Michael Dodd" />
  • ABOUT
  • PRINT
  • PRAISE
  • SUBSCRIBE
  • OPENINGS
  • SUBMISSIONS
  • CONTACT
The Missing Slate - For the discerning reader
  • HOME
  • Magazine
  • In This Issue
  • Literature
    • Billy Luck
      Billy Luck
    • To the Depths
      To the Depths
    • Dearly Departed
      Dearly Departed
    • Fiction
    • Poetry
  • Arts AND Culture
    • Tramontane
      Tramontane
    • Blade Runner 2049
      Blade Runner 2049
    • Loving Vincent
      Loving Vincent
    • The Critics
      • FILM
      • BOOKS
      • TELEVISION
    • SPOTLIGHT
    • SPECIAL FEATURES
  • ESSAYS
    • A SHEvolution is Coming in Saudi Arabia
      A SHEvolution is Coming in Saudi Arabia
    • Paxi: A New Business Empowering Women in Pakistan
      Paxi: A New Business Empowering Women in Pakistan
    • Nature and Self
      Nature and Self
    • ARTICLES
    • COMMENTARY
    • Narrative Nonfiction
  • CONTESTS
    • Pushcart Prize 2017 Nominations
      Pushcart Prize 2017 Nominations
    • Pushcart Prize 2016 Nominations
      Pushcart Prize 2016 Nominations
    • Pushcart Prize 2015 Nominations
      Pushcart Prize 2015 Nominations
    • PUSHCART 2013
    • PUSHCART 2014
Arts & Culture, Film, The CriticsAugust 31, 2014

Safe Scares: How 9/11 caused the American Horror Remake Trend (Part One)

By Michael Dodd

Frightening the audience is the fundamental goal of the horror film but it can be a difficult and intricate feat to pull off. Shocks and surprises can make the cinema-goer jump in their seat, but in order to truly terrify the viewer and send them home still shivering at what they just witnessed, the filmmaker has to go deeper. True horror comes from what terrifies us in our everyday lives.

white-zombie1Throughout its history Hollywood has consistently produced horror trends that capture and put into sharp focus what the American movie-going public is most afraid of. Often what takes place on the big screen embellishes and reinforces these fears, but the cinematic trends are always rooted in already existing terrors. In the inter-war years when the United States took on an isolationist policy, the trope of the American protagonist finding him or herself in danger on foreign soil became the norm, as evidenced by such titles of the period as White Zombie (1932). Such was the prevalence of this plot technique that it effectively reworked non-American stories and moulded them to fit the trope, turning British characters into Americans and having them menaced by a distinctly foreign entity like Dracula.

With the onset of the Cold War and growing discomfort over destructive scientific research, the pulp elements of the American horror market began to churn out creature features that explored how far this malevolent experimentation would go, and what sort of consequences it would unleash. Perhaps the best known of these titles was The Fly released in 1958, a bluntly disturbing warning against mankind’s inventive and explorative nature whose message was that by using our intelligence and modern technology in the wrong way, we may propel ourselves backward to a more bestial form.

There was more Cold War symbolism. When the United States was gripped by a so called “red scare” in the 1950s and McCarthyism dominated the political landscape, the movies provided more close-to-home tension. Don Siegel’s 1956 masterpiece Invasion of the Body Snatchers is one of the most multifaceted horror films ever made. Simultaneously exploiting the contemporary fear of infiltration by undesirable elements as well as a burgeoning concern over homeland totalitarianism in the wake of Senator Joseph McCarthy’s notorious communist witch hunt, it may be the clearest window into the American psyche that horror cinema has ever provided.

In the 1970s and 1980s America was gripped by an epidemic of serial killings that saw names like Ted Bundy, John Wayne Gacy and Richard Ramirez burned into the public consciousness. It can come as no surprise that during this period the most popular style of horror was the Slasher movie. The names of Bundy, Gacy and Ramirez were joined in America’s collective psyche by those of Michael Myers, Jason Voorhees and Freddy Krueger, who though sometimes outlandish shared key traits with their real life counterparts: an apparent lack of human conscience, an appetite for young victims and, most frightening of all, they seemed unstoppable.

Safe Scares PicBy the end of the twentieth century horror had modernised its ability to be all-encompassing in expressing the fears of American society. The Blair Witch Project (1999) carried a simple yet powerful message about the future. In an age where anyone can film whatever they like, horror needn’t be a cinematic expression of what terrifies the cinema-goer, it can simply be the medium through which terrors captured by the average American can be showcased. The found-footage phenomenon would continue into the twenty-first century.

It is clear that the American horror movie has a lineage of identifying the worries and fears of the contemporary viewing public and utilising them for the fullest, most pure terror. So when an unprecedented event rocked the United States at the beginning of the twenty-first century, history dictated that American horror cinema would explore the subsequent fears that it brought about.

The path which the American horror movie would follow after 9/11 however does not at first glance appear to conform to history. Just as this tragedy affected politics, war and even aspects of the way we live our lives, so September 11th had an impact on the Hollywood horror film, but rather than showcasing and examining the fears of the post-9/11 United States, American horror has seemingly suffered a kind of regression. Whereas previous widely held fears have spawned a plethora of contemporary scary movies imbued with themes taken directly from what spooked the public, the 2001 terrorist attacks appear to have been too traumatic to attract such focus. Instead, the business of scaring the movie-going American audience has largely been dedicated to revisiting the scares of old. A remake culture has been in practice for much of this young century, and for all intents and purposes 9/11 seems to have been responsible.

In the next part of this article we will explore how 9/11 is not only arguably responsible for the recent spate of American horror remakes, but for the tone and content of these re-imaginings as well. We will also determine whether American horror cinema has explored post-9/11 fears, and to what extent.

Michael Dodd is a film critic for the magazine.

Tags

2014filmMichael DoddSafe Scares

Share on

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Pinterest
  • Google +
  • LinkedIn
  • Email
Previous articleReinventing the Reel: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
Next articleSafe Scares: How 9/11 Caused the American Horror Remake Trend (Part Two)

You may also like

Tramontane

Blade Runner 2049

Loving Vincent

Ad

In the Magazine

A Word from the Editor

Don’t cry like a girl. Be a (wo)man.

Why holding up the women in our lives can help build a nation, in place of tearing it down.

Literature

This House is an African House

"This house is an African house./ This your body is an African woman’s body..." By Kadija Sesay.

Literature

Shoots

"Sapling legs bend smoothly, power foot in place,/ her back, parallel to solid ground,/ makes her torso a table of support..." By Kadija Sesay.

Literature

A Dry Season Doctor in West Africa

"She presses her toes together. I will never marry, she says. Jamais dans cette vie! Where can I find a man like you?" By...

In the Issue

Property of a Sorceress

"She died under mango trees, under kola nut/ and avocado trees, her nose pressed to their roots,/ her hands buried in dead leaves, her...

Literature

What Took Us to War

"What took us to war has again begun,/ and what took us to war/ has opened its wide mouth/ again to confuse us." By...

Literature

Sometimes, I Close My Eyes

"sometimes, this is the way of the world,/ the simple, ordinary world, where things are/ sometimes too ordinary to matter. Sometimes,/ I close my...

Literature

Quarter to War

"The footfalls fading from the streets/ The trees departing from the avenues/ The sweat evaporating from the skin..." By Jumoke Verissimo.

Literature

Transgendered

"Lagos is a chronicle of liquid geographies/ Swimming on every tongue..." By Jumoke Verissimo.

Fiction

Sketches of my Mother

"The mother of my memories was elegant. She would not step out of the house without her trademark red lipstick and perfect hair. She...

Fiction

The Way of Meat

"Every day—any day—any one of us could be picked out for any reason, and we would be... We’d part like hair, pushing into the...

Fiction

Between Two Worlds

"Ursula spotted the three black students immediately. Everyone did. They could not be missed because they kept to themselves and apart from the rest...."...

Essays

Talking Gender

"In fact it is often through the uninformed use of such words that language becomes a tool in perpetuating sexism and violence against women...

Essays

Unmasking Female Circumcision

"Though the origins of the practice are unknown, many medical historians believe that FGM dates back to at least 2,000 years." Gimel Samera looks...

Essays

Not Just A Phase

"...in the workplace, a person can practically be forced out of their job by discrimination, taking numerous days off for fear of their physical...

Essays

The Birth of Bigotry

"The psychology of prejudice demands that we are each our own moral police". Maria Amir on the roots of bigotry and intolerance.

Fiction

The Score

"The person on the floor was unmistakeably dead. It looked like a woman; she couldn’t be sure yet..." By Hawa Jande Golakai.

More Stories

Mary’s Reading

“…I waylaid her one frozen/ morning on her way to Bacon Hall/ French class & we had a brief scene…” Weekend Poem, by Peter Grieco.

Back to top
One last love letter...

April 24, 2021

It has taken us some time and patience to come to this decision. TMS would not have seen the success that it did without our readers and the tireless team that ran the magazine for the better part of eight years.

But… all good things must come to an end, especially when we look at the ever-expanding art and literary landscape in Pakistan, the country of the magazine’s birth.

We are amazed and proud of what the next generation of creators are working with, the themes they are featuring, and their inclusivity in the diversity of voices they are publishing. When TMS began, this was the world we envisioned…

Though the magazine has closed and our submissions shuttered, this website will remain open for the foreseeable future as an archive of the great work we published and the astounding collection of diverse voices we were privileged to feature.

If, however, someone is interested in picking up the baton, please email Maryam Piracha, the editor, at maryamp@themissingslate.com.

Farewell, fam! It’s been quite a ride.

Read previous post:
The Courage Necessary

"They wanted to live on the Moon, so they did. One day, they just got into their rocket ship, and...

Close