Creepy Images 3: The Horror of Politics

With the recent Presidential election behind us, I thought I would post some relevant creepy images with the charged particles of partisan bickering still lingering in the atmosphere. This first one could easily fit into the minds of those affected by the banking crisis as a symbol of greed and hostility on Wall Street. As a piece of horror art, it functions very effectively by drawing on old socialist motifs of the greedy, toxic, and inhuman capitalist. Gas masks continue to frighten us for several identifiable reasons. They hearken back to that first global war, and in an age of possible bio-terrorism and worldwide pollution, they could easily herald the descent of the Four Horsemen. In fact, art works of political horror are almost impossible to degrade with the addition of the gas mask, as this artist clearly realizes.


This picture takes inspiration from John Carpenter's cult classic "They Live." Here, the threat of alien creatures hidden from the brainwashed masses is transferred from make believe sources to real individuals. The popular demonization of George W. Bush and the policies and power he continues to represent make him an obvious target. This work easily functions as political satire and horror. Indeed, the American mind will readily draw on historical anxiety over invasions by "outsider" forces. Fear of subversion from witches, communists, and other alien powers has long taunted American ideals. So, this image strikes out at a contemporary figure while reaching much deeper historical fears as well.


The Denver Airport was haunted by a series of murals and other unusual symbols in the late 1990s to the early 2000s. This is a detail from one such artwork that hung on the airport's walls. Some conspiracy theorists even believe the Denver Airport is some sort of command center for the "New World Order." In this theory, the mural pictured above is a symbolic representation of what the "NWO elites" plan to inflict on the wider population. Whatever the truth, these murals were powerful and very public displays of terror art, successfully prompting so many questions about their meaning that the airport took them down in recent years.


The Soviet Union, especially from Stalin's reign, has long served as a symbol of the terrifying "other." This photo from life captures this theme rather well. We see students and their instructor drilling with gas masks on, while a prominent symbol of the state (Vladimir Lenin) hangs on the wall behind him. The creepiness of such images isn't really weird in origin, but Orwellian. That doesn't mean it doesn't scare the hell out of us--perhaps better than most other sources, because a tyrannical government cropping up one day is all too plausible. While the USSR wasn't always the monster it was made out to be, pictures like this carry all the envisioned monstrousness in the Western mind and beyond during the Cold War.

-Grim Blogger