horror and middle class anxiety
As I've been spending a bit more time with the manuscript of dark country as I get it publication ready and thinking about summertime and horror movies and drive-ins (which are experiencing a renaissance during the covid-era, but I haven't yet made it to one.) When I was 6 or so, my parents took me to see a double feature that included The Shining. Or more accurately, I fell asleep through parts of it, so it remained fuzzy as to what actually happens in that movie until I was older. My dad has a similar love of horror, so once we had a VHS player in the house, I saw everything he did--Funhouse, Ghoulies, Friday the 13th, Ghost Story. My mom, on the other hand, claimed she hated them, but never denied I and my sister the chance to watch things that most children would be forbidden from. At around 10, Friday nights weekly involved a trip to the video store for a stack of horror movies, then the drugstore for candy to keep us occupied while my parents went to bowling. My favorites--Sleepaway Camp, Nightmare on Elm Street. Adolescence included convincing my Aunt Nancy, who also loved horror, to take me and my cousin to see new releases that were always R rated. Later, as my friends landed drivers' licenses, going to the discount Belford theatre where movies were under $2 and they never carded to see things like Silence of the Lambs.
Of course, it was the 80's and there were many real things to be afraid of. We had a lot of freedom as kids-but the narrative was continuous as what could go wrong...poisoned trick-r-treat candy, satanists killing cats in the park, men in white vans, disappearing girls and women. Slashers that waited in back seats and under parked cars. For a decade in which there was so much to be worried about, we actually had a lot of freedom. I walked to school alone at 8. Had run of our neighborhood at 10 and was left to babysit my sister. When my mom went back to work when I was 11, we were alone in the house after school on the regular--not just us, but also my cousins who lived next door. I remember another cousin and I riding bikes at full speed over and over around the curve at the end of the road that had a downhill slope, something my mother did not know about, but that was probably pretty dangerous. We were left alone in parked cars more than we were not. I walked back and forth between a friends house every night before dinner and had to get past an angry doberman that could very easily have attached. By the next decade, no one would have given kids the freedom and responsibility we had. I would argue it made us more adult and independent and resilient at a younger age, something that did us well as we transitioned to adolescence. I've always said it made me less afraid, but also more afraid. (I knew what dangers lurked in the world, real or imagined, but I also knew what to do about them--where to seek help, how to fight back.).
As I initially wrote the poems in dark country, for all it's feral children and domestic dangers, the world now seemed so much more frightening. I may have had to be afraid of lurkers in white vans, but I did not have to worry about school shooters. About men shooting up the theatres and malls where we had free reign. All of the made up fears I parents had in the 80's were nothing like real fears today. So in many ways, I came out of that decade innocent. I remember being shocked, when I arrived at college in NC that we had to be careful to watch our drinks and make sure no girl was out of sight for too long. My high school social circle had been mostly girls til that point--I had little clue of the danger in male-dominated spaces like dorms and frat parties. When a friend of a my suitemates friend from home got drunk and tried to casually break into my dorm room while I was sleeping alone, I learned my lesson pretty quickly.
A couple years ago, a friend I went to a conference about slasher movies, and the keynote speaker was taking about gothic novels and the victorians' love of scaring themselves. In a world where you had some measure of safety--real or perceived--people long to be scared. Long to be horrified. It makes things less boring. It sets your pulse racing, but like a roller coaster, it's something with safe parameters. You might think you're going to die, but you likely won't. There's a certain level of safety you need to feel to enjoy horror. To enjoy being scared by pretend things as opposed to the very real things.
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