The Beauty of Horror
Beautiful nightmares and an appetite for violence: the old marriage of like and fear
We cannot see beauty as innocent.
My sister would tell you I was the biggest gatekeeper of anything good. I’d be jealous even if my best friend knew about the obscure metal-indie-pop-synth song I was listening to, having found it by mistake via eMule. Things have changed tremendously, and now I try to force-feed my taste onto others. But, Anguish has become something of an internet sensation, and I get why. I remember my attention being stolen like someone screamed my name across the room. But it was a pallid painting of a mother and lamb.
The baby is peaceful, gone to where no sheep aids human dreams with trots and fences. It’s just the mother. It’s just the cry for help in the cold. It’s the crows waiting, observing, adding screeching sounds to an already loud portrayal.
‘We cannot see beauty as innocent,’ writes the philosopher Kathleen Marie Higgins, when ‘the sublime splendour of the mushroom cloud accompanies moral evil.’ The same could be said for Sephiroth in Final Fantasy VII and fireworks from dogs' eyes.
