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Scream
Did the people who made this movie know they were creating the most over-used Halloween costume of all time?
Comments
>Halloween thread
By George, we skipped Thanksgiving altogether!
Seriously. I actually felt the urge to scream at the top of my lungs when I read the title
If I sounded like Seth Green then I'd get all the bitches.
Also, I simply dislike suburban middle-class horror without supernatural elements. Seriously, give me a break. As if someone, at some point, doesn't just pick up some kind of convenient tool and brain the bad guy. Crowbar > knife. I find that most non-supernatural horror, unless done particularly well with a strong context, kinda fails on the level of making the antagonists anything to be scared of. In most cases, you need white, teenage, middle-class, suburban victims because no-one else lacks the requisite balls for someone within the cast to take on some bastard dressed up scary with a knife.
When your antagonist is just an unhinged human with no special skills... meh.
If a white teenage middle-class suburban victim can take on the murderer they can also be the murderer.
By and large, the entire genre is too steeped in tradition and rigid surface formula to play with that, of course, but in principle...
I kind of like the idea of fear being a very important aspect for a slasher. It doesn't translate very well into horror, admittedly, but I like the idea.
Honestly, I enjoyed Scream not because it was a horror movie, but because it did amuse me way back when I watched it. And it's far more consistent in terms of quality than Friday, Halloween or Nightmare.
This is true. Then again, how many victims did the guy claim? And that's if running is possible at all; someone convinced they're going to die is just as likely to snap and fight as to beg. All it takes is a frying pan and moment of desperation.
^^ You think mere BULLETS will stop Alex!?
I mean.
Food for thought.
And bullets would work just fine. Probably.
Keep in mind the weeabooism has been going on for a while now. It arguably got its beginnings in the 19th century, where Western domination of Japan started a cultural surge in England much the same way that the domination of India did the same. If memory serves, the kimono even became something of a fashion statement at one point. I've also heard that dressing gowns are descended from the kimono fashion of this period. I'm not sure if that's true, but it seems pretty sensible -- I'm wearing a dressing gown right now, and it's the only piece of clothing I own which is robe-like, complete in one piece and is tied together with a soft fabric belt.
So some kind of fascination with Japan and its ways has been with us for well over one hundred years at this stage. The last half-century or so fuelled that fire pretty well. Allied soldiers fighting in Japan captured katanas, which became war trophies. Many, I believe, are still owned by American families to this day -- captured weapons from a different culture, but ones that have become ancestral in their new context. From our perspective, katanas are just so bizarre; they've got a tiny handguard, a fairly short blade for such a long grip, and their construction is consummately Japanese, with different layers of steel forming "suspension" for the blade.
Via Japanese media, popular in the West as early as 1956 with Godzilla, we start to become influenced. This early media foundation is important, because it paves the way for the combination of martial arts films, samurai films and anime that probably saw Japan's cultural export at its most mainstream in the West during the 80s. The 80s Japanese-influenced media outburst (including Japanese cinema, adaptation of Japanese works and just flat-out ridiculous stuff like American Ninja) in turn sets us up for the last 20 years, where the Japanese dominate video gaming and continue to export anime.
Persians, on the other hand? They're long gone and, being Middle Eastern, are closer to ancestral adversaries than anything else. Between the Muslim invasions of Europe during the early medieval period and the Crusades of the high medieval period, sword-relevant relations with the Middle East have always been decidedly slashy. Furthermore, they actually considered European swords superior to theirs -- "Frankish" swords to them, although every European was a "Frank" in their vernacular. West Asia's finest swords were probably made by the Indians, who had access to the finest steel and struck the most balance between European straight designs and more "native" curved designs.
In short, one has to keep in mind that we're biased and we react to what we're exposed to over long periods of time. Medieval Europeans probably thought that their swords were the best in the world, having on the Middle East and North Africa to compare themselves to. North Africa's an interesting case, though, as North Africa was traditionally Muslim territory. Despite these Middle Eastern influences, North African swords had a tendency towards straight-bladed, cruciform designs. They're really interesting; I wonder if they're the same as European swords, or of the same shape with different construction? What challenges did the North Africans face that necessitated straight swords?
We really don't know much about North Africa in context of the medieval period, which is a shame. By the time the high medieval period rolls around, around 1100 or so, they're not big players anymore, but they're certainly a piece of the puzzle.
(And there you have it, ladies and gents. Japan to North Africa via swords. I hope you enjoyed your flight.)