Hey, everyone, I'm thelitcritguy. I co-host the horror movie podcast Horror Vanguard, have been a regular guest on Revolutionary Left Radio, and make Youtube videos on culture and aesthetics. I write on horror, capitalism, and cultural criticism (you can read my last piece here https://readpassage.com/the-horror-of-capitalism-squid-game-and-the-gothic-trap-of-debt/)
Ask Me Anything!
Do you think what type of horror is made is a cyclical process? I definitely think that Haunted Houses made a resurgence during the financial crisis.
Yeah, we go through cycles -- horror reflects the fears of a given social totality and like any cultural practice it tends to be iterative. Yes, haunted houses had a big moment post-2008 (I've written about this before too!)
When do you think we'll see a good encapsulation of the horrors of social media, does one already exist? I've seen a couple of movies where the teenagers are basically glued to the screens. Come and Play used tech but it was mostly about domestic horror.
I honestly don't think we have had a good internet/social media horror yet -- we had some attempts in the early 2000s but nothing that really understood why the internet is such a horrifying space. Host (the pandemic horror movie) was pretty good but limited. I guess culture is still too close to social media (horror marketing is very invested in getting something to get that social media virality). Pretty sure in the pivot to the metaverse we'll get some good horror out of it...
I think Black Mirror was definitely trying to do something along these lines but kinda fell flat for me. The whole Metaverse thing is almost too horrifying on its face to even come up with fiction that could top the implications of such an evolution of social media without veering into absurd parody.
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