Das Wundmal im Zeitalter seiner technischen Reproduzierbarkeit. Horrorvideos und die Herausforderungen des Affekts in den 1980er Jahren

The human body poses challenges for society in general and specifically for its media. However, it is often the effect on the viewers’ bodies rather than the morally reprehensible mise-en-scene of the body on screen that fuels debate. This applies particularly to the horror movie genre. The shock experienced while watching a horror film becomes a threat to the inviolability of the viewer’s body and a threat to a socially constituted difference between fiction and reality resp. medium and world that is woven into the fabric of society itself. The article deals with the pedagogical discourse on horror videos in the early and booming stage of the video recorder. It demonstrates how the wounds inflicted within the films threatened the audience’s body even more than its moral integrity.