"I think that we're all mentally ill; those of us outside the asylums only hide it a little better--and maybe not all that much better, after all. We've all known people who talk to themselves, people who sometimes squinch their faces into horrible grimaces when they believe no one is watching, people who have some hysterical fear--of snakes, the dark, the tight place, the long drop... and, of course, those final worms and grubs that are waiting so patiently underground."
PARAPHRASE: I think that we all have some weird traits about us. Most are pretty good at hiding it, however some aren't, especially those who makes faces or talk to themselves.
Rhetorical Strategy or Style Element:
-Cumulative Sentences.
-Parallelism. (I suppose?)
-Death metaphor
Effect or Function: Introduction, simple thesis "I think that we're all mentally ill" presented, and elaborated on. Further, he is going to, in reference to the title, tell us "Why We Crave Horror Movies", or at least why he thinks that we do. Also sets up fear, perhaps of death or getting maimed and thrown into a freezer. (worms are icky.)Parallelism used, can perhaps drawn the line of the people inside the mental asylum, and the people outside, perhaps they are PARALLEL, and not too different from each other.
Side Note: I feel the phrase "not all that much better, after all." is a little awkward, maybe just because of how close together he uses the word 'all'. =/
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"When we pay our four or five bucks and seat ourselves at tenth-row center in a theater showing a horror movie, we are daring the nightmare."
PARAPHRASE: When we go to the movies, we are daring the nightmare. (Challenging your mind into bringing up a nightmare that night in your sleep...?)
Rhetorical Strategy or Style Element:
-Periodic Sentence
-Metaphor
Effect or Function: Daring nightmares to come, as well as putting oneself into the nightmare.
Speeds up reading and switches the tense. Order of the sentence (syntax ;D) is progressive, beginning with going to the movie theater, paying the money, and ending up in bed/asleep perhaps within a nightmare.
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"Why? Some of the reasons are simple and obvious. To show that we can, that we are not afraid, that we can ride this roller coaster. Which is not to say that a really good horror movie may not surprise a scream out of us at some point, the way we may scream when the roller coaster twists through a complete 360° or plows through a lake at the bottom of the drop. And horror movies, like roller coasters, have always been the special province of the young; by the time one turns 40 or 50, one's appetite for double-twists or 360-degree loops may be considerably depleted."
PARAPHRASE: Why? Simply, we want to prove we aren't scared. It doesn't mean that there won't be scary parts in the movie. Horror movies have often been like more often by younger people. As one matures, the appetite for horror movies drops.
Rhetorical Strategy or Style Element:
-Cumulative Sentence.
-Some Parallelism.
-Roller-coaster metaphor
Effect or Function:
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"We also go to re-establish our feelings of essential normality..."
PARAPHRASE: We go to feel normal again. An ugly melting woman in some movie I've never heard of makes us happy that we will all never be that disgusting.
Rhetorical Strategy or Style Element:
-Allusions to movies and old personalities.
Effect or Function:
"And we go to have fun."
PARAPHRASE: And we go to have fun...
Rhetorical Strategy or Style Element:
-Short sentence, somewhat periodic (If it had to be one of the two.)
Effect or Function: Quick switch in topic, train of thought. Transitions into next paragraph, which starts with a rhetorical question.
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"Ah, but this is where the ground starts to slope away, isn't it?"
PARAPHRASE: This is where it gets tricky. (Isn't it?) This fun is odd. The fun of seeing other people mutilated and killed. Football is combat, horror movies are public lynching.
Rhetorical Strategy or Style Element:
Effect or Function: Begins to go into the morbid side of the essay, detailing the odd desires of people to see others hacked and slain.
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"It is true that the mythic, "Fairytale" horror film intends to take away the shades of grey..."
PARAPHRASE: It is true that the movies put us in a different mindset. It puts aside the manners and allows us to return to a childlike personality. Seeing things more simply. Perhaps these movies provide mental relief because allowing to think this way is rarely seen in the real world. We are given the right to feel whatever emotion we choose.
Rhetorical Strategy or Style Element:
-Oxymoron: "Fairytale Horror"
Effect or Function:
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"If we are all insane, then sanity becomes a matter of degree..."
PARAPHRASE: If we are all insane, some are definitely more than others. If your insanity makes you a mass murderer, you go to prison. However, if you talk to yourself and pick your nose, people will leave you alone, but you'll have no friends.
Rhetorical Strategy or Style Element:
Effect or Function:
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"The potential lyncher is in almost all of us..."
PARAPHRASE: We're all psycho. (Except saints and what not.) Routinely, the psychotic side needs to come out. Emotions and fear become a muscle that must be exercised. We exercise them so we do not get overwhelmed for the civil emotions such as love, friendship, etc. are better.
Rhetorical Strategy or Style Element:
Effect or Function:
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"When we exhibit these emotions, society showers us with positive reinforcement..."
PARAPHRASE: When we're nice, society rewards us. We learn this at an early age, such as when we're nice to a sibling, the adults are happy and reward candy. But if we're mean, death ensues and spankings are handed out. Get it? Hand-ed? Sorry... :(
Rhetorical Strategy or Style Element:
Effect or Function:
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"But anticivilization emotions don't go away, and the demand period exercise..."
PARAPHRASE: Bad emotions don't go away and they need to be released. Sick jokes are a part of our culture, even told by children. We still laugh at them even if we try to hide it. This confirms that if we share a brotherhood of man, we are also sharing an insanity. Not that it's a bad thing, but horror films are reactionary just like fairy tales.
Rhetorical Strategy or Style Element:
Effect or Function:
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"The mythic horror movie, like the sick joke, has a dirty job to do..."
PARAPHRASE: Horror movies work like sick jokes. Appeals to the 'wrong' emotions in us. It's morbid, letting us loose from social constraints. Liberals hate horror movies. I however love them the worst they are.
Rhetorical Strategy or Style Element:
Effect or Function:
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"Why bother? Because it keeps them form getting out, man..."
PARAPHRASE:
Rhetorical Strategy or Style Element:
Effect or Function:
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"As long as you keep the gators fed."
PARAPHRASE: (Don't really need to, do I?)
Rhetorical Strategy or Style Element:
-Twist ending.
-Short abrupt sentence.
-Comical.
-Gators being a (very slightly) extended metaphor.
Effect or Function: Ends the essay, little joke to leave the reader off with the knowledge of needing to "keep the gators fed" as in regularly engage in 'anticivilization' emotions to satisfy the 'lyncher' inside.
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