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By Drewsch
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Disney has canceled their streaming series GoosebumpsA serial series on the iconic anthology horror series by author RL Stine. I remember watching the first episode of the show and thinking, “This looks right enough for children today but it doesn’t fuel any excitement from me, someone who was raised on those books.”
Who led me to consider a topic that is often on my mind: an anthology horror. Here’s my favorite storytelling in all the fiction and I’m even Written about it during another life. When I heard about Goosebumps When I was canceled, it made me look another on pop culture and asked, “Where have all the Campfire story TV shows gone?”
Raised on scary stories
If you grew up in the 1980s and well into the 1990s, an anthology horror was practically inevitable. Thanks to George Romero’s EC Comics Creepshow Hitting the #1 spot at the Box Office in 1982, the format became a hot commodity in Hollywood. We would see a revival of the best -known anthology TV show, The twilight zoneIn 1985 that would last for three seasons over four years. More importantly, Creepshow would lead to the legal adjustment of the CE comics on TV in 1989 with Stories from the cryptAn anthology series run by your Pal and mine, the Crypt Keeper.
Stories from the crypt He would be struck unexpectedly with audiences on HBO, successfully holding the seven seasons all the way into 1996. Not to mention that two theatrical feature films were released before the run came through. Needless to say, audiences (especially those too young at the time like yours were real) and pop culture fully engaged with an anthology horror for well over a decade.
And since Stories from the crypt It was not a show edited for children, a capitalism machine knew it needed to hit while this iron was hot and get some projects in place that could target this trend and aim it directly to children.
You are in for terror, children
The largest and most relevant of these efforts to me was the 1992 Nickelodeon Series Are you afraid of the dark?. Seeing this kind of friendship between a diverse group of young children was an important part of my upbringing. I understood that real -life divisions –– Children of the Midnight Society came from different schools and did not socialize with each other during the day –– something that fiction and stories telling could overcome by bringing people together for a daunting story.
Naturally, RL stine on the horror of the anthology with the anthology with the Goosebumps A series of books in 1992, and thanks to an anthology horror zeitgeist, they became a runaway success. The books would be adapted into a series starting 1995 with specific chapters such as the pilot, “The Haunted Mask”, becoming staples for a generation.
Give children the camp fire again
So what does this Goosebumps be canceled by Disney? As I said at the beginning, this iteration of the property took a serial that integrated many notable stories from the book series. That is not in any way -worthy effort, but makes me wonder why Goosebumps He could not exist as an anthology horror series today. Or really, why children don’t get their own camp horror shows today.
The anthology format has collapsed in favor of modern viewers trained on making serial shows seems more important. Even the most popular modern anthology show, Black mirrorIt cannot help itself by crafting links between some chapters or simple serial continuity.
But, Black mirror Not a children’s show. Heck, it’s not even a show that tries to grab younger viewers illegally Stories from the crypt. The market for an anthology horror series does not seem to be supported because audiences across the age spectrum are not so enthusiastic from something they feel is more fleet than a serial story.
That’s a shame because children deserve and need an anthology horror. They need the campfire that can just reduce that for them, where they are not spoken down or treated with children’s gloves. Trust me, by the end of its original run in season 5, Are you afraid of the dark? Pumping monsters that would even scare some adults today (example above).
The horror of anthology generally needs to find a way to find a way to get children excited about it again as they were when they were Goosebumps Books were flying off the shelf and we all ran home to catch the next Are you afraid of the dark? Episode.
