Children's Horror

While working on my final paper for this class, one of the things I've encountered is the use of horror in children's media. The fact that my paper is on the mixture of comedy and horror should say something about exactly how horror is used in children's entertainment. Because children are more likely to become uncomfortably scared by horror movies, some lighter emotion must be mixed into any attempt to convey horror to children, and comedy does a very effective job of preventing children's horror from becoming too scary. In fact, many horror movies are rated at least PG-13 with a great deal of them rated R, only further proof that straight up horror is not for children. But that of course doesn't mean that kids have to be totally removed from this genre. I know that, although I did not watch R rated horror movies until I was a teenager, I did see shows which included elements of horror that provided enough of a scare for me that I liked them but not so much that they made me cry and curse the name of horror. I think the reason for this was the injection of comedy into horror.

Take one very popular example of children's television with horror in it: Scooby Doo. Each episode has a "monster", or at least that's what it looks like at first. These baddies are always pretty frightening, especially to little children, and include such things as ghosts, frankensteins, werewolves, mummies, etc. However, the antics of the members of Mystery, Inc., especially Shaggy and Scooby, greatly decrease the potency of the horror. When Scooby and Shaggy go searching for food and run into a monster, a chase scene is often started which includes light-hearted music and a humorous movement of the characters between doors in a hallway. So, although the show usually starts off in a spooky setting with creepy characters and the introduction of a scary "monster", the rest of the show is absolutely riddled with comedy to make children laugh at their fears. Watching a horrific monster clumsily searching a set of drawers for the hiding Scooby and Shaggy makes him seem funny and not so scary.

True, it seems more comedy is used in this "horror" children's media than even in the horror-comedy of today aimed at adults. But this seems only natural. Forcing a child to watch a horror-comedy movie like Creep-Show would probably scare them to an uncomfortable level, causing the some to even cry. I think that using something "fun" like comedy is an excellent way to allow children to be introduced to the genre of horror so that, when they grow older and more mature, the transition into true horror is made a lot easier!