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We watch a romantic comedy because we want to cry, say, or an action movie so we can participate in heroics. Horror's different. It can hit you with a moment of revulsion so hard you might want to erase the last five minutes of your life, please.
Stephen Graham Jones
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Interpretation

What this quote means

This quote reflects the emotional experiences different genres evoke in viewers.

Stephen Graham Jones explores how various film genres appeal to our emotions in distinct ways. While romantic comedies and action films draw us into joyful or heroic scenarios, horror films provoke intense feelings of revulsion and discomfort, driving us to wish away the unsettling moments they present. This highlights the complex role cinema plays in shaping our emotional landscape.

Themes

HorrorEmotionsCinemaFilm GenresRevulsion

In practice

Example use cases

In a film discussion, to highlight emotional responses audiences have to horror films.

More from Stephen Graham Jones

Horror, of all the genres, is the only one that can provoke an involuntary visceral reaction.
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The way humor's usually used in horror, it's as a pressure-release valve; without it, the drama would escalate out of all control almost immediately.
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Most zombie stories, the problems they solve are not the actual zombies. The problems they solve are the human interactions.
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Every time I lock my people in a spacecraft or land them on an asteroid, the blood wells up again, and I'm writing horror. Horror's my default setting. It's also where I prefer to write.
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Making people laugh is so much more difficult than making them sad. Too much fiction defaults to the somber, the tragic. This is because sad endings are easy in comparison - happy endings aren't at all simple to earn, especially when writing to an audience jaded by them.
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