America Horror Story: Asylum

I love horror, whether the threat being supernaturl or your next door neighbor I love the macob. But I don't like unpleasantness without purpose, people shouldn't be dismembered unless there is a lesson for the reader/gamer/audience to learn damnit! Even slashers have lessons in them, don't be permiscious or a dick and you won't get killed. Granted that isn't always the case, with movies like the Scream franchise and even long before that Black Christmas killed the first virgin on screen. For me personally the Silent Hill video games are an excellent example of horror at near perfection, people's anxieties, fears, and regrets coming to life as horrific monster to torment you. Awesome!

Then there is American Horror Story: Asylum the tv series...I don't just hate it, I loathe it...it isn't scary and there seems to be no purpose to all the horrible, horrible things done to the characters. While the original series wasn't much better, this repeats alot of the same problems except even worse.

Spolier Alert!!!

First off, this show suffers from some serious racism. Each person of color to make it on the screen dies before there is a chance to getting to know them, some reader may think "So? It's a horror series of course people die!?". It's not that they die, it's the nature of their deaths. They're the only colored characters who get no development before they die horribly.

As for the characters that are developed, the good guys are actually pretty descent people. Not all of them, but I genuinely was invested and got really angry when characters had bad things happen to them. But I got angrier as more endless bad things happened again and again, all while I wondered what lesson there was to be learned for these poor souls.

There is also a reused plot point from the original show, pregnancy resulting from rape. Lovely isn't it?

There is also this strange mix of supernatural horror with exteresterial horror, one of these things is not like the other! It doesn't make any sense for the devil to posses a nun to be in the same world as alien invaders.

Oh one last thing, the show rips off soundtracks from better horror stories like Bram Stoker's Dracula and Silent Hill. Assholes...

 

Honestly Angel there weren't any racist stereotypes, just a like of diversity and what little people of color there were died after a few minutes on screen. There was once a hispanic woman who didn't speak English.

I know, I was a bit ranty, rather than giving a review like I usually do.

 

It's not just because a good portion of the US is white, it's also because alot of tv shows and movies when they host audition restrict auditions for people of color. Though this has gotten better for black actors and actresses, but there is still plenty of room for improvement and especially for people of Asian, Native American, and Hispanic descent.

 

I didn't say anything about giving them a slot to fufill a quota, but there is some serious restrictions for people of color in the acting business.

Did you know the casting for Katniss in the Hunger Games would only audition for white actresses? Even though in the book Katniss was described as olive skinned with dark hair, it's actually implied that she may being a mix of Black and Native American (given the location of her district). That means that soooo many actresses couldn't audition for the role because they were hispanic or etc. even though they had similar descriptions to Katniss. You'd be suprised how much this has happened in Hollywood even today in the 21st century.