SPN Analysis – S1E10 – “Asylum” – Oral Traditions and Horror Cinema

Okay, everybody, it’s time to head over to Zeroth’s blog and read this most excellent analysis! It’s one of my favorites so far.

There are certain tropes common to horror cinema, ones that have been rightfully criticized.

  • If a character has sex, they’re going to die.
  • The black guy dies first.
  • The survivor will be the white blonde virgin.

These tropes were established back in the heyday of horror movies, and they’re criticized because they communicate specific, poisonous social norms. The killer is often presented as an unstoppable force of nature, killing seemingly indiscriminately, and yet somehow, fitting these tropes much of the time.

There are consequences, delivered by a force of nature, for breaking specific norms, such as “don’t be black” and “don’t have sex”.

Seems fairly arbitrary, eh?

But horror cinema is simply an extension of a much older phenomenon: oral traditions.

Read the rest!

And I promise I’ll catch up on my backlog of SPN analyses soon.

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SPN Analysis – S1E10 – “Asylum” – Oral Traditions and Horror Cinema
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