Tonight on South Park, the creative staff made fun of the BP oil spill by saying they also accidentally drilled a hole to an alternate dimension, culminating in the release of C'thulu (or however you spell it) rising from the sea while a newscaster talks about how a local cult has upstarted in honor of the entity. They also had Cartman recreating a scene from A Clockwork Orange where the main character, Alex, attacks one of his own mates for challenging his authority.
Also today, a webcomic I read has been referencing Cathoosey (or, rather, a feline version) for the past few strips in a manner that also references the Sandman story we've read - click on images to expand them:
Another C'thulesque reference was made (although I might be putting it there more than anything else) on buttersafe.com, another great webcomic:
And on a final note, I'm playing Fallout: New Vegas, a new videogame that takes place in a post-apocalyptic distopia filled with so many depressing and horrifying images. I present you the nightstalker, one of the many very able-to-kill you creatures in this world (imagine being completely by yourself, hearing a howl and a hiss unnaturally molded together coming from behind you, turning around just in time to see seven ungodly creatures rushing to you with their mouths agape while you stumble to draw a weapon - that was what it was like for me to meet these things for the first time):
I guess what I'm trying to get at is that everyone seems to be okay with identifying horror as a valid cultural artifact, or at least the people who I enjoy as artists.
2 comments:
I think horror is acceptable as an artifact, and it's funny that you should mention video games. I remember when my parents bought me the first version of Playstation, and I was so captivated by the game Resident Evil, a game that anyone who knows anything about video games knows is about zombies from an evil lab trying to eat you. That game used to scare me to death. Now that franchise has gone on to make a few more video games that have sold fairly well and a couple of movies. Horror seems to serve well as a cross-medium genre.
I'm not sure what qualifies as an "acceptable cultural artifact," but so often srt is created in response to the world. Horror -for better or worse, depending on who you are- exists in the world. For the artists whose work you've presented, it seems as if the presense of horror as part of our culture just means there's that much more material to work with.
Post a Comment