I have to say I'm a bit disappointed with the articles covering this week's subject. The subject (horror) is good, but I think most of the articles are pretty bad and kind of miss the point.
There is some truth to the idea that horror and fear can be a very personal thing. But some things are pretty much universal. The problem of course with horror and fear is that by definition they are uncomfortable feelings, which means that most people set out specifically to avoid them, or get VERY upset when confronted with such things. What this tends to mean is that most things that are considered to be horrorific are nothing but a little shocking because anything REALLY scary is defined as being taboo. Any REAL horror movie that freaks people out in a genuine way is going to find itself massively persecuted.
It's sort of like how you sit down and here people say things like "well, I like horror, but no Satanism, or Rape" when your going to run a horror themed PnP RPG, or are with some friends and picking out horror movies. The basic point is that while they can deal with being mildly shocked, very few people are going to seek out fright intentionally.
This is incidently what I think the problem is, society has created a sort of standard of what "acceptable horror" is. By definition you can't offend anyone, it has to be politically correct, violence generally has to be glossed over, or so over the top as to be beyond belief. All of the stuff about metaphors and "art" usually just exists to talk around a movie's failings, or perhaps justify it to people obtuse enough to be against what passes
for horror movies.
I guess what I'm getting at is that none of the articles are wrong per se, but some of them seem to miss the point of horror in the media (basically there isn't any). While creepy I'm not sure if you could say that any of the games mentioned (when some were actually mentioned) like "Resident Evil", "Silent Hill", or even "Fatal Frame" could be called truely horrorifc rather than creepy and emulating movie conventions fairly well in most cases.
The bottom line is that as much as I love goofy horror movies, I think in the end that as soon as someone made something genuinely scary it would be attacked on so many levels for being offensive that it would set new and unprecedented records for hate the media and
masses could spew. Only a relatively small niche of people would wind up appreciating it.
Also to be honest with you, I don't think Steven King is all that scary, though he has his unnerving moments. I think people who call him a "master of suspense" rather than of horror are more accurate in most cases. From stuff he's written about his writing, he's said flat out that he tends to try and create situations where the reader projects onto the story and makes it scary for themselves beyond anything he describes. To me horror isn't supposed to be ambigious that way.
Also while losing or fearing for a relative or pet can be scary, it's differant from being truely horrified.
To see real horror we will need to experience a perfect storm of both complete freedom of the media from regulation (either govermentally or socially) and the arrival of a very talented creaor (or creators) who would probably by definition have to be totally insane.
