Blogs by Phoenix

Ever wondered why you are so fond of watching horror movies or reading horror novels? The book that I read recently talks exactly about this. Noel Carroll (1990), in his book, "The Philosophy of Horror," explains why we like consuming horror content and why we get scared or scream or freak out whenever there's a jumpscare scene, even if we don't believe in ghosts or the paranormal. So, when we are watching a movie or reading a book, we see/read it through the point of view of the main character, probably because we see some similarities between them and us, or we just happen to like them. We might even think that our perspectives match. When this happens, we get to feel what the main character feels, or at least, we tend to understand them better. But then, why do we get scared even when we know it’s just fiction and we don’t even believe in ghosts? The author explains this through what he calls the “thought theory.” He argues that our emotions...