Nosferatu and the Decay of Fear

    This is an image that many people who watched the popular Nickolodeon tv show "Spongebob Squarepants" will recognize, those most are missing the key context. The episode this shot is shown in is meant to be one showcasing the character's fears and how ridiculous they become as time passes. By the end of the episode, a non-sequitur is thrown in. Nosferatu, a horror villain, is used in what is arguably the funniest gag in the show's history. This was a film made before there were large scale regulations on filmmaking, the only constraints were the abilities of the crew, no one telling them they were going too far. But when I was watching the movie I noted that this shot, and the one preceding it make up the scariest part of the movie. I wasn't scared but I found it eerie.
This seems odd, one of the most popular horror films of all time and the scariest part has become a joke. Don't get me wrong this movie is amazing, lovely set pieces and camera work come together to make a good film. But it's not scary. At least not to me, or most modern audiences.
This brings up another point, in the last film I posted about Texas Chainsaw Massacre audiences were so horrified by what they saw that the movie was often condemned or outright banned from being shown. But many people in the class found themselves laughing.
    Fear has decayed in our society. Or the tolerance for fear has become much higher than before.
    If I showed an audience from 1922 (the year Nosferatu was released) the most garbage B rated horror movie from the last decade, say The Bye Bye Man, I feel like most of us would agree at least half of them would pass out from either shock or fear (or perhaps the fact that this is a film with sound, color, and technology beyond their understanding but that's beside the point). But again this is what we today consider a terrible movie with no scare value.
    I think there are three reasons for this shift in what we as a culture find scary. The first being that as people get used to Body Genre films filmmakers are forced to "up the ante" in order to get similar reactions from their audiences. We see this all the time from porn actors (mostly women) who complain that their directors are forcing them to perform more brutal and hardcore situations in order to keep getting views and payments from their films. From internet "celebrities" who perform wilder stunts so as to get more attention. In horror where slasher films get more blood and gore, psychological films begin to incorporate technology that has yet to be invented, and monsters who kill people in more creative and brutal ways.
    The second has to do with the world as a whole. As the World Wide Web became more popular and social media applications more mainstream people saw real-world horror. I remember coming home one day crying because a friend of mine had told me she found a video of a man skinning puppies online. I hadn't even seen the video but it was enough for me at the time. But I have seen movies that involve people being skinned alive and I barely flinch. Our capacity for empathy, especially towards fictional people, has been changed. Videos of unarmed men being shot by police in the streets, tales of people who were captured and tortured by different governments, people's experiences with real trauma have changed how we are able to connect to characters experiencing fake fear. When we are exposed to more and more of the real world it becomes harder to take these films seriously.
    The final one is a little obvious but changes in technology and the ways horror films are made have also affected what we find scary. More realistic props and color help make the world these characters inhabit seem real, sure. But I also found the sound design to be a bigger point. While watching Nosferatu I kept thinking about how the sound design in the film could have been more in tune with what I saw on screen. The music seemed almost disconnected and I'm not sure if it was the version I was watching or if it had to do with how grating I found the score. But little noises in modern films help to build to the world and the anticipation of what is to come. Take the sound of each character's footsteps in A Quiet Place, the squeaks of Danny's trike as he rides through the halls of the Overlook Hotel in The Shining,  or even the orchestral stings from the opening shots of Texas Chainsaw Massacre. The ways these films are made are so different when compared to the silent era. Synchronized sound being the biggest reason for these changes.
     Nosferatu is a prime example of a well-made horror movie that has decayed with time. As technology and cultural focus changes, I am left to wonder what horror films of the future will hold. Perhaps Virtual Reality will take the place of traditional filmmaking? After all, what's more, terrifying than being in the very same place as the characters?