As a fan of the goth genre from its earliest days, I was, like many goths, always puzzled by “normies” who assumed that goths must all be suicidal misery-gutses. On the contrary, most goths, at least the first wave of goth, regarded the genre as fun. It was all a kind of in-joke for those of us who’d grown up on Hammer Horror movies, The Addams Family and Dark Shadows.
In fact, as a new study claims to show, goths and horror fans in general have uniquely prepped themselves to cope with truly dark times.
All those nights curled up watching zombie massacres, alien invasions, and paranormal hauntings may be paying off during the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a new study which suggests horror movie fans are coping better than others during these unsettling times.
The study, published last week in the journal “Personality and Individual Differences”, found that fans of horror films exhibited “less psychological distress” during the pandemic than those who prefer other genres.
“People who engaged more frequently with frightening fictional phenomena, such as horror fans and the morbidly curious, displayed more robust psychological resilience during the COVID-19 pandemic,” the study’s authors wrote.
When you’ve spent your life seeking out the thrill of fictional horror, the real thing holds few surprises.
The study’s authors found that those who indicated they were fans of horror and “engaged more frequently with frightening fictional phenomena” reported lower levels of distress during the pandemic.
An acquaintance of mine often wore a t-shirt saying, “The hardest thing about a zombie apocalypse will be pretending I’m not excited” which is perhaps no idle boast. Another much-misunderstood sub-culture who appear to be handling the pandemic well are the preppers.
In addition to fans of horror flicks, those who enjoyed the “prepper” film genre, which involves fictional stories where the imagined world is illustrative of the chaos that might occur in a real-world pandemic, such as in zombie, apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic, and alien invasion films, were also found to exhibit greater resilience during the global health emergency.
Those in the “prepper” fan base were also shown to display more preparedness for the COVID-19 pandemic because of their experience watching films that deal with social upheaval, such as during a fictional zombie uprising.
“The widespread chaos that occurs in zombie films is in many ways similar to the widespread chaos that can occur during real-world disasters,” the study said. “Thus, the information we obtain vicariously from an imagined zombie apocalypse may serve us in analogous situations in the real world.”
[Coltan ]Scrivner said he found it “unsurprising” that fans of the “prepper” genre reported feeling ready for the pandemic.
“They would say things like they sort of knew what to buy when the pandemic started, it didn’t catch them by surprise as much as it did other people, things like that,” he said.
As Don DeLillo wrote in White Noise, in a catastrophe, always follow the right-wingers. Or, as an ABC journalist found to her obvious surprise, far from being low-intellect loons, preppers were smart and adaptable people.
But that doesn’t mean that the normies can spend a few hours on the couch with The Grudge, The Exorcist, The Shining, Ringu or Event Horizon and be good to go for the rest of this year.
As for whether he thinks people should start binge-watching horror and “prepper” films to help them cope during the pandemic, Scrivner said he doesn’t think that strategy will be effective for everyone.
“People kind of know if horror films make them really anxious, it’s probably a bad idea to start watching them now to try to reduce your anxiety,” he said.
“If you don’t absolutely hate horror films, maybe watching stuff that scares you a bit now and then is sort of like a psychological vaccine of sorts, but that’s speculation.”
Meanwhile, whatever else 2020 throws at us, we horror fans will be joining up with the preppers and passing the popcorn.
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