Sex in Horror

[ferretchucker]

that's why, after you're in that old abandoned warehouse, your friends have gone missing and there are noises everywhere YOU DON'T GET INTO BED WITH YOUR EYES CLOSED AND NOT LOOKING AT THE DOOR TO THE ROOM YOUR IN!"

[Demonique]

I believe that sex and horror have been linked not only from the late '80's but much longer ago than that. This pairing can be seen throughout our culture back as far as the middle ages and Chaucer's Cantebury Tales. In that, he write about the 7 deadly sins (mostly about lust) and the people who have sex are the ones who get killed or punished in the most interesting, painful ways. Our tales about vampires are only a thinly veiled representation of sexual congress and look what happens to them. Sex and deadly punishment has been linked in our culture for a very long time. It lately (since the '80's) seems to be more specifically represented in horror movies but I think it always has and will always be there.

[Doc Faustus]

I've always felt that the 80s slasher sex kills attitude had something to do with figures like Jason being subconscious embodiments of AIDS. He's faceless, unstoppable and he kills people for promiscuity. It also has to do with horror movies being moral fiction. Horror has always been moral fiction. It starts even before Ovid's Metamorphoses and continues through the Middle Ages and Renaissance. Dante and Ovid are real progenitors of horror. Look at Ovid's King Lycaon, one of the first literary werewolves, or Dante standing before a truly ghastly Satan. One of the reasons I love horror is because it tells you more about the human condition and how to live your life than almost any other writings, because it's the legacy of Dante, Ovid and others like them. So, sex kills because after the sexual revolution there's a lot of moral ambiguity, the occasional lack of intimacy and the fear of disease. Sleeping with the wrong person can damage people's feelings, can ruin one's life or can outright make you sick. Nobody's ever killed in a horror movie for being in a responsible loving relationship, but often for misguided, ill advised sex, which society usually says goes on between teenagers. I'd like to see more corporate drones castrated for "working late" instead of spending time with their three children myself. I think that's just as harmful as teenage sex. With the dissolution of intimacy, sex becomes something different, often something scary, risky or ill-advised. Our society still isn't punishing the right behaviors, however.