This is also how a lot of horror stories work. The monster got her because she stole a valuable artifact/slept with a man she wasn't married to/looked into a mirror she'd been told was cursed/was mean to a handicapped child/otherwise violated either a social taboo or a taboo established by the story.* When I was in my early teens and reading all the horror I could get my hands on (and scaring myself sick in the process), that's exactly how I dealt with the scariest ones. "If I don't steal valuable artifacts, the monsters won't get me."
Of course, then there are the horror stories that doesn't work on . . .
--- *A lot of horror does the cultural work of policing social norms, and that's more or less the mechanism by which it does it. Us vs. them, where "them" are the people who violate a taboo, either knowingly or unknowingly, and "us" are the people who don't and are protected by our inherent virtue from every possibly doing so.
It's a little like the Puritan idea of the Elect, come to think of it. You know who the Elect are because they lead virtuous lives; obviously, if bad things happen to them, it's because they aren't among the Elect after all.
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timeasmymeasure
This is tangential. Also possibly pedantic and full of as-you-know-Bobism.
Date: 2009-03-10 12:31 am (UTC)Of course, then there are the horror stories that doesn't work on . . .
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*A lot of horror does the cultural work of policing social norms, and that's more or less the mechanism by which it does it. Us vs. them, where "them" are the people who violate a taboo, either knowingly or unknowingly, and "us" are the people who don't and are protected by our inherent virtue from every possibly doing so.
It's a little like the Puritan idea of the Elect, come to think of it. You know who the Elect are because they lead virtuous lives; obviously, if bad things happen to them, it's because they aren't among the Elect after all.