By Adrian Amiro-Wilson
Fairytales in their truest form are some of the earliest, most terrifying forms of horror as art. They contain evil witches, curses, poisoned foods, the slicing off of toes, and cooking children in an oven. All of it horrific, and it all played to the tune of hardcore lessons in morality long before the magic of moving pictures.
We all know the rules to survive a horror film:
Do not have sex.
Do not drink or do drugs.
Never say "I'll be right back" or "who's there?"
These rules would like the lyrics of Adam Ant's Goody Two Shoes because Horror, Morality, and Censorship have been dancing together either hand in hand or destroying the other. In the 1930's we had the introduction of The Hays Code in the United States, binding films from using profanity, nudity, drugs, white slavery (yes, I said that correctly), and homosexual undertones.
Some of these rule's sound vaguely familiar, right? Obey these rules, you could survive almost any horror film through the 1930's- the early 2000's. Even the 1996 film Scream pokes fun at these rules, as does the 2006 film Behind the Mask, the Rise of Leslie Vernon.
In the 1980's, in the UK, we had the Video Nasty era which banned films that:
Lowered the morality of the audience.
Influenced women and children.
Influenced susceptible minds.
However, art in any form, and especially horror films have recently stepped out of all of these censorship standards to bring viewers real, human, emotional, and sometimes hilarious terrors. "No one puts baby in a corner".
We have seen the rise of films like the Babadook (where a mother in grief is haunted by a monster and her inability to connect with her son), The VVitch (where a girl breaks out of her abusive and constricting puritan lifestyle to live "deliciously"), X (where the final girl is a porn star), Run, Sweetheart, Run (where they refuse to show violence against women but absolutely show her fighting back)… Even though technically, the Video Nasty era was officially put back in place in 2010.
Not only has female nudity been accepted in horror films, but male nudity has found its way in, creating a more equal use of the human figure, proving art is and always will be art. Bad things happen in both life and films. And horror is here to show the humanity in it in the most beautifully horrific ways.
Even fairytales have found their voice again in the genre of folk horror, and films like Scare Acre and Mandrake have found their voice with lax censorship. Horror has even found its voice to sleek against its censorship. The film Censor centers around a woman with trauma during the Video Nasty era who becomes both the big bad and the final girl showing that it's the human experience that makes people who they are, not what they see on film.
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Adrian Amiro-Wilson is a macabre artist, jewelry maker, and horror enthusiast out of Texas. Please be sure to visit their page HERE for much more!
