Do we not, now, have exhibits that in their own way are both much more disgusting, and much more graphic than the death-filled scenes in “Texas Chainsaw Massacre”? I am speaking of the various “Bodies” exhibits, which take human corpses, and more or less make artwork out of them. You literally have corpse “mobiles”.
I’ll ponder this a bit more. It does seem to me both that we need a sacred and profane, and that this distinction, at carefully chosen times and ideally in ritually defined ways, needs to be broken.
The most salient characteristic of Horror, perhaps, is that it retains the sense of danger and submission, but never transcendence. It is one half of an ages-old equation.