Early Access: Clive Barker's Cabal - The Merit of Vague Horrors
Added 2017-06-24 08:34:24 +0000 UTCEarly Access for my Early Access Peeps! :)
Comments
I decided to consider your question about the lack of rock star horror authors, and I honestly think it's because we still haven't completely formalized what ideas are scary to our generation. I've always enjoyed contrasted Barker with Lovecraft. To give my own spin to Clark, "There are two possibilities. Either we don't matter, or we do. Both are equally horrifying." In contrast to Lovecraft, Barker tended to draw horror from the idea that humans did matter, but that wasn't a good thing. In The Hellbound Heart human pleasure and pain were tangible forces, and in fact were forces that could be far stronger than we could handle, to the point that eternal pleasure is fundamentally no different than eternal pain. In Cabal humans basically are Cthulhu, like an early version of Evangelion. I think the 80s were the point at which religious conservatism had lost enough of it's power that the idea of life as meaningless no longer horrified. This continues to this day, where Cthulhu for President is a popular form of political protest. We'd rather a leader who would destroy us all for no reason, than leaders who would destroy us for self-gain. Now, I'm not sure how these themes would have to be updated for a modern horror author, but I think the next rock star will come out of the creepypasta crowd, as (mixed in with all the crap) they are the real source of horror for this generation. I'd also note that, in this sense, I think the Trump Presidency is a modern horror story. He was put into power by people looking for meaning in their own troubles ("immigrants took our jobs!" "blacks are too lazy!" "all my taxes are going into food stamps!"), rather than simply accept that life sucks, and they were unlucky. Trump is an attempt to give life meaning, and meaning is terrifying.
Serpen Thrope
2017-06-24 12:44:32 +0000 UTC
