a recent headline caught my eye: Coronavirus pandemic spurs Australian movie producers to favour feel-good films
well, nothing good lasts forever – and so, according to industry experts with far more experience and cred than i, the horror genre’s current popularity will come to an end when the current pandemic passes
audiences will be looking for “feel good” experiences they argue – pointing to changes in viewing habits after WWI and the Spanish Flu pandemic, and post WWII
and if you look at the graph below ... well, maybe they’re onto something
see graphs here – ht: No Film School
the graph is part of a larger group of graphs (created by Bo McCready) that tracks horror and eleven other genres over the same time period – the graphs are interactive, detailing the most popular movies per genre, per year ... interesting stuff
however, i do have some “issues” with these industry experts’ prognostications – and not just because i’m fond of horror movies
let’s begin with that standard piece of boilerplate slapped on the end of ads for financial products: Past performance is no guarantee of future results.
this isn’t just a nice, little “get out of jail card” for spruikers[2] of shonky financial products, it is also recognition of the fact that many things are just too complicated to be able to predict ... for example, how our current pandemic will play out
sure, in the past, a certain pattern appears to have played out – but that doesn’t mean it will do so again – people may not change, but the environment they’re living in certainly does – and this impacts upon how they react to changing circumstances
for example, look at the more recent end of the graph – it appears, to my untrained eye at least, to contradict, or at least call into question, the notion that after the societal trauma of 9/11, people turned their attention to the “feel goods”
the graph makes it clear that they didn’t – and the other graphs (including Romance and Comedy) seem to bear this out
why is this? i’d argue it’s because, since 9/11, we never actually reached a “post-crisis” stage[3]
instead, we have lurched from one crisis another – y’know the list: wars, domestic terrorism, epidemics and pandemics, the rise of political extremism and the growing threats posed by Anthropogenic Global Warming
all this, while many of us struggle to get by in stagnating economies where we’re forced to work more for less, while whatever protections we once had are being reduced or removed
but let’s say that COVID-19 is tidied away within the next few months and the predicted global depression ends up being a non-event … the world will still be stuck with dealing with all the other shit
and so the assumption that in the near future, people will, en masse, search out “feel good” content after all this is over, is, to my mind, a little dubious (at best)
until that halcyon day when we finally (collectively) get our shit together, many of us will want (NEED) horror – either to “inoculate” ourselves against the real horrors that surround us – or as a form of escapism, when the other genres are just too “feel good” to be palatable – or just to experience that blessed release we feel when a nightmare finally ends
... or at least, that’s my opinion – but then, i’m just some nuff-nuff with a horror script i’m planning to sell
[1] nickname for Australia’s goverment-owned media, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation
[2] spruik – to sell or promote – named after the ladies and gents who used to (and probably still do) stand outside certain stores and yell about the high quality and low prices of the merchandise therein
[3] by “we” i mean that subset of humanity commonly referred to as the West – not that the rest of the planet isn’t dealing with the same shit (and then some!) – but the article is about producing films for Western (particularly Australian) audiences