Lust for Horror and violence

In bear markets the social mood is quite negative and therefore desire for violence and horror tend to increase. For example wars can start during and at the bottom of bear markets (eg 2003) when social mood is at the worst.

It should also be interesting to note that the desire for horror/crime/violence has steadily increased over the last decade as a very high rate. The SAW movies are a good example of extreme violence as well as the continuous barrage of CSIs, Bones etc etc on the usual channels.

What is surprising is the number of Horror movies produced each year now outperforms the number of family movies produced.

The chart below provides an overview of family and horror movies produced each year (semi-log scale) overlaid on the DJI and XAO indexes. Since the mid 1920’s family movies have held rank above horror movies and continued to do so ever since - until 2004.

The desire for horror will continue as the current social mood today is negative and is as yet to reach extremes. Horror movies have usually peaked at the bottom of bear markets (red arrows)when social mood has been the most negative.

In the future, family movies should remain flat or continue to decrease whilst horror continues to grow, until near the end of the bear market as it did in the 1920s, 40s, 70s and 80s. This assumes that the major movie houses don’t collapse in the meantime.

It also raises the question about personal safety. Even in relative safe cities in Australia (whilst I don't have statistics) violence does appear to be on the increase. Recent television advertising on family violence has timed quite well with the bear market we are currently enduring and is perhaps a sign of more to come.

You like these sort of cross societal comparisons dont you OWG

Its interesting but remember corellation does not imply causality

lol interesting viewpoint. i agree with the wider social sentiment angle, you could probably find a whole bunch of related behaviours moving in tandem from the market to fashion to car names. keep on looking for the threads that hold the system together

and i'm sick of the pointless violence the media is pushing, it isn't healthy and its mostly crap anyway.

Yeah, interesting correlation there OzWaveGuy.

I guess it shows what I have seen with behavioural analysis... that most people tend to be followers, ie they like to do what their mates and peers do. It would vary a bit across cultures, but in a group I was involved with only three of us out of about twenty odd were catagorised as outside the 'normal' paradym insofar as we tended to be more individualistic and ahead of the pack or paradym shift as they called it.

A small subsection (about the same proportion) for want of a better phrase, have relatively low moral conviction, low empathy for others and are prone to more dictitorial behaviour. That doesn't necessairly equate to a criminal.

No, none of us were criminals, actually we were all preselected for the course, (Group Facilitator Training)... but the point our instructer was trying to make is that one can reasonably predict personal behaviour... and hence group behaviour.

I guess it's all the more reason for plenty of stimulus packages etc to make the markets, err society feel and behave better again.

Whiskers said:

I guess it's all the more reason for plenty of stimulus packages etc to make the markets, err society feel and behave better again.

Click to expand...

Yes - very true. The perception from the Gov/RBA/Banks is that stimulus packages have worked in the past, so it should again. However, it's like giving an illicit drug to a patient to keep them happy and ticking - at some point the drug will kill them.

Once the lowering of interest rates has run its course - there isn't going to be much left to stimulate the credit happy crowd. The crowd will turn ugly, and will look for people to blame for the mess (as is already happening in the US). This is what I see happening should the jobless numbers start to rise considerably over the next 12 months.