There probably aren’t many people who love horror as much as College of Charleston history professor Scott Poole. It’s his job.
Poole has written extensively on monsters, he’s appeared on the History Channel and recently published a biography of Vampira, America’s first TV horror host in the 1950s. He’ll be speaking at the main branch of the Charleston County Public Library on October 20, 2014 at 6 p.m.
RELATED: Read “Blood Thirsty: Are Vampires Past their Prime?”
He gives five reasons why now is a good time to be a horror fan (and Halloween is not one of them).
Photo from Facebook.com/americanhorrorstory
1. There’s so much good horror on TV now.
American Horror Story has dealt with everything from the Lost Colony of Roanoke to the misogyny and religion to, now, the history of the American sideshow. Poole says, “Like so much current horror, AHS works the scary into our brains rather just trying to get our blood pressure up.”
RELATED: Poole writes a Huffington Post blog entry on American Horror Story.
2. It’s more than a few creepy moments.
“One of my favorite show on TV right now is The Strain because of how it deals with our growing fears over contagion/uncontrollable pandemics through the mythos of the Vampire. It’s not just a few creepy moments.”
3. Today’s horror opens dialogues.
Poole notes that when storylines blend the real and fantastic, they give people an arena to examine our darkest fears.
“Think about how a show like the Walking Dead allows us to ask questions of ourselves about ethical decisions, the nature of community and how we give meaning to our lives when we cast it all against a background of zombies.”
4. Everything old is new again.
Horror fans sometimes complain about all the “reboots” and “remakes” but actually horror has always been a genre aware that it has a history. Some reboots have become classics themselves (like John Carpenter’s “The Thing”) and others are just plain fun like the 2014 Godzilla.
“One of the most surprising things in recent years has been the enormous popularity of 1920s and 30s horror writer H.P. Lovecraft,” Poole notes. “Although at one time he was thought of as a stodgy New Englander who wrote adventure stories for adolescents, now you find his work in comics and film, on t-shirts and tattoos.”
RELATED: Check out the H.P. Lovecraft archives.
5. We live at a time when it’s possible to study American horror.
Today there are scholarly books being written about zombies and religion and even zombies and the meaning of capitalism. You can take college courses on the meaning and history of horror and they aren’t just in film studies. I know of at least three history departments across the country now offering courses on monsters, horror narratives and the American experience (and the College of Charleston is one of them!).
