition of horror of good quality and what every artist should strive to achieve when creating a tale that was meant to scare. By stimulating our ‘psychological pressure point’ (Danse Macabre 86) as he calls it – usually in connection with our own mortality – writers might be able to evoke the type of fear that King is trying to describe.

This however has to be done not on a direct level, but with the use of symbols in the horror piece. The writers strive to create a dream-like tmosphere in hopes of illustrating or recreating the nature of their problem in the reader’s mind. Dreams are volatile forms of coping, unless it hits the ‘pressure points’, the impact might not be as deep and it might be forgotten in a short amount of time. As King puts it: [A great horror story is] one that functions on a symbolic level, using fictional (and sometimes supernatural) events to help us understand our own deepest real fears (Danse Macabre xi).

He emphasizes ‘understand’ here and avoids saying ‘know’, because if one is introduced to it without actually having the roper background explained; one would lack the ability to confront it or would not be able to come up with a plan to tackle it. Only supernatural elements, however, make it harder for the reader to exercise their suspension of disbelief; another essential tool has to be integrated, which is none other than realistic elements. In his book King mentions, that he particularly remembers a movie, which had a great impact on him: The Blair Witch Project.

Since it is a movie, it has visuals to work with as well as music, and although it was made with a small budget, it looked and it felt eal, according to King. Although in the movie itself there is not much action and we do not see the witch, Just by placing it in a very realistic environment, it made the film believably true, further supporting the idea of realism as a ground for suspense. But making a good horror is hard, since the genre and the audience are constantly changing in the sense that new topics need to be introduced every once in a while.

Horror writing is a very volatile and delicate form of art, says King, and it is in constant need of innovation. What worked once may not work again, “catching ightning in a bottle”, revisiting the same ideas may wear out after a time (Danse Macabre xii). As time passes the object of people’s fears are changing, while at the same time it stays the same on an instinctive level, that is why horror writers need to invent new ways to make us fear the unknown and to let us indulge in its dark atmosphere.

Horror works on two levels: ‘gross-out’ level, meaning the distasteful images and the horrid monsters in the tale, and on a more potent level, describing horror as a kind of dance, a slow rhythmic search for our deepest level of emotions, he simple and brutally plane hole of a Stone Age cave-dweller (Danse Macabre 218). I nls Is Daslcally slmllar to wnat LovecraTt was trylng to explaln In nls essay, tne instinctive fear that has been present since people exist.

So we can conclude that the definition of a real danse macabre is when the creator of a horror story is able to unite the conscious and the subconscious mind with one potent idea, usually with a dash of realism and an equal amount of supernatural used, so that the readers can still rely on their suspension of disbelief. Is Horror Art? We have established, that for a good horror to be written, many elements have to be in place. And that raises the question: is horror a form of art.

Although this is a yes- no question, the answer to this is not as simple as it looks like. Not every piece of this genre can be viewed as a form of art, because several elements have to work together to create a good horror story. King goes ahead and claims that since it was composed like a piece of music or painting, and it was looking for something that would predate art: phobic pressure points (Danse Macabre 18), then we can safely all horror an art form. This point of view might be a bit biased; King himself admits that he is an avid fan of the genre.

He does agree with the fact that some narratives are not as well thought out as they should be, but he does not mention that by doing so, they are failing to fulfill their primary purpose of introducing readers to their own fears. Carroll on the other hand has a more critical approach on the subject: he agrees that it might as well be an artistic genre, but generalization of it should be avoided (38). He calls horror a “concept with fuzzy and perhaps developing oundaries”, which basically suggests that it does not require a tight definition.

We could try and categorize horror by how well it exerts the phobic pressure point idea. Most works are able to find the so-called national phobic pressure points – which as the name suggests, is not aimed at the individual, it is experienced on a grander scale -, most successful pieces of horror media always plays upon and express fears which exist across a wide spectrum of people, fears often political, economic, and psychological rather than supernatural. In connection to this phenomenon King entions the time, when the movie version of Invasion of the Body Snatchers came out.

The motion picture had come out at the time of the Red Scare, when people were afraid that their close friends or even relatives might be communists. The movie tells the story of an everyday American little town, with everyday American people who are slowly being replaced by pod-people, who look and act like the switched humans. We can see the parallelism between the two and although Finney, whose book was the one that got adapted into film format, claimed that the story itself was written ithout any intent of a political undertone.

But because of the timing, it has emerged as one of the most well-known horror tales. Another example of well-timed symbolism that has affected big audiences would be the emerging of the zombie culture. Taking a look at the historical overview, we can determine that this fad has been gaining ground since the terrorist-scare in America. The image of ruthless, animalistic, seemingly unstoppable beings that only know how to kill and hunt people without remorse would be exactly how the American government tries to depict errorists.

We can agree that applying pressure on the national phobic pressure points work, still, King raises an interesting paradox about the issue: it is a generally accepted idea that negative emotions are usually associated with ‘mob instincts’, when in reality these are what drive wedges between individuals, and then we are lett alone wltn our Tears, ana In Tact tney ao not unlte us. Yurtnermore ne asks wny we need make-believe horror when there is so much real horror going on in life (Danse Macabre 27).

Or putting it another way: why people need stories of isintegration, Just to, by outletting our pent up emotions, bring them back to a constructive state again. The answer is right there in the question, to help people cope with the harshness of reality in the form of entertainment. this feeling of reintegration, arising from a field specializing in death, fear, and monstrosity, that makes a danse macabre so rewarding and magical… that, and the boundless ability of the human imagination to create endless dream worlds and then put them to work” (Danse Macabre 28) – explains Stephen King why he chose this particular media to express himself.