From: axg708@cscgpo.anu.edu.au (Ashraf Ghebranious)
Newsgroups: alt.horror
Subject: Re: Repost of Horror Poll
Date: Tue, 12 Jan 1993 05:27:23 GMT
Organization: Australian National University
NNTP-Posting-Host: 130.56.5.23

In article <1ipftbINN5kn@savoy.cc.williams.edu> 96nlp@williams.edu (sublime) writes:
>  
>  Flat and unbelievable are better words to describe the "monsters" if
>you will, in King's novels.  They fall into the cliche of being
>incarnations of pure evil, unleashing their awesome fury on the middle
>class of America.  It's all black and white, clear cut as to who's the
>good or who's the bad.  Essentially, I find King's protaganists to be
>simply too boring.  A foil to the weirdness?  Yes, but a predictable
>foil, one which leads to predictable endings.
>
>    What Barker does is shift the "weirdness" onto his protaganists,
>and the humanity onto the supernatural, something King would never do, for
>fear his audience might get confused or not know who to root for.  It
>may be unbelieveable, but that depends on what you believe.
>
>VHE,
> norm

 Man o man, where the hell do you come from? Read Pet Semetary, and try to 
tell me what moves the story there, or The Shining, or even Christine or 
Carrie. Horror, by definition, is supposed to scare you, not make you 
orgasim and beg for more. I really can not attack Mr Barker's work as I have 
not, IMHO read enough of his work to get a true picture of what it is he is 
trying to say. I have watched a few movies based on his work's and in most 
of these, the hero/anti-hero is quite often had to distinguish. This would 
not be so bad if was not so predictable that he would do it that way.

 In most of King's stories, the Stand included I think, he never moralizes 
or ends a story with a "see what happens if your naughty boys and girls". 
All he does is narrate a story, tell you what the characters are feeling
and ties in an event that bonds all the characters together. In most 
cases, the people would have never met or gotten to know each other if 
not for the event. This could be a car accident (The Dead Zone) to a major 
world crisis, (The Stand). The event is not the drive in the stories, 
it is what happens to those people leading upto it or because of it. 
They are scared, they get scared, and King gives you a look into their 
minds as well as their lives. This is horror.

 There is nothing wrong with making horror more horrifying; it is when it 
starts to be glorified that the plot is very quickly thrown away. It is not 
the evil presence of whatever indian god that roams the Pet Semetary that is 
the scary part, it is the fact that main characters lives are heading into 
invariable disaster because of the effect it is having on them. There is 
nothing horrid about been able to see the future that is scary, it's what he 
sees that scares him. It is the effect of this "Gift" on his life, his 
health, and his death that is horror. Look mum.... no gore. This is what 
Mr King can do with his words. Any fool can describe gore.

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"Jesus woman! I dont give a f___!" Rhett Butler (slighty paraphrased)

Ashraf Ghebranious                           axg708@cscgpo.anu.edu.au
                                      Australian National University
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Newsgroups: alt.horror,rec.arts.sf.written