Ponder what early Buddhist life was like. They were required to wander as beggars, owning only what they carried, which was a rice bowl and perhaps a few other essentials. They were required to not eat after 12pm. No doubt they had other tasks–perhaps the recitation of mantras or scriptures, and almost certainly meditation–but consider how hard this life was, at least physically. For the true believer it was no doubt a liberation of sorts, living out the Buddhadharma, but put yourself in that position. Imagine living in homeless shelters, wandering from town to town, constantly hungry.
“Life is Pain”. This is what Cary Elwes tells Robin Wright as Buttercup in “The Princess Bride” (I will note in passing that his role in the first Saw is in this respect interesting). What Horror movies do is reinforce the sad, sick, grotesque side of life. Could we not find many horrors in cancer wards? In third world hospitals, with cases of elephantiasis, and leprosy, and all the deformations I am told by world travelers are quite common in unsanitized, non-developed nations?
The point of Movie Yoga is not to intellectualize about movies, although of course that is in some measure what I have done. But I know myself–the feelings come later. When things happen to me, the feelings land in a sort of filter, where I can release them at appropriate times.
The night after I watched Texas Chainsaw Massacre I got hints of some part deep within myself grasping that life is serious, at root. This is an emotional truth, one that I think most modern Americans don’t get. We feel lost in the superficial, because we are not confronted with the existential.
In a very real way, Leatherface is chasing all of us with a chainsaw, but he is far away. Our deaths are far away. There is nothing to PUSH us, there is no imminent threat forcing us to fundamentally reevaluate who we are, and what we stand for. But I think people need that, they want that, they want structure, and they are not averse to turning to fear to provide it.
Obviously, Horror movies do not tell us how to live our lives, but I think they may create the momentary sense in some/sum that life does have gravity, that it is serious, and that the existence of the viewer is not pure foam.
My two cents for today.