I thought I’d bring a question to the AH blog here and find out what people might think.<\/p>\n
Earlier I started watching Red Dragon<\/i>, the 2002 remake based on Thomas Harris’ novel, the basis of Michael Mann’s Manhunter<\/i>. Ran out of time this morning. I’ll start it over and watch it later. (Yeah, I’m weird. Either I wake up to a horror flick or CNN. Is there a difference?)<\/p>\n
While wading through one of the slower moments in the flick, I was comparing differences between Manhunter<\/i>, the original novel, and the film I was zoning out of. Then I remembered an argument I got into with Kevin J. Anderson<\/a> at a convention about 10 years ago over the Michael Mann flick. He thought the movie had steered too far from the book and should’ve kept more from the killer’s POV, including backstory and how it tied into his graphic MO. I didn’t think any of it was necessary.<\/p>\n “How much horror do you need?” I said. I was only half-serious, facetious but still curious what he thought was really necessary to make the story work. He shrugged it off, glowered for a few seconds, clearly annoyed. We moved on to things , it turned out, we both agreed on. It ended amiably. A year later, he even signed a book or two for me and Jamie.<\/p>\n Cut back to June 2004. My mind’s drifting away from Red Dragon<\/i>, making comparisons like I said, flitting around that disagreement KJA and I had. I’d gone back and forth on the use of gore, disillusioned with splatterpunk writing and lame-brained horror flicks until I finally got around to renting Hellraiser<\/i>. Between that and Neil Gaiman’s work<\/a>, I started making a serious study of dark fantasy. ( I’d been dealing with almost a year of constant nightmares, so it gave me a chance to deal with all these dark themes and images in my waking hours. Kept me sane, got a mini-education. Doesn’t suck.)<\/p>\n But I came away with a better understanding of gore and violence as storytelling devices. Until then, I’d seen only the awkward mishandlings of it. Most slasher flicks lack the skill of Hitchcock, Barker, or Dario Argento. I knew about public protests against media violence, but only heard smatterings of things like tragedy as drama, catharsis, and Grand Guignol<\/a>. <\/p>\n Anyway, it’s gotten wondering what people might say. Horror isn’t everyone’s cup of tea in the first place. Graphic violence is the drop of arsenic that only so many have the stomach for. Is it possible to do a tastefully done gory scene?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I thought I’d bring a question to the AH blog here and find out what people might think. Earlier I started watching Red Dragon, the 2002 remake based on Thomas Harris’ novel, the basis of Michael Mann’s Manhunter. Ran out of time this morning. I’ll start it over and watch it later. (Yeah, I’m weird. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.afterhell.com\/news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.afterhell.com\/news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.afterhell.com\/news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.afterhell.com\/news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.afterhell.com\/news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.afterhell.com\/news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.afterhell.com\/news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.afterhell.com\/news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.afterhell.com\/news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}