HORROR, MONSTER, SUPERHERO, APOCALYPSE: MOVIES IN TIMES OF CRISIS
Starburst Magazine|July 2020
Films usually serve as one of two things: a means of escape or a means of confronting fears and processing trauma. Often the two are not mutually exclusive, and instead work in tandem as a two-step healing process.
Laura Potier
HORROR, MONSTER, SUPERHERO, APOCALYPSE: MOVIES IN TIMES OF CRISIS

For example, in the wake of the Red Scare and McCarthyism came films about alien invasions and pod people; the consumerist age of the eighties saw films rebelling against traditional values and presenting a much darker view of youth – the vicious comedy Heathers (1988) being a prime example; the computer age led to a wave of films exploring the meaning of free will, existentialism, and our own obsolescence.

Turning to movies in times of crisis is a common means of processing traumatic events and, equally, films will tend to engage with contemporary concerns. After all, isn’t the symbiotic relationship between entertainment and current events one of the most potent influences on culture? Here, STARBURST explores how movies engaged with times of dramatic social revolution and crisis at three historical junctures: the rise of horror movies after World War I, the popularity of monster features in the early years of the Cold War, and the rise of the superhero film after the September 11th attacks.

Learning from these trends, what then can we anticipate from movies once the Covid-19 pandemic is behind us? What film genre will proliferate, and will the movie industry opt for escapism or will it embrace the fears and anxieties that gripped the world?

“The Cosmic Vampire That Has Sucked the Blood of Millions”

– Albin Grau, dir. Nosferatu.

The War, Death, and Mutilated Bodies in Horror Cinema

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