Conservatives Can't Write Horror
and shouldn't be allowed to write anything apparently ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
“Trust me when I say that conservatives are perfectly capable, just like anyone else, of being funny and learning how to produce those things are skills that anyone can do. To think otherwise would be hopeful at best, but in practice is dangerous and allows the slow infiltration of conservative beliefs into places that they should not be allowed. Because it creates this shield that allows us to ignore their red flags. The idea that conservatives cannot make good art needs to be abandoned, because it leaves us in a position to where we underestimate their potential to spread their messaging.”
I have to admit a dirty secret; I love internet drama. I am a simple woman, I see a multi-hour YouTube video talking about someone I’ve never heard of, and I watch it. This is not something I’m proud of, and as a Catholic I know it’s not great to be so invested in the private lives of strangers, but… fuck me it’s addictive.
The latest drama to catch my attention surrounds a creator I’ve never heard about, In Praise of Shadows, essentially creating a hit piece on another creator I admittedly don’t care about, but a lot of people seem to, Wendigoon. IPOS is a longform horror reviewer, and wannabe breadtuber, while Wendigoon is that guy who does the iceburg trend and also covers horror and the like. He, IPOS, has since deleted his video, but the internet is forever, honey.
[Warning: this article is long, and I mean long. I popped off a little, went on some tangents. I was actually working on a different article about art when this came to my attention, and this covers so many thing that have been on my mind lately. Thank you for giving it a read, but please know it may not load fully in email. Now strap in and prepare for the cringe.]
Now, there is a lot that I could talk about with this pathetic, commie doofus. We could start with how greasy and unwashed he looks. “Busted, dusted, crusted,” as Blair White might say (another unfortunate guilty pleasure creator of mine.) But, frankly he looks like every other soyjack, woke koolaid drinker. My guy has just enough testosterone to grow a droopy 70’s porn ‘stache before, I assume, generously donating the rest to a very deserving transmasc. This picture doesn’t even do justice to his fringe jacket, gross necklace, or just the distinct unshowered quality he posses throughout the video.
Looks aside, he is the epitome of smug, hypocritical, self-centered, woe-is-me tortured artist, leftist bootlicker that I’ve become so deeply sick of since my own unbrainwashing. His three hour long video is filled to the brim with baseless and source-less accusations, to the point that one might believe his is a conservative parody of a liberal, some of it just boil down to arbitrarily comparing others to Hitler and Nazis (the tried and true leftie trump card.) Though, truly he spends the majority of the meandering video complaining.
Complaining about a video from two years ago that he made on the film ‘The Hills Have Eyes’ where he compared the cannibal murderers to Native Americans and black people, and the valid and just criticism he garnered from it. Complaining that he doesn’t make enough money from YouTube, from his ART. Complaining that he must now make the videos that bring in money, instead of his incredibly important and deeply intersectional and inclusive AARRTTT dammit! Complaining that conservative people exist (we’ll get back to this point in a minute.) Complaining that other people make money doing what he does. Rest assured, this man does not have a job outside of YouTube, so this is a great injustice.
But none so great as the injustice cast upon IPOS by Wendigoon... just existing I guess? I’ll spare you the bullshit, but essentially he tries to call Wendigoon all the commie alarmist terms. He’s an -ist, he’s a -phobe, he’s rich, he’s white -presenting which is evil enough-, he’s Christian, he’s a gun owner, he’s everything wrong with America gosh dangit! The proof? Well, get this kids, Wendigoon has Twitter/X mutuals and real life friends that have *gasp* dissenting opinions?! Although, that’s not entirely true, because IPOS actually lies about half the people he accuses of being -ists and -phobes. (I’ve also seen it mentioned in a few places that he failed to mention Wendigoon’s association with Penguinz01, or Charlie. I guess he’s scared to be the next MamaMax.)
He also has a completely whack take on A Vampire in Brooklyn, which is a bizarre Eddie Murphy movie that I’m particularly attached to, so I was personally affronted by that.
Anyway, I don’t care about Wendigoon. He has shown open support for the LGB and T and is a purveyor of the supernatural and mystic, but he’s a Protestant so what else would you expect? I will give it to him that he practices what he preaches, he even went to so far as to publicly comment politely and respectfully on the hit piece video. He even apologized if he caused this fragile crybully any unintended pain. You are not saved by faith alone, but also by works, and I’m not going to fault a man for turning the other cheek. Let’s all just pray for him that he can work out the other issues.
As for ISOP, which again stand for In PRAISE of Shadows, his whole tantrum just boils down envy. Vicious, blinding envy and a healthy splash of self pity. Father Ripperger (who I have to be honest, while I deeply respect, really stresses me out, and is not my favorite spiritual teacher) is incredibly knowledgeable and has a great series summarizing St Thomas Aquinas’ teachings on the 7 Deadly Vices and their daughters. I would highly recommend watching his video about Envy as a companion piece to this article, but allow me to quote,
“Envy is a sorrow at another one's good, and it sees the other’s good as one's own harm.”
To quote another marvelous Catholic priest (who stresses me out far less) the late, great Bishop Fulton J Sheen,
“Criticism of others is thus an oblique form of self-commendation. We think we make the picture hang straight on our wall by telling our neighbors that all his pictures are crooked.”
This really typifies ISOP’s whole point. It’s nothing that he says out loud, but it’s the glaringly obvious subtext throughout everything he does say. This man, whose name is Zane because of course it is, is so deeply, deeply, deeply envious and resentful of Wendigoon’s success. Zane is so upset, that instead of looking inward at his own creativity, both his failings and potential for meaningful creative growth, he would rather look for anything that could tear down his competition.
Not to sound like a liberal, but Zane also has a severe white savior complex. This man loves to compare Native Americans and black people to mutant cannibals, while also asserting himself as the arbiter of what is morally just in regard to them. He spoke on behalf of Native Americans for Wendigoon’s username, and I have to admit I was guilty of the wendigo argument too, but that was before I was Catholic and realized that all paranormal and supernatural and cryptid stuff was just demons every time (which is an article for another day because that was one of the biggest bummer things about my return to the faith tbh. A huge chunk of my personality back then used to be wannabe ghost hunter.) I could go on a real diatribe about this, and I could do it like a real leftie. After all, I was married in a quasi Pueblo Indian ceremony and have two half brothers that are Pueblo/Acoma and live on the reservation. At the end of the day, it doesn’t fucking matter.
Zane also said, and I am quoting directly,
“Deep Appalachia is very white country and for the most part is exceptionally racist. Genuinely, in this part of the country you have to assume that any white person you meet is racist unless they show you otherwise.”
Oh boy, where do even begin with something like this? I am from deep Appalachia. I was born in raised in a town with 1,000 people on a good census year, and 900 when the old folks start dropping. I also recently moved to a different rural town, after my love affair with my blue city ended. Although, I now live only a town over from a Walmart and traffic lights instead of over a half hour drive away like I did growing up. What luxury, eh? Anyway, I’m a little different from the people Zane is playing reductionist with. I think liberals forget that Appalachia spans the entire Appalachian mountain range, and isn’t just the deep south. I’m from Maine, deep backwoods Maine, but methinks that Zane would never a) criticize New England or b) Stephen King’s backyard. (Bangor is a shithole tho, my poor husband has to work there on occasion.) Carrie is set in a fictional town not too far away from me.
Anyway, yeah Appalachia is pretty white. Radical liberals also like to forget history in general that this area was settled by poor, and disenfranchised Irish, Scottish, and British immigrants. “Rednecks” were the outcome of these men toiling under the sun as working class people, in the farms and in the mines. Yes, in the south there were also blacks and that is why some of southern Appalachian culture is different from northern. Still, New England and Louisiana aren’t too far apart from one another, influenced by French Canadians, and particularly the Arcadians, as well.
I know people whose families have been here for generations, going back to the Mayflower. Their family names are the same as roads and ponds and buildings. My own family is a collection of transplants that seem to pick up and move every other generation, so my roots don’t run that deep. My maternal grandparents were both Irish immigrants, and my parents were running away from an steadily growing worse New York City. In my high school, of about 250ish, there were only 5 black kids, 3 of whom were adopted by white families. A family of hispanics, one whom was even from Puerto Rico and I almost dated (but that’s a story for a different time lol.) Only a handful of Asian kids too; one was adopted by white people after China’s one child policy, and the others were the children of Cambodian refugees who had escaped the Khmer Rouge. By the way, these refugees were fully integrated into the local community and beloved members of it. I didn’t even know one of the kids was Cambodian for years because his Maine accent was so thick, he was chubby, and he was just one of the fucking hicks! He was one of the rednecks!
No one was racist. If you want to criticize small towns, because there are actual things you can talk about, it’s more accurate to say they are insular. It took years for my white parents to really settle into the mostly white town because they were outsiders, with thick New York accents to boot. Eventually mom worked at the library, and dad was an electrician who wired half the county (sometimes for free too, because as much as I complain about him, he is a good man) and I came along and became friends with the other kids. I saw businesses fail and people leave town, sure, but it wasn’t because of their race or religion or whatever other identity checkbox. It was because they didn’t become part of the town, and they didn’t have the benefit of generations of family ties to the area. There was far more disdain in my town for the living off the state white trash and “fake hicks”, the poor whites to reference Gone With the Wind, than there ever was for a person of color. To just assume that every white person you meet from Appalachia is racist is to deprive yourself of the opportunity to challenge that bias, and to possibly make new friends and find community.
But that’s the loving, inclusive, and deeply tolerant left, am I right?
I don’t want to linger on it for too long, because I haven’t even gotten to the meat and potatoes of this article yet, but suffice to say, Zane is getting absolutely pilloried for his hot takes. I’ve also been watching the response videos from the accused and various drama channels covering this train wreck and dunking on him. One comment I read said it the best: “He made the rookie mistake of thinking that Reddit echo chambers exist in real life.” It’s a breath of fresh air, to see him being so utterly destroyed by the left, right and center. The tides seem to be changing, ever so slowly and imperceptibly, but it’s still there.
But…
No doubt you read the quote at the beginning of this article. It was taken from Zane, verbatim from the video in question. It’s a sentiment he repeats throughout, between his struggle sessions and complaining, and bizarrely claiming that horror as a genre is about love, and it struck a chord with me. I took a few more quotes by him and I want to dissect them, through a few various lenses. Like Zane, I am an avid horror fan. Unlike Zane, I am not a leftie (btw that’s what he unironically calls himself) but I used to be. So, I think I have a unique take on this particular subject, because I was brainwashed and bought into this too. I used to refuse to read books written by men with female main characters (ironic, because now one of my favorite horror books is by a man with a female lead. Meanwhile the last few horror books I’ve read by women have been hot garbage.) Though, I wouldn’t really call myself a conservative either, I have and always will be an Independent, because blind partisan is dumb and bad. However, I truly, deeply, to my bones hate communism. I think the American left has been unfortunately captured by communism, in all its satanic glory, and dusted with a coat of intersectional, rainbow paint. So I’m not a conservative, but I align more with them at the moment.
Let’s start, shall we?
“He's a conservative, is that a problem? Which the answer to that is ‘yes,’ but the reason that I care is because this does not belong in horror or anywhere. I care deeply about horror. And everything that he does, has demonstrated so far in his career, that he should not be welcomed in our spaces, or even you know, just in public in general.”
Now, despite what Mr. In Praise of Shadows thinks, there are ‘conservative’ horror and thriller authors and film makers, both in classics and modernity. Dennis Wheatley, M. R. James, Russell Kirk, and Dean Koontz, Alfred Hitchcock to name a few, and many more who were in the middle, like Ray Bradbury. You could even make a case for left leaning authors who, either intentional or accidental, include traditionally conservative themes in their works.
But, what is really interesting is the last little bit he throws in there. Not only should [Wendigoon in this case, but it’s quite clear he means all conservatives] he, she, you, or me not be welcome in horror spaces, but not even in public! Where have I heard that kind of sentiment before?
Charles Bukowski, someone who wrote in Zane’s beloved genre of ‘transgressive fiction’, once said, “Censorship is the tool of those who have the need to hide actualities from themselves and from others.” On on a basic level I can sympathize with not wanting someone you dislike around you, hanging out in your group. But it’s pretty shocking to see the cognitive dissonance going on in this guy’s mind. He’s not being hyperbolic, he’s not being intentionally provocative, he’s not being satirical. He genuinely means this. He believes and said with his whole chest that Wendigoon [but what he means is conservatives, Christians, men, and white people] not only don’t belong in horror communities, but do not belong in public.
I would leave him with a word of warning. When the Kulaks were all gone- killed, thrown in the gulags to rot, intentionally starved- who was left? A house divided can not stand.
Next quote, and this one is a doozy:
“I think there's actually not one but two distinct horror communities that do not overlap. One that is more concerned with writing and thinking about how our own experiences and world are reflected through art. A group that overall is less concerned with how much a movie makes at the box office, and more with what it is trying to say as a work of art and how it relates to ourselves and culture as people. And then you have another that is more conservative and traditionally capital ‘A’ American and is based more in basic consumerism and viewing movies strictly as entertainment and nothing else. A group that often gets angry at the very notion of subtext existing within a work of fiction, and views art not as a means to express what it means to exist, but instead that sees the value of creation just within the context of how fun and experience that product is the right word here as this side of horror is obsessed with money and defending companies and even when putting on a mask of pretending to be left leaning everything that they do is in the service of capital and big business. I hate to put it in terms like this, but I think deep within the heart of horror at the moment, and the country, as a whole there's a problem of anti-intellectualism raging at people who want art to be more or to stand for something important. A group of people yelling, ‘just let people enjoy things!’ while the other side argues that, "‘we can do better we can be more!’
I actually just think this quote is hilarious. I pay a lot of attention to storytelling, because it’s my passion, and because it has been dying a slow death in the past couple decades. Zane is just wrong. The issue is so much more multifaceted than he wants to pretend it to be.
In 2022 the highest grossing horror film was Jordan Peele’s ‘Nope’ grossing $172,039,087 worldwide and blowing all of the other competition out of the water. Make no bones about it, that was also a year of continuing or rebooting (for the umpteenth time) various franchises, as well as the typical horror shlock. Nope featured a cast of mostly people of color, and written, directed and produced by a black man. Peele has gone on to say that the movie was partially inspired by the Covid-19 lockdowns (which I’m sure affected the Hollywood elite deeply in their palatial mansions) and the “endless cycle of grim, inescapable tragedy [of 2020.]” It also touches on themes of, you guessed it, racism, spectacle, ‘misrepresentations of history’, tragedy and the like. I’ve never seen the movie, but I’d probably like it idk. I’ve heard the man is a very talented horror moviemaker.
Anyway, there’s that. I think maybe what Zane is actually trying to argue isn’t related to horror, but with what movies and media do or don’t contain the message. But it’s actually a lot deeper than that.
‘The Barbie Movie,’ a demonstrably feminist movie, grossed a worldwide $1,445,638,421. Do you remember the trend of women breaking up with their boyfriends based on if they liked the movie or not? A sort of feminist litmus test. Because that really happened. I think it’s also important to say I didn’t watch this movie, but when I asked my brainwashed friend if she liked it her response was, “eh, it was a fun, dumb movie.”
That seems to be the case with most of these woke movies, which is the inversion of what Zane is trying to propose. It hit the correct propaganda points, but in doing so there is so limited storytelling potential. The most that even the brainwashed can come away from it with was, oh well it was a fun dumb movie. It doesn’t have to be deep right?
No doubt you’ve heard a lot of feminist complaining and lambasting about ‘male power fantasies’, while oft omitting the equally ‘toxic’ female fantasies. Here’s the deal, tho, they both exist for a reason. ‘Barbie’ is an example of a female fantasy, although as a female I could have done without the feminist pandering. It was one of the first movies in a long time to hit that feminine sweet spot. In an era of girlbosses, sometimes a girl just wants to be a fucking girl. That’s part of why this movie was so successful- women are desperately craving to be women and not just diet men!
I shall briefly take us on an excursion to the Marvel Universe and beyond- ew I know, but I’m making a point. Let me start by saying I have always hated Marvel, I dislike mainstream comic book heroes (but you can tear the og Teen Titans cartoon from the mid 2000’s from my cold, dead hands), and have a deepening hatred of what Disney has become. Unless you live under a rock, or mercifully off the internet, then you’ll know that Disney is, uh, not doing so hot.
They’re losing money left and right, embroiled in worthless lawsuits, the drama of the pompous and out of touch Rachel Zegler (weird, weird), lots of delayed and canceled releases, and their parks are only really being patronized by perverts. Even with their fingers in many pies, like Pixar, Marvel, Star Wars, etc, and with both movies and television via the catastrophically failing streaming service Disney+, they threw away billions of dollars last year. This year is looking equally good! For the haters anyway.
Sure the live action Little Mermaid grossed $569,626,289 worldwide, but cost $250 million to make and a reported $140 million in marketing. It needed to gross approximately $560 million just to break even. They just barely made a profit, and that was one of the more successful ventures. (Baring Guardians of the Galaxy, but that had a sort of grandfather status from the good times.)
‘Wish’, the supposed 1'00th celebration of Disney’s long animation history, was a disastrous failure. Not only was it critically panned, mocked, and universally hated by all sides, it cost $200 million to make. Although, it did gross $255 million, that’s not counting the marketing and other costs. It is reported that the movie in fact lost over $130 million! But, that’s not even the worst of it! The latest corpse of Indian Jones that they shuffled out of the closet, in a desperate attempt to replace him with a woman obvi, lost them another $143 million. ‘The Flash’, which featured famed nonbinary predator Ezra Miller cost the company $155 million. It’s hard to even quanitify how much money their Disney+ tv shows cost them either, but it is safe to assume it was a lot.
But ‘The Marvels’ takes the cake. Now by Zane’s logic, this movie was made to be ART. I mean it does feature three women, one of whom is black and another a muslim, and Samuel L Jackson throwing away his dignity to yell, “black girl magic!” It was directed by Disney’s youngest ever black woman for crying out loud! Now that is culture, that is AAARRRTTTTTTTT!!!! All the right ART boxes are ticked! It’s so punk, it’s so anti-establishment!
Never mind that to even being to understand this movie and its characters you need to watch the first movie, and the not one, not two, but THREE other Disney+ shows -two of which bombed, and one that was accused of using AI artwork. Never mind that the writing is nonsensical and underwent massive cuts and reworks, partially due to the director’s incompetence because she had never, uh, directed a movie like this before and partially because of all the other backlash. This movie is not only Disney’s biggest flop (so far), nor Marvel’s biggest flop, it is the worst super hero movie premiere EVER. This movie cost roughly, because Disney is desperate to hide this, $274.8 million not counting marketing costs and only grossed $206.1 million. It needed, minimum, $439.6 million just to breakeven. In total it is reported that the movie lost Disney $237 million.
But that’s ok, according to Zane, because it was made to be ART and there was no way that Disney wanted that sweet, sweet Twitter, Tumblr, Reddit SJW LGBTQIABCD+ money. The problem is that super hero movies, and action films on the whole, by and large and not exclusively, are a male power fantasy. Think of when Marvel was at its height, raking in billions and billions. The movies were spearheaded by predominately handsome, strong, sometimes charismatic sometimes complex, masculine men. There is, believe it or not, nothing wrong with men projecting themselves onto these heroes.
Men on the whole are beaten down and disenfranchised. They’re told they are dangerous, violent, almost certainly future rapists, misogynists, patriarchal, and the root of all of society’s problems and evils. There are no boys clubs anymore; they have been shut down or forced to allow in women or wannabe men (trans men.) At this point they only have a few options: toxic online video game communities, equally toxic and out of touch online forums, becoming trannies, or turning into willowy, soyboy simps like Zane. God Forbid the men want to escape our psychotic matriarchal society and fantasize about being a hero. About saving the day. Fuck me, about just doing something!
“Well the women are always the prize!” And??? And, Jessica??? Show me the most popular romcoms, the most popular dark romance novels that are infecting TikTok, show me the [standard] female power fantasy and show me how the men aren’t just meat puppet rewards for the she-doesn’t-realize-how-beautiful-she-is female mc. Edward and Jacob would not have fought such a legendary battle over BELLA FUCKING SWAN in real life. Bella, who is clumsy, medicore and normal looking, a plain jane, and Stephanie Myer’s Mormon self insert (we haven’t forgotten the floor length skirts, Steph.) And guess what? There is nothing wrong with that! It is a story, it is fake, it is not real, it can not hurt you.
Twilight is garbage, and frankly so are all the Marvel movies. They aren’t high art, but are they supposed to be? Or are they just some indulgent fun, that IF you want to psychoanalyze and explore the themes of, that fulfill some deeper desires in all of us? Is it possible that, sometimes, the movies and stories that make a lot of money, have value to the consumers? Regardless of what propaganda they [Zane] want to force onto you and your family? Is it really that bad to have fun art? The leftists are allowed to have their equvilent junk food movies like Barbie, which raked in money. (God his argument is so wrong in so many ways that trying to combat it is just putting out fires by lighting other ones.)
I don’t want to be reductive either, because good art can speak to us regardless of our sex. I really enjoy writing stories with romance as a major element, but if you put a gun to my head and told me to read/watch contemporary fiction romance, I’d say shoot me. I love good stories, but I like genres you can’t experience in real life. Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative Fiction, Weird Fiction, Supernatural and Paranormal. I enjoy a lot of “typically” male interests: I like first person shooters, anime -although this is a much bigger conversation, science fiction, tabletop roleplaying games, and select action movies (don’t come for me, but I have a soft spot for Terminator 2.) I hate a lot of “typically” female interests: contemporary romance, reality tv, makeup, erotica. Some of this shit is why I thought I was nonbinary for years. Reducing these interests down to who “typically” enjoys them is reductive and clearly dangerous, but doesn’t mean they don’t have a place with people who are, gasp, typical. Normies have rights too.
Now juxtapose all this with another movie that came out that year. One that fell in 10th place on the list for box office revenue falling under the new Spiderverse movie that treated us to a “protect trans kids” flag and a pregnant fucking black spiderwoman dommy mommy, the race-swapped Little Mermaid, and even fucking Ant Man. Sound of Freedom.
No doubt Zane was one of the people who was pro boycotting/silencing the movie. It grossed $250,570,396, which is nothing to sneeze at from a smaller Christian studio, with a $14,000,000 budget, that was halted and lambasted at every turn. The movie stars Jim Cavezail (who I love. Now that man is a Catholic icon!) and is a sort of biopic about Tim Ballard, an ex government agent turned pedophile hunter. The movie is about Operation Underground Railroad (which is a charity I couldn’t recommend more) that fights the ongoing and every growing worldwide issue of human, and particularly, child sex trafficking. I’m sure that Zane would call this movie a Christian, conservative, propaganda movie but were they really concerned with making money more than, oh how did he put it? What it was, “trying to say as a work of art and how it relates to ourselves and culture as people?”
Just listen to how the lead actor talks about this movie, vs any of the self absorbed and self indulgent diversity Hollywood hires talk about their projects.
Ok, final quote. Thanks for sticking it out this long!
“Horror has a modern internal problem with conservatism and fandom based centrism that excuses that conservatism and reinforces its power. We don't have enough time here to do the entire history of the genre, that would obviously take a while and this video is already quite long and we have more ground to cover still. but horror is an intrinsically left, punk, anti-establishment, counter-cultural art form that is primarily concerned with social issues and pushing boundaries beyond what is deemed acceptable by traditional more conservative, polite society. There's no other way that you can rationally look at it and still exist within reality. just about every major work of iconic horror has had a leftist message to what it is trying to say at its heart about the human condition and the people and the Taste Makers at the forefront of the genre pushing it forward from the very beginning up to modern day have always been transgressive artists looking to express something that they otherwise couldn't in more mainstream outlets. People of color, women, and queer people have often found a home in the genre where they otherwise might not have in other art forms. It is not a place for hateful ideas and it never has been.”
He goes on to speculate on who was queer, making pretty baseless assumptions that I guess he can jack it to later. Ok I’ll give you Oscar Wild, since he was a convicted gay pervert, but Lovecraft? Fucking Bram Stoker? Maybe stop jerking it to reddit nsfw and ao3 smut for 30 seconds, my guy, and touch grass. Although, I do think a lot of the early horror authors would vibe with this guy. Mary Shelley was a degenerate freak feminist, H.P Lovecraft is an over hyped atheist loser and mega racist who I’ve seen argued for being conservative (insert obligatory reference to his cat’s name), and Edgar Allan Poe was an incestuous pedophile.
I’d bet you all the money I have that Chuck Wendig, my mortal enemy and overall Bad Guy™, is his favorite author. (Someday I’ll air all my grievances about this man, but today is not that day.) No doubt that Wanderers must be his favorite book. Easily the worst book I’ve ever read. 5% really interesting plot, 95% liberal virtue signaling and hatred for rural America. A book so bad, so full of hate, so vitriolic that even when I was still fully brainwashed, remember I was basically only reading #OwnVoices books ew, I still wrote this review:
I know we are talking about horror, but Zane has broached the subject of classic literature first (and let’s be so honest, he’s only talking about the stories that got film adaptations because my guy doesn’t have the attention span to read anything other than Fuck Wendick.) I think it’s important to remember that horror is a niche genre, nor can anyone even begin to claim that it’s the most important genre to the overall canon of great storytelling. Horror is… it’s like dessert. A good dessert can compliment the meal and leave you satisfied, but bad dessert can leave you feeling bloated, crashing from a sugar high, and unsatisfied. I’ve read and watched waaaaaay more terrible horror than good, but I’ve consumed more good universally acknowledged media than bad. Basically, I’ve had way more bad desserts than I’ve had bad meals.
Can we really compare The Purge to The Brother’s Karamozov? Can we honestly say that Halloween and other such slashers are equal to War and Peace or Anna Karenina? Is the Scream franchise comparable to Sherlock Holmes? I know that I’m making a pretty bad faith argument and comparing apples to oranges, but I guess what I’m trying to say is… horror just ain’t that deep, bro. Look, there is nothing wrong with enjoying some trash, but let’s not try to pretend it isn’t trash. Let’s not act like it’s this heroic, punk, anti-establishment bastion of free thinking and ART.
And the whole history of horror, and in my opinion thriller because they go hand in hand, is leftist? Ok I’ll be sure to tell that to Alfred Hitchcock, a lifelong Roman Catholic. I will give it to Zane that leftists, atheists, and ‘transgressive’ people do make up a large majority of the more popular horror artists and ‘taste makers.’ It was pretty counterculture of Stephen King, the most well known horror author, to include a graphic gangbang between 11 year old children in his widely praised IT (this is real and it’s an important to the plot. I’ve read the damn book, and I wish I could take back those 45 hours.) They never seem to add that to the film adaptations tho. Hmm… I actually could go on a tirade about the book, how batshit insane, revolting, infuriating, uninteresting, and the wasted potential it has, but then we would be here for another 45 hours.
Stephen King is incapable of writing a story with a female character, even if she is ELEVEN YEARS OLD, without describing the state of her nipples at all times. The Shining is decent, but when the main leads get into a serious fight about their son’s mental illness, the fight is solved by suddenly fucking. This man once said he was so high and drunk that he doesn’t remember writing Cujo. How very transgressive and counter cultural of him.
Obligatory reminder that his son Joe Hill is by far a million times better at writing horror than his commie, worthless father. (Idk Hill’s politics, but isn’t it interesting that they don’t matter to me because he’s a good storyteller?) N0S4A2 is a masterpiece, and I’m loving The Fireman.
Now what’s really interesting is that Zane thinks that being a leftist is still somehow anti-establishment and counter cultural. In fact, being a liberal, is so anti-establishment that we’ve somehow come full circle to being establishment! Every government department waves high the pride flag, from the FBI, the education departments, the social workers, to all branches of military. The president is a democrat, the house and senate are majority democrat, the blue cities scattered across the country are running it for everyone. What more does Zane want?
The new and media are democrat too! Disney used to censor its content, just look at how much Alex Hirsch bitched about not being able to insert his propaganda into kids cartoons. Now they are full on endorsing it. In the parks, in the shows, in the movies. It’s fucking everywhere. Even ‘republican’ media is ideologically captured. I won’t forget Fox News hosts telling people to get the shot during Covid, and neither should you. They fired Tucker Carlson, and it doesn’t matter how you feel about him, it matters who benefited from trying to silence him. There is evidence to prove that the government silenced social media websites. People are in jail for praying, while pedophiles walk free with a slap on the wrist.
Horror is “not a place for hateful ideas” is also a funny take. Does this man know about splatterpunk? Books like Baby in a Blender, The Slob, The Playground that use horror as little more than a canvas for barely restrained fetishistic works? Works that frequently have no artistic value, and are certainly not concerned with money because most people don’t like reading them and certainly won’t pay real human money for them. How about movies like Saw and Hostel, which are little more than torture porn gorefests with nothing to say unless high IQ folks like him want to peel back the layers and pretend there is anything more than surface level excuses to make such violent movies?
And don’t get me wrong, I love a gory, violent movie. The Evil Dead remake is one of my favorite horror movies, and that movie is blood soaked. Cabin in the Woods, while a sort of parody and love letter to the slasher genre, has the entire fucking world get destroyed. Library at Mount Char is a surrealist novel with graphic dog and human deaths, rape, and the attempted destruction of the universe. N0S4A2 features sexual assault, murder, mental illness, and great harm against children. But all of these (with the exception of Evil Dead because I haven’t seen it in a hot minute lol) have a story that is being told under all the blood and violence. The horror veneer is necessary to telling the stories that they are. They are supposed to visceral and shocking. They are supposed to go that far, because under all the blood and guts, the stories about humanity. Sometimes they revisit trauma, retelling it in ways that give the writer power over the situation. There are nuggets of hope, fragility, and pure humanity at the core of them. They need to be painted on a canvas of blood to expose the beating hearts under it all.
I, obviously, take a lot of umbrage with what Zane has to say. I think the thing that gets under my skin isn’t the idea that conservatives can’t write horror, but that they shouldn’t be allowed to. Even more, that if you watch a scary movie or read a thriller novel- or let’s be real, if you consume a piece of media- and don’t walk away with ‘the correct’ view point, then your view of the art is wrong. That there is only one lens through which you are allowed to view the art. That, like, defeats the whole point of art, man.
At one point in the video he says that he loves that two people can watch the same movie and walk away with different opinions, but I don’t think he means that. Maybe he likes that that happens, but he clearly thinks there is only one correct way to view it. He overtly states that he thinks all media is political. I’ve been noticing this kind of problem for a while now, often times in relation to media literacy. One that started back with things like Cinema Sins and other YouTube videos and think pieces about “what the ending of XYZ movie really means” that exploded a while ago.
I love David Lynch (even if I think he often is very, very, very pretentious.) He’s a weird little guy who makes weird art. But once he puts it out there, he leaves it up to the audience to do with it what they will. They can love it, they can hate it, they can have any interpretation, and they are all right. I’ve heard it said that the point of art is that it makes you feel something. We can argue until we’re blue in the face about what constitutes good art, but just art at it’s core is supposed to be a universal experience. No two people are they same, so why should we all feel the same way about it?
I actually do like that two people can watch a movie and come away from it with two different opinions. But where I differ from Zane is that I think both people are right in their conclusions. I get flak for it, but I think you can separate the art from the artist, but that it is a personal decision. Some art you can seperate and some you just can’t, but you don’t deserve to be burned at the stake for either take. It may be worthwhile to examine the art through various lenses, because then you can walk away from it with even more. You can read a book through the lens the author told you to, what they wanted you to think and feel, but once that book is published the art itself no longer belongs exclusively to the author. Death of the author. Sure they own the legal rights and copyright, blah blah blah, that’s not what I mean.
Take for example Inception, and sorry for the hot Inception spoilers I’m about to drop. It’s a heist movie, but instead of stealing something, they enter people’s dreams and input ideas. To make the idea stick, they have to go incredibly deep, through layers of dreams. But the dream worlds are incredibly real and the dreamers can sometimes get lost in them instead of waking up. So they use totems, items that behave one way in the dreams and another in reality (which is actually a way to teach yourself to lucid dream btw.)
At the end of the movie, the main character, whose totem is a top that spins forever in a dream and stops in the real world, spins his top for one last time and walks away. The camera focuses on the top for a long time. It wobbles like it might fall, but the movie ends before it does or doesn’t and you’re left to wonder: did he stay asleep or did he wake up? The actual story is over, so this is the only question that remains. It digs at you and forces you to think about it.
But, that’s what Zane and those of his ilk don’t want you to do. They don’t want you to think. They want to think for you, and there is a wrong choice so you better not step out of line. Is that art, or is that propaganda?
