Reflection of Society's Fears in Horror Films Throughout history, horror stories have been circulated to scare people. As time went on the stories changed to reflect what society was afraid of at the time. This continued from the silent film era to the time of computer generated imagery, or CGI. The root of any good scary movie is targeting a fear that is already in the audience's mind. Over the past century, horror films have reflected society's fears of nuclear radiation, communism, war and AIDS. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay The prime example of fear represented by scary movies is nuclear radiation. When the United States bombed the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki to end World War II, it greatly affected both countries. In Japan, the aftermath of the bomb devastated the country. A few years after the two bombings, a group of Japanese directors created Godzilla, a film about radiation following an atomic bomb attack that mutated a lizard and attacked Tokyo (Koyama, 1954). In America, fear only grew with films like The Beginning of the End and Them! (Swain, 2013). In one of the most famous horror films of all time, Romero's Night of the Living Dead (1968), the apocalypse began with nuclear radiation. These films allowed the public's imagination to reach further into the mystery of what the consequences of an atomic bomb might be. After the American fear of radiation, attention focused on the fear of communism, or McCarthyism. During the Cold War, Americans feared the spread of communism from Russia or Cuba into the continental United States. Senator Joseph McCarthy only worsened this fear in his hunt for Communists in government and the public, resulting in widespread hysteria and accusations. McCarthyism essentially led to a fear of things that seemed human but were actually evil, which can be seen in films like Siegel's Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956). In the film, a small, typically American town is slowly conquered by a mysterious group of humanoid life forms that take over the bodies of American citizens. Unlike ordinary Americans, these so-called body snatchers were only interested in taking over society, forcing the two main characters, the only humans left, to try to escape to save both their lives and their individuality. The body snatchers represent communists because, even though they looked just like Americans, they were truly sinister beings whose main goal was to build their following and create a world without diversity among people. The two main characters reacted in much the same way as McCarthy: panicking and trying to find help, only to find that everyone had already switched to the side you were trying to avoid. In the 1960s the Vietnam War broke out and this transformed society's main fear into war and the massacre of the many young Americans sent to fight. This was essentially the first war in which visual combat was shown to the American public via television. The real-life horror that could be seen simply by turning on the news subsequently led to an increase in the amount of blood shown in films. Before then, scary movies had been more gothic in the sense that they left things up to the viewer's imagination, but this new greater tolerance for blood and guts soon led to an increase in.