A Cultural Approach to the Popularity of American Horror Cinema during the 1970s and 80s

Aegina Brahim
This is a historiographical research paper about American Horror Genres appeal and its sudden mainstream popularity during the 1970s and 1980s. What role did Horror Cinema play in American culture during this turbulent period? And why is it so appealing to audiences?

Student Number: 3416836 Course: CMG Professor: Bart Dieho

[A CULTURAL APPROACH TO THE POPULARITY OF AMERICAN HORROR CINEMA DURING THE 1970S AND 80S] 2

Introduction:
The 1970s and 1980s could be marked as the shock of the century. Horror became a very popular means of artistic expression. Horror film attendance increased, merchandise production and distribution multiplied, fan cultures emerged and Goths became an entire subculture. The production of Horror was used as entertainment consumption and as a means to express political criticism. As Noel Caroll notes, it was the most accurate Post-Vietnam shifts in American interest or cultural interest. For over a decade and a half, perhaps especially in the united states, horror has flourished as a major source of mass aesthetic stimulation. (Noel Caroll, p. 1). About this time, scholars started taking an interest in horrors appeal as well as it gained more cultural significance. They discussed and analyzed these sensationalist movies critically, and gave them more meaning and appraisal. It seemed that from out of nowhere, horror became mainstream. Thompson and Bordwell write in Film History: an introduction that since the 1960s, low-budget independent filmmakers and production companies grew stronger, partly through the relaxing of the Production Code and partly through the decline of the Major Hollywood Companies as a result of the Studio Crisis.i In order to compete with the Majors, Independents had to largely focus on art-house and sensationalist films in order to attract audiences and hustle for screen-time in cinemas. The immense decline in movie production of the Majors at the end of the 60s created new opportunities for these independents: movie theatres, distribution channels and retail stores began to fill up their shelves and screening programs with these low budge productions. This filling of the market thus rapidly increased the visibility of independent films: a privilege that was previously reserved for Major Hollywood Productions. At the same time, the political, cultural, and social situation in America during the 70s promoted in society a craving for a more hedonistic lifestyle; the need for sensationalist expressions. According to Bruce Schulman, the prevailing concept of the 70s remains the idea of the Me-decadean era of selfishness, narcissism, and personal rather than political awareness. The 70s and 80s were a period where people lay emphasis on the skin, on the surface rather than on the root of things. It was a decade in which image became preeminent because nothing deeper was going on. (p. 145) The youth smoked weed all day and continuously sought forms of leisure, which had a relatively high shock or adrenaline-rush potential, but required as little effort or movement as possible.ii Horror, especially in the 80s, was the main form of leisure genre, and became even more popular with icon artists like Michael Jackson promoting artistic expression of the dark side of your emotions. Horror has become a staple across contemporary art forms, popular and otherwise, spawning vampires, trolls, gremlins, zombies, werewolves, demonically possessed children, space monsters of all sizes, ghosts, etc, at a pace that has made the last decade (1970-1990) or so seem like a long Halloween night. (Noel Caroll, p. 2) Horrors popularity spread from the film industry onto the music and music-video industry (Michael Jacksons Thriller album), was seen in literature (The Exorcist, The Shining, novels from Stephan King), in Broadway Musicals like Phantom of the Opera (1988), a horror/Goth-like theatre play, and post-modern art. Famous artists like Kirk Hemmit even collect horror-art; especially props from famous movie sets like Alien. The Goth subculture emerged and their manners of expression are now romanticized with films like Twilight (2008) and Lord of the Rings. Since horror is used as leisure, identity formation, and political criticism, the influence both horror genre and American culture had on one another should not be disregarded. In this article, I explore how and why exactly horror became so popular in the 70s and 80s, more specifically, I argue in favor of a cultural approach to horrors genre in order to

[A CULTURAL APPROACH TO THE POPULARITY OF AMERICAN HORROR CINEMA DURING THE 1970S AND 80S] 3 understand what role horror played in American culture during this time-period and ultimately to understand what is so pleasurable about it.

The Debate:
Horror Cinemas impact on American Culture and Hollywood industry has been debated in various ways. Scholars have continuously sought to explain horrors sudden popularity in the 70s and 80s by theorizing about the pleasures of the genre. In their eyes, understanding the paradox of fearwhy fear is pleasurablewould give them better insight into peoples sudden interest in horror fiction, as well as why horror fiction had integrated into cultural expressions and productions; why horror suddenly went mainstream. The influence of 70s and 80s horror is still witnessable today, as many films like Nightmare on Elm Street, and Alien are being re-shot, their merchandise reproduced and consumed, and their narratives discussed by film critics, film scholars, and fans. Before outlining my own approach, I would like to look at the various approaches scholars have took on horror cinemas appeal and popularity, ranging from cognitive and psychoanalytical perspectives, to phenomenological and integrational ones. One of the first scholars to theorize about the pleasures of horror is Noel Caroll in his popular study Philosophy of Horror: Paradoxes of the Heart. According to Carroll, the pleasure derived from horror fiction is cognitive. Carroll identifies the typical objects of horror as monsters, that is, beings that lie outside our standing conceptual schemes. Being violations of our usual categories of thought, he argues, such beings are disturbing, distressing, and disgusting. For the same reason, however, they attract our attention and elicit our curiosity: we want to know more about the nature and threatening behavior of those beings, to find out how their existence is unveiled in the fiction, and, eventually, how or if they can be destroyed. Such curiosity is aided and properly guided by the narrative, which is concerned to render the unknown known by processes of discovery, explanation, proof, hypothesis, confirmation and so on. Caroll thus lays emphasis on the plotting element and explains that in order to keep ones interest a filmmaker has to carefully structure the narrative in a way that excites the curiosity and impatience of the viewer after which he artfully delays disclosure of the monster and then relieving him of the situation he created. The appeal of horror is thus for Carroll the pleasure of the disclosure of the horrific being: a cognitive pleasure that supposedly is potent enough to compensate for the negative emotional side effects of our encounter with such a being. He takes a more general perspective on Horrors popularity and argues that although his theory on horrors pleasures does not specifically explain why horror became popular at that time, nor for that specific culture or audience, it does suggest that horror thrives cyclically.iii By analyzing the narratives and themes of 1970s and 1980s horror films, like for instance Nightmare on Elm Street and The Shining, he links the changes of the genre to poststress periods, claiming that horror cycles are likely to occur in periods of pronounced social stress in which horror fictions serve to dramatize or to express the prevailing malaise (p. 210). He suggests that the 1970s and 80s horror can be compared to postmodernist characteristics. Many of the monsters in the 70s and 80s horror films are, according to Caroll, return from earlier horror films. Aside from the fact that the periods films use more graphic violence, meaning different stylistic choice of displaying action and gore, Caroll argues that 70s and 80s horror cycle and postmodernism correlate insofar as both articulate an anxiety about cultural categories; both look to the past, in many cases with pronounced nostalgia; both portray the person in less than sacrosanct terms. (212) Since the increase in movie attendance and horror consumption increased in this Post Americana Period, Caroll suggests that horror became popular in that period because by watching the films, the audience could not only enjoy its narrative and disclosing appeal, it could return back to memories of the past

[A CULTURAL APPROACH TO THE POPULARITY OF AMERICAN HORROR CINEMA DURING THE 1970S AND 80S] 4 as well as gain a different perspective on the self, thus seeing in horror an escape from contemporary time and reflection upon ones own life. Matthew Strohl supports Carolls claim of narrative structure and disclosure of the monster, but points out that its main function is to create, enhance, and direct viewer emotions towards evaluation of the fearful experience. This approach alters the perspective on horrors popularity slightly. Strohl implies with this theory that fear as a painful and disgusting emotion is pleasurable because it is guided by narrative structure towards disclosure of the monster. This means that the narrative structure enhances our enjoyment of the film-moment, but that the viewer already enjoys seeing a chainsaw, for instance in Texas Chansaw Massacre, shred someone to pieces. Strohl points out that audiences inherently already enjoy fictive instances of pain and disgust, because these are not physical and are happening to some random character on screen. People find it fascinating to see sensational events that rarely happen to them in real life. Humans have a need to get to know that which is rare and new to them. Thus, he implies, that horrors popularity in the 70s and 80s can be partially explained due to its increase in visibility and screening opportunity, and partly because sensational movies occupied the viewers daily topics of conversation, whether they good or bad evaluations of it. However, Brigid Cherry points out that Strohl and Carolls perspective falls short in that their approach does pose an explanation for the increase in viewer attendance in horror movies, but does not account for its impact on broader American Culture. She prefers to take a psychoanalytical approach to the paradox of fear, arguing that horrors popularity during the 70s and 80s is a result of the parallel relation between Steven Schneiders Catharsis theory and Robin Woods explanation of the social, cultural and political situation in America. Woods argues that social, cultural, and political encounters had great affect on the production and distribution of horror films, which increasingly resonated cultural anxieties and ways to cope with them. Psychoanalysis has great resonance, but only in so far as it is melded with political awareness. (Woods in Cherry, p. 146) Cherry points out that such a [psychoanalytical] approach explains sudden shifts in genre and thus sudden shifts in audience preference and cultural meaning. (Cherry, p. 146) Furthermore, Cherry draws on Schneiders catharsis theory, which literally means to relieve from negative body emotions, and agrees with Matthew Hills who claims that Horror is said to narratively restore repressed material, before finally restoring repression itself via its narrative closures, or its textual boundedness. (Hills, 2005) This means that fear is pleasurable to the viewer, because, through narrative structure and creative exposure of the monster, he is first made to feel the uncanny and the abjectexperiences of cognitive dissonance where something is attractive (we want to understand it) and repulsive (fearful, disgusting) at the same timeafter which he is relieved of these suppressed negative emotions. The emphasis of fears pleasure lay thus in the relieve of it. The situation in the 70s, argues Woods, was one of many anxieties. Negative emotions welled up inside Americans surrounding trust in higher authorities and faith in the American Dream (which were important foundations for their secure feeling), who increasingly sought for ways to get rid of them. The disappointment in their own country and their own fellow men was a typical characteristic of this periodiv. Schulman supports this claim, and states that as a result of the oil crisis, audiences were also looking towards cheaper leisure activities closer to home. Filmmakers, argues Woods, went in on these new social developments by resonating broader cultural anxieties within the movies. Kendall Phillips displays in his study Projected Fears: Horror Films and American Culture, as proposed by Cherry, that in the 70s filmmakers and production companies changed their monsters from physiological and outerspace, like giant flies, to psychological and within the audiences trusted circle, like a family member or a neighbor. This allowed viewers to connect with victim as well as monster, which not only made horror more real, suggests Cherry, it allowed them to familiarize and transgress. For this reason, Cherry implies that horror increased in popularity. According to

[A CULTURAL APPROACH TO THE POPULARITY OF AMERICAN HORROR CINEMA DURING THE 1970S AND 80S] 5 Cherry, Horror is pleasurable because the experience of a horrific movie relieves viewers anxietiestheir repressed negative emotions. And as the Major Hollywood companies in turn discovered that sensationalist films generated large profits, they also began producing more of these films and its merchandise for cultural consumption. Horror thus became a cultural product of American society in the 70s and 80s, because the majors and independents focused more on producing sensational movies, knowing people enjoyed increasingly: people could now relieve their emotions more frequently. Kendall Phillips elaborates a little more on this theory, arguing that the sudden popularity was not only the result of production companies producing and distributing more sensationalist horror moviesCherrys theory is also not viable to explain why people consumed horror merchandise, since tangible products do not relieve negative repressed emotionsbut that the horror films produced were more influential: movies that became part of American culture as a result of heavy debates around them by scholars, fans, and governments, and the meaning they acquired within American society. In order for a film to be influential, to have impact, says Phillips, it needs to resonate with broader cultural anxieties and creatively violate (narrative) expectations. Connecting with broader cultural anxieties gives viewers a certain familiarity, while the narrative violation immerses them into the narrative and shocks them at the same time. The balance between resonance (familiarity) and violation (shock), argues Phillip, more importantly forces us to think differently about those (resonated) anxieties, or at the very least, to think about our normal patterns of dealing with those anxieties. (p. 8) According to Kendall, films like Night of the Living Dead (1968), The Exorcist (1973), The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974), Halloween (1978) are living examples of his theory. He argues that because more of these films incorporated resonant violation, they fostered heavy debate among fans, scholars, and governments and were awarded several prestige awards, giving the horror genre more critical acclaim, cultural approval, and thus lounging it off into mainstream culture. Horror films and horror culture became popular because it could now be appreciated for its controversial message about society instead of its (low culture) sensationalist relief. Horror now appealed to the conscience, rather than just the senses. People could defend or express their love for art-horror, without being looked-down upon as the genre or the movies were now something for the people to express themselves with, rather than being subject to it (like in porn). It is not something to relief you of emotions, but something to express your opinion. Accurate use of resonance violation gave films a purpose and meaning, and changed the genre from low cultural to high art. However, Andrew Tudor disagrees with general cognitive and psychoanalytical approaches, arguing that they are excessively reductive, particularly misleading, and conceptually inclined to neglect the variability of audience responses in the name of spurious generality.(Tudor, p. 4) These approaches are essentially normalist, in that they identify characteristics of the genre and its audience from analyzing texts. Tudor argues, genres are not fixed nor are they only bodies of textual material. (Tudor, p. 3) In so doing, they commit what Tudor terms the fallacy of generic concreteness. (p. 3) Genres are composed as much of the beliefs, commitments and social practices of their audiences as by texts, better understood as particular 'sub-cultures of taste' than as autonomous assemblies of cultural artifacts. Accordingly, it is only possible to speak of the appeal of a genre in a particular socio-temporal context. Tudor continues that genres change over time and sustain differently constructed audiences, thus conceiving genres variable and taking different pleasures over them. For this reason, Tudor argues, a truly universal approach to the subject is misguided. Even though he himself does not conduct a study of the sort, Tudor does implicitly plead for a more cultural approach to genre study and the paradox of fear, arguing that we do not need to look at Why horror? generally, but need to ask the question why do these people like this horror in this place at this particular time? And what are the consequenses of them constructing their landscapes of feareveryday sense of fearfulness and anxieties?

[A CULTURAL APPROACH TO THE POPULARITY OF AMERICAN HORROR CINEMA DURING THE 1970S AND 80S] 6 (Tudor, p. 9) Because Tudor could not explain exactly what kind of approach he wanted to take or how scholars should conduct it, his work has been disregarded for quite some time. Julian Hanich does agree with Tudor in that he also argues against cognitive and psychoanalytical approaches. Hanich claims that although Caroll argues cinematic emotions involve bodily states and phenomenological qualia, he never describes these states and qualia. The pleasure of fear, says Hanich, lies in the experience itself, not in its cognitive awareness. Hanich also refutes Schneiders catharsis theory, arguing that this theory implies that emotions during horror films are intensified and then removed or discharged so that the viewer will experience, at the very least, a feeling of reliefwhich is pleasurable. Hanich argues that Catharsis focuses solely on the end of the experience (the feeling of pleasurable relief at the end of a negative ride) and it makes no sense that people would want to sit through a horrible experience just for the relief at the end. Horror, in his eyes, is pleasurable in itself, not just the anti-climax. When treating fear as an experience, it is important to analyze how viewers experience fear. Therefor, Hanich argues in favor of a phenomenological approach to horrors popularity and appeal. Hanich argues that the pleasurable-fear experience is characterized by a balance act between the strong intertwinement of immersion and the loosened or even cut entanglement of extrication. (p. 101) What viewers enjoy in horror is the emotional immersion of Angst-Lust, i.e. pleasurable fear. Hanich states that co-existentialist versions of pleasure in horror, such as Carollsin which the cognitive pleasure of interest and the emotional displeasure of fear exist next to each otherhave to be replaced with an integrationist one. He quotes Moritx Geiger who argues When aesthetic pleasure is mixed with moments of displeasure, pleasure [] becomes bitter, more ambivalent, less uniform, but displeasure does not exist next to pleasure. In pleasurable pain, in enjoyable anguish these feelings merge with pleasure. (In Hanich, p. 100) Hence, Hanich continues, pleasurable fear (Angst-Lust) does not consist of two components (pleasure and displeasure); instead, it is one emotion (p.100). Contrary to Caroll, Hanich treats the feeling, the intertwinement between pleasure and fear, the lived-body experience, as most important immersion factor. He continues by saying that viewers like the fright, but can also not take too much, which explains why they shy away during a too frightening scene. For this reason Hanich argues that fear is pleasurable: the body experience immerses us into the story, and we can enjoy the frightful feeling because we experience it from a safe distance in a safe environment. According to Hanich, Horror should thank its popularity to the combination of his phenomenological theory and account of modernitys effects on the psyche of audiences. He draws on theories of Adorno, Foucoult and Weber, and argues that modernity created a hedonistic situation through the paradoxical simultaneity of suppression and revalorization of the body. This re-birth of modern hedonism fostered an increasing hunger for strong sensations via fiction. (Hanich, p. 154) Since watching horror provided the necessary thrill and sensationalist experience which 70s and 80s society so craved, Hanich argues, movie attendance increased rapidly when horror, during the Studio Recession, came from out of the Majors shadows into the screen-light. Hanich therefor claims that horrors popularity in the 70s and 80s is one of both coincidental fit of supply and demand: the increased need for sensational fiction and the sudden availability of a wide range of these type of leisure activities such as movie-going. George Ochoa, however, disagrees with Hanichs perspective and refers back to a cognitive approach. Scholars need to not look at bodily emotions, which are essentially easily changeable in different circumstances, but need to focus on longer lasting and more consistent experiences. He attacks Hanich by arguing that if audiences really sought the so called adrenaline rush they lacked in their daily life as result of modernity, they could supplement movie going for a simple roller-coaster ride. Ochoa also undermines the psychoanalytical

[A CULTURAL APPROACH TO THE POPULARITY OF AMERICAN HORROR CINEMA DURING THE 1970S AND 80S] 7 claims made by Cherry and Phillips. If audiences were looking for a relieve of negative emotions brought on by daily life, or sought an explanation and insight into their problems, a trip to the cinema could be substituted for a visit to their therapist. However, Ochoa argues, viewers explicitly seek out horror movie going as their primary leisure form, and therefore refutes Hanich, Phillips, and Cherrys arguments. In his opinion, humans have an intrinsic need to understand beings and new forms of beings, whether real or fictional. Ochoa thus argues in favor of Carolls cognitive approach, but claims however that it is precisely the monster that the audience is interested in, rather than Carolls not the monster as such, but the whole narrative structure in which the presentation of the monster is staged. (p. 11) He argues that the horror film exists primarily to present Deformed and Destructive Beings (DDBs or monsters), so that the audiences may satisfy their desire to see new beings otherwise inaccessible to them, (p. 12) a new form of being that would be virtually inaccessible if it really existed. This appeals to people because by nature humans wish to know being, preferably new and difficult-to-access forms of being. The purpose of horror is to satisfy the audiences desire to get to know forms of being, and thus to please the audience. (Ochoa, 2011) The pleasure in horrors fear therefor lies in the way viewers are made to apprehend the monster. Departing from this perspective, Ochoa implies that horror in the seventies became popular because viewers were presented with new, real forms of deformed and destructive beings. Ochoa therefor claims that genres are cyclical as well. However, even though Ochoas theory might validate the cyclical process of the horror genre, it does not generate an insight into the cultural aspect of horrors appeal. Besides that, Ochoa does not account for the unpleasantness the genre generates in its audience, whether the feeling is unpleasant or nor. Bantinaki lastly disagrees with Caroll and Ochoas cognitive approach, claiming that it is hard to provide a convincing account of the ways in which cognitive pleasure can outweigh affective pain, especially in repeated viewings or readings where the element of curiosity is lessened. It is also doubtful, Bantinaki continues, whether audiences indeed derive mostly cognitive and thus dispassionate experiences in response to horror fiction.(p. 3) Bantinaki thinks that horrors enjoyment is an emotional one, rather than cognitive. The narrative processes that Caroll highlights as basic in horror fiction may indeed be basic, but to the extent that they are instrumental to (that is, they aid and guide) that emotional engagement. (Bantinaki, p. 2) Therefore, Bantinaki takes an integrationist approach to the paradox of horror, which has its source in the viewers emotional engagement rather than his cognitive engagement with the film, and argues from Jesse Prinzs account of emotional valence that, The distinctive attraction of horror inheres primarily in the emotional experience it elicits, an experience that the subject welcomes for the benefits and rewards that it provides. (p. 10) Fear in response to horror films, according to Bentinaki, is experienced as an overall positive emotion that is, an emotion toward which the viewer has a positive stance and thus enjoys experiencing; leaving it open whether the emotional experience is also affectively pleasurable or affectively painful. The excitement that we feel in fearan excitement produced by physiological changes such as an increase in alertness and muscle tension, and increased heartbeat, etcis what makes fear potentially enjoyable, especially for someone who leads a relatively dull life. (Bentinaki, p. 6) Caroll raises an objection against this claim, undermining Bantinakis integrationist hedonic accounts of the appeal of horror. He argues that the feeling components of fear and, especially, disgust are at least uncomfortable and can be outright painful and distressful. Caroll states that the relevant emotionsrather than just the situations that elicit themare intrinsically unpleasant, so an account that traces the enjoyment of horror in the emotions it elicits would be doomed to failure. Now if we accept, as Carroll does, that fear is an emotion with invariantly unpleasant physiological symptoms (bracketing the reservations mentioned

[A CULTURAL APPROACH TO THE POPULARITY OF AMERICAN HORROR CINEMA DURING THE 1970S AND 80S] 8 above), we are forced to conclude that fear is necessarily a negative and thus an overall unpleasant emotion: the enjoyment of fear in our encounter with horror fiction would then indeed be paradoxical. However, Bantinaki actively counter attacks Carolls traditional view, claiming that the evaluation of bodily responses during horror moviessuch as increased heart acceleration followed by constrained breathing, etcare contextually bound and can thus be experienced both pleasant and unpleasant. Increased heart rate, heavy breathing, sweaty palms, etc, says Bantinaki are physically not painful, but are signs of arousal that can occur in both positive and negative emotions for example, at the sight of a snake and the sight of a loved one. Even symptoms that are commonly acknowledged as painsfor example, queasinesscan occur in euphoric conditions, as, for instance, when one is having an orgasm. (p. 5) The idea that emotions and their aspects are strictly dichotomized into mutually exclusive poles, positive or negative, thus seems to exclude the possibility of mixtures (that one can feel, for instance, sweet sadness or tormenting love) and overlooks the complexity and richness of daily-lived emotions. Bantinaki argues that fear during horror films is experienced as a positive emotion, and thus pleasurable, because it is experienced in a circumstance where the benefits and rewards gained from the overall experience surpasses the risks. According to Prinz, fear can become a positive emotion through learning and experience. [When] people discover that certain dangerous situations have benefits that outweigh the risks, fear is experienced as positive emotion, which explains viewers thrill seeking behavior. (Prinz in Bantinaki, p. 7) The first requirement for fear to become or be experienced as pleasurable is thus that fear needs to be experienced in a context that poses no threat to the individual, in order to reduce or control the risk factor. The subject should be able to maintain complete control over his own experience; meaning, that he or she has the ability to start, direct, and stop the experience whenever it becomes overwhelming or intolerable. The second requirement according to Bantinaki is that there should be benefits and rewards to be gained from the experience of fear in response. One of the benefits a viewer gets, says Bantinaki, is the challenge of his endurance limit of fearful experiences. Each time we learn to cope with the emotion, we master our bodily state and are thus more prone to cope in real-life situations. Bantinaki has a valuable point when discussing fears pleasures, but Andrew Tudor again debates against this theory of emotional yearning. Like in Hanichs case, phenomenological and integrationist approaches are also universal (meaning general and timeless). Since these theories argue that fear is pleasurable when met by certain requirements, anyone, anywhere, at anytime can enjoy a fearful experience. These approaches do not explain why horror went mainstream in the 70s, as they do not look at time- and culturally bound developments of a specific period. cannot stand alone when looking at horrors appeal in cultural contexts. This explanation of the pleasure of fear might be positively correct, but it cannot be used to explain why horror became popular at a particular time exactly, since the theory treats fears pleasures as universal and timeless.

The Problem and New Approaches:

The problem with previous approaches to horrors popularity and pleasures during the 1970s and 1980s is that all of them are normative, looking at the text first for explanations, rather than the other way around. For this reason, I would like to go back to Andrew Tudors pleads and argue in favor of Jason Mittels cultural approach to genre theory. Like Tudor, I agree that in order to understand this historical instance, we need not look at Why horror? generally, but need to ask the question why do these people like this horror in this place at this particular time? And what are the consequences of them constructing their landscapes of feartheir everyday sense of fearfulness and anxieties. Like Mittel, I argue that we need to

[A CULTURAL APPROACH TO THE POPULARITY OF AMERICAN HORROR CINEMA DURING THE 1970S AND 80S] 9 look at all parties involved in producing, distributing, legalizing, and consuming of horror movies during the 1970s and 1980s. We need to understand how each of these agencies are related to and influenced one another. Only if we have a clear picture of how and why horror became popular during that time period, can we better understand why audiences enjoy the fear it elicits.

Works Cited:
Caroll, Noel, Philosophy of Horror: Paradoxes of the Heart, Taylor and Francis Group, 1990, Print. Strohl, Matthew, Horror and Hedonic Ambivalence, Journal of Aesthetics and Art criticism, Spring 2012, Volume 70, Number 2, Print. Cherry, Brigit, Horror, Routledge Taylor and Francis Group, New York, 2009, eBook. Wood, Robin, The American Nightmare: Horror in the 70s, First Published 1990, Horror: The Film Reader, Edited by Marc Jancovich, Routledge, New York, 2002. Phillips, Kendall R. Projected Fears: Horror Films and American Culture, Library of Congress, USA, 2005. Tudor, Andrew, Why Horror? The Peculiar Pleasures of a Popular Genre, Horror: the Film Reader, edited by Marc Jancovich, Routledge, London, 2002, eBook. Tudor, Andrew, Why Horror? The Peculiar Pleasures of a Popular Genre, Horror: the Film Reader, edited by Marc Jancovich, Routledge, London, 2002, eBook. Ochoa, George, Deformed and Destructive Beings: The Purpose of Horror Films, McFarland and Company Publishers, London, 2011, eBook. Bordwell, David, Thompson, Kristin, Film History: An Introduction, McGraw-Hill, New York, 2003, Print. Mittell, Jason. Genre and Television: From Cop Shows to Cartoons in American Culture. Great Brittain: Routledge, 2004. Fahy, Thomas, The Philosophy of Horror, University of Centucky Press, 2010, eBook.. Conrich, Ian, Horror Zone: The Cultural Experience of Contemporary Horror Cinema, I.B. Tauris, 2009, eBook. Walters, Glen D., Understanding the Popular Appeal of Horror Cinema: an Integrated Interactive Model, Journal of Media Psychology, May 13, 2004, Volume 9, No. 2, Web. Schneider, Steven Jay, Horror Film and Freuds Psycho Analysis, Cambridge University Press, 2004, Print.

[A CULTURAL APPROACH TO THE POPULARITY OF AMERICAN HORROR CINEMA DURING THE 1970S AND 80S] 10 Schulman, Bruce, The Seventies: The Great Shift in American Culture Society, The Free Press, New York, 2001, Print. Bantinaki, Katerina, The Paradox of Horror: Fear as a Positive Emotion, Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, Volume 70, Number 4, Fall 2012, Print.

Studio Crisis: The Hollywood film industry was suffering from heavy losses. The popularity of the Television made fewer people visit the cinemas. It was a period when the need for innovation was high, but the budget very low. In order to cut back on expenses, The Majors like Paramount and Warnerbrothers produced less productions, focusing only on those with absolute blockbuster guarantee, like for instance films like The Graduate. ii Conrich, Ian, Horror Zone: The Cultural Experience of Contemporary Horror Cinema, I.B. Tauris, 2009, eBook. Conrich explains in his introduction that the social situation in America in the 70s and 80s was one of relatively low engagement in politics, since the trust in the government and corporate life was largely lost as a result of the Watergate scandal and oil-crisis. People turned inward, focusing on themselvestheir happiness and means for success and acted careless to political issues or societys problems, morals, or values. iii Caroll, Noel, Philosophy of Horror: Paradoxes of the Heart, Taylor and Francis Group, 1990, p. 207.
i iv