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Scary Stuff

Posted on 07/04/2011 by admin

Whilst motion pictures have given a new lease of life to horror it has to be said the scariest ideas used by directors come from ancient stories told around fires and as instructive lessons on what not to do and where not to go. For as long as myths go back human beings have filled night-time with terror and been witness to the metamorphosis of the human being into any of a number of animals, spirits, demons and walking dead. So ubiquitous are the stories that even when there are no really scary animals around people make one up.

The literature of successive generations through oral and written media have given each and every animal a whole menagerie of traits and hunters a plethora of defences. There is always a defence. We have taken these stories into the realm of aliens but still maintian the same basic story line that was used by the Greeks and before of hero and villain, victims and eventual supremacy.

I am not sure I see these stories as a sublimation for our lack of power, or even as instructive lessons in how we can together overcome huge odds. I do see though the imagination of human beings revels in these stories, delights in fright and instilling terror into children.

I wonder why?

 

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Children’s author, novelist, editor and poet.

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