Read My Column! I'm So Sensitive!

One of the things that disgusts me with newspaper writing today is how the writer, instead of doing some investigative work or making insightful commentary, will want to show you how sensitive and PC he is.

There is a perfect example of this in today's Washington Post in Steven Hunter's review of The Descent. It is a horror movie about a bunch of thrill-seeking women that go spelunking and get more thrills than they bargined for.

Here is an excerpt from the column. The italics are mine, to emphasize the point I want to make.

"So the movie right away removes itself from the heavy misogynistic vibe of most horror movies, in which beauty and promiscuity are punished, and there's a profane subtext of men wreaking vengeance on the women who've rejected and humiliated them over the years.

The best known horror franchises of the last thirty years are the Halloween movies, the Friday the 13th movies, the A Nightmare On Elm Street movies, and the Scream movies. In the movies in the first three series, the killers (more or less) are the same from movie to movie.

But in not one of those series is the killer targeting women who rejected or humiliated them over the years. Micheal Myers kills because he is a psycho. Jason kills because he was left to drown as a child. Freddy kills because he is "the bastard son of a hundred maniacs" and he kills children anyway, for the most part were born after he died (so does Jason). And I don't have enough space to get into the motives for killing in the Scream movies.

And another things about these supposedly misogynistic movies: They all have female protagonists. There's a lot more "girl power" in horror movies than in the average Hollywood summer action movie (and this certainly carries over to The Descent).

But if we go even further back into horror's past, and look at the most famous 1970's movies, we still can't find a movie that meets Hunter's description.

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre? No.

Last House On The Left? No.

It's Alive? No. None of the plots of those three movies have anything remotely to do with the point Stephen would like you to believe.

So what the hell horror movies is Stephen talking about? Really, I have no idea. I am resisting the urge to break into The Big Encyclopedia Of Horror Movies to find one with a plot (or even a discernable subtext) where the killer's motivation is to kill women that rejected and humiliated him over the years.

But boy, doesn't Stephen sound all modern and sensitive and PC when he writes this? Instead or researching his subject or even citing one movie that meets his description, he just drops in his proclimation and expects people just to accept his statement because it's a common misconception of horror movies.

Critics are supposed to do a little digging below the surface, just not parrot what is commonly believed at the time.