The Robot Gospel: Spooky Season
Intermission xii
Ahhh. Here come the shorter days. The changing of the leaves. Sweaters. Hot chocolate.
And that can mean only one thing: Seasonal Depression — er, Spooky Season!
A time when it is socially acceptable to watch as many horror movies as you want without being labeled as one of those people. A real Lydia Deetz type. Someone who enjoyed violence and reaped a perverse pleasure in florescent blood and rubber gore.
For me, growing up in the 80s during a particular high point for Slashers and still within the grip of the Satanic Panic, horror movies always scared the shit out of me. I mean Freddie — that guy could get you in your dreams! You’re asleep, and you can’t run away from your dreams — they’re there every time you sleep! The Critters? Their quills paralyze you and they roll around real fast! They’re almost kind of cute, but they’ll eat you!
When you’re a kid, you tend to not really have any power or control in the world. Grown-ups are in charge of everything, except for when they’re at work and you’re left to fend for yourself for prolonged periods of time that nowadays, seem pretty negligent. You have no other option than to trust that they are going to put you into spaces that are safe for you.
I wasn’t a particularly athletic kid, but my dad wanted me to do sports so I would stay active. Socialize a bit. Learn about teamwork and all that stuff. I was a fairly big kid, so maybe my dad just wanted to make sure I didn’t get too husky.
I did football for one year when I was in 3rd grade. 8 years old. We were running laps and I was the slowest one. All bundled up in pads, my glasses strapped on under my helmet. Everyone else had finished and were waiting on me. I was just making the final turn. a stitch burning in my side. About 50 more yards to go. I wasn’t going to give up, though. I had to keep going or else incur their ridicule1.
The coach told one of the other players to tackle me — I guess as punishment for me being so slow. There were 2 hits: Him hitting me, and me hitting the ground. The wind was knocked out of me. I couldn’t breathe and thought I was going to die. Like being dry water-boarded. That was some real life horror...
The coach then started yelling at me to get up, because who could have predicted that knocking an 8 year-old kid to the ground would prolong the amount of time that had already been unacceptable up to that point?
In elementary school, most of the boys I was friends with wanted to play some kind of sports during recess. Basketball. Football. Smear The Slur — you know the one. Everyone knew what it meant to be picked last, and no one else had to worry about facing that indignity if I was standing in the lineup.
In middle school, I started to hang around with girls. I, of course, had a crush on one or two of them in the group (which I never acted on — the Fear, you know?). The only other boy2 with us wasn’t interested in any romantic pursuits with those girls, and he would never have to say, but we knew why. But we both retreated to this social position in order to avoid the seemingly constant physical competitions for status. The powerless in greater society seeking to wield whatever little power they have over those lesser than even them.
More true life horrors of adolescence...
But movies aren’t real. It’s not a real fear that you might have from things actually happening to your body in meat space. It’s a Pretend Fear. One that you’re wading into yourself when you dip your toe into Netflix or Shudder. It’s a way of practicing, maybe. So that you can prove to yourself that Fear doesn’t hurt you. That being afraid is something that you can overcome. That fear will only have as much power as you give it.
So, to give me yet another way to exercise my writing muscles, I’ve joined the other movie dorks and started a Letterboxd page. And so that I could play along with everyone else living on this calendar page of the year, I’m starting to watch some horror movies.
One of the several ideas for podcasts I’ve had in the past, is that I would watch horror movies (as an excuse to finally start watching them) and then run through the plots to my wife, letting her know if I think she could handle them or not (since she’s not the biggest horror person, either). I came up with a rating system that I thought would be able to encapsulate the cardinal attributes that most horror movies tend to express: Creepy, Gory, Corny, Horny.
So at the bottom of the little micro-reviews on my Letterboxd, I’ve got that scale from 1 to 5, since I’m probably not ever going to do that podcast — but it’s an idea I had, so I’m going to do something with it, damnit!3
-bcp
Yes, new Momma! Hopefully they come play here in Reno when they tour for their next album. One of them has parents that live in one of the desert towns here in Northern Nevada, so it’s almost like a hometown show.
Another integral part of being a team, I guess.
As I’ve written about in the past:
I used more exclamation points in this post than I think I have in the whole of my life!
Oh hey, it looks like NPR was talking about this a couple weeks ago...
https://www.npr.org/2024/10/09/1210938257/fear-anxiety-scary-movie-horror