#bux does horror exposure therapy

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I'm gonna ramble about The Shining for a bit. I can't stop thinking about it, which is the ideal effect a movie should have, second only to that intensely focused, total sensory immersion that you can get for the duration — when it's really good, in other words. When it pulls off the shared dream.

Specifically, I can't stop thinking about hotels as purgatorial spaces, cordoned off from the world both physically and psychologically, inviting sinners, inherently liminal. Or about abusive relationships constituting a kind of purgatory, a suffering that is mediated by faith (i.e., that the relationship itself is meaningful, worth enduring that suffering). The purgatory that is drinking, addiction of any kind, doing the same things over and over and over even though it's killing you and sucking everyone else into your passively suicidal vortex. (Doctor Sleep leans even more heavily into the addiction-as-purgatory metaphor, because, you know, Flanagan.)

Danny eludes his father and escapes the maze (always a symbol for self-discovery) by retracing his own footsteps into a loop, which his father follows and then . . . cannot break out of. That connection to his mother, a relationship exemplified by love and trust rather than latent fear, draws him back outside of himself and his own abyss. Speaking of tropes, that may be one of my favorites in the whole of artistic symbolism: the false lure of self-knowledge, that introspection does not and cannot supplant authentic behavioral change and self-betterment, and that it can in fact encourage the opposite.

One imagines that Jack Torrance, a writer and an intelligent man, understood himself very well, spent countless hours wandering the corridors of his own psyche. Where does it lead him? Resentment, narcissism, and ultimately, death — of madness, exposure, outside in the freezing cold. He chooses to see his family as a cage and a siphon, trapping him and bleeding him dry, constraining his essence. For whatever reason — perhaps his own childhood, his own parents, and there is plenty imagery in the film to lay blame at the feet of American culture in and of itself — Jack Torrance cannot conceive of obligation to others, compassion for others as sources of incredible strength and power. In the end, it kills him. And he dies alone.

#the shining #stanley kubrick #doctor sleep #mike flanagan #stephen king #pandemic film school #bux does horror exposure therapy

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See, my issue with these slasher movies is that they have been painfully boring. Halloween and Friday the 13th were the worst offenders, Black Christmas slightly less so. My Bloody Valentine had a great concept and haphazard execution. A Nightmare On Elm Street has the most fascinating narrative and symbolic premise thus far, and I’m actually interested to see where it goes, but it is the exception to the rule.

#bux does horror exposure therapy

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This movie rules, but Flanagan, you’re on my aesthetic shit list. You make the bad guys the Ketamine-tripping rock ‘n’ roll Balmain hippies and the good guys a bunch of sober squares???

#I don’t like the subliminal politics at work here LOL #yes I’m being glib but I’m also allowed #doctor sleep #pandemic film school #bux does horror exposure therapy

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I like The Conjuring already because there’s a Who poster next to the creepy haunted wardrobe.

#bux does horror exposure therapy #pandemic film school

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Adam says we have to start with Black Christmas, so that’s what we’re doing!

#bux does horror exposure therapy

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I will say, I do like the romantic symbolism of Michael Myers killing his sister, and the loss of his humanity/sanity/communicative ability being linked to that rejection of his feminine counterpart.

#byron and shelley would be proud #bux does horror exposure therapy

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Adam: We can watch Psycho tonight, because that's important, that was the first "the monster is a person" horror movie, possibly the first slasher movie... and then I'm thinking My Bloody Valentine... maybe we can skip Halloween.

Me: WHAT! But... PROFESSOR! The SYLLABUS! Even I know how important and influential Halloween was!

Adam: Yeah but Halloween 4 is the best one and the original Halloween is just kind of boring, and everything else that came after it opened the slasher floodgates is better than the original template, you know?

Me: Is this a controversial opinion that like, if you shared it on the internet, people would freak out at you?

Adam: Yes.

Me: OK, I'm gonna go tell everyone

#bux does horror exposure therapy

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We are now watching DOCTOR SLEEP. Director’s cut, naturally. I’ll let you know how it measures up to The Shining.

#pandemic film school #bux does horror exposure therapy

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Adam and I watched The Shining last night, by the way. In my case, first viewing in probably 20 years. Just, WOW! Wow. It had been so long I forgot how incredible it was. They don't make movies like that anymore.

#we stan penderecki and a steadicam #pandemic film school #bux does horror exposure therapy

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We're doing it, guys... I'm watching Friday the 13th!

#bux does horror exposure therapy

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Turns out friends are coming for dinner tonight and tomorrow evening I'm en route to Philly, but once we resume Graduated Horror Exposure Therapy at the end of the week, we're gonna do My Bloody Valentine and one of the Universal movies, probably The Wolf Man. After that, he says, maybe Blood Rage.

Adam says that Friday the 13th will be the one I'm going to find most difficult to take, as far as my particular ~*~delicate sensibilities~*~ go. But he says it's important, and also about dreams, so it will be of interest to me, and we're going to work our way up to that.

#I feel like if I handled Titane with only a few instances of having to avert my eyes I can probably handle Friday the 13th #bux does horror exposure therapy

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Oh! Oh! Adam and I watched Paranormal Activity last night. It was a lot of fun. It was cute. I was expecting to Get Got but none of the jump scares nailed me — I think maybe it would have been a different story in a movie theater, but it loses something on a television screen.

I spent much of the movie admiring the 15-year-old laptops, video cameras, DVDs, and CRT television sets.

#pandemic film school #bux does horror exposure therapy #adam says the third one is the best

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So what’s the deal with the “kill the horny teenagers” thing, what’s the preoccupation with that?

#it seems more playful than moralizing tbh #like ‘this is the ridiculous over the top horror our parents envisioned but expressly isn’t real’ #bux does horror exposure therapy

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You know Adam was kinda right! It was a little boring until the last 20 minutes LOL

#influential movie clearly but it didn’t floor me! #bux does horror exposure therapy

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I talked Adam into watching Halloween, so that’s what we’re doing. Jamie Lee Curtis is perfectly cast as the Cool, Smart, Hot, & Unusually Attentive Babysitter. My other immediate observation: if it’s Halloween why the fuck are all the trees green

#bux does horror exposure therapy

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PSYCHO…ANALYSIS!

#it was great I loved it #psycho #bux does horror exposure therapy