Ian Park
I’ve had a life long fascination with scary movies because they are a significant part of my southern family’s bonding activities, and my friends. Growing up, we would rent from multiple video stores around the towns. The visceral feelings helped tie us together with frightful enjoyment and cope with blue collar lives in small town rural Arkansas. Around middle school years, I discovered recorded VHS tapes in my grandparent’s wooden movie case. It felt exciting and slightly forbidden, especially one I wasn’t supposed to watch, but secretly did, I Spit on Your Grave (1978). This was a pivotal moment and solidified my interest in schlock and all things eerie. My love for horror grew stronger as I found personal connections with discoveries of queer ideas and theories seen deeper than the screen. Such formative examples included May (2003), Sleepaway Camp (1983), and Basket Case (1982). I enjoy the amalgamation of emotions that nostalgia provides as escapism.
I’ve had a life long fascination with scary movies because they are a significant part of my southern family’s bonding activities, and my friends. Growing up, we would rent from multiple video stores around the towns. The visceral feelings helped tie us together with frightful enjoyment and cope with blue collar lives in small town rural Arkansas. Around middle school years, I discovered recorded VHS tapes in my grandparent’s wooden movie case. It felt exciting and slightly forbidden, especially one I wasn’t supposed to watch, but secretly did, I Spit on Your Grave (1978). This was a pivotal moment and solidified my interest in schlock and all things eerie. My love for horror grew stronger as I found personal connections with discoveries of queer ideas and theories seen deeper than the screen. Such formative examples included May (2003), Sleepaway Camp (1983), and Basket Case (1982). I enjoy the amalgamation of emotions that nostalgia provides as escapism.
