Contemporary media criticism, according to Gregory Sharrett removes itself from an analysis of society's activities and focuses only on lived experience as text or discourse. It seems as if criticism is concerned with the sole purpose of demonstrating the degree to which media violence alone is responsible for producing violent social behavior neglecting arguments related to political economy, sociology or history.
The apolitical nature of violence in contemporary film supports the idea that visual violence is an end in itself and that it is being exploited. However, modern Western society itself has become more fragmented and is characterized by flagrant individualism. Ultimately, most contemporary film violence does little more than to reflect current values. It fails to offer alternatives in the same way as the Western political spectrum has become essentially monolithic. In a way, modern violent cinema reflects Francis Fukuyama's famous remark - and title of his bestseller - ' the end of history', that was intended to illustrate that the collapse of Communism in the early 90's left society with only one model, the Western capitalist one, for success. Ideologies, alternative constructs are bound for failure.

The amount and diversity of the crictical opinions expressed in this book should give it at least 4 stars. Sadly two essayists works contain errors so blatantly ignorant of the source material I had to dock the whole barrel a single star. Carol J. Clover goes into incredible, albeit wincingly inaccurate, detail when describing the stabbing deaths of two characters in a hot tob in the film Halloween 2. However neither of these characters were stabbed in the actual scene, one was strangled and the other scalded. In another example, editor Barry K. Grant, in his essay on legendary horror auteur George A. Romero, continually confuses Dawn of the Dead with Day of the Dead and vice versa. One would think that after supposedly studying these films so closely the writers would get the titles and scenes correct in the texts. Error quibbles aside THE DREAD OF DIFFERENCE is a fascinating and mostly positive study of a genre that has been critically maligned (if not out and out ignored) for far too long.

For students of horror and film this book is indispensible. Taking horror film seriously is, many times, a losing proposition, but not for the writers here. The essays on the "Alien" films and David Cronenberg are worth the price alone. One of the best books on horror movies out there--intellectually satisfying and illuminating, worlds away from the tepid, incomplete "encyclopediac" fare usually published. My highest recommendations.