The Scare Drive in Mainstream television

I first read about the scare drive in Shivers by Shawn Rosenheim while I was researching the notion of horror as entertainment. I am unsettled that serial killing, fetish, and other deviant behavior has become main stream entertainment. Shows such as Dexter, American Horror Story, Hannibal, and Hemlock Grove depict people being murdered, raped, and directed alive for the viewers pleasure. Many of the grotesque elements are mixed beauty in the scenery and can create a bizarre element for the viewer.

 I believe that these shows popularity prove mass unconscious desires and deviant behavior. I also believe that this isn't proof to contemporary moral decline but is more likely insight to true human behavior and interests and can be seen in Grimm's Fairy Tales , Gladiators , public hangings/ beheadings through the decades.

 Shawn ask the question ; " if horror is in some way an encounter with the things that terrify , how is it also a source of pleasure". Aristotle's notion of catharsis could be an explanation, that viewers have an emotional purge and feel revitalized.

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Dark unconsciousness

David Lynch's Film Paintings such as Six Men Getting Sick Six Times and The Alphabet are like lucid dreams that are surreal, bizarre and grotesque. The chaos creates a unsettling feeling that nothing is in control in these film Paintings. A similar feeling comes from Jan Svankmajer's film such as Alice and Food. In these nothing is off limits to Jan to create work from . He animates everything from socks to a butchered cows tongue. He butts the objects close together to create a narrative story.

Jan Svankmajer FOOD
David Lynch's Alphabet