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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