Monday, May 21, 2018

[Obscure American History] & American Horror Story







 


            If you are familiar with FX or horror, the you are familiar with, or have known of, the tremendous variation that is the American Horror Story. With an admixture of reoccurring, devout and talented actors, writers, directors, history and unrestrained sexual depravity, extravagant dossiers of sporadic, unpredictable grimace, it is no wonder why 7 seasons have picked up so much momentum that worldwide it has placed itself apart from the ever-dwindling of creativity in the field of horror and now bracing for an 8th upcoming season.

            Taissa Farmiga, the younger sister of renown actress Vera Farmiga, has found her footing, displaying, as Elizabeth Olsen, as Jake Gyllenhaal, that a family’s credentials in Hollywood is not even a spec that defines her resume. Making an appearance in season 1 (Murder House), season 3 (Protect the Coven), audience have inquired numerous times on when, if ever, would she make future appearances. Angela Bassett, the legendary, seasoned actor/writer/producer and director herself, along with Kathy Bates, Jessica Lange, Sarah Paulson, Evan Peters, Emma Roberts, Gabourey Sidibe, revisits and redefines themselves in so dramatically creative fashions, it creates a stunning effect on even an audience who has followed Angela Bassett since “What’s Love Got to do with it” in 1993, Kathy Bates in “Misery” in 1990, even the beloved Sarah Paulson who was so despised in the multiple Oscar-Winning film “12 Years a Slave.”

            From a historical point of view, American Horror Story taps into some of the darkest moments and tragedies to ever occur in American history, abide by time-traditional issues while disregarding those very censors (during that time) by introducing what phases of history that have gone unknown to the latter generations. In Season 4, Monsters Among Us, Evan Peters portray “Lobster Boy,” a moniker attached to him from his genetic congenital malformation of his digits. Between shows, he earns his money in a way that may have seem so peculiar to those who have revered the 1950’s as a more “curtsy” time. Women are in the living room, discussing their husbands, dressed in the latest fashions, perceptions that tells that audience they are women of standard who live up to those traditional stands, whilst simultaneously, following an unspoken compulsion to fulfill a need, one that today is seen just as “getting off,” but in the 50’s, as a recommended treatment to the now defunct medical condition “Hysteria.” Lobster Boy, or Jimmy, takes his station in a back room, catering to one woman after the other by placing his lobster claws under their dresses and titillating them until they reach orgasm. This very gathering of women was commonplace between the Victorian age and up until the early 1960’s when Hysteria was removed from legitimate medical conditions and made illegal to diagnose or to be medically treated as such.

            In the very same season, Jessica Lange, portraying Elsa Mars, is visited by the two headed Prince, Edward Mordrake, portrayed by Wes Bentley, and forced to share the darkest, tragic moment of her past. During this very tale, audience is shown a vivid picture of Germany before the rise of Adolf Hitler and his Nazi party. The Weimar Republic was then the mecca of deviancy, drug use, and all forms of depravity catering to even the most unusual of compulsions.

            During season 3, Protect the Coven, there were multiple emphasis on the Salem Witch Trials of 1692 and the little-known fact of the fleeing of others who would have possibly been victims of the trials and tortures that befall those who remained. Although it was not mention that the Salem Witch trials took place in over 6 town, across a little of a years-time, over multiple trials and that the burning of suspected witches never took place, only drownings and hanging (burning was a European penalty for witchcraft), the broad strokes it covered was enough to inspired audience, once ignorant to that very portion of American history, to educate themselves to it.

            From the previous 7 seasons, it cannot be farfetched in the least to assume that writers, actors, directors and producers who have given us 7 years thus far unprecedented entertainment, will honor those prior years with a future triumph.

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