Horror and Philosophy

               I found a discussion on a forum that analyzes The Philosophy of Horror by Noel Carroll, which I read for my book review, and reaches a lot of the same conclusions that I do.  He also writes that it is not clear why people would not watch fantasy instead of horror and that it does not include human’s that act like monsters. He adds a criticism that if monsters are expected to appeal to our curiosity, then Carroll’s argument does not explain why we would watch films about the same monsters. It would seem that overtime vampires would stop inspiring curiosity and would start to seem normal. He does not mention that idea of breaking category distinctions that is so important to Carroll’s theory, but I think this is what is intended to be appealing to curiosity so it is somewhat implied. Overall I think the post at the top of the page on this forum is a good, quick look at horror and philosophy. He also finds that getting scared is an important part of horror even though Carroll finds fear to be a secondary part of horror and not why most people would read or watch it. I would agree that at least some of the appeal of horror has to do with the fear and other emotions like disgust that it inspires. Otherwise people would be content with non-horror fantasy and it is clear by the persistence of the horror genre that they are not.  

http://forums.philosophyforums.com/threads/why-do-we-enjoy-horror-films-28527.html

Why do you think people enjoy horror?