by Shockadelica

Created on: July 25, 2008

PG-13 Horror Movies:
Parent-Friendly Goodness Or Probable Garbage?

With today's society racing forward strongly into the new millenium our society is becoming more and more advanced. Our children are growing up smarter. Our technology is going further and previous thoughts of what the future may be like are quickly becoming old news of what the world was like decades ago. To try to counteract the reaction of our minds to the hyperspeed of communication and sociological advancements, a large part of the world is trying to dumb things down, either to promote the safety of innocence or to simply numb our senses all together. This is happening in all corners of our reality, from governent to politics to economics and even entertainment. But does it have a place in entertainment, that is the question. Is subduing certain forms of entertainment for the sanctity of moral protection not in reality the same thing as censorship? Or even worse, is it not to be considered oppression of our creative liberty?

This battle has long been fought against two film genres in the entertainment world in particular. Those two genres, pornography and horror, have continued on despite the wars waged against them. To bawk agaist the adult film industry which takes just about everything one step further is one thing (although it's still an infringment of our freedoms) but to be a martyr against horror is completely different. Those who are soldiers in this war cry to the media that horror movies have gone too far. Have they? And if so, are the new trend of PG-13 horror films the answer to our problems? New age middle America parents say yes. Die hard, old school horror fans say no!

In considering both sides of the coin, you have to ask yourself, what is a horror film? Webster's Collegiate Dictionary gives the primary definition of horror as "a painful and intense fear, dread, or dismay." Tack the noun film onto that adjective and you have an entertainment tradition that www.filmsite.org quoted started in 1896 with the first known horror movie ever made, Le Manoir Du Diable (aka The Devil's Castle) which was a film with vampiric overtones only about two minutes long made by imaginative French filmmaker Georges Melies. Another ground breaking and remembered early horror film was of course director Paul Wegener's 1914 film Der Golem (aka The Monster of Fate). The new trend (at that time) continued with horror flicks popping up everywhere including European filmmaker F. W. Murnau's feature-length

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