Karl Marx famously claimed, ‘Religion is the opiate of the people’. For the 21st century, film is the opiate of the people.
Film seduces us to switch off our brains and immerse ourselves in a colourful, glossy, life-sized narrative. Without wanting to undermine the genuine pleasure that comes from relaxing in front of a good film, I want to encourage us to re-engage our brains and to critically consider modern cinematic output. As Neil Postman writes in his book Technopoly, the surrender to technology ‘is a state of culture’ but ‘is also a state of mind’. To help us do this, I will sketch out the implications of two recent developments in film that I consider to be the most significant: the rise of a new genre of horror, and the advent of 3D films in the commercial market.
The rise of horror
First, I will discuss the more insidious development of the two — the rise of a type of horror film that seems to demand hyperbole to capture its specific brand of ‘eyeball poppingly repulsive sadism’.
