00:00:00.000So let us discuss the question of horror movies.
00:00:03.000Apparently, major controversy broke out online between two of my friends, Ali Beth Stuckey and Matt Walsh, over horror movies.
00:00:12.000So, Ali Beth made a comment about horror movies that maybe was taken a little out of context.
00:00:17.000Here's what she had to say I just don't think it is at all an option for Christians to not only fully participate in Halloween and all of its darkness and scariness, but I also just don't think that Christians should.
00:00:56.000Like, being scared is not like, how many times, how many times do we read throughout scripture from Jesus and in the Old Testament, do not fear?
00:01:08.000And yet, we purposely consume content that is meant to make us scared.
00:01:13.000Okay, so if what she means is that there's certain content that makes you paranoid about the world and makes you believe false things about the threat of the world, then I agree with her.
00:01:21.000But if we're just talking about, say, horror as a genre or suspense as a genre, disagree.
00:01:27.000So Matt Walsh put out a tweet that I generally agree with.
00:01:31.000He said, I'd actually argue that horror is the most Christian genre of film.
00:01:34.000Obviously, that's not true of the torture porn stuff, films in the Texas Chainsaw Massacre tradition.
00:01:38.000But supernatural horror is often subtly Christian and sometimes very explicitly Christian.
00:01:42.000It's the only category of film where the supernatural, demon spirits, exorcism, the church, et cetera, are consistently taken seriously.
00:01:49.000The only genre where the priest might actually be the good guy.
00:01:51.000Horror has deep roots in Christian thought and tradition.
00:01:53.000That, of course, is, he's right about that.
00:01:54.000Not only that, virtually every horror matrix, at least the classics, they're all built on the idea that sin is punishable in reality.
00:02:03.000This is why whenever you have somebody, it's like a classic horror movie trope.
00:02:06.000They make fun of it in scary movies, that if there's a girl who is, shall we say, getting around, That she's a Tate McRae in it.
00:02:13.000You know, if that's happening, then she's usually the first to go in the horror film.
00:02:18.000And usually it's the innocent girl next door who's just trying to babysit her siblings who ends up surviving.
00:02:47.000If you live in the critical Senate battleground states of Alaska, Michigan, Maine, Ohio, Iowa, or Texas, early voting is already underway this week, like right now.
00:03:20.000The typical reason is because human beings, especially in the very rich West, we tend to overconsume scary genres like horror or like suspense.
00:03:33.000And the reason for that is because if you're living in an actual horrible situation or a suspenseful situation, you want some escapism.
00:03:39.000You don't actually want to be in a position where you're seeing terrible, terrible things.
00:03:44.000The human brain has a desire to sort of simulate and prep for things.
00:03:47.000It's the same reason why you have nightmares.
00:03:49.000So, Jordan Peterson on his podcast, I remember there was an episode of his podcast where he talked about dreams and nightmares.
00:03:54.000And one of the things that he talked about in that podcast, from a psychological perspective, is that the reason you have nightmares is because your brain is testing out the limits of what you would do if a bad thing were to happen.
00:04:05.000So, you can experience the risk without experiencing the downside of the risk.
00:04:08.000Also, by the way, why very important for fathers to play rough and tumble with their kids because it means that kids can experience the quote unquote risk of the world without actually being risked in a physical way.
00:04:18.000It's why kids love that kind of activity with their fathers, particularly.
00:04:23.000So, when you watch a horror film, very often what you're doing is you're activating the amygdala, like your fear center of the brain, and your prefrontal cortex is then dealing with, oh, that's not real.
00:04:33.000If you thought it was real, you wouldn't watch a horror movie.
00:04:36.000The more real it is, but the more you know that it's not real, probably the better these sort of thrillers are.
00:04:43.000So, that is actually why we consume that sort of content.
00:04:45.000Now, again, I agree with Alibeth that there are genres of horror, and I think Matt would agree with this too.
00:04:49.000I think actually we would all agree with this.
00:04:51.000There are genres of horror that are simply about the degradation of the human being.
00:04:55.000They're just kind of gross and icky, and they're ugly images in your head the rest of your life, and you don't need that kind of stuff.
00:05:01.000And there are horror movies that are meant to spread lies about people.
00:05:07.000But the reason that the human being craves suspense or thriller kind of content is because your brain is doing sort of prep work for the possibility of danger arising at some point in the future.
00:05:18.000That's sort of the scientific basis for all of that.
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00:05:50.000So either we will be happier than you expect or we will be, you know, at the bottom of the bottle.
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