![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
American Horror Story 1.07 - Open House
Nov. 17th, 2011 12:26 pmThis ep picked up the pace a bit from "Piggy Piggy" and I'm glad they're moving the storyline along in a very un-House M.D. sort of way (Ben and Vivien actively trying to sell the house and all); I just hope we're not stuck in a new status quo with the Harmons somehow never realizing that Constance and Moira sabotage all their attempts to do anything that get them out of the house, like a never-ending loop of The Prisoner in some universe where Number Six doesn't realize Number Two keeps dragging him back and is like "wait, how did I end up in the Village again?? Weird!" If they go somewhere meta with it -- IE that the house itself is cursed that no one who moves in moves out except in a body bag and will contrive various meta ways to make this happen, including Constance and Moira's interference, other life events, whatever -- then that'd be better, making the premise of "Harmons are in fact STUCK here" explicit. I like breaking-the-curse metaplots. That assumes the show's thought through that far, though.
AHS is kind of interesting to watch because it's such a typical middle-of-the-roadly bigoted example of horror media in terms of what stuff it leans on for creep factor and scares. Which is to say, a lot of horror stories are about trotting out freakshows, and freakshows wind up featuring a lot of 'grotesques' that Mom and Pop and Bobby and Susie in front of the TV are afraid of -- cripples, crazies, queers, vengeful women, children, you name it, if your average all-American John Smith might be secretly afraid of it, then it's fair game for the horror genre. Turning marginalized people or controversial concepts into scary monsters is the backbone of horror. Xenophobia is the backbone of horror. H.P. Lovecraft is the xenophobic granddaddy of this in the United States.
( AHS, xenophobia, and bigotry in horror in general; warning for references to violence and abuse )
In other words, it's the same-ol' same-ol' bullshit. I watch because Wednesday is a boring night, the Harmon family themselves and the story are entertaining, I like to know what's going on in the horror genre, and there's nothing on TV that doesn't perpetuate the same-ol' same-ol' anyway. It's TV. It's the centrist Republicans of the media political caucuses. It's there to tell middle America what it already knows. And horror is generally there to reassure middle America that they're not bad people for locking their doors to the people they lock their doors to -- after all, strangers are scary. AHS is like a rogues gallery of that.
Speaking of Ryan Murphy, I loathe Glee with the passion of a thousand fiery suns burning the fuel of the universe's autotune machines but somehow his horrible pandering Disney Channel show has produced a cover of a song (that I normally also hate? Adele knock it off with the Whitney Houston runs) that now sounds like a haunting bitter love song from a queer person to their ex-partner they're still in love with who's chosen to settle down into a hetero life without them. Naya Rivera, why can't you be on a better show?
AHS is kind of interesting to watch because it's such a typical middle-of-the-roadly bigoted example of horror media in terms of what stuff it leans on for creep factor and scares. Which is to say, a lot of horror stories are about trotting out freakshows, and freakshows wind up featuring a lot of 'grotesques' that Mom and Pop and Bobby and Susie in front of the TV are afraid of -- cripples, crazies, queers, vengeful women, children, you name it, if your average all-American John Smith might be secretly afraid of it, then it's fair game for the horror genre. Turning marginalized people or controversial concepts into scary monsters is the backbone of horror. Xenophobia is the backbone of horror. H.P. Lovecraft is the xenophobic granddaddy of this in the United States.
( AHS, xenophobia, and bigotry in horror in general; warning for references to violence and abuse )
In other words, it's the same-ol' same-ol' bullshit. I watch because Wednesday is a boring night, the Harmon family themselves and the story are entertaining, I like to know what's going on in the horror genre, and there's nothing on TV that doesn't perpetuate the same-ol' same-ol' anyway. It's TV. It's the centrist Republicans of the media political caucuses. It's there to tell middle America what it already knows. And horror is generally there to reassure middle America that they're not bad people for locking their doors to the people they lock their doors to -- after all, strangers are scary. AHS is like a rogues gallery of that.
Speaking of Ryan Murphy, I loathe Glee with the passion of a thousand fiery suns burning the fuel of the universe's autotune machines but somehow his horrible pandering Disney Channel show has produced a cover of a song (that I normally also hate? Adele knock it off with the Whitney Houston runs) that now sounds like a haunting bitter love song from a queer person to their ex-partner they're still in love with who's chosen to settle down into a hetero life without them. Naya Rivera, why can't you be on a better show?
