Abstract

In a sense the classroom concerning the genre of horror deals with the popular arts on the whole. The popular arts are part and parcel in the young generation's daily life. The students in the classroom seems to agree with the negative criticism on the popular arts, but once they are out of the school they are still the very important group of consuming the popular arts. Generally speaking the youth-students do not exercise any serious influence upon any other groups of society at the same time they are not any more children. Besides they have difficulty to ascertain their own identity as a human-being in distress for surviving life itself, not to mention that they possibly have power of influence. Power is located on the other side of schools and institutions. At the same time the traditional system of value is radically changing. The youth-students responds sensibly this radical changes in search for the new system of value. But where they can find the object of their identification? The schools and institutions still demand the youth-students to follow the traditional way of discrimination, which the schools and institutions themselves do not believe any longer. On the other hand, the global cultural industry copes with the situation very effectively. To be sure, for the cultural industry it is a matter of commercial interest. The youth-students are fully aware of that, but the senior generation does not listen to what the younger generation really feels in their heart. In this circumstance the genre of horror has made a considerable impact on the younger generation. To the youth-students their experience of horror may be an initiation ceremony, or a demonstration of peer-group experience. The problem is the passive attitude the youth-students usually assume concerning the horror. The genre of horror should be appropriated to the classroom like any other areas of the popular arts. It is unquestionably required that the horror is to be understood as it is in the classroom on the condition that the due consideration should be paid constructively. First and foremost, it is the horizontal conversation between the school and the youth-students through which the cultural significance of the classroom dealing with the horror is to be acquired not only as an expansion of productive horizon but also as a new value-orientation in the era of uncertain prospect. In this context, this paper proposes a concrete model directly appropriated to the classroom for the discussion of horror inspired by and constantly referring to a Swedish case which is really thought-provoking.