The Push To "purify" horror
To me, horror will always be about horrible people (or monsters) doing horrible things to people. Horror can also be about people doing horrible things to themselves. Beneath it all, there is most often a theme of something being forced upon someone against their will, whether it simply be an unfortunate experience all the way up to an act of violence or murder. And this was always by the horror creator’s design, not because they were terrible people who wanted real life things to happen to people, but because they had a story they wanted to create and share.
Somewhere along the way, not just in the horror fandom but in other fandoms as well, the act of creating a story or even reading one became some kind of moralistic performance. A kind of puritanical tightrope walk where to like certain characters or to write about certain characters became proof that people in real life were themselves a terrible human being. This is particularly pernicious in horror, which is filled with characters who by their very definition are bad people to begin with. Then it simply becomes about HOW bad they are allowed to be, which comes off looking particularly silly when the figure in question is a demon from hell or a cosmic entity who has been destroying entire worlds since before earth even existed.
I couldn’t imagine coming into a genre that has a long documented history of putting women in peril and going, “Yeah, I know this character is an ancient demon who oversaw the sacrifice of babies, but he better not enjoy hurting too many women or he’s a misogynist! Oh, and the writer is obviously a misogynist, too!” The truth is that a story about a clown that killing people, even if it involves them predominantly killing women, is still a story about a clown killing people, which is what the creator of that character intended when they wrote it. Does it really matter if the clown is a misogynist? Would you expect a serial killer who views people as human playthings to adhere to any kind of moral code or decency? Does Jason Vorhees love women? Does Michael Myers?
The reality is that we, as the viewer, have complete control over the content we consume. Purposely choosing to interact with content, then complaining about it, would be like putting your hand on a hot stove and then seeking sympathy when you get your hand burned. And then going once step further and expecting the person that owned the stove to get rid of it, because you chose to ignore all logical warnings and got burned,
The thing about censorship is that it’s a gordian knot. Impossible to take apart with any clarity because it contains a huge amount of topics that effect different people in different ways. When you take away a subject, it becomes easier for someone else to come along and go, “Well, you got rid of this other thing, so I need you to get rid of something I don’t like, too,” and it just goes on and on until there’s very little left but the most mainstream, vanilla things humanly possible. Especially when it comes to horror, which by its very nature already has intrinsic non consensual and violent elements.
I think that what people have to start really understanding about fiction is that fictional people cannot be harmed. Because they don’t exist. They also can’t really be bad people. Because they do not exist. If all of that was true, the CSI and Criminal Minds writers would all be rotting in jail somewhere. And no story, regardless of what it is, can physically make anybody go out and do something that they were not inclined to do anyway. Because real people have to be held accountable for their own actions. Not fictional characters in a book or on a TV screen.
