Society, Law & Politics

CUriosity: What can horror films teach us about society?

Daniel William Strain — Tue, 07 Oct 2025 21:39:13 +0000

CUriosity: What can horror films teach us about society? Daniel William… Tue, 10/07/2025 - 15:39

Daniel Strain

In CUriosity, experts across the CU Boulder campus answer pressing questions about humans, our planet and the universe beyond.

This week, in honor of Halloween, sociologist Laura Patterson takes a stab at: “What can horror films teach us about society?”

The 2025 Norwegian film "The Ugly Stepsister" examines beauty standards facing young women, with grisly results. (Credit: Marcel Zyskind/IFC Films/Shudder)

Laura Patterson loves a good scare—turning the lights down, popping on a horror film, and watching the blood splash across the screen.

But the scholar, an assistant teaching professor in the Department of Sociology at CU Boulder, believes that horror movies can do more than just creep you out. The genre also reveals a lot about the world we live in.

“I like horror movies, on the one hand, just because they're fun, and I think being scared is really fun,” she says. “Horror films also let us discuss some of the hardest things that we go through as people.”

Laura Patterson

Patterson may be one of the university’s biggest horror buffs.

She teaches a class for undergrads called “Gender, Race, and Chainsaws” and co-hosts the horror movie podcast “Collective Nightmares.” She’s also tried her hand at making her own short horror film. “Silent Generation” tackles the terrors of growing old and will appear later this month at the Denver Film Festival.

“They act as a mirror and can reflect back to us the societal biases and stereotypes that we have,” Patterson says. “We can look at, for example, who is a victim and who's a villain, who gets to live and who deserves to die, who can save themselves and who can't.”

Speaking of stereotypes, the horror genre has had a long and complicated relationship with women.

In the early days of scary movies, women were usually portrayed as victims. They screamed. They fainted. They got rescued by men.

Slasher flicks of the 1970s and 1980s, however, gave rise to the “final girl.” That’s the name for female characters (almost always innocent and chaste) who find their inner strength and stop the killer. They include Laurie Stode in the “Halloween” franchise, Nancy Thompson in “A Nightmare on Elm Street” and Sidney Prescott in the “Scream” films.

But that trope still has issues.

“You have certain women who are picked and chosen as special and deserving protection, and it doesn’t matter what happens to every other woman,” Patterson says.

More recently, a new generation of women writers and directors has emerged in Hollywood.

They include Mimi Cave, director of the 2022 film “Fresh.” It follows a young woman who goes on a weekend trip with a man she just started dating—with predictably gory results.

Previously in CUriosity

The aspens are changing color in Colorado. Why do they do it?

Or read more CUriosity stories here

“It helps now that we have more women writing and directing horror films because we get to see the stories being told from their perspective,” Patterson says.

She adds that horror fans can still enjoy movies even if they don’t agree with their messages. Patterson sometimes has more fun watching movies she doesn’t see eye to eye with. They include this year’s “Weapons.” At its start, the film hinted at tackling big questions around school shootings, Patterson says, but never wound up delivering much of a point.

She urges her students to think critically about the films they see, and to be aware of the lessons the filmmakers are passing on, whether they mean to or not.

When it comes to 2025, Patterson says it’s been a great year for horror.

She recommends “Sinners,” a film about the blues, vampires and much more in Jim Crow Mississippi. Also on her list is a gruesome take on the Cinderella fairy tale called “The Ugly Stepsister.” This slept-on Norwegian film follows the titular ugly stepsister as she goes to increasingly twisted lengths to make herself more beautiful. It’s not for the faint of heart.

What about the squeamish out there, those who watch scary movies with their fingers over their eyes?

If they consider the underlying themes in horror films it can sometimes make them a little less frightening—at least in the usual sense, says Patterson.

“I’ve had several students come up to me and say, ‘I used to think that the guy chasing somebody with a knife was super scary. But now I realize that the patriarchy—that’s what’s really scary.’”

Horror movies offer messages about the world we live in, even if the filmmakers never intended to comment on society. Sociologist Laura Patterson wants her students to be aware of what films are telling them.

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What's all the buzz about?

Elizabeth Lock — Fri, 03 Oct 2025 17:58:22 +0000

What's all the buzz about? Elizabeth Lock Fri, 10/03/2025 - 11:58

Having recently celebrated National Coffee Day and International Coffee Day, CU Boulder scholar and "coffee-ologist" Kate Fischer considers a good cup of joe.

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Sometimes 'building back better' doesn't include everyone

Megan Maneval — Thu, 25 Sep 2025 16:43:01 +0000

Sometimes 'building back better' doesn't include everyone Megan Maneval Thu, 09/25/2025 - 10:43

Colorado Arts and Sciences Magazine

CU Boulder researcher Mary Angelica Painter finds that in post-disaster recovery, equity isn't guaranteed.

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Liberals hit the brakes on buying Teslas

Megan Maneval — Thu, 25 Sep 2025 15:24:12 +0000

Liberals hit the brakes on buying Teslas Megan Maneval Thu, 09/25/2025 - 09:24

Colorado Arts and Sciences Magazine

Research co-authored by CU Boulder environmental psychologist Amanda Carrico finds CEO Elon Musk's embrace of rightwing politics resulted in liberals being less willing to buy Tesla's electric vehicles.

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Television is a laughing matter

Megan Maneval — Fri, 19 Sep 2025 17:49:10 +0000

Television is a laughing matter Megan Maneval Fri, 09/19/2025 - 11:49

Colorado Arts and Sciences Magazine

In the 75 years since it was introduced, the laugh track has conditioned viewers to know when and how much to laugh.

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What nations around the world can learn from Ukraine

Daniel William Strain — Thu, 18 Sep 2025 14:18:58 +0000

What nations around the world can learn from Ukraine Daniel William… Thu, 09/18/2025 - 08:18

Daniel Strain

The Independence Monument in Kyiv. (Credit: Adobe Stock)

When Russia mounted a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, many outsiders expected the worst. Predictions swirled that the capital city of Kyiv would fall in a matter of days or weeks.

But Kyiv, which is home to nearly 3 million people, is still standing today. So is the majority of Ukraine, even though the country has experienced extreme losses. Hundreds of thousands of civilians and military members have died, roughly 3 million people have been displaced within Ukraine, and 20,000 children have been forcefully deported to Russia.

Now, in a recent special issue of the journal “Post-Soviet Affairs,” political scientists from the United States, Ukraine and beyond take a fresh look at how the nation has persevered through the crisis. The studies examine how resilience can spring not just from armed forces but from the actions of everyday people and communities.

The special issue was edited by Sarah Wilson Sokhey, associate professor of political science at CU Boulder, and Inna Melnykovska, assistant professor in comparative political economy at the Central European University in Vienna.

“Ukraine is still there,” said Melnykovska, who grew up in Chortkiv, a small town in western Ukraine. “You can still attend the cinema and concerts and can still have a great coffee in Kyiv and other cities in Ukraine. We wanted to know how society is still able to function and also resist in times of war.”

Through five studies in the special issue, researchers trace that resistance back to a series of decentralization reforms that began in 2014, around the time when Russia illegally annexed the Ukrainian region of Crimea. These changes shifted power from the national government to local municipalities around the country.

Dr. Adriana Hayduk working at the Lviv Volunteer Medical Battalion in Lviv in summer 2025. (Credit: Sarah Wilson Sokhey)

A display in Lviv commemorating an attack in April 2025 on the city's Sumy District Court building, which was being used by Sumy State University. (Credit: Sarah Wilson Sokhey)

Sarah Wilson Sokhey poses for a photograph with Geoffrey Glenn, an American living in Ukraine who is married to a Ukrainian woman and has a step-son fighting in the war. They are collaborating on a civic engagement education program that connects Ukrainian and American high school students. (Credit: Sarah Wilson Sokhey)

The research reveals how people and organizations, from small town mayors to parent and youth groups and activist networks, banded together to keep the nation running. These local players helped find housing for people displaced by the war, secured medical supplies, and kept the lights on in cities, literally.

“Ukraine is, in many ways, an example for other countries,” Sokhey said. “The theme is resilience: There are some remarkable lessons here about how things can get done under really bad circumstances.”

Stake in society

Sokhey gives the example of a doctor she met this year during a research trip to Lviv, a city in western Ukraine. By day, the woman practices medicine and teaches at a local university. In her off time, she leads a group of volunteers that solicits donations for medical supplies and sends them to the front lines of the war.

The doctor and her colleagues have kept up their work for more than three years and counting.

“There’s a real fatigue that comes with having to do this all the time,” Sokhey said. “But even with that, when they get requests in and need more people, they go to their families and their friends, and they can still get a bunch of volunteers.”

These kinds of stories are common in Ukraine, Sokhey said. In many cases, their roots extend back to well before the war began.

In 2014, Ukraine began dividing the nation into 1,469 municipalities, or “hromadas.” These hromadas retained broad powers to decide how they set their budgets. In some cases, citizens in hromadas even vote on the region’s spending priorities, a process known as participatory budgeting.

Melnykovska believes the reforms empowered many people across Ukraine to get involved in local politics—and that involvement continued after the full-scale war with Russia erupted eight years later.

“These decentralization reforms gave everyone a greater connection to the state,” Melnykovska said. “Every participant in society had a greater stake in Ukrainian sovereignty, in ensuring that Ukraine would continue to be there.”

In one paper appearing in the special issue, Sophie Schmäing of the University of Greifswald in Germany explored how those early connections became useful during the war.

In the city of Dnipro, for example, a parent group that had originally formed to improve local schools started making candles for the army in 2022. In the winter, a group of young activists in Kyiv that had originally formed to get involved in participatory budgeting built a warming room for city residents as many lost power.

Separately, Sokhey and her colleagues examined how voting patterns in local elections shaped policies in Ukraine—a case of democracy in action.

The team found that hromadas with higher voter turnout rates also tended to spend more money on social services, such as housing and resources for displaced people and other vulnerable groups. Sokhey sees the results as evidence that local authorities are listening to and responding to the demands of their constituents.

“Even before the war began, Ukraine had been taking these steps to improve local governance and accountability,” she said. “All the evidence we have suggests that these changes allowed the country to respond much more effectively.”

Lessons for the world

Sokhey and Melnykovska emphasize that governance in Ukraine is far from perfect.

In one study in the special issue, for example, Maryna Rabinovych of The Arctic University of Norway and her colleagues highlighted several hromadas that have established martial law systems—which, the researchers argue, risk undermining local governance.

But Sokhey and Melnykovska added that countries around the world, including the United States, could learn a lot from Ukraine. Strong societies, where individuals and communities feel empowered to solve their own problems, are crucial for helping nations survive times of crisis.

“Ukraine’s situation is probably good news for nations where state institutions are weakening,” Melnykovska said. “These institutions have another pillar to help them survive, and that is society.”

She follows the Facebook page for the mayor of her hometown, which has a population of about 30,000. The city has gotten creative, using international interest around the war to bring in funding for a variety of projects. They include efforts to modernize the town’s energy system, along with improvements to water pipes, which date back to the Soviet era. Those kinds of efforts will become critical when people who fled Ukraine at the start of the war eventually start coming home, Melnykovska said.

The political scientist also offers a warning: Ukrainians have been remarkably resilient, she said, but they can only be resilient for so long.

“Society can get tired, and some resources are running out,” Melnykovska said. “This resilience has been long-term, but it’s not endless. There should still be support from outside.”

In a series of studies, researchers from the United States, Ukraine and beyond show how everyday people and communities banded together to keep the nation running in the midst of war.

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Over a Barrel: The branding misfire that put a restaurant chain in the crosshairs

Megan Maneval — Thu, 28 Aug 2025 17:03:53 +0000

Over a Barrel: The branding misfire that put a restaurant chain in the crosshairs Megan Maneval Thu, 08/28/2025 - 11:03

Morgan Young, an advertising and branding expert, weighs in on Cracker Barrel's rebrand—and reversal.

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Scholar dissects voter perceptions of transnational politics

Megan Maneval — Tue, 26 Aug 2025 16:33:25 +0000

Scholar dissects voter perceptions of transnational politics Megan Maneval Tue, 08/26/2025 - 10:33

Colorado Arts and Sciences Magazine

CU Boulder political scientist Jeffrey Nonnemacher asserts that Western European national political parties use their affiliations with party families to signal their own political viewpoints.

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ESPN launches a new era

Megan Maneval — Fri, 22 Aug 2025 18:30:43 +0000

ESPN launches a new era Megan Maneval Fri, 08/22/2025 - 12:30

Colorado Arts and Sciences Magazine

Launching a new direct-to-consumer service and inking a recent deal to control National Football League Media, the ESPN network continues evolving as the dominant force in sports media.

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Alumni in media undeterred as Congress claws back funding

Megan Maneval — Tue, 29 Jul 2025 16:36:38 +0000

Alumni in media undeterred as Congress claws back funding Megan Maneval Tue, 07/29/2025 - 10:36

College of Communication, Media, Design and Information

The $9 billion rescission package is going to hurt local stations, but journalists and managers working in public broadcasting aren't going away without a fight.

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