Humans love to think about fear. For some reason, our little monkey brains are obsessed with it, whether through religion, urban legend, or science, humans are absolute magnets to things that terrify them. These fears do not live in a vacuum, though. They live and breathe as the people who hold them do.
So have have these fears changed across time and space? I don’t know, but we can find a nugget of truth by looking at two legendary horror films and see what’s changed after almost 100 years of cinema.
Nosferatu is THE horror movie. Made by German expressionist F.W. Murnau in 1922, Nosferatu is the movie that really originated horror films. It’s about the vampyr (vampire to us modern folk), Count (of course) Orlock, who wants to find a cheery little vacation home. He seeks out Thomas, a realtor, to get Orlock a nice house right across from himself and his pleasant wife. One thing leads to another, Orlock moves in, gets a little too mouthy, and later dies (we’ll get to that later) You should know about Get Out. Rose (white) takes her boyfriend, Chris (black), home to meet her parents. Yada, yada, yada, Rose and her family are a bunch of white supremacists that auction Chris off where he will undergo an experimental brain surgery that allows the buyer to control his every move (spoilers). Chris then kills Rose’s entire family. You know the drill.
Part One: The better halves
Ellen vs. Rose
Ellen (played by Greta Schröder) is pretty one dimensional. Not unlike many contemporary female characters, her beauty is her only real trait. Though she does display courage, her ability to defeat Orlock comes from her “purity,” associating a woman’s value in terms of male control over her body (more about that here, if you like).
Our charming female lead in Get Out is Rose (played by Allison Williams), a stone cold bitch. Her purpose in the film is to play with our emotions. She begins as Chris’s largest supporter, disgusted by how he gets mistreated by the police and angry at how her parents treat him, but it turns out she just lured him to her family in order to make him a zombie. Whoops! Director Jordan Peele does this intentionally. The collective knowledge of film and female stereotypes within film shape our expectations of Rose to be the moral, kind, and sensitive female soul only to make her the main antagonist, criticising both representation of women in film and the guise of ‘white innocence.’ First impressions can be misleading, I guess.
Part 2: Products of their times
When Nosferatu was released in 1922, Germany was relatively shit. They got blamed entirely for World War I and were basically responsible for fixing everything. Their economy and military were in shambles and this nifty sheet of paper ensured that it would remain that way for the foreseeable future (or at least until a certain moustached leader came about).
The entire country felt victimized and angry at the rest of the world and the financial burden placed on Germany may have manifested itself in the idea of the ‘bloodsucker.’
I have also heard that the Germans did not have a particular fondness for Jews at this point in time, so the rat-like characterization could be something to look at, as well.
You can be the judge of that
America in the 2010s is constructed of facades. The dark history of oppression and mistreatment of virtually everyone without white skin is largely ignored or claimed to be days passed. The issue is that many people do not see racism as passed, and actually believe that it is still lingering in a fairly inconvenient way. Reduction aside, the African-American voice is one that is still unfortunately rare in film and such a pointed criticism of White America leaves little to the imagination of the internalized struggle of Black Americans.
What’s the point?
These two films hold great importance in the long history of horror in film and they point to the purpose of horror itself. Yes, we are scared of vampires and of getting experimental brain surgeries done on us without our permission, but we are also scared of political and economic turmoil and our uncomfortably intimate history of violence against Black Americans. Though time and space change, the human aspect of horror can not be erased.
The Flexible Body 