Life Lesson in Reality Through Horror Movies

Life lessons are taught in a multitude of ways but mainly through experience. Each trait within ourselves is shaped through events and objects we encounter in the 'real' world. What makes this so amazing is the fact that we get to choose what we face, and, the act of deciding what we get exposed to shapes our minds around the individual morals we set. We will not wish to confront something out of our comfort zone of feelings most of the time. A type of encounter many people frequently choose to expose themselves to is fear, specifically in the form of digital media. Confrontation with fear brings out feelings of stress, anxiety, panic, anger, sadness, angst, fright, and joy. These feelings are occurring at younger ages because gaining access to all kinds of media types is so easy in 2019. Whatever you see on the television can easily teach you a life lesson. If you are a kid wondering what a dead body looks like, as soon as you can spell, you can google it and know.

Technology changed the way that we have previously encountered the horror genre, specifically children’s horror movies. Previous generations were exposed to much less atrocity at this age because they had no way of looking it up. However, one sub-genre of film violence has remained a constant influencer in deciding what we choose to believe since the 1800s. That is horror movies. To be more specific and recent, children's horror movies. These are most commonly seen in animated form to desensitize the actuality of something like bloody gore. Little kids' horror is unique because most youngsters are going to be scared of virtually anything you put in front of them that has a sharp set of teeth and uses deception. These movies always end up teaching a lesson of sorts with the monsters and villains having a change of heart or the good guys prevailing eventually, and things like that. They help kids to channel their anger, sadness, angst, fright, etc., into something constructive such as joy or fearlessness. Children’s horror movies like Monsters Inc. elicit fear in adolescents. However, at the same time that fear is operationalized in positive ways because children's horror movies show kids that what initially scared them might not seem scary at all anymore, effectively giving insight into the monstrosities of the “real” world and teaching that they can always overcome any horror.

Because Monsters Inc. shows kids that what initially scared them might not seem scary at all anymore, children learn to carefully assess and overcome any frightening situation and not let horror cloud judgment. Gaiman, in his piece titled, “Ghosts in the Machines,' says, “Fairy tales are more than true: Not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten”. If you replaced “fairy tales” and 'dragons' with 'murderers,' then this quote would translate into a much better real-life example because murderers, in retrospect to the other horrors in the world, are very common yet they hold very little power over the function of society. They can and will be caught; therefore, they should not be feared. If you teach a child that being a monster has repercussions for both the monster and victim, then when faced with one, an assessment led by experience rather than pure fear will take place. A lesson like this can be taught in many ways but the most common by far is through media. Monsters Inc. is the best kind of horror because something scary turned out to be nothing in the end. This type of children’s horror “…tells us more. It tells us how to live with being afraid. It tells us how to distinguish real evil from harmless shadows. It tells us how to fight back”. If we teach kids that figures like Randal and Mr. Waternoose are synonymous with criminals, violence, and horror, then the child will perform under such atrocity being guided by experience, not letting fear get in the way.

By giving insight into the monstrosities of the “real” world, Monsters Inc. teaches kids they can distinguish between different levels of evil, from good to bad. The entire “good vs. evil” situation is an essential theme in Monsters Inc., and it is not talking about the moral issue around scaring children to harness energy. It is speaking on how there are “bad” monsters like Randall and “good” monsters like Mike and Sully. I will be the first to admit there is a problem when it comes to putting some people in a 'bad' category and some in an 'evil' group. It is not easy, and it takes practice. Monsters range in the severity of their actions. Therefore, it is common sense that some monsters (people) inherently make better decisions than others. Monsters Inc. exposes these two types of monsters (people) by creating a world in which children must figure out if a monster (person) is 'good” evil or “bad” evil when the entire population’s race is monster-like. Randall is really evil because he is genuinely mean, egotistical, and loves to make kids scream. However, though Mike and Sully are both excellent at making kids scream, it is only because of Sully's size that are they able to outperform a “bad” evil like Randall. These two guys do not actually like to make kids scream and would choose laughter as an alternative method to collect energy, so they are “good” evil. Distinguishing between good and bad is hard, especially when the level of measurement is evil. A real-life example of this lesson applied would be a child learning that even though a person might have a criminal record, it does not mean the person is guilty of eternal evil. Also, good evil might take the form of political protest or government control, where a monster has good intentions of evil.

With the coming of technology, horror has become so available for children that some would say horror movies add unnecessary burdens and take away from better, more positive feelings they would have from watching the happy films. Perhaps, adults might claim the fear from these movies only makes kids more afraid of the world instead of helping them to navigate it. Happy and positive videos only encourage affirmative actions. This idea is a known fact. If you were to bundle up all the fear that has come from things we see on the news, videogames, in film, etc. you would realize how much it is. We witness tens of thousands of onscreen murders in our lifetimes and become preconditioned to view monsters as rapists, murderers, and robbers. None of that is usually seen in happy movies. Horror movies reflect the “real” world and everything life might throw at you, and some would deem that unnecessary. If children only watched happy movies with kind actors, then they would reflect on those actions entirely. There is always the issue that a child can never fully protect themselves from the horrors of the “real” world. It is difficult to claim a child would not benefit from all the lessons a fictionally “bad” evil character teaches in a movie because so much of life is about fear and evil. To say there is a chance kid might only pick up on the violent parts of horror movies is false because all children’s horror has a type of message or meaning that is easy to pick up on.

Fear can take on numerous roles in one’s life and can be operationalized in positive ways like teaching kids to not be afraid of fictional beings and how to distinguish between different levels of evil. Fear can affect one person who then changes the outlook of life on another person. Fear can also change social systems. It is important to think about how kids can only get these life lessons through horror movies because they show the 'true' world whereas positive movies only depict the rarity of the universe actually going the way you want it to. It seems to me now after writing this paper, that the news will never change and the media will always be violent. There is never going to be a scenario where world peace is achieved, at least not in my lifetime. So, why worry about violent children's movies having a detrimental effect on the minds of our youth? I would rather my child witness a psychopath on screen for the first time rather than in person where they could physically get hurt. Fear operationalizes itself in many different ways but it is never about the same stuff. Movies do an excellent job of tackling fear from so many angles. In the case of Monsters Inc., we see an amazingly written and intricate plot that shows the transformation in both the monsters and humans involved. I find that unique how is easy it is to push the boundary of expectations in this movie toward a more encompassing life lesson: do not fear monstrosities in the world.

Work Cited

1. Gaiman, Neil. 'Ghosts in the Machines.' New York Times, 31 Oct. 2006, nytimes.com/2006/10/31/opinion/31gaiman.html.