Main Function Of The Horror Genre example essay topic

" Why do horror and terror exert such a fascination on us? It is sufficient to have a look on the TV program or on the bookshelves in any library to figure out the extent to which the horror genre is appreciated by a large audience. Why is it so? What makes this genre so appreciated by a broad public? Why are we so fascinated by the horror genre? The fascination is due to several reasons that are linked to human nature.

First of all, it seems that the main function of the Horror genre is the function of gcatharsish from the ancient greek Katharsis. That is to say that by watching or reading horror pieces people aim at taking pulsions off their mind. In daily life one can have some bad ideas such as killing the unbearable waiter in the restaurant or the chauvinist and dangerous driver in his big mercedes. The horror movie watched late in the night allows people of letting those pulsions coming from their mind by seeing other fiction ary characters accomplishing them. Moreover this phenomenon is increased by the existence, in any human being, of a tendency more or less developed to voyeurism. Watching other peoplefs cruelness or on the contrary other peoplefs despair has always attracted human beings.

Just think of how many people went and still go to attend to public execution. In the United States, some executions to death are, nowadays, shown on Internet. How many people do wait and watch in the streets when they hear, it has just been a car accident? That may be a terrible fact; but it is nevertheless true to assess that many people like seeing blood bleeding or other disgusting things. From the childhood all the people have fears and being faced with horror helps people to materialize phobia. They are afraid of witches, wolves, demons, vampires.

How many nightmares can children have about bad clowns or vampires coming after nightfall in their bedrooms to terrorize them? Facing phobia through the media of books, television or cinema screen may help people to put them into a framework. They do not belong anymore to reality, to daily life. They come from fiction nary pieces and stay locked into it. When television or novels are shut, the horror characters such as the Count Dracula cannot appear in real life. All it seems to contain those characters in a closed environment.

Everyone lives experiences that can be stressful and entering the world of the fantastic genre leads to forget daily life problems. One gets absorbed in a totally different world that brings the audience far, far away of their sorrows with the secretary, the unpaid bills, etc. In addition, the experience of a great fear or a sudden stress paradoxically ease the mind of any other kind of tensions. After watching a good horror movie, people are, in a certain way, in peace and can go to sleep without thinking of anything else.

What a wonderful power! To my mind this is a good way to go out of the daily groutineh. Before ending it also seemed pertinent to underline the fact that sometimes the horror genre not only fascinates but also attracts people to commit equivalent acts. In France, no doubt each and everyone remembers the young teenager who, a few year ago, dressing like the Scream killer, aggressed one of his classmates and killed her by knifing her more than ten times.

His only reason was, he wanted to feel what it really makes to kill someone with his own hands. This phenomenon pointed out questions the influence the horror genre may also have on a weak audience. To conclude, the fascination, the horror genre exerts on people is linked to the natural tension in human beings mind between the temptation to let grow animal pulsions and the control inherent on the consciousness power by the individuals. v.