Horror and gore are no big deal for me. I don’t watch movies that mainly focus on torture or suffering because they tend to be boring as hell with very little plot or action.
Social embarrassment or any kind of undeserved humiliation just suck the entertainment out of anything. I might stick around if I know there will be some serious, and hopefully gory, revenge in the near future. If it’s just embarrassment of an otherwise good character you can keep it.
I’m scared when there is horror and/or gore in a movie. Social embarrassment in a movie or TV show makes me cringe in a different way. I think it’s because it hits too close to home. I’ve been socially awkward since I was a child, and have been through my share of embarrassing social incidents that, to me, could have been avoided if I had only had a clue how to handle them. This is why I can’t watch many of today’s comedy films and TV shows, since so much of the humor depends on someone being humiliated. One anime show I can’t bring myself to watch ever is “School Days,” because it contains both. Spoiler boxed due to gore:
It’s about a high school boy who tries to juggle two girlfriends, and ends up impregnating one and getting murdered by the other, who is already kind of crazy and snaps completely when she finds out. She also kills and disembowels the pregnant girl, and the show ends with her sitting around talking to the boy’s decapitated head.
The social embarrassment comes in during the school carnival, which contains a funhouse with a secret room where couples can have sex, unaware they’re being filmed for the student council’s amusement. When one female student finds out she and her boyfriend were taped, she commits suicide.
The film “About a Boy” almost made me have a panic attack, when said boy begins to sing at the school talent show. Similar to the beauty pageant in “Little Miss Sunshine”. Both scenes turn out OK.
The next question is: are we representative of society in general?
Or does the SDMB / this forum / this thread simply draw in people who are ill at ease with awkward social situations?
'Cause if we’re representative, Hollywood has been spending its millions on the wrong works for decades…
Scare might be the wrong word, but social embarrassment is way worse for me. I can’t bear to watch anyone embarrass themselves, even, say, my worst enemy. And yeah, I can’t enjoy movies/shows that have a lot of it (but it has to be realistic embarrassing situations. A camp comedy is unlikely to tickle my embarrassment lobe).
<anecdote>
I was out shopping when suddenly a group of white, teenage girls stood in the middle of the square and started doing a rap. A crowd immediately gathered, mainly of people chuckling to themselves, but I had to get away from there fast. I wasn’t quite running but I wasn’t walking either.
Yup, embarrassment is worse for me. Some people find what I call “cringe comedy” uproariously funny, but it just makes me cringe. It doesn’t so much as make me smile.
Fawlty Towers and Borat are the classic examples.
As you say, Heracles, the responses in this thread are interesting. There is too much cringe comedy for it not be popular. I suspect we tend towards nerdy and socially awkward around here.
Wow I thought I was the only one.
A true horror film is one without gore
Neither bother me in terms of scares. Personally I find embarrassing/uncomfortable situations unpleasant to watch, not because I’m scared of them or worried they’ll happen to me, but because I find them unfunny an uninteresting. They’re a common comedic device but they just feel lazy to me. Rather than write something that’s actually funny they write the characters into awkward situations and expect you to laugh at their awkwardness. It’s why I find 99% of sitcoms utterly unwatchable.
Social embarrasment, hands down.
Moving from IMHO to Cafe Society.
This reasoning doesn’t always follow. You can get situations where a whole genre is full of derivative dross, which continues for years because some of the dross makes money (because there’s audience demand for that genre).
In this case though I would agree that cringe comedy is popular among some. Some people just enjoy laughing at people. Then as I alluded earlier some scenes don’t bring about the instinctive embarrassment emotion because they’re done in a comedy light-hearted way (here’s an example), so they’re just laughing at an absurd situation.
Finally some people go to the cinema hoping for a visceral reaction, even a negative one.
This got me to thinking about a different thing that’s similar to social embarrassment: how do you feel about situations where a person is put into a position where they’re manipulated into acting emotionally (and often extremely emotionally)? Sometimes these happen in movies, but they seem to be the province of morning radio DJs: you know, the one where somebody’s “friend” (I put that in quotes because any friend of mine who did this to me would no longer be a friend) calls the station and sets up their unwitting friend to get a call from the DJ pretending to be a cop saying their car was in an accident, or their kid’s in the hospital, or their wife is having an affair, or whatever?
I will not voluntarily listen to these. I don’t think they’re funny or in any way worthwhile. I consider them similar to the social-embarrassment thing except that the person is being manipulated into embarrassing himself in public against his will. I’m not sure which is worse, the one where he goes into it of his own free will, or this one. Probably this one, because in some cases the situations the person is put into could have serious ramifications for his life if his reaction got out to the wrong people. (You know, they make him think his wife’s having an affair, and he spouts off about, “Yeah, man, I never trusted that bitch…” etc.) on the air.
Either way, I’d definitely rather watch horror movies. I have no idea why some people think this sort of thing is funny.
Ok, now this I definitely find horrifying, because it’s really happening, and not a contrived situation by a writer. I hate “humor” that depends on some hapless victim making the “mistake” of trusting a fellow human being. Classic example, person A says “My grandma died.” Person B offers sincere condolences. Person A then laughs and says “Just kidding! My god, you’re so gullible!” What the hell is the humor in that?
I avoid the Social Embarrassment. I don’t find it not scary, but still painful to watch. Especially if it’s based on a ‘comic misunderstanding’.
I am OK with horror. I still dislike gore though.
I love horror, but it doesn’t greatly scare me, as it isn’t very real to me. What sickens me is any portrayal of bullying that makes it out to be normal behavior. A good example is the Smallville TV series, in which every episode concerned a victim of bullying who develops supernormal powers, attacks his attackers, and is then treated like he’s the bad guy. Young Superman defeats him, and normality is restored, with the bullies back to their own behavior, and clearly, in the minds of the series creators, all’s right with the world. It scares me that it’s acceptable to portray collusion with one’s own repression as the only right course of behavior.
Social embarrassment shows nearly make me ralph, I get so angry. I want to slap someone. Hard. Mr. Limey’s family had us all watch “Meet the Parents” one year on vacation, and I was horrified by it. As a teacher, a kid trying to embarrass another will push all my buttons. Gore? Meh. I’ve butchered everything from chickens to a hog. I’ve seen it all.