IT's ONLY A MOVIE?

During the summer of 2007, the Museum of the Moving Image in Astoria, Queens in New York hosted the film series ‘It's only a Movie: Horror films from the 1970s and today’. Running from 16 June to 22 July, the series featured screenings of over twenty-five horror films, mostly those made and released in the 1970s and the 2000s. Though some of the films were non-American productions, the thrust of the series was predominately American, as evidenced by the screening selection for the opening of the series: The American Nightmare (Simon, 2000), a documentary film that takes its title from Robin Wood's treatise on American horror films of the 1970s. The documentary describes how American horror films from this turbulent time ‘reflect’ the social turmoil of an era that included the civil rights movement, the Vietnam War, the counterculture movement, movements for the rights of oppressed people, and Watergate.

This selection for the opening screening set the tone for the series in a significant way. The curators of this series demanded that these films be taken seriously, as a reflection of the times in which they were made. The description of the series on the Museum's website makes this aim explicit:

This write-up suggests that the museum curators – and, perhaps, viewers as well – have come to expect a great deal from their horror movies. Once dismissed as exploitation or ‘trash’, in 2007 horror movies were expected to be ‘transgressive’ and ‘powerful’, and to offer insightful social commentary.

To emphasise the horror film's power to challenge hegemony and the ‘status quo’, the curators of the series paired horror movies from the ‘Golden Age’ of American horror films with current horror films. The first decade of the twenty-first century, like the late 1960s and early 1970s, was rife with unrest and upheaval.