In the latest attempt by the scientific community to offer algebraic explanations for the seemingly inexplicable, mathematicians have come up with a formula for the best kind of scary movie.
Using the equation (es + u + cs + t) squared + s + (tl + f) / 2 + (a + dr + fs) / n + sin x – 1, researchers have concluded that The Shining, the 1980 film starring a homicidal Jack Nicholson, is the ideal horror flick.
—Music + chase scenes = new formula for fear (Guardian)
Hmm… this project was commissioned by “Sky Movies,” a British which just happens to be holding a scary movie marathon this weekend.
My colleague Mike Arnzen reports he was interviewed by BBC News to respond to this finding. I didn’t know about it until it was over, though.
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The interview went well, but we never really spoke directly to the "formula" article, unfortunately. I think it's a joke, ultimately, from Sky Movies...but it doesn't really say a lot for my favorite genre. Maybe the films of recent notice have become formulaic, but a literary genre cannot be reduced to a formula, obviously. Especially in horror, it's BREAKING the rules that make genre literature so exciting, even insomuch as they appear conventional in other ways. It's commerce's dream that there COULD be a bankable formula that's responsible for wounding the arts in our culture. Wish I could have said something to that effect on the air...
-- Mike A.
I can imagine working the qualitative characteristics of something into a formula-like mnemonic for the sake of organizing an argument, but the idea that a value such as (true life + fiction) / 2 is somehow quantifiable is ludicrous.