I meant to add that if your wife tries to get you to confront your fear of picking fights in biker bars by calling you a scaredy-cat think long and hard about it.
Welcome aboard(s), Aries28!
Blonde, are you sure you’re from Dallas? I’m not quite used to agreeing with a Texan this much.
[minor hijack]
PS: Yes, it was the Celebration restaurant out on Lover’s Lane (hard to forget that location). Is the food and service still that good?
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I’ll point out that I specifically mentioned slasher movies. I see these as having no redeeming value. I feel that they also promote the treatment of women as sex objects in addition to dehumanizing them through constant victimization.
Monster movies are another matter as they more often rely upon obvious fantasy figures for their central characters. While I agree that overprotection is a potentially damaging thing, I feel rather strongly that a lot of youth violence stems from the “normalization” and desensitization that results from routine exposure to graphic and (especially) gratuitous violence.
I heartily agree that correctly directed suspense type thrillers are far more “scary” than the usual blood and guts trash that is so common these days. I’ll also add that I find it exceptionally unhealthy to view and thereby retain images of intense violence. To permeate your memory with depiction of extreme mayhem like dismemberment and disemboweling or rape can have a polluting effect on your thought processes. Perhaps this is not always so, but I think it is often (if not always) a needless form of psychological challenge to witness such psychotic acts regardless of whether they are fantasy based or nonfictional recountings.
News accounts contain enough senseless and outrageous violence whereby I feel absolutely not one shred of desire to further contaminate my mind with garbage like slasher flicks.
On the other hand, when I was twelve, my best friend and I would watch Friday the 13th movies and keep a tally of how many people got killed, making special note of particularly gory or interesting deaths, like the guy who got his face pressed into the bathroom partition of his mobile home hard enough that you could see his features on the other side. This scene required repeated rewindings to watch it again, and much discussion over wether your features would retain their coherency, or be unrecognizably crushed before the ouside wall would even start to distend. I don’t think this made me a bad person. I haven’t been in a fight since the seventh grade. I’ve never been in any sort of legal trouble: not even a parking ticket. And I have so far been frustrated in my goals of treating anyone like a sex object, although if anyone is interested, my email is in my profile.
I’m not saying these movies have any “redeeming value,” but then, neither do Hostess cupcakes. Doesn’t mean they’re not tasty on occasion.
I’ve got mixed emotions about this, to be honest. As a child, I grew up on a steady diet of monster movies courtesy of “Creature Double Feature” every Saturday on good old Channel 56. I absolutely loved them, and as an adult I still have many fond memories of those movies (just in case my username didn’t give that away).
At the same time, however, I have to admit that watching those movies gave me some horrible nightmares. I was petrified of the dark well into my teenage years, and couldn’t even bear to look at a darkened window for fear that I would see some gruesome face peering back at me. Being told to “go downstairs and turn off all the lights” was torture for me. The glow-in-the-dark owl-shaped light switch plaque on the bathroom door freaked me out to no end, and I had to close my eyes on the way to the bathroom. And yes, I lost a lot of sleep because I was worried that the monster in the closet would team up with the one under the bed.
I eventually got over my fears. I still enjoy watching scary movies and reading horror stories, but I am now able to completely distinguish between fantasy and reality. Watching scary movies didn’t turn me into a bad person, and I don’t think there are any lingering psychological scars. And yet, I spent a good chunk of my early life being terrified at stupid things as a result of the stuff I watched, and I sometimes can’t help wondering why my parents let me watch it all in the first place. I doubt I would have turned out any differently had I not watched it, but I think I would have been much happier as a child.
Having said all that, I am not a psychologist, and I really don’t know why I kept watching the movies if they scared me so much. You’d think if they were giving me nightmares I wouldn’t keep watching them, huh? Did I have some subconscious need to be scared, caused by some other factors in my life? Would I have been afraid of the dark and that damn glow-in-the-dark owl even if I hadn’t watched all those movies? I really don’t know. But I do think that when I have children of my own I will pay close attention to see how they are being affected by what they watch and, if necessary, restrict their viewing habits as appropriate.
Barry
What reasonable adult considers the Nightmare on Elm Street movies (or any other slasher film) scary?
Don’t get me wrong, I’m a big Freddy Krueger fan, but . . . well . . . come on!
Brief hijack:
Born and raised, Zenster.
Celebration
4503 W. Lovers Lane
Dallas, TX 75209
Restaurant Review
Wonderful home cooking served family-style in a homey setting with responsive service. Daily specials, desserts usually excellent. Delivery available.
End of hijack.
Fibber McGee – The only gory movie I’ve ever seen that was truly laughable, as in not scary, was Dawn of the Dead. I wouldn’t expose my kids to, or waste my time with, a movie like Nightmare on Elm Street. I just have to wonder why people enjoy watching murder and mayhem - turn on the news and catch the real thing if that’s what gets you off.
When my daughter was 10 she was hosting a sleepover, and wanted to rent something scary. I suggested The Exorcist. Big Mistake–it has scarred her for life. Not in any big way–but 10 years later, she now has a full-blown phobia about that particular movie. Won’t even be in the same room as the box the video comes in.