As far as controversy within the film industry goes, the debate on why horror movie fans keep coming back for more blood, guts, murder, and fear remains fairly open. Many critics of horror would have you believe scary movies are a trashy form of cinema, and that the people who watch them are sadistic and cruel, much like some of the killers often depicted. Evidence: According to Horror Movie Scene Recognition Based on Emotional Perception, a science journal published in the International Conference on Image Processing, Jianchao Wang, Bing Li, Weiming Hu, and Ou Wu would go as far to say that they “seriously affect human physical and psychological health, especially for children…”, (Wang, Li, Hu, Wu 1489). However, on the opposite side of the spectrum, researcher John Goodwin in The Horror of Stigma: Psychosis and Mental Health Care Environments in Twenty-First-Century Horror Film (Part II) states that, “The horror genre has been criticized for desensitizing viewers to violence, encouraging a sort of perverse fascination with human suffering. However, the heinous acts committed by killers and monsters prevent us from identifying with them and allow us to instead identify with the victims of the suffering “, (Goodwin 203). Discussion: While unintentionally, or even forcefully, exposing children to horror could likely scar them for a potentially long amount of time, this is less of an argument of the genre in general and more of a discussion in parental, or guardian, supervision. When consuming movies, it is safe to estimate that most are watched with the full consent of the viewer, with the reasonable knowledge on how the events of the film will play out.

The viewer, more than likely, identifies themselves with the victim, projecting themselves on the character in distress, rather than the one doing the harm. This is the case with most types of fiction, characters are often meant to be stand-ins for the reader or viewer. Hedonism, is a word that is recurrent in the analysis of human motivation, a philosophy that summarizes most everyone’s motive as what will give them the most pleasure. At first glance horror movies, a genre that is meant to pull at our fear and startle us with graphic imagery, might appear to go against hedonism. The feeling someone might get in their stomach when anxiously watching a slasher film seems quite the opposite of pleasure; however, Eduardo B. Andrade and Joel B. Cohen disagree. In their journal titled, On the Consumption of Negative Feelings, Andrade and Cohen found that viewer suspend their disbelief for the duration of the movie and focus on the aftermath, the resolution. A lot of horror movies end with no resolution for the victim(s); however, many more do. Films like The Shining, Alien, It, Halloween, ­and Poltergeist all end with the main characters still alive to see another day. Many viewers naturally would assume that this is the case, so their ­­­­­attention goes directly on the sense of relief that follows must scary films.

This is an example post, originally published as part of Blogging University. Enroll in one of our ten programs, and start your blog right.

You’re going to publish a post today. Don’t worry about how your blog looks. Don’t worry if you haven’t given it a name yet, or you’re feeling overwhelmed. Just click the “New Post” button, and tell us why you’re here.

Why do this?

• Because it gives new readers context. What are you about? Why should they read your blog?
• Because it will help you focus you own ideas about your blog and what you’d like to do with it.

The post can be short or long, a personal intro to your life or a bloggy mission statement, a manifesto for the future or a simple outline of your the types of things you hope to publish.

To help you get started, here are a few questions:

• Why are you blogging publicly, rather than keeping a personal journal?
• What topics do you think you’ll write about?
• Who would you love to connect with via your blog?
• If you blog successfully throughout the next year, what would you hope to have accomplished?

You’re not locked into any of this; one of the wonderful things about blogs is how they constantly evolve as we learn, grow, and interact with one another — but it’s good to know where and why you started, and articulating your goals may just give you a few other post ideas.

Can’t think how to get started? Just write the first thing that pops into your head. Anne Lamott, author of a book on writing we love, says that you need to give yourself permission to write a “crappy first draft”. Anne makes a great point — just start writing, and worry about editing it later.

When you’re ready to publish, give your post three to five tags that describe your blog’s focus — writing, photography, fiction, parenting, food, cars, movies, sports, whatever. These tags will help others who care about your topics find you in the Reader. Make sure one of the tags is “zerotohero,” so other new bloggers can find you, too.