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{"id":18472,"date":"2016-10-28T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2016-10-28T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/leithart.level2d.com\/?p=217"},"modified":"2016-10-28T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2016-10-28T00:00:00","slug":"horror-for-kids","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/leithart\/2016\/10\/horror-for-kids\/","title":{"rendered":"Horror for Kids"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

T<\/span>errence Rafferty calls filmmaker Guillermo del Toro the \u201cMaster of Highbrow Horror\u201d (The Atlantic<\/a>). He traces del Toro\u2019s aesthetic to a childlike mix of fear and fascination: \u201cToro\u2019s work isn\u2019t simply the something\u2019s-out-to-get-you feeling of conventional scare pictures. It\u2019s fear mixed with fascination, a childlike wonder at the strange shapes reality can take. In the poem \u2018Children Selecting Books in a Library,\u2019 Randall Jarrell writes, \u2018Their tales are full of sorcerers and ogres \/ Because their lives are: the capricious infinite.\u2019 That\u2019s where the best moments of del Toro\u2019s films always seem to be taking place\u2014in the capricious infinite as it is apprehended, warily, in the mind\u2019s eye of a child.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rafferty thinks that horror enthusiasts are also childlike: \u201cHorror is for those whose sense of dread is more primitive, or less mundane. It\u2019s for people who never outgrew their belief that the world is infinitely mysterious, and that its unknowability is the source of both terror and pleasure. It\u2019s for people like Guillermo del Toro.\u201d<\/p>\n

Along the way, Rafferty offers this intriguing analysis of Robert Eggers\u2019s The Witch<\/em> (2015): \u201cthe children here belong to a family of devout 17th-century Puritans settled on a sere, ungiving patch of land. Their brand of religion, which lacks devotional imagery, and their spare and dutiful way of life leave them oddly defenseless when bad things start to happen and the world (or God) seems to turn against them. In the absence of art and play, their belief in evil becomes something unendurable, a pure torment. . . . If only this unfortunate family had pictures to look at, effigies, shrines to what they fear, they might be able to survive the evil around them. That\u2019s how frightened kids survive their childhoods, and how a master of horror can help us all, at any age, get through our scary days.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"