The Art of Fear and the Power of the Frame: How Did Pop Culture Get So Gloomy?

“Dark sides are important, they should be nurtured like nasty black orchids.” 

• Gillian Flynn

One of the reasons I fell in love with storytelling (and the arts more broadly) is that it is a way we express our experience of being human, in all it's complication and nuance. It's why story and the arts do so much for us, and do so many different things, why we have so many varieties, even within specific mediums. Storytelling, the arts, are a collective conversation we've been having, since we developed the ability to express, describe, investigate, excavate or reflect our humanity to each other. After all, science harnessed the power of the sun and can use it to destroy entire civilizations or it can use that power to empower them. At the same time, we still don't have a very good grasp on human consciousness. We have theories, ideas, but really, we know very little. The arts, particularly storytelling, are part of how we explore this thing we don't understand. Storytelling does so many different things because we don't understand the tool we're using to create it, while simultaneously trying to understand that tool. The arts are a mirror, megaphone and microscope, all at the same time.

Sure, there's storytelling I don't like. People create things that don't speak to me, move me in any way, all the time. They make things from perspectives I don't agree with or I think are outright stupid, wrong, vicious... all kinds of things. Even as I'm someone who approaches the storytelling arts from the perspective of looking for something I can appreciate or something to respect, I might not find a particular work very good or to be something I like. I also recognize things can be good, and I might not like them, and vice versa. They can be terrible, and I might like them anyway. I occasionally, but rarely, even find them offensive. This is part of the necessary work of the arts, including storytelling. It's a place we are able to work through things, have conversations less likely to disintegrate into conflicts solved with blood. They are simultaneously important to how we form an understanding of the world, and low stakes. One story is one story. Very, very few do much good or harm, by themselves.

The arts are also anarchic, and maybe storytelling most of all, because all it takes to tell a story is a language, even if that language is imagery. Rules about who can make things and what stories can be told are fungible, at best. They're terribly hard to enforce. Once something is made, if it catches the right wave, the right sub culture grabs onto it, it's nearly impossible to stop it from spreading, as long as it has the capacity to speak to people in some way. Even in nations where varieties of storytelling or art are criminalized, they continue. In reality, often part of the reason they do continue, survive and keep getting passed around, is that they are taboo.

The Hayes Code was instituted in the United States and lasted from 1934 to 1968. It was a stupid set of ideas about what was allowed to be shown on screen, meant to insure an movie going audience wasn't going to encounter anything that would cause them to think too critically about the sociopolitical reality they experienced. Of course it was sold as a moral measure, to protect "public morality." Still, artists of all stripes learned how to insert symbols and representations of the things the Hayes Code was specifically designed to prevent. The history of queer cinema is among the best examples of how stupid and useless it is to attempt to prevent storytelling from being a vehicle for anyone who has a story to tell. For most storytellers and other artists, these barriers become creative challenges, from whatever perspective they choose. Before long, 10 artists will show you 100 ways of circumventing those barriers, saying things to an audience who are supposed to be invisible or illegitimate. Authoritarian states, to their vexation, have never been able to solve this problem. It can be artists sneaking the taboo into works meant to reach a mass audience, as is so much of the history of queer cinema. It can also be some rebellious soul, printing the accepted texts during the day, and then secretly printing copies of banned books at night, those copies then getting dog eared and beaten as they're passed around. Trying to stop people from sharing art that speaks to them, and artists from creating work that speaks for them, is a fools errand. With the digital revolution in full swing, it's just another battlefield for this age old war.

Horror is the art of fear, both as a result and in connection with this, it's also often the art of the taboo. Sometimes it's presenting the taboo as being taboo for good reason. Sometimes its calling attention to the reasons a thing is labeled taboo, and finding them absurd or dangerous. It also tends to deal in an emotional register that in daily life, in what we'd say is "real life," isn't pleasant. Fear isn't a pleasant thing to experience in real life. Encountering man with a mask and a knife is terrifying in real life, and not in a fun way we go to the movies or read novels to experience. It's a genre about the knowledge that these experiences exist, the reality that we sometimes can't avoid them, and what we do with what's in between. Even when they're dealing with the supernatural and fantastical, horror stories are getting at/dealing in emotional experiences and fears that are real. Human fear of the unknown or imperceptible is one of storytelling's most often revisited themes. This also means horror requires a certain comfort with discomfort, and it engenders a kind of familiarity with different kinds of discomfort, which is part of what makes it such a good vehicle for dealing with the taboo. The audience is signing up to be made uncomfortable, and not always in a way they're already familiar with. There are many varieties of what we think of as uncomfortable feelings that horror deals in. Stephen King wrote about in terms of dread, scares and gross outs, but even these are too few to cover the full spectrum of comfortably uncomfortable experiences horror provides Audiences often don't know exactly what variety of uncomfortable they are signing up for when they first sit down for a movie or open a novel. The audience for it understands that, and even as today it's easier than ever to find detailed descriptions of what might make on uncomfortable and how, creators are still finding ways to color between the lines, to join different kinds of discomfort, take audiences places they weren't expect to go and inspire feelings they don't have exact words for. Horror's easy, comfortable nature with the taboo is often part of the draw too, because portraying or examining the taboo is one of those varieties of uncomfortable.

It's because of these things, the requirement of comfort with discomfort in horror, as well as its easy relationship with taboo, that it often gets associated with being a "bad" genre, in terms of the technical quality, but in both aesthetic and moral senses too. Not only is it dealing with an emotional spectrum we consider undesirable to experience in real life, it's often dealing with topics and ideas that are socially sanctioned, through being jettisoned into the territory of the taboo, and it's dedicated to finding beauty in our ugliness. There is, a puritanical streak in this way of thinking about horror, and storytelling arts overall. Exploring "bad" things is bad, and bad people go to Hell. Religion, certainly Christianity has long understood the power of being able to define meaning and perspective, including what is and isn't acceptable to explore. There have been periods when The Church was able to enforce laws preventing people who weren't Church appointees from reading The Bible, because it meant they might draw a perspective different from, and therefore a challenge to, the perspective of the The Church. We still have an alarming number of people in the United States who genuinely believe what's on the pages of a book, on a television or movie screen can invite demons and devils into their lives.

The arts, because they are this exploration of human experience, are also a place we find and create meaning, perspective and have out our discussions about what is and isn't acceptable. They stand as a place where meaning, perspective and definition can be found, outside of, then also by definition, contrary to the other powers which seek to do this, be they religious or political. Horror, being the art of fear, and because the arts are by nature anarchic, is a challenge to power and authority in its ability to define fears, create perspectives that heighten or lessen fears, and because art enables this very human curiosity, explores what's supposed to be unacceptable to explore. This treatment of horror as some kind of taboo, in and of itself, as well as the cultural position it gets afforded by the institutions that convey legitimacy, is a way of preventing exploration of, and serious consideration of our fears. It discourages inquiry, and it works in no small part because we associate the emotional spectrum horror deals in with "bad feelings," and the subject matter it tackles as taboo.

What I'm saying is that there is utility and practicality of understanding our fears, collectively and individually. The reason I've taken to writing this ongoing series, is that I think our unwillingness to openly express, interrogate how we express our fears and what they say, leaves us open to manipulation. One of the central traits in common between extremist political movements, cults and run of the mill con artists is the manipulation of fear in ways that can be blatant or subtle. This series is my small attempt to start chipping away at our unwillingness to interrogate these, and the ways the media and journalism meant for a general audience cover, talk and write about horror, help prevent us from asking useful, effective questions about what horror has to say to us, and what our reactions to it are saying about us.

The first piece I've chosen for this series is by a music critic and historian, specializing in jazz, named Ted Gioia. Let me be clear, I was not familiar with Mr. Gioia prior to coming across this piece. I'd venture a guess that he's a pleasant person. I'm not writing this to take a stab and Mr. Gioia. I don't believe he's written this piece in bad faith or with some ill intention. The name of his piece is, How Did Pop Culture Get So Gloomy? 

It begins with the question, "Why did pop culture go over to the dark side?" It's the kind of question akin to, "When did you stop beating your wife?" There's an underlying negative assumption. In this case, it's that what he refers to as, "The dark side," a thing itself associated with negativity. There's an entire cultural behemoth of a franchise, hinged around questions of "the dark side," in Star Wars. It's also it's own narrative device used throughout history, as in "a character giving in to their dark side." This dark side, it's bad. It's where we keep the instincts, drives and ideas that are not good for us or would earn us some kind of consequence and cost. It's a puritanical idea, at its base.

He goes on in the next paragraph, "The happy genres—musicals, romantic date movies, screwball comedies—have mostly disappeared. But horror and dystopian sci-fi films are more popular than ever." This is a paternalistic and simplistic understanding of how audiences engage with storytelling. It's also a characterization of genres that is so broad as to border on absurd. I would implore anyone reading to take any opportunity to see Caroline, or Change, the musical by Tony Kushner. Please come back and tell me whether its an experience you would describe as happy. With a halfway decent cast, you're going to have an extremely moving experience with a musical, and it has hopeful notes, but I'd be hard pressed to describe it as "happy." I have Rent on the line as well, and it would like to know if it is a "happy" musical. There is a variety of musical I think can be called happy. It is not the entirety of what that genre is though. This paragraph in Gioia's piece is relying on a sense of association the public has with these genres, whether or not its based in reality. It's doing the same with horror and dystopian sci-fi. Mad Max: Fury Road might not be what we would consider a "happy" film, but what it's saying, overall, is something hopeful, and one might even say positive. It's thrilling, exciting and an achievement in film, and yet still, wouldn't qualify as "happy" in the sense Gioia uses the word. As for horror, I'd dare anyone sit down with Happy Death Day, and say it isn't a happy film, a good time with some suspense, comedy and saying something overall positive and up lifting, while also being very much a horror film. I'm going to try not to think about Mr. Gioia would make of Ready Or Not, a horror comedy with a very think vein of class commentary running through it. For their audiences though, both are fun experiences with the stories they're telling, in the way they're telling them.

Gioia's assertion also excludes work like Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives, Jason X, or the recently canceled Chucky series. Part of the draw of these works, for the audience that embraces them, is as reaction to the kind of superficial, paternalistic statement Gioia is making. The creators and the audience are in on the joke together, using this superficial, absurd space with an iconography and symbology they share, to take joy in the fact that they are shared, as well as exploring and enjoying what kinds of creativity can happen within that space.

From the beginning, we have a narrow perspective, that has to exclude a portion of reality, and the audiences for the work he's talking about.

Gioia goes on to try to provide proof for this idea that pop culture is now "gloomy," even as he hasn't really given us parameters for what he means by gloomy or why that might be bad. He's relying on his audience's associations:

"You can actually measure it in Hollywood box office numbers. The happy genres—musicals, romantic date movies, screwball comedies—have mostly disappeared. But horror and dystopian sci-fi films are more popular than ever.

Daniel Parris ran the numbers, and proves that horror offers the best return on investment in the movie business. Audiences don’t want love and laughs—give ‘em slasher films instead."

Shall we talk return on investment, first? Return on investment is the amount of money made beyond what was spent to make a film. By definition, the movies which spend the least in production have the best chance to provide the best return on investment. This is not new. You'll notice Blood Feast in the horror section. The first thing to note is it was released in 1963, which says this graphic covers horror, at least from 1963 to 2015, when The Gallows was released. The time period is important later.

For now, let's stick with the return on investment. What the casual reader might not see is that the majority of the films on this list are independent films, and not just in horror. By their nature, independent films have lower budgets. They are independent because they weren't made in the studio system which has more money to put toward a film. The studios exist to make films that are too expensive for independent production companies to make, and independent production companies exist to make movies for less than what studios consider an investment worth making, essentially. The histories of horror and independent film are deeply intertwined, specifically because horror has been a reliably profitable genre, going at least as far back as the fifties. This is not a new phenomenon.

Even when studios were regularly putting $100 million to $350 million into making certain genres of film, whether they were period epics or action fantasy films, $40 million was considered a "big budget" horror film. Budgets regularly afforded other genres, are very rarely afforded to horror films, and when they are, it's usually due to attempting to attract one or a handful of "stars" (whether directors or actors), that are a substantial portion of the budget. There are a handful of films which flirt with the horror genre that have gotten budgets over $100 million. Usually, they're what we'd consider action horror, meaning they're action movies, that happen to use some of the character types popularized by horror, but they are very few that would be solidly in the genre. What this basically means, is that when a horror film does "hit," it's going to be more profitable, in terms of percentage of return on investment, than most other genres. A film made for a $1 million has a 300% return on investment if it makes $3 million. A film with a $100 million dollar budget has to make $300 million for the same return. This is a significant difference in ticket sales.

From the era of the drive-ins of the fifties and sixties to the grindhouse theaters of the seventies and eighties, to digital VOD today, horror has been reliably profitable. One of the ways the Weinstein Bros. became powerhouses in Hollywood was by using their genre label, Dimension, as a source of profit to fund their "prestige" films with their Miramax label. The return on investment for most of their Miramax Oscar winners wasn't as high as it was for some of their Dimension films, but the budgets on the Dimension films tended to be smaller. I am not commenting on their business model or any of their infamy as positive. The Weinstein's and Miramax are just an example most people are likely to have heard of. Additionally, the landscape of the movie business wouldn't be what it is today, without Roger Corman, who gave a cavalcade of luminaries and icons their first jobs on film, making cheap, low budget genre films. This is to say the business of the movie industry, the way the entire environment is shaped, can't be fully grasped without the positive contributions horror has made, even if you only take them indirectly. George Lucas, Francis Ford Coppola, Jack Nicholson, Brian DePalma... the list of people who got their start with Roger Corman or in other low budget genre fare and then went on to reshape the movie business as part of the New Hollywood movement in the 70s is long.

If anything, what's changed in movies today is that the a number of genres which used to be reliable no longer are, and horror is continuing as reliable as it has been for a very long time. Gioia makes no attempt to reconcile this history with the idea that there is some kind of new phenomenon or relationship to "gloomy" pop culture and mass media. If the terms, as it puts them, are "one or the other" the terms of audiences relationship with horror hasn't changed. It's the terms of the relationship the audience has with other genres that has changed. He either isn't aware of it or is relying on his readers, his audience, having a relationship with horror that is as superficial as he is portraying the genre itself to be.

It would be charitable to say Mr. Gioia is not familiar with the history of the penny dreadful or the tradition of Grand Guignol theater. The less charitable reading would be that he is, and he hasn't factored any of that in, because it would undermine what he's saying to his readers, and whether or not it matches the evidence, he's most interested in convincing them of his point.

Next, Gioia decides to rope in the Halloween holiday. Again, we're dealing in general associations here, not any kind of solid direct connection:

A lot of this is driven by October demand for scary Halloween films. But this, too, is a fairly recent pop culture trend—no holiday has gotten more popular during my lifetime than Halloween.

Not long ago, only little kids participated, but now everybody celebrates October 31 in grand and gruesome fashion—even as other rituals disappear from secular life.

Here’s a measure of the use of the word “Halloween” over time. Are you surprised?

Now, you'll notice there is a big jump in the trajectory of this graph. When does that start? It's the late 70s, right? What could possibly have happened in the late 70s that would correspond with that? Well, John Carpenter's seminal work of horror cinema, Halloween is released in 1978. Let's just step back for a second, take in some context, and consider what it means.

There being a film named Halloween is going to cause use of the word to break into a new context. There were no films with the word "Halloween" in the title prior to this. The word is then being used because it is the title of a film, as well as the name of the holiday. Considering that Halloween was quite successful (as Gioia's graphic about return on investment shows), it would mean use of the word would be increasingly exponentially. Each successive entry in the franchise adds a new reason for use of the word too. There have been, as of 2024, fourteen films in the Halloween franchise. The original becomes part of the canon of "Great Horror Films." It film escapes the dungeon of illegitimacy horror is usually relegated to, and becomes one of those rare examples the institutions of legitimacy recognize as a "great American film." Also, not long after its release, in the early eighties, publications aimed at genre fans become increasingly popular, and increase in number. If you add in the advent of the internet, and the further explosion of pop culture focused media, including fan blogs etc, there is an explanation that the sheer proliferation of media itself, meaning both the Halloween franchise and all other varieties of media journalism, are responsible for this explosion in the use of the word "Halloween."

In this passage, he also says, "Not long ago, only little kids participated, but now everybody celebrates October 31 in grand and gruesome fashion—even as other rituals disappear from secular life." This is interesting because he's doing a few different things here. First, he's associating Halloween celebration with being juvenile. Second, he associates it with gruesome. Third, he connects it to secular ritual.

Based solely on facts, he's not wrong in the two of those counts. It's relatively new for adults to celebrate Halloween. It is also, to a degree, a secular ritual. It's his second count which is questionable on factual lines. Halloween can include displays we'd consider gruesome, but it is not limited to the gruesome. It is the one broadly accepted secular ritual where the gruesome is accepted. It's not required, and I would be honestly surprised to find the majority of participation in it would qualify as gruesome.

There's an underlying issue here though, isn't there? A few really. First, I'm not exactly sure what Halloween celebrations and rituals have to do with being "gloomy," which was supposed to be the topic, the thesis, of this piece. I'm going out on a limb to say the majority of people who celebrate Halloween don't associate it with a sense of gloom. They may include costumes and decorations which are drawn from the horror genre or even the symbols both the history of Halloween and horror draw from, but I'm not sure I've ever attended a Halloween celebration I would describe as "gloomy." Though, maybe, any celebration or party that's boring is also inherently gloomy, and I've been to a few boring Halloween celebrations.

Are Disney princesses gloomy though? My friends, I will spare you my lecture about Disney and their contributions to kinder horror (media meant for children which introduce archetypes of the horror genre) for another time. How about nurses? Are nurses gloomy? Doctors? Firemen? Cops? Superman is only gloomy if you let Zach Snyder get his hands on the Big Blue Boy Scout. Are popular musicians gloomy? What about Spider-Man? In all of pop culture, Peter Parker is among the least gloomy characters. It's a significant part of the why he's still around. I'll agree that individual nuns may not be gloomy, I've met a few who were delightfully cheery, but the cultural association with nuns is pretty gloomy. I'll stop here, as I'm sure you see where I'm going. Halloween is neither gloomy, in the way people participate in it as a ritual, nor is it inherently gruesome. We haven't gotten any definition of why horror is "gloomy," of course, nor any parameters on what "gloomy" means in this context either, we're still working on some vague association, that it's clear he believes his audience shares.

Next, if we accept Halloween as a secular ritual, what is that ritual uplifting or celebrating? As it stands today, separated from its roots as it is, I'd suggest Halloween is a celebration of creativity, individuality and the rich history of our storytelling. Gioia may or may not be familiar with the amount of creativity that goes into annual celebrations. From the choosing (or making) of costumes and decorations, themes for parties, parades etc., the different forms celebration of the holiday takes on are connected to the history of storytelling and other many other forms of creativity. It's not just horror and gore, but that's convenient to leave out, if this is your argument.

Third, let's take that in context of his larger point within the passage... He's saying Halloween has come to have a larger place in the cultural landscape than it previously had, and is a secular ritual. If we take the graph he's presented, in the sense he's presenting it, but as proof the start of this new behavior is in the late 1970s, what does that say? What it says to me is that whether its just the tradition and ritual providing stability over time or something more, the people who were children in the 1970s have held onto it. It didn't break into the adult population. They kept it with them. Is there something wrong with that? Does that immediately connote something "gloomy" in the negative sense he's presenting it? Wouldn't it suggest the fact that is was held onto, speaks to some kind of need? I was born in 1977. People my age are grandparents now. They would have raised their children with the enthusiasm for the holiday, which is likely to mean those children are celebrating it as adults, and passing it on to their children. Why would that be?

I'd suggest the problem for Mr. Gioia, and most others who take this perspective on Halloween and horror as a genre, is in what it doesn't restrict, not what it is or what it celebrates. Again, it's a holiday which is comfortable with things we aren't comfortable with in the other 364 days of the year. Death, sex, the absurd, aspects of the supernatural outside or independent of Christian religious definition, poking fun at figures of authority and power. "Give a man a mask and you'll see who he truly is." Halloween is the one day a year when we get to don costumes, and no small number of people use those costumes as an avenue express or accentuate aspects of their personality and psychology they tend to keep hidden, because it is taboo to express them openly and honestly. We even see this in how many people refer to the costume ritual of Halloween.

Annually, there are complaints about the "slutty" costumes. Likely, you've heard them in your place of employment, on social media, in conversation with friends. And what is this, if not in line with the many social sanctions related to how women present themselves in public. It is the inverse anxiety produced by the degree to which women are so often treated as if their worth is in their appearance and their appeal to male sexual urges. It's the fear women might realize or exploit the power it inevitably gives them to have this be their value. The complaints and accusations can range from being inappropriate to being boring. What they don't take into account is that it is perfectly logical some women might want to explore and play with this dynamic, as it is such a significant part of their experience in life, in a way that's as socially acceptable as possible, and Halloween fits that bill.

At the base of all this though is still the simple question, what about the experience of celebrating Halloween is gloomy? I'm still trying to wrap my head around that bit. He doesn't say. He's plowing forward on the assumption the reader will understand the association, and there certainly is an association between Halloween, horror and what our social norms consider "darkness," but he never gets around to what's "gloomy" about any of it, other than this vague, baseless association. I cannot for the life of me see what about a Halloween celebration is "gloomy," whether it be parades, commercial events like costume parties in bars or nightclubs, the many haunted attractions that have sprung up around the nation or even parties in private homes. What, about any of that, is "gloomy?" The entirety of his assertion that these things are "gloomy" is in what they don't restrict, which is accepted cultural expression relationships with things we might otherwise find fearful or taboo.

Then, he jumps back to referencing horror movies, saying:

Other film genres now borrow from the horror playbook. Superhero films are filled with scorched earth battlefields. I’ve lost count of the times I’ve seen the Eiffel Tower destroyed (here are a dozen or so examples) or the Statue of Liberty blown to smithereens (see here).

I will admit, one of the foundational texts of Western civilization I haven't read fully is The Bible. I've tried a few times. Like Crime and Punishment, I find it boring and repetitive to the extreme. That said, I'm pretty sure there's a whole big thing in The Bible about plagues, isn't there? There's also a whole thing dedicated to God destroying a tower of some kind too, isn't there? I've always gotten the impression there's a really important story about a flood that washes the existing civilization away. H.G. Wells published War of the Worlds in 1898. Godzilla was released in the US in 1956. In case you didn't know, these were both very successful in their time, and continue to influence storytellers today. Invasion of the Body Snatchers was released in 1956, not a lot of on screen destruction, this is true, but still very much a story of civilizational destruction. The 1970s saw an explosion of the disaster film sub genre, but it dates back to the 1930s. What has changed in terms of the desire to engage with stories involving large scale disasters, threats to civilization as we know it and, I think probably more importantly for Gioia's piece, the on screen destruction of symbols of the power of Western culture, is the technological ability to present them on screen. The superhero is the modern version of Greek gods, stories about power, and our relationship to it. The technology of CGI has given us the ability to present the consequences of such power, at the point of compromise between cost and realism, within the fantastical framework of the superhero story. The desire to engage mass destruction and the use of it as part of the milieu of storytelling is not new. The technology is.

An important piece of context here is that this is, to some degree, this is new for superhero storytelling, in terms of its history. An intrepid, curious reader might ask, "Why?" It's is a function of the time period they became popularized, because like the Hayes Code, there was the Comics Code Authority, which sprung from a moral panic about children and comic books. This moral panic was based on claims that many of the comics existing before the code, a number of which weren't written for a child audience, were contributing to "juvenile delinquency." It's important to understand here, horror comics were at the center of this, along with certain varieties of pulp detective comics that drew their inspiration from the noir movement in film and literature. Like most moral panics, it was a farce, and an effort from a certain portion of conservative population to exert power and control over cultural artifacts and products. It was, in no small manner, racist, sexist and homophobic. Below are its criteria:

• Crimes shall never be presented in such a way as to create sympathy for the criminal, to promote distrust of the forces of law and justice, or to inspire others with a desire to imitate criminals.

• Scenes of excessive violence shall be prohibited. Scenes of brutal torture, excessive and unnecessary knife and gunplay, physical agony, the gory and gruesome crime shall be eliminated.

• Criminals shall not be presented so as to be rendered glamorous or to occupy a position which creates a desire for emulation.

• Policemen, judges, government officials, and respected institutions shall never be presented in such a way as to create disrespect for established authority.

• All scenes of horror, excessive bloodshed, gory or gruesome crimes, depravity, lust, sadism, masochism shall not be permitted.

• No comic magazine shall use the words "horror" or "terror" in its title.

• All lurid, unsavory, gruesome illustrations shall be eliminated.

• Inclusion of stories dealing with evil shall be used or shall be published only where the intent is to illustrate a moral issue and in no case shall evil be presented alluringly, nor so as to injure the sensibilities of the reader.

• In every instance good shall triumph over evil and the criminal punished for his misdeeds.

• If crime is depicted it shall be as a sordid and unpleasant activity.

• Scenes dealing with, or instruments associated with walking dead, torture, vampires and vampirism, ghouls, cannibalism, and werewolfism are prohibited.

• Profanity, obscenity, smut, vulgarity, or words or symbols which have acquired undesirable meanings are forbidden.

• Females shall be drawn realistically without exaggeration of any physical qualities.

• Suggestive and salacious illustration or suggestive posture is unacceptable.

• Nudity with meretricious purpose and salacious postures shall not be permitted in the advertising of any product; clothed figures shall never be presented in such a way as to be offensive or contrary to good taste or morals.

• Nudity in any form is prohibited, as is indecent or undue exposure.

• Illicit sex relations are neither to be hinted at nor portrayed. Rape scenes, as well as sexual abnormalities, are unacceptable.

• Sex perversion or any inference to same is strictly forbidden.

• Seduction and rape shall never be shown or suggested.

When we make the assumption that superhero stories are only for children and are by their essential nature immature or some kind of populist pablum, this is why. Look at that list again, and consider how it might go over to set a superhero story in the Jim Crowe south in the forties or fifties. How, exactly, would one tell a realistic story about domestic violence, within those parameters? It's not that the superhero isn't a character archetype that can't be used to tell a broad variety of different stories, including those which could take on what we think of as "serious adult content," because any archetype can be used to create a story for almost any audience, it's that a certain section of the public and our political powers restricted comics from doing anything remotely like that. Alan Moore would like a word, Mr. Gioia.

What we're seeing, in part, is the combination of superheroes as a character archetype being released from the comic pages and the expectations of that medium, along with the technology catching up with how to portray these larger than life characters, with these impossible powers, in ways that are going to fit audience expectations of the action/adventure film, replete with the desire for spectacle. Let me remind you, in 1989, Tim Burton's Batman involved Jack Nicholson's Joker gassing hundreds or possibly thousands of people at a parade. The difference is, there wasn't a focus on those consequences. If Kryptonians existed, and started duking it out on Earth, the consequences would be catastrophic. There's a lot I don't like about the current spate of superhero films, but they have gotten right the kind of chaos and mayhem that would be released if beings like this existed.

Gioia goes on to make some comments about The Joker getting his own franchise and so on, but it's essentially the same. It is important to note he compares the separate posters featuring Lady Gaga as Harley Quinn and Joaquin Pheonix as The Joker to the posters the Rock Hudson and Doris Day romantic comedies of the sixties, especially because of where he goes next. 

Now consider the case of James Bond.

In his analysis of modern social pathology, philosopher Byung-Chul Han relies on secret agent 007 as a measure of how playfulness has disappeared from culture.

James Bond movies…have become more serious and less playful over time. The most recent ones even forgo the depiction of rituals of carefree love at the end. The final scene of Skyfall has a disturbing effect in this regard; Bond, instead of dedicating himself to amorous play, simply receives his next assignment from his superior, M. M. says to Bond: ‘Lots to be done. Are you ready to get back to work?’ A stern-faced Bond replies: ‘With pleasure, M. . . . with pleasure.’

The irony, here, is that pleasure is notably missing from this entire sequence. James Bond has somehow turned into a stoic workaholic.

I admire actor Daniel Craig as James Bond, but how did we get from the Dionysian secret agent, with his intoxicants and fertility rites, to this grim Apollonian, who doesn’t even care if his martini is shaken or stirred?

Let's be clear here, this is about casual sex. "Carefree love" and "amorous play." Is there a reason for these euphemisms, especially in this context? Just call it casual sex. I find it very funny Han had to employ this euphemism, but it also says a lot, don't you think? What audience might not have a positive association with "casual sex," but would instead prefer to think of it as "amorous play?"

Again, let's get into context. James Bond is the longest running franchise in film history. There are a total of twenty-seven films. Twenty-two fit the style Gioia and Han are pining for. The twentieth film, Tomorrow Never Dies, the twenty-first film, The World is Not Enough, and the twenty-second film, Die Another Day not only met with less than enthusiastic critical reaction, but also fell below box office expectations. Bond needed a makeover. The "new Bond" films starring Daniel Craig are the five highest grossing entries in the franchise. One of them, Skyfall, broke the billion dollar mark. Audiences were into what the new Bond was selling, this much is definitely true.

What was the new thing they injected into Bond films? Consequences. This spate of Bond films introduced consequences, and over a five film arc, told the story of 007 from the time he was promoted to double 0 status, until his death. They're still action/adventure films with over the top set pieces, but there are consequences for Bond's actions. In the first film, he causes an international incident by chasing a bomb maker into an embassy, then killing him. The one time we do get Bond engaging in some espionage driven casual sex, when he seduces the wife of a man who has information he wants, she ends up dead, very quickly. This series of films is about legacies and consequences for Bond and British Intelligence. The first two films include Bond falling in love, and the consequences arising from that.

If you take a step back and look at Bond, as a character, strip him of The Bond Universe he existed in, James Bond is an ultranationalist sociopath, without regard for law, be it local or international, and pretty sexist. There is nothing he won't do for Queen and country, and that's very much the character Craig's films begin with, but over that series of films, they allow him to grow, in part because there are consequences. His "amorous play" is almost always in the effort to use women in that endeavor or as as the equivalent of an amusement park ride between plot advancement. Every creative writing class in the world will say consequences are a necessary element of good storytelling, and it's clear audiences and critics both felt the storytelling in the older films was lacking. These new films treat Bond like a character worth being treated well, allowed to have dimension, instead of a cartoon archetype.

Also, there's the idea of playfulness. It's another word for fun, right? Here's the question outside of the frame Gioia is using, "Who are the Bond films fun for?" In the example cited, it's Bond's lack of casual sex that brings this new series of Bond films down, makes them less playful, not so fun. The new films turned James Bond from an ultranationalist sociopath into a workaholic. All in all, I'd say this is a lateral move. The point is, for Gioia and Han, Bond isn't fucking. Why would that possibly be?

The Bond series is pretty notorious for just how deeply sexist so many of those earlier films are. I don't think there's any way to counter it either. The women in the early Bond films are plot devices, eye candy and sex objects. I grew up with the Bond films. Through a pretty long period, my dad and I went to see each one as it was released in theaters. I can enjoy them, from a personal nostalgia and from an interest in cultural relics. I'm a heterosexual man. Ursula Andress arising from the water in her white bikini is iconic, for a reason. Maybe I'm wrong, but I bet anyone who is attracted to women can understand why. The problem is, those films are content with Ursula Andress bikini being character development. It's not just the bikini, it's everything else missing from the character in the rest of the film. By the time the later entries in that version of Bond film comes along, it's reached the point that the sexism is so entrenched and baked into the films and the audience expectations of them, one of the major criticisms from critics and fans boils down to, "Hot girl no do science." Of all the fantastical shit that happens in the Bond universe, a beautiful woman being a scientist was the thing that was hard to believe? The laser watch was fine, considering what battery technology was at the time, but the beautiful woman with the education, intelligence and drive to be a world class scientist is beyond the threshold of suspension of disbelief?

That's a problem when you consider half the movie tickets sold, by the time the Daniel Craig films come along, are being bought by women. This is still the case. It's not a mistake that in Craig's first Bond film, Bond arises from the water, looking like a Greek god or as if he were just chiseled from marble. He's quite a specimen. Don't worry though, it's got something for everyone who's not averse to heteronormative presentations of sexual appeal or beauty. Eva Green shows up later on, and dons a dress that would stop traffic in Manhattan. Her character also has a major impact on the film, and the rest of the series. Eva Green is certainly an attractive woman, but in Casino Royale, that's not all her character is there to be and do. The last act of the film begins with the clear indication Bond and Green's character, Vesper Lind, are making the beast with two backs, as often as possible. There's no less on screen heavy petting in this than there were in any of the previous films. Green's Vesper doesn't just drop her panties when Bond shows up though, and she eventually ends up being the one who got the upper hand on him, and there are consequences for Bond. She shapes the overall story of Casino Royale, as much as Bond does.

By subjecting Bond to consequences, and treating the character like he deserves to be more interesting than a cartoon, what's happened is it is no longer the simplest form of male achievement and domination fantasy. It's still very much a male fantasy, because Bond is still all of the other things he always has been, deadly, intelligent, with the power of the British government behind him, good looking, swathed in beautiful clothes, playing with fun gadgets, expensive cars, and often in the company of a beautiful woman. He's just not trying to fuck every woman who gets within five feet of him, and as crucially, they aren't throwing themselves at him. A number of them are either as capable as he is or possibly more so, and he treats them as being having that capability.

A lot of women in 2006 (when Casino Royale was released) weren't going to be reacting to a "Dionysian secret agent, with his intoxicants and fertility rites," with more than rolled eyes. I'm going to bet when you say "intoxicants and fertility rites" to the majority of women under 55 today, they will tell their friends about you, and not in a good way. We have, collectively, had the experience of seeing or being made aware of videos of groups of young men cheering each other on as they commit rape against young women who've been drugged or are simply too drunk to put up much of a fight. "... intoxicants and fertility rites" might not conjure the same sense of care free imagery for everyone else that they do for Gioia.

I also don't quite understand what about Bond was so "Dionysian" beyond for his penchant for martinis and casual sex. "The 'Theology' of the Dionysia and Old Comedy" describes him as, "Dionysus Eleutherius ("the liberator"), his wine, music, and ecstatic dance free his followers from self-conscious fear and care, and subvert the oppressive restraints of the powerful." There are a number of instances of Bond being the thing the women in the series have to fear, not him liberating them from fear, at all. His "by any means" approach to serving Queen and kingdom was never based on a sense of owing liberation. Bond may have always been fighting some new over the top super villain, and yet he represented oppressive the restraints of the powerful. He's basically an assassin for one of the wealthiest, most influential nations on the planet. I am going to assume Ted Gioia is either not familiar with the amount of celebration internationally when news of Queen Elizabeth's death broke or that he finds it in "bad taste." Odd that this aspect of the Dionysian mythology would be so easily discarded, don't you think?

Times changed, and women have the economic power to buy movie tickets. There is no reason to lament this fact, nor do I see it as something that "ruined" Bond. To my mind, Casino Royale and Skyfall, both in the new spate of Bond films, are the best in the franchise. We got better movies when we torpedoed the bland, uncomplicated male fantasy. It is a terrible loss for all of us men who only got to see Eva Green's Vesper Lind and later, Lea Seydoux's character Madeliene, falling madly in love with this Bond though, isn't it? Whomst among us would deserve such denials of our fantasy pleasures? The riches of joy we have been denied are incalculable. It is devastating to imagine myself, a cis, white, straight man, trying to see myself in the character of Bond, and be restricted to the poverty of imagination that is the fantasy receiving the love and affection of these two characters, in all their intelligence and beauty. How could anyone impinge such a burden upon me? Can you tell how aggrieved I am by this? It's terrible, horrible. I can't take anymore. Make me stop fantasizing about this, please. It's torture... Please... I can't take it. Make it stop. Please... I beg you... NO MORE!

Oh, and hey, I almost forgot. Remember that Gioia was mentioning those Rock Hudson and Doris Day romantic comedies? Why might they have gone away? What might they have in common with the example of the Bond franchise? Can you guess what that might be? Dear reader, I'm sure you can.

Gioia goes on:

It’s not just movie franchises—the same thing is happening with books. We live in an era of rationalism and science, but that’s not what people want to read about. This chart shows the increasing use of some supernatural words over the last century.

Now... let me get this straight. We were just going over the idea that the lack of on screen casual sex is a real downer in the James Bond films, and we're jumping to the fact that these classic character types are being mentioned more. I'm very sorry to tell Mr. Gioia this, but the explosion of what's referred to as supernatural romance as a genre, is contributing a whole lot to these words being used so much more. There is a whole sub genre of books about people wanting to or outright fucking monsters, and it is really popular. Please, for all things beautiful and wondrous, do not tell Mr. Gioia how popular hentai is.

Demon's, witches, vampires, werewolves... all of them are getting it on in books. The different series of books by Charlaine Harris's alone are a perfect example. Those are all over the place, tonally, and chock full of monsters and supernatural creatures. Those are just the most "acceptable" border, there is a whole genre of literary porn about people fucking monsters, and boy howdy, does it sell. The reason witches, demons, vampires and werewolves are being mentioned much more has everything to do with the fact that they've escaped the realm of horror. It doesn't mean they are taking the tone of the darker horror films into all of these other genres with them. They're in romance novels, comedic novels, soapy dramas, detective procedurals. You name the genre, and you can most likely find a corner in it playing around with these characters. Bewitched began airing in 1964. Again, this isn't new. Interview with the Vampire was published in 1976, and that's essentially a gothic romance novel, with vampires. The X-Files was constantly flirting with the lines between horror, sci-fi, drama and procedural. Horror is part of our storytelling history, and another part of our storytelling history is throwing that history in a blender to see how these new amalgamations can be used to do and say what we need them to.

There are also practical reasons these classic horror character types are being taken up by other genres. Foremost is that it's easy. Unless you're messing around with the generally understood lore and mythology, they can be thrown into a story and be off and running. There's a minimum of exposition required. The "rules" related to them have penetrated the culture. I'm writing a vampire novel right now, and I know I don't have to shoehorn in some exposition about "rules" because anyone who might pick up the book is going to be familiar with them, and likely, a few different variations. They'll recognize the rules I'm using as the story goes on. Second, these character types can be used as symbols or metaphors for so many different things, and can be used to create different, interesting perspectives within a story. If you want to spice up your procedural, play with the rules of the genre or you have something specific to say, these characters provide versatile utility to storytellers and for the audiences. Related to the Bond discussion, I'm going to guess Ted hasn't clued into the substantial subculture that has started tapping into the symbol of the witch as one of female empowerment, which some people might find "gloomy"... Who might those people be?

Next, Gioia moves on to popular music...

And what about music?

Here, too, I consult data guru Daniel Parris—source of the chart on movies at the top of this article—who is a whiz at tracking cultural trends. He provides me with this timeline of positivity in hit songs since 1960. (He shares other longterm song metrics in a recent article, which I highly recommend.)

According to this metric, a song is positive if its is “happy, cheerful, euphoric,” and is negative if it is “sad, depressed, angry.”

I read Daniel Paris piece, which is quite good, but it just refers to using Spotify's metrics, which I couldn't find.

I'm one of those folks who sees a graph like this, and wants to know what the metrics are for things like "positivity," because being a horror fan and writer has taught me my understanding or definition of what's "positive' in a thing is often quite different from the way it's discussed in journalism or media meant for a general audience that's talking about works in the horror genre. This isn't just true of me. A large portion of the audience for horror look positively or negatively on them by very different measures than general audience media journalism does.

Immaculate was released this year. It stars Sydney Sweeney as a young novitiate, sent to a convent and home for orphans where she's meant to take her vows to become a nun. As it's a horror movie, it's not a positive experience for this character. She's subjected to a thorough string of indignities and abuses. The ending is among the best moments in horror in 2024, and I hope it finds its place among the great moments in horror history. When I step back from the fact that the experience of watching the film is harrowing, what I see is a creative work saying something necessary, and saying it pretty emphatically and honestly. Additionally, I know it was produced by Sweeney, because it was a part she wanted to play when the roles she was being offered weren't interesting to her. It's a film, shepherded into existence by a young woman, giving her an excellent opportunity to demonstrate her talent in a way she hadn't before, and has the courage to say something necessary, emphatically and honestly. It is also, possibly, the most full throated, rage fueled, cinematic "fuck you" to the anti-abortion movement ever put on screen.

I consider this a positive addition to our cultural landscape. It's not something which would have been made fifteen or twenty years ago. To put it plainly, no one would have funded it. It's a film centered on a young woman, about the abuses and indignities an institutional power subjects her to, that isn't lascivious in how it portrays this. It accepts as both natural and positive the rage this treatment engenders in her, and not long ago, would have been treated as if there wasn't a large enough audience to make it financially viable. It wasn't very long ago that the only way Immaculate would have gotten funded, would have been if it were going to be the kind of exploitation film that portrays for this subject matter for titillation. What's changed is a recognition of the existence an audience for films interested in material like this, as we got a few of them this year alone, and they ranged from being very successful to moderately successful. What about today's cultural environment could possibly be driving an interest in material like this?

Immaculate is a horror film, but also not one that's going to be easily subjected to a binary sense of how "positive" it is. Gioia is apparently not familiar with the embrace of "Good for Her" horror, cinema and television depicting feminine rage or revenge.

It's also interesting Gioia doesn't take Daniel Parris analysis into account, even though he's using Parris' research. In fact, Gioia's piece, speaks in direct contrast to what Parris has to say about this shift:

Modernization of Music Subject Matter: At first pass, one might think that uniform declines in song positivity speak to some sort of music nihilism. Instead, my hot take is that modern music better reflects our complicated everyday experiences. Genres like rap and hip-hop often examine difficult subject matter, with taboo topics like sex, violence, political subjugation, and mental health regularly depicted in popular music. Decades ago, explicit representations of these themes were a rarity in pop music.

By choosing rap and hip-hop as the example and saying, "modern music better reflects our complicated everyday experiences," Parris refers to how narrow the acceptable perspectives and topics within pop music (and pop culture) were previously, the golden hued past Gioia is comparing our present to. Hip-hop is an art form birthed by Black Americans. Art forms tend to represent the full spectrum of experiences, beliefs, hopes and fears of the people who create them, and hip-hop is no different. Consider that maybe, the way a white American would react to a piece of music touching on sex, violence, mental health any subject remotely associated with being "political" in a way that might be associated with feelings of positivity, but might inspire feelings we associate with positivity to Black Americans.

Friends, I present to for your consideration, NWA and Fuck Tha Police. Straight Outta Compton, the album containing Fuck Tha Police, was released to a furor of controversy in 1988. Compton, in case you are unaware, is in Los Angeles. White people were very angry, and it was overwhelmingly white people, everywhere white people could go and be angry or say they were angry where other white people would listen. Police advocates were positively enraged and indignant. For those of you who weren't alive to experience it, the reaction to Beyoncé releasing a country record was nothing compared to the fits of rage Fuck Tha Police inspired. In 1991, barely three years later, national news was plastered with the now infamous Rodney King Video, depicting LAPD officers beating King, who was Black, with a viciousness white people had convinced themselves went out of fashion with disco and civil rights protests. The next year, 1992, when those same officers were acquitted of all charges, the LA uprising (or riots, depending on your perspective) broke out. Could it be possible that a lot of Black Americans might have responded to Fuck Tha Police with feelings we would associate with positivity because it was a clear, straightforward expression of Black experience with and resulting feelings about police? Is it possible, Straight Outta Compton and Fuck Tha Police weren't works created with white people as the intended audience? Friends, if you were not alive at the time, let me tell you this was something the overwhelming majority of mass media tried very hard to avoid talking about. Today, the kids are calling it "feeling seen," and what it is, basically, is any piece of creative work reflecting to an audience a representation of themselves or their experiences that they identify with.

If we want to stick to music, in the period of time Gioia is asserting is "gloomy," we can put the cultural phenomenon's that are Taylor Swift, Beyoncé and Lady Gaga to a similar test. One way to test this would be to take to social media and start asserting these artists are contributing to this "gloom" cast over the period, and see what the audiences who have embraced these artists have to say. I wouldn't suggest it, but it is one way to do it. Is Beyoncé's Freedom a happy song or a gloomy song? How about Swift's ...Ready for It? Gaga's Born This Way? It depends on where you are in the greater cultural landscape, doesn't it? There is a rather large population of people in the US who wouldn't associate these songs or artists with anything positive. They just elected a president. Yet, there are many, many millions who experience these artists concerts and music as nearly transcendent. Please, take to social media and poke the Beyhive, stir the Swiftees and wake up the Little Monsters, so you can find out just how passionately these audiences feel about the positivity these artists bring into their lives. I dare you.

Are you sensing a pattern in the rose hued past Gioia keeps referring to? I am.

Gioia continues:

Why are these trends all converging on negativity? What does this tell us?

Popular culture always reflects the larger social reality. I’ll even go further, and claim that pop culture is our single best source of information about the psychological state of society. In some odd way, the revolution is televised—it emerges in songs, films, and other forms of entertainment long before the political leaders even notice.

Rock music anticipated the social changes of the 1960s by several years. The same thing is true of jazz in the 1920s. And the Viennese waltz played a similar role in 1800. Troubadour songs did the same back in the medieval era.

You can actually watch social values toppling on the dance floor.

So I can only conclude that the grimness and negativity in our popular culture is a mirror of the audience.

But that shouldn’t be surprising. I’ve written elsewhere about our cultural shift from cool to hot, and how it’s disrupting social stability. I’m certain you’ve noticed it too, by now.

I find this all somewhat amusing. I read the other piece Gioia linked to, about this theory of "Hot and Cool," and he defines the period of "cool," being the period of 1949 - 1999. I'll give him credit for opening it with the disclaimer that it's highly speculative. Dear Reader, I still almost fell out of my chair laughing as I read it... vibes, man, vibes. How, exactly, does one measure, "Laidback ways"? What is the measure of "tolerance" here, because, uhhh... the history of pop culture in the US is a history of hiding a culture of intolerance, at every level. I would be very shocked if Mr. Gioia, a jazz historian, wasn't familiar with the history surrounding Billie Holiday and Strange Fruit. The many controversies around Black musicians just trying to play concerts? How about the many controversies related to Black male musicians being seen as maybe a little too friendly with white women on television? How did folks react to William Burough's Queer? 

Incidentally, wasn't there that whole "Red Scare" thing, and HUAC committee, dragging artists of all stripes into public hearings to claim they were agents of the dreaded Soviet Union?

How, exactly, was the overall culture reacting to this "cool" attitude? Does this seem like a real "cool" period?

I mentioned N.W.A. already, and they exploded on the world stage in 1988, eleven years before Gioia's "hot" period. All of this, the entire piece and foundation of two others, turns out to be a result of Gioia being gacked, blinkered, plastered, pasted on nostalgia, and making an argument for a return to the cultural aesthetic and attitude of the stereotypic hippy. Gioia's nostalgia for hippy culture is apparently a better nostalgia than the adults who didn't abandon Halloween, carrying it's rituals and celebrations into adulthood with them.

As an aesthetic within the parameters of pop culture, I have no problem with the hippy thing. It was cool, as an aesthetic. It produced art and artifacts of culture I appreciate, some I love pretty deeply. It didn't happen in a vacuum though. The response to this pop culture of "cool" as Gioia is labeling it, was anything but.

Gioia's assertion, from the previous piece he links to, that this "cool" period lasted from 1949 - 1999, has to treat the New Hollywood movement as if it didn't happen. For those unfamiliar, the New Hollywood movement happened, more or less, in the seventies. Hollywood was in a lot of trouble financially. They couldn't figure out what people wanted to see. The result was a lot of new, young filmmakers getting opportunities they wouldn't have before, and one of the hallmarks of the New Hollywood is beginning to put US institutions, values and beliefs under scrutiny in a way that wouldn't have been presented to general audiences, but would likely not have been accepted by them before. The American Dream, and what I call the "suburban utopia mythology" that came to be the center of American identity in mass media, were starting to be interrogated on screen, and a whole lot of those filmmakers weren't presenting so positive a picture. The seminal works of that era are not what would generally be considered "happy" or "positive" films in the way Gioia has been using those terms.

Easy Rider, the film most associated with this "hippy vibe," a product of that counterculture movement, is a tragedy. It's a film about naiveté and privilege coming up against the sheer brutality of power, both institutional and cultural. It's about two protagonists that are almost comically unprepared for the reality of a world they're trying to navigate, and the brutality with which that world responds to their lack of understanding. Maybe, if you were part of the counter culture movement, a hippy, in 1969 when it was released, Easy Rider made you feel seen. Now, uh... It's kind of a movie about two young white guys whose privilege shielded them from knowing the brutality that made that privilege possible, and paying the price for it.

Additionally, this period of time Gioia asserts as "cool" includes the seventies, eighties, and nineties. Yet one of the first things he asserts as an example of how "gloomy" pop culture has become, was asserting a new level of influence over pop culture more broadly. Horror. The seventies, eighties and nineties are the era in horror history when slasher films dominated the genre. Not since the Universal Monsters of the forties do so many characters from horror so thoroughly penetrate pop culture to become part of the cultural lexicon. Michael Myers (Halloween, 1978) Freddy Krueger (A Nightmare on Elm Street, 1983), Jason Voorhees (Friday the 13th, 1980), Chucky (Child's Play, 1988) along with Candyman (Candyman, 1991) and Pinhead (Hellraiser, 1987) are all lifted into the status of cultural icons. People who have no interest in horror and have never seen the films they originate from, recognize these characters. This factwould also have to be cast aside as a factor for Gioia's reading of pop culture to have a firm foundation.

As a matter of fact, now that he's given us a timeframe for these claims, let's look again at the graphic Gioia used to assert horror's box return on investment being a sign of this new turn toward the gloomy, and put it in the context of his suggestion the period began in 2000.

There are sixteen films in the horror category. Of those, five were released in or after 2000. That's 31.2%. So, 68.8% of these films, were made before the period Gioia asserts has gone "gloomy." What Gioia is presenting as evidence isn't evidence related to his actual claim. Sure, horror has always had a high rate of return, it's not new though. In fact, the period prior to 2000, the 1949-1999 period, accounts for the 68.8% of films, which makes the evidence directly contrary to his claim. The first film on that list, Blood Feast, by Herschell Gordon Lewis, was released in 1963, shows this dynamic was already at work in the early part of his "cool" period, and continued to be throughout.

After his voyage into nostalgia, Gioia gets to the most troubling claims in the piece:

And when we looked at dopamine culture, we saw how web platforms obsessed with delivering pleasurable stimuli actually create anhedonia—namely the opposite of pleasure. And this is supported by survey data, especially surveys of teens and young adults.

Below are metrics on the mental health of college students. Note that they worry less about grades, but more about everything else.

Anxiety and depression are now twice as common among students as concerns about academics or relationships.

Don’t expect more positivity in popular culture until we reverse these trends. But we might have already created a vicious circle where a bleak society leads to gloomy songs and stories, which further amplify the depression and desolation.

In other words, the culture is not just an effect—it’s also a cause.

If that’s true, the people who have the most responsibility here are entertainment execs as well as technocrats who run the main cultural platforms—TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, etc.

Their algorithms and addictive interfaces are literally the growth engines for dysfunction. They amplify it, they disseminate it, they help it go viral.

He includes a video which has an interview between himself and David Perell, where he talks about the addictive nature of modern technology and media.

Then, he goes on to his conclusion:

But, of course, these same algorithms (and the organizations that control them) can also help turn the tide.

The first step, of course, is admitting that there’s a problem. I can see it, and you surely can too. It would be nice if the business insiders who enrich themselves from this mess would also come clean—and admit what’s already obvious to the rest of us.

Once that happens, there are many ways to fix these problems.

The decision-makers who control pop culture might actually benefit from a reversal. I suspect that the level of depression and dysfunction in society at large is causing people to detach themselves from media and entertainment.

In other words, healing psyches might be a good business move, and not just a good deed.

But what if the corporate leaders who let these genies out of the bottle fail to take action?

In that case, we may need to force their hands. There are ways for doing that, too.

We have the proof that social media companies have engineered their products to be addictive, in the physiological sense. It's a mechanism not different from the reason that gambling is addictive. He's calling it "dopamine culture." I'd suggest the more precise name would be "dopamine capitalism," except that this would automatically call to attention that capitalism has been focusing on this mechanic as a way to sell products and services, for as long as it has existed. Capitalism understood dopamine culture before anyone knew what dopamine was. Half of advertising is a promise that the product will give the consumer a dopamine hit. We haven't been terribly concerned with whether or not the product provides that, nor have we been terribly concerned the advertisement is promising it. This is why we issued a collective shrug to the realization that social media companies are trying to hack the neuro-chemical infrastructure of our brains. Nicotine, alcohol and various forms of gambling have been legal for a long time. In fact, prohibition has proven pretty terrible where attempting to combat "vice."

I agree we should start taking a serious look at how companies are attempting to hack the neuro-chemical infrastructure of the brain, I don't think it's just social media we need to have this discussion about. Social media is a convenient scapegoat, because it's a newer phenomenon. As I've been pointing out, even if you take Gioia's perspective that "gloomy" media is a bad, and even if you accept the assertion he's making now, by associating it with bad mental health outcomes, none of this is new. What he's been describing through this entire piece is new presentations of phenomenon already occurring within and contributing to culture and pop culture. What's different is the "who" of it all.

It's also true that the research we have right now suggests that social media contributes to poor mental health outcomes, including the anhedonia. This, though, is where I stop laughing, stop finding all of this a bit of good natured absurdity. I enjoy the idea of writing about culture and the arts being an opportunity to throw ideas around and see what has real merit. Where I get angry is with Gioia making a connection here between social media and what he's labeled "gloomy" media, including horror and mental health issues. There is no evidence that horror media contributes to poor mental health outcomes. None. There is, in direct contrast to his claims, evidence that for at least three identified portions of the horror audience, a positive mental health correlation. What Gioia is asserting is something that has been accepted for a very long time. It was accepted as gospel to the degree that no one bothered to research it. We do know, because people tried to make a connection that violence in media contributed to violence in real life for so long, we can't say for sure whether there is a connection or what it is. There are well designed studies that suggest there may be some connection, and there are well designed studies that suggest there isn't a connection. There is zero evidence, as in none at all, in well designed studies meant to look for it, that this sense of dark or "gloomy" media contributes to poor mental health outcomes. There is a growing body of research suggesting that for a large portion of the audience for it, there is a beneficial relationship. I would suggest, to Mr. Gioia, and anyone with any interest in the subject, following the work of researcher, Colton Scrivner, as this has become an offshoot of his overall research into the phenomenon of morbid curiosity. Additionally, there's the work of Noel Carroll, Alexandra West, Alexandra Heller-Nichols, Anton Bitel, Robin R. Means Coleman, and Kier La-Janisse, to name just a few. You have to venture into the circles where horror is accepted as part of the landscape of the arts, without prior assumptions of its presence being positive or negative.

One of my fundamental beliefs is that storytelling has existed since human beings had the capacity for it because we need it. We might not fully understand why, but we do. We abandon things we don't need. Storytelling is something that not only haven't we abandoned, we've invented new technologies to enable us to better tell our stories. We are absolutely ravished with technology that enables us to engage with stories. It's one of the things we started doing as soon as we booted up this thing called the internet. What we think of as horror has been with us since the beginning, so it too is doing something we need it to, and for some people, as Scrivner's research is showing, it's doing something for them they aren't finding elsewhere. All of the commercialization of storytelling, all of the effort and perspective to boil the storytelling arts down to nothing more than empty, consumerist entertainment, hasn't been able to do that. Even as they've been commercialized, even as so many people believe they should be nothing more than escapist entertainment, the storytelling arts are still doing more than that. I love that escapism is part of what the storytelling arts do. It should never be considered all they should be doing or are doing, and that perspective is damaging to our ability to be literate about media. We can and should how and why audiences react differently to different pieces and what different works are conveying outside of academic settings.

I've made some jokes along the way here, and I've taken some humorous shots at Ted Gioia's piece. As I said at the beginning, I do not know him. I do not want to encourage his work to be read as that of an ideologue, hiding his intent, because that's not how it strikes me. It does strike me, especially this piece about "gloomy" media and the related piece about "hot and cool eras," that he is writing from a perspective which doesn't consider that what has come to be called "monoculture," never actually existed. It was always a mirage. It may have been treated by the journalism at the time as if it were real, and many of the people experiencing it may have felt it was real, but it wasn't. It was the product of the desire for every variety of corporate entity to get their hands on the expendable income of the middle class (in which the people making financial decisions were overwhelmingly white and male), because it was the largest cache of wealth in the country. It has never been the full picture of what "pop culture" is, and often, it's woefully uninformed about what's happening outside of it's limited lens. To be honest, it seems like Gioia's perspective has been so thoroughly shaped by this context and perspective, he doesn't even realize it.

The reaction to NWA, was in no small way to an effort to prevent the frame of that lens from expanding to include hip-hop, a Black art form. Hip-hop was already a genre generating many millions of dollars, and was driving a significant part of youth culture, before it started getting attention from the "mainstream" of pop culture. For people my age, especially those in proximity to LA or NYC, hip-hop was part of our pop culture milieu from the time we were aware of culture outside of what was presented to us in our homes and schools. It was in its infancy, but it was also just part of the media happening in the world as we became aware of it. It was new, but it was another of many things that were new to us. It was not just new to the generations older than us, it was disruptive and without interest in their norms and standards, like punk had been in the seventies.

Consider the popular music of the 1970s, the songs that were hitting the Billboard charts and getting radio play, how many of those were punk songs? At the same time, the influence of those early punk acts and their music is one of the strongest veins of influence in rock music since. Punk and hardcore (the most direct descendant of punk) from the seventies eighties and nineties probably aren't going to score very high on the "happy" measure, but they were also extremely positive, joyful and therapeutic for people who are alienated by popular culture, in finding a place they belong. Countervailing forces are often as important in a pop culture period as the pop culture itself is.

No piece of journalism about horror, much less pop culture as a whole, can take in the entire context of a culture at any given moment. It's difficult to write a piece that takes in the context of the horror genre, even if limited to the particular moment its written. That's different than making qualitative statements about horror as a genre or pop culture, when the person making them is ignorant of or is purposefully erasing that context.

What's happening here, something I think we're going to find happening repeatedly as this series continues, is that Gioia's piece is speaking to certain cultural fears, but it is doing so through a lens constructed to obscure them.

It's speaking to a fear of a changing America. I agree that social media has negative impacts, and we should absolutely work to mitigate those to the best of our ability. I also think one of the reasons we are experiencing this period of conflict within American culture broadly is that the web and social media shattered that lens. It has meant a democratization of access to expression we have never seen before. It is revealing that there never was a monoculture, by the nature of the interaction necessary for the web and social media to exist. It is also revealing the consequences and schisms resulting from the intentions behind, and the architecture of, what was necessary to create an illusion of monoculture.

Horror, because of being a genre where comfort with discomfort and the taboo are practical necessities, has been reacting to this break with the ingenuity and curiosity it has always reacted with, so it has not lost it's relevance for audiences. It is still exploring our fears and discomfort. Because it has always been both sidelined from the institutional legitimacy and has always heavily involved questions of The Other, it has taken all of this in stride, delivering to audiences what they have always relied on it to do. It's deeply rooted relationship with independent film, and track record with profitability has also allowed exploration of this new reality in a way that comes with less financial risk, but a higher percentage of reward when it's done well. It has not become a symbol of utopian egalitarianism, for sure, but because of all of these things, there is a solid argument to be made that of all the "mainstream genres" (a term itself defined by that now broken lens), horror has embraced the nature of the world revealed by the breaking of that lens. In short, horror has embraced a diversity the other genres cannot, because of the relationship those genres have long established with an audience that no longer trust them, and horror has been rewarded with an extremely diverse audience.

This monoculture lens, which includes pop culture, was constructed to focus on and for people who were white and middle class, and lived a life in keeping with the Christian definition of family. It was constructed to center their experiences, their dreams, their fears, their sense of individual and cultural/national identity. For a majority of the time it existed, the men were a particular focus of that lens because they were the most likely to make financial decisions. Women were only given a broad financial independence for a short time this lens was broken, but they had also been included because they were reliable consumers. In part because of the nature of the social media alone, but also because of the changes in commerce the digital revolution has brought, they feel displaced. In horror particularly, they are no longer so dominant as creators or audience, which is reflected in the diversity of horror's audience, but also in the reaction of those who yearn to retain the illusion of monoculture in that success.

Gioia's How Did Pop Culture Get So Gloomy? is an expression of that sense of displacement, whether he realizes it or not. One of the reasons it is imperative to begin to take the art of fear seriously, is to be able to identify when they are leading us to erroneous conclusions, as his have.