{"id":2060,"date":"2017-10-02T08:30:50","date_gmt":"2017-10-02T12:30:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nickzaino.com\/departmentoftangents\/?p=2060"},"modified":"2017-09-30T02:04:32","modified_gmt":"2017-09-30T06:04:32","slug":"daily-horror-film-fest-stephen-king-on-childhood","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nickzaino.com\/departmentoftangents\/2017\/10\/02\/daily-horror-film-fest-stephen-king-on-childhood\/","title":{"rendered":"Daily Horror Film Fest: Stephen King On Childhood"},"content":{"rendered":"

Like the first entry in this year\u2019s DHFF, I found this one through the Boston Short Film Festival. It\u2019s an oddity for this series, in that it\u2019s not a narrative film, but part of PBS\u2019s Blank On Blank<\/em><\/a> series, which features a noteworthy person talking about a single subject. In this case, it\u2019s Stephen King On Childhood<\/em>. The master horror writer talks about the relationship between childhood and horror, illustrated by Patrick Smith. <\/p>\n

The interview is taken from King\u2019s appearance on The Public Radio Book Show<\/em> in 1989, when he was interviewed by Thomas Smith. King<\/a> talks about the difference between how we think as adults and how we think as children. We\u2019re more linear as adults, whereas we tend to process life in a kind of dream state when we\u2019re young. That\u2019s useful, because it\u2019s connected to how we might process fear. Where fear comes from, he says, is the friction between very real concerns and how our minds change them in that dream state to make them more palatable. <\/p>\n

\u201cI think that in a lot of supernatural stories, we\u2019re dealing with fears that exist on a very practical level,\u201d says King. \u201cAnd in between those two levels, the shout on top, where the make-believe is going on, and the whisper underneath, where the subconscious is saying, \u2018Yes, but this could really happen if you just changed a few things,\u2019 that\u2019s where the story can succeed.\u201d <\/p>\n