Fifty More Horror Clichés That Should Be Left to Spoil

#18: Horror Cannot Be Poetic

  To many, the horror genre is reserved solely for the role of just creeping people out with the modern invention of the jump-scare.  If they are not that to those people, then they are merely an excuse for writers and film makers to create sociopathic bloodbaths in their works.  It is because of these two primary public opinions on the horror genre that many find it completely undesirable.  There is a reason why many horror staples such as Little Shop of Horrors and The Rocky Horror Picture Show are considered by the public eye as merely cult classics.  They see these horror narratives as lower quality material than their other genre counterparts, kind of in the same vain as humor.  People see horror as mostly cheap writing material not even worth the value of tissue paper.

  However, what these people do not realize is that many horror authors have a truly poetic hidden agenda for writing their material in the first place.  That motivation is far from wanting to depict sociopathic scenes of gore and bloodshed. They want to metaphorically depict real-life issues onto the fictional page, sending their message for change onto a more accessible format for people to flock onto. These authors are perhaps the deepest thinkers of the literary scope, hiding well thought out hidden messages in their narratives through the metaphoric actions of the cast. They are philosophers, preaching change into their many sentences.

A prime example of hidden poetry in the horror genre are the various zombie apocalypse stories out there. To most, zombies are just another monstrous antagonistic threat in horror. They are walking dead human sacks of decaying, diseased flesh that act like Cujo when first contracting rabies. What most people do not know about zombie stories though is that they are secretly cautionary tales about the complexities of human interference on the Earth.

The apocalypse in itself is a representation of human interference in nature through an artificial disease. The zombie disease in itself is usually mutated from a regular viral strain of the flu in labs, unleashed after someone's ignorance caused security to be breached. Because these scientists and virologists messed with nature through the artificial disease they have crafted, humanity as a whole is punished with their universal act against nature. Usually the zombie virus purposefully takes a long week or two to take full effect and kill the infected in order to engrain the message of suffering humanity will face when messing with such fragile parts of the ecosystem. When these people die and become zombies, they become constant reminders of the failure we as humans committed through our continued neglect of the Earth. Zombies in their quest to hunt down human flesh have become consumers of the messed up ideology that we as humans can mess up the Earth all we want without consequence, infecting more victims with this mindset through a bite or scratch.

Zombies are an abrasive poetic warning to mankind to respect nature while continuing to evolve technologically. They are the byproduct of mankind's mistreatment of the Earth, consuming all those who try to resist their toxic pull. That is why the usual band of survivors are usually represented as a strong foil to this dark poetic message. Survivors in zombie apocalypse stories are representations of those who see the danger in what mankind has done to the Earth, trying their hardest to survive the hardship of their controversial views to do what is right. Some will die fighting to have their views expressed, but other will prevail and find the "antidote" to the overdone consumption and manipulation of the Earth. These stories are activism messages hidden in the guise of a typical "gory" horror story.

Horror authors, like anyone else in the writing business, have a key goal in mind when writing their stories. They wish to spread the poetic messages they have learned from personal experiences in their own lives, trying to make the world better through messages disguised as regular fictional novels or films. Even if the goal is smaller than that of the typical zombie story, such as creating a more inclusive unique second person perspective, they are goals with a strong amount of admirability. Horror has a poetry to it that many people tend to miss due to their inability to scratch beneath the surface to get the true meaning of the story. These authors' methods may seem extreme to most people, but they are justified with the layers of complexity written between each page.

When someone in the future tells you that the horror genre is nothing but a bunch of gory jump-scares, inform them about the hidden poetic nature these stories tend to depict metaphorically through the worst of monsters. You do not have to reduce your explanation to merely just explaining the hidden complexity of zombie stories. Any type of horror story is just as powerful to get the message across. All you have to do is just dig deep enough in one story.