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Rural Horror in movies and books... WHY?

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MariaHobbit
Post subject: Rural Horror in movies and books... WHY?
Posted: Tue 07 Mar , 2006 6:58 pm
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I never read horror stories, nor watch horror films... but recently it has come to my attention that many such stories are in rural settings.

Why could this be?

Is this some sort of conspiracy to make city dwellers afraid of rural places?

Are the authors just playing on the fear of the unknown by the masses of people who live in cities?

Or is it the fact that rural America tends to be conservative, and thus high density liberal metropolitan areas are trying to implant a subconscious distrust of any idea or person who comes from a rural area?

Or is it more basic than that? Has the herd instinct been carried on throughout the ages? The person who lives outside of town is strange and untrustworthy and scary and probably a witch to boot? The animal on the edge of the herd is more likely to get picked off by predators, thus any herd animal that hangs around the fringe is likely insane and might do anything?

Does anyone have any ideas on this? Googling is less than helpful :roll: and I can't find any stories or essays on that topic. This is a pervasive attitude that I find perplexing. My own mother in law found it intolerable to stay at her daughter's farm, it was too far from civilization. She almost never visits us at ours, we are also too isolated for her. It literally freaks out the woman to be out in rural America.

Why could this be? Why don't I feel this way? I've lived in both cities and the backwoods when I was growing up, and I far and away preferred the woods. It's quiet and safe, once you learn the habits of the living things you are likely to encounter and the hazards of the geography.

Why would anyone want to live anywhere else? The only reason I live as close to a city as I do is for employment purposes: my nearest neighbors are 1/2 to 1/4 mile away... and I like it like that! However, I can completely envision moving somewhere more remote once we retire. The fewer people around the better I like it.

So why does Hollywood demonize the rural places? What is their purpose? Anybody know?


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Jude
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Posted: Tue 07 Mar , 2006 7:24 pm
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My guess is that they want to emphasize the isolation; if somebody gets attacked in a remote location, help would probably get to them too late.

In a crowded city, screaming when attacked will likely bring, if not help, at least some curious onlookers.

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gimli_axe_wielder
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Posted: Tue 07 Mar , 2006 7:39 pm
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That's exactly what I was going to say. You have a lot more leway in the stories when there is no one around. If one is in the city they can just run next door or something. Someone will hear, etc. In a rural setting you can play around with the phones cut. No one around for miles, ummm. No one to hear sounds, To far of a distance to run. No cell service. Police or rescue to far away. A lot more possibilites. Though, I must say. It also makes for some lazy stories too. Instead of making a real suspenseful one where they take on all of those city problems and work with in them, they just throw the people out into a rural area when they don't have to deal with "why didn't the moron just go next door or why didn't the neighbor hear" etc...

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Dave_LF
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Posted: Tue 07 Mar , 2006 8:43 pm
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Like the others, I think it's just that rural areas are wilder and therefore more scary. A couple hundred years ago when most people lived in rural settings, the Grimms set their horror stories in the forest.


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Riverthalos
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Posted: Tue 07 Mar , 2006 11:02 pm
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In the countryside, no one can hear you scream...

That's also true for space, but it's cheaper and easier to film movies set on Earth. :P

As for the rest, there are people who need to around people and people who need to be alone. I prefer being alone, and I'm happier out in the wild, but, at the same time, to do the work I like to do I need to be in a university or industrial setting, so I'm kinda stuck with cities and towns ( refuse it civilization; rural areas are also civilization). So I've learned how to be alone among people, if that makes any sense. People live in the places they do partially by choice but also by necessity, and modern farming is such that fewer people are needed to work the land and therefore fewer people can actually make a living that way.

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ToshoftheWuffingas
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Posted: Wed 08 Mar , 2006 8:57 am
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It's the same in our country. We have two kinds of rural story, the sheep and shagging sort where the countryside is a beautiful backdrop and everyone gets along together in an extended rural community, a bit like your Waltons; the other where everyone is mysterious and hostile, I think The Wicker Man or Steven King caught that attitude.
The city dweller's derision of farmers probably dates back to Mesopotamian times. As a country dweller myself, it suits me, it keeps the hordes out and plenty of countrymen have benefited from being thought a village idiot. A local saying goes, 'If yew fry him for a fewl yew'll lose your lard' That said, I like city life too but am happy to get back

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MariaHobbit
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Posted: Wed 08 Mar , 2006 2:37 pm
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River wrote:
In the countryside, no one can hear you scream...
LOL! :LMAO: When my kids get into fights and are screaming at each other, I kick them outside, and it doesn't matter how much they yell, no neighbor is going to complain.

They didn't even complain when my older daughter's rock band practiced at full volume in the garage almost every weekend a year and a half ago... and you could hear them almost half a mile away- we measured! (I was kinda worried that the kids were intruding on other's peace & quiet, but the sound didn't actually reach to the next houses.)
Jude wrote:
My guess is that they want to emphasize the isolation; if somebody gets attacked in a remote location, help would probably get to them too late.
Doesn't it usually get there too late? :scratch: Those are the stories you hear in the news, anyway! The number of violent crimes committed in cities always seems to vastly outnumber the same sorts of crimes in rural communities.


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Riverthalos
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Posted: Wed 08 Mar , 2006 7:47 pm
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The stuff you hear about in the news is the stuff that doesn't happen all the time. If all you do is watch TV shows and the news you'll think the cops never show up and CPR always works and neither of these is true. Also, population size and density plays a role in crime rates. More people = more crime. This doesn't mean violent crime won't happen in the hills - we had a case in Boulder last fall where a couple who lived up in one of the canyons (Boulder is not a big city, and what with the hills and the twisting roads and open space homes in canyons are actually quite isolated) ended up beating a home invader to death with a baseball bat before the cops could reach them. I've ridden my bike up in the area where this occurred, and believe me, it'd be hard to reach anyone quickly for any reason, especially since driveays are very poorly marked.

Up in the mountains above Boulder accessibility gets even worse.

I think, however, you've hit on another factor in why horror movies get set in the quiet countryside. It's the quiet countryside. Bad shit doesn't happen in the quiet countryside, or, at least, that's what we all want to believe. So having a serial killer or something attacking people in the quiet countryside just makes it that much more horrifying.

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