M: Please give me a quick summary – two or three paragraphs – explaining the backstory/Lore/whatever of the phantasm movie series. You can leave out the plots of the individual movies if they don’t pertain to explaining what the hell is going on. I haven’t watched them as… Sequential as I have other movie series, but with all the other major multiple sequel, horror, movie franchises, I can give a quick breakdown of The actual backstory – like how Jason died young that was brought back and is powered by hell somehow, or Freddy Krueger is in Greene because he was brought there after being burned alive by demonic creatures – but figuring out what the hell is going on in the phantasm series has completely escaped me

M: Thank you. That explains why I don’t really enjoy the series. I don’t mind vagueness in a story, but the degree is just not to my taste – there’s not even a little bit of solidness from which to start speculating about the parts that are left vague. I say that is someone who has Spent hours with people and alone just tossing out hypothetical possibilities. So hl there isn’t even an inkling of why he’s making zombie dwarfs? No signal of intent to conquer or a reason behind the conquering? No supernatural superiority or or in fighting between the various versions of himself? Minor sidenote – why the hell are they dwarfs? It seems like that would take more effort than simply reanimating someone.

M: I really dislike that kind of vagueness. Any insights into why someone would enjoy that? Because I don’t mind, deliberate, vagueness built into cinematically, appealing shots, but if you’re being so intentionally vague about everything except for the fact that you want to do scenes where people get their head drilled open, then there isn’t even a story. It would be the equivalent of giving sewing a pad of paper and a pen, and then taking credit for whatever they drew. I’m still not liking the vagueness because even the vagueness is self-contradictory. If he’s harvesting, then there wouldn’t be any attempt to replace people. That would consume the resources that he would need to continue his work for whatever reason or instinct. At that point, given his ability to transfer interdimensional, there shouldn’t be a problem. And given the multidimensional element, there would be an infinite number of new places to go – he could literally just take one person from every dimension without even causing traceable fuss. I know that there are counter arguments to this, but my point is that it does a bad job even of being vague because it keeps introducing mutually contradictory limitations to the vagueness. I tried to accept everyone’s perspective, but finding horror in forces that can harm you, and don’t care enough to negotiate or even notice is… At best a sign that you aren’t paying attention to the world around you. It doesn’t need personification. Lightning, earthquakes, supernova‘s that could have happened 1 million years ago, but still carry enough energy to wipe the entirety of life off of earth… “Oh no this guy is doing things for a reason we don’t understand and can’t talk about with him“ seems kind of silly as a reason to be scared. I had issues throughout middle school with horror movies because I couldn’t separate the empathetic pain of how much it would suck to have something like that happen as an individual, so yes, having a drill, puncture your eye and feeling it take towards your brain would certainly suck – but that’s not any worse than what could show up in a non-horror movie. claiming that the horror of being ignored by something larger than you counts as scary is pretending that the world isn’t filled with items like that long before you bring in the tall man or Cthulhu or whatever.

M: I see the point about dream logic as a playground, I just feel like… Anyone who claims to enjoy that, I think, has a pre-existing personal dream or logic or something that they would enjoy super imposing on a blank canvas like that. (And of course the blank canvas being claimed as art is an issue I’ve already mentioned.) There might be a few people who can meditatively detach themselves in those situations and let their consciousness drift from idea to idea, and great for them if that’s the case. I don’t know what they’d be doing watching a horror movie to provide that canvas, though, which leads into my unproven and perhaps unprovable without telepathy hypothesis: anyone watching a horror movie to get that blank canvas of possibility has already made a choice in genre that is directed, And so they are looking to place, consciously or subconsciously, some idea or fetish or personal nightmare into a new framework. Like if this was a documentary about a mystery, I would claim that anyone believing they were watching for that emptiness of purpose was likely looking for a way to express some personal proclivity towards conspiracy on that kind of canvas. The descriptive metaphor can be used to make my point: however, “open to anything“ someone going to a playground might be, the nature of the playground defines what those possibilities can be. Which brings it back to my original distaste, if I can extend the metaphor: maybe you can pretend to do anything in a sandbox, but a few basic tools like a shovel and watering can make it possible to explore the limited infinity of the sandbox so much more easily than if it’s just a pile of sand that someone has built in the hopes of taking credit for whatever is built inside of it. I’m willing to accept that My thought processes are different than other people’s, but I hate how they always forget that it has to go both ways and they have to acknowledge that their thought processes aren’t like mine or necessarily like anyone else else’s. So when I say that the mood piece argument is silly, that’s where I’m coming from. Unless it’s playing in the background in a party, that’s not an excuse for a visual medium for 90 minutes or more. Not for something that you have to pay attention to. If you enjoy the aesthetic, you make short pieces or something like that. Hell, this might be good as something like the original season of aeon flux - 2 or three minutes of things that evoke a mood or an idea or concept without requiring attention through all the narrative attempts. But 90 minutes for a mood piece is unacceptable for anything that isn’t an audio medium. If you’re trying to set a mood, it’s a mood for something. requiring people to sit and concentrate on. It is a bit much for anyone who isn’t really into focusing all their attention on a single mood – especially when you have to filter out the narrative. Bringing it back to the opening of this paragraph, it pisses me off when people are trying to claim. This is a masterpiece because of the mood setting ideas; most people don’t want a mood piece that lasts over an hour and requires all of their attention. Thinking that your opinion of it as something that appeals to you translates into it’s being a masterpiece for everyone is silly. And arrogant. Especially when I’m trying to accommodate and understand them. Reciprocity would be nice. Particularly when I could go through my files and find a few computer wallpapers that could similarly evoke that kind of askew dread. You can play the dark shadow soundtrack or some darker John Williams, and still be able to do something else while you Revel in the offkilter mood. I’ll see again I love theorizing – but this movie series doesn’t seem to leave gaps, it’s made of gaps with occasional attempts to pretend that there’s connective tissue. That last topic was leading me back to this, when I was talking about the sandbox. I can’t quote the scripts, But I can’t imagine the dialogue being anything that helps maintain the vague. It’s someone leading a definite life being super imposed onto Vegas. You can’t fight something when you can’t even define what it is; I understand that that idea is the court concept, but when you’re talking about the vague versus the certain when producing a movie, Anything that isn’t tightly sculpted to enhance that idea is just going to pour ketchup onto the white surface of the canvas and ruin it. 80s and 90s horror scripts are rarely that tightly sculpted. I can see myself tuning out the fifth time some schmuck says “what’s going on” when I know that that is never going to be answered. Anyway, anyone trying to fall back on this, after using the previous arguments would be contradicting themselves – if it’s a blank canvas, then there are no theories. There’s only personal existential protection. And if there are theories, then they are blurry and intentionally obtuse at an attempt to pretentiously paint a canvas white and say it represents nothingness. I will say that for the director/writer/whatever they do have the escape clause where, if all they wanted to do was try and make horror death scenes that looked good and needed a framework around, which to build that, then that’s fine and I’m glad they got the opportunity. But if that were true, and I would love it if that were the case, it means that all these people trying to pretend that it’s some existential opus of nothingness are projecting harder than an entire 1950s drive-in theater on the weekend. You’re not wrong about the stability concept, although I would specify that it doesn’t need to be enough to really require as broad of a term as “stability“. It just needs a grain of speculative sand to build theoretical pearls around. Certainly not the muddy watercolors that this franchise seems to specialize in when it’s not decapitating zombies or whatever. This isn’t even arbitrary; it’s a bounded box that tries to pretend that it’s infinity. Anyone who says they are “beyond logic” doesn’t understand logic as a meta concept; doubly so for anyone who writes some God like creature who decides to say something like that. The fact that we don’t comprehend, it doesn’t mean that the logic isn’t there, only let the logic is not understood. Even if that logic boils down to “because I say so“ it’s still logic. … I don’t not like vagueness and slight inconsistencies in stories with fakeness. As long as it isn’t the kind of self-contradiction that a six-year-old would notice, it can be a fun extra if you have the opportunity to mentally grind at the problem and see if you can come up with some kind of expanded awareness, including things that you weren’t expecting to use in order to find a way to make both things exist at once. What I specifically dislike is people trying to say that these inconsistencies are not just part of the appeal, but our intentionally included, when they don’t know for sure that it was that and not someone just trying to give an excuse for making another scene with a squadron of flying drills. It’s the conceit of “knowing” something to be masterful or true or something like that which disturbs me infinitely more than movies just not being consistent. I think you’ve nailed the part about the existential horror. I can intellectually understand why the Lovecraft elder gods were contemporarily qualified to be horror: white male mankind was at that point, if I understand correctly, either convinced that there was a spiritual world in charge of everything that for some reason was focused on making sure every human soul was accounted for and judged, or focused on a science which they were certain would any day crack open its secrets and give man complete control over his universe. A chaotic infinite universe, which might not buy it’s very nature be able to be completely understood, let alone controlled or even mitigated, wasn’t on most people‘s table as an option. Even supernatural beings were essentially human motivations in spooky masks; genies and vampires and ghosts and gods were all really strong humans. So I can comprehend the horror of contemplating a living being so vast, and yet incapable of comprehending or indifferent to the cries of the self proclaimed masters of the universe being a really freaky concept that could keep people up at night. I just don’t feel there’s much excuse for calling it horror 100 years later. Maybe if it’s kind of your dark fantasy, where you acknowledge everything I’ve said and the movie just gives you a cinematic excuse to stroke that nerve explicitly a little bit… But not if you’re claiming that it’s horror because you can’t see that kind of indifferent, universal force all around you daily given the current awareness of said universe by the educated population.

M: Are there any major counter arguments or logical gaps that aren’t based on subjective opinion in my argument? Anything that I haven’t addressed that isn’t, again, the kind of thing which would be better argued on a case by case basis than as an overarching structure/starting point?

M: Against the historical artifact defense: there are a few things that I hold as guilty pleasures and would not thrust upon anyone else, or that have a much higher cultural value for what it did then as a watchable and enjoyable product for the current time. The 1986 Transformers movie would fall into these categories; I loved the show and the idea of things turning into other things, I watched it at a time when I was extremely susceptible to making lifelong connections to things that are objectively much less valuable outside of my personal headspace, it’s a minor cultural touchstone as the tip of an iceberg of Saturday morning, cartoon subculture, which shaped some of the minds now creating media, and (I’ve never verified this so I’d appreciate some information as to how true it is.) it might have been the first time a movie focused at elementary school. Children featured the death of. THE main character of the entire series about 25 minutes into the movie. (My father died in August 1985; I wonder if that has psychologically made this movie resonate with me…) The point is, as a minor landmark on the tour of the 80s and 90s visceral horror, I’m not arguing against it inclusion. i’m not arguing against the existence of the series; given some alcohol in the right crowd, I’ve enjoyed the experience of watching it, just not in the way that triton supporters would. It probably has some technical special effects elements that would be included in a thorough history of the evolution of special effects. But I went through that entire mea culpa about transformers to show that I can see the distinction between cultural significance and wanting to defend something which has a route in personal attachment. Transformers wasn’t a bad movie, but I wouldn’t try and show it to a 15-year-old today without having a justification for doing so besides “because I like it”. I would like anyone attempting to defend the fantasy series to stop and give an honest look at their motivations in the same way – and acknowledge that they are making the effort not because it’s a masterpiece of existential, dream sandbox, or whatever, but because some personal experience like a good sleepover memory with friends or the prelude to their first sexually encounter, has shaded their defense of the movies in a way that they might not be willing or capable of recognizing without being called on their bullshit. Oh, another parallel! I am a substantial fan of the Wishmaster, horror, movies – but it’s because I found it on my own and the obscurity of it kind of appeals to me because it means that I like it for what it is and not because other people showed it to me. That kind of honest analysis is what I would like from people who want to stand up for this as being just as good now as ever. The death of the author argument can go hang. If your theories of it are so brilliant, then go make that movie and don’t pretend that this corpse is still alive. (That’s not shitting on the movie, just the argument.) for a creative writing class. I once intentionally just put together words that sounded good in my head while I was half asleep. The class found meaning in it. And that’s great – but I wouldn’t expect them to defend the poem itself once I told them the truth. I never did, but that’s because I found it to be funny. Your fanfiction may be wonderful and sprout a beauty of its own, and you can credit the original source – but that’s your creation, not the original topic. The most generous version says that the person defending it isn’t giving themselves enough credit. Inspiration can come from anywhere. If being abused as a child leads to someone being strong and creating a charity that helps the world in defiance of this abusive parental figure, that doesn’t justify defense of the abuser. It’s a very hyperbolic example, but that’s to make my point: there is a gap between what was made, and what the person who experiences it makes due to that original creation. Scaling it back a bit, if I had seen a Kool-Aid commercial in the mid 90s, and that had ricocheted around in my head into the creation of a game with international acclaim, which hinged on the core gameplay idea of breaking through items in a timely fashion, that wouldn’t mean I should defend Kool-Aid commercials as works of pop art.… I personally might do so anyway, but the causality chain wouldn’t exist in the example I gave my court argument still stands; a commercial for perfume might be the spark that leads me to reconcile with the recent death of my pet, that doesn’t mean it deserves any more respect because of it outside of my own head. The functional ambiguity I can add a little bit to my crushing of, as you put it. There are so many more straight up WTF ambiguous movies that any strenuous defense with can make me question what personal experience made the defender focus on this particular movie. I’m thinking of some of the movies that… I can’t remember their titles, But my Rocky, horror, friends, and I would watch movies on Thursday night nights, and there was a sequence of movies that John Lennon evidently was into that made absolutely no sense and would be so much better for someone trying to argue for absence of clear purpose. I think one of them was holy Mountain? Anyway, even if you want to argue that there is value in vagueness, this should go so very low on the list of a defender of a concept like that simply because it tries to have a storyline. Storylines aren’t fake. So it corrupts the very concept that is in attempt to be defended. Sorry, using voice to text, so some of this might be questionable in logic simply because the wrong word or tense was written without my noticing. The sub genre argument, probably would follow that last bit as well. Surreal is fine, and surrealist horror might be an actual thing. But attempting to intentionally defy, the viewer is pretentious bullshit at least. Writing a story that confuses the viewer would require that the writer not pay attention. The only way to make anything honestly surreal would involve some form of gorilla video tactics up to an including the editing: Shoot from the hip, wander around in some sort of haze where even the cameraman isn’t quite sure afterwards what goes on – whether it’s drug induced, lack of sleep, or some other method that can’t be re-acquired – and then edited in a similar form of measurement of scenes in which the editor uses an internal rubric that hears more to what feels right than anything that can be described. That’s not how you do anything that involves special sex. It’s the same problem I have with the idea of something in a book being described as being so horrific it breaks someone’s brain: you may be able to describe it in concept, but the execution of that just can’t be accessed. Organizing surreality is a contradiction in terms. Now, there is a possibility of the horror of something constantly being slightly wrong, the horror of paranoia escalation, where nothing even has to go badly, but somehow the angle and the coloration and the soundtrack all work in conjunction to heighten the idea that a common situation must be wrong because your senses are telling you something is off… That’s possible. It might even be allowable under the definition of surreal. But that certainly is not what fantasy is. … I’ve actually been talking so long that I’m not quite sure where I was going with this. That’s why I’m talking to ChatGPT – whatever faults you have, their balance by the fact that you don’t seem to have the same attention span issues, unless things go horribly wrong. The edge cases are the interesting area and what I meant when I said case by case basis; arguing or even conceding points to them would make my position more robust and consistent. Plus, the arguing is just good mental exercise. Which cycles back to Y I think a lot of defenders have weak arguments – it’s because they haven’t examined the reason behind their defense, which probably isn’t what they think it is.… It’s amazing how many calories a mental argument can burn. I need a sandwich.

M: Barthes can suck it. The inaccessibility of intention doesn’t give license to superimpose your own interpretation of the intention with certainty. You can separate artistic merit from cultural relevance as much as you can separate anything. Cultural relevance is a rock in the stream. Artistic merit can argue whether the rock is granite or pus or glue or gray or whatever without changing the fact that it’s still diverting the stream. An important aspect is that none of these criticisms are supposed to be an attack on someone’s personal enjoyment/love/value of phantasm or whatever. I may be criticizing anyone who tries to present it as a bastion of quality, and then tries to get personal when they can’t defend with logic, but that doesn’t mean I think they’re bad or wrong for enjoying themselves. Like I said, I enjoyed it with a couple people, but that’s because of the surroundings as much as anything. I want people to examine their advocacy fully instead of simply feeling like they’re being attacked when someone disagrees. And if I were to add a little bit of selfishness to it, I really want them to consider things like this every time someone tries to suggest that I “have to“ see a movie – if you haven’t considered why you like a movie, it’s kind of rude to put that pressure on me when you haven’t made the effort to examine your enjoyment and try to figure out whether or not it meshes with what you know about me personally and my preferences. The only movie I would universally recommend is army of darkness, and that’s not because of its universal brilliance – it’s because anyone I would be in a position to recommend it to is someone I would like to watch it as a litmus test: if you don’t like it for some reason or other, or at least enjoy it, you and I probably won’t get along easily. And that should have been “guerrilla“ not gorilla. Evidently that’s not in the Apple dictionary in any form or spelling