Professor David Johnston, who has taught philosophy and film studies at Lyndon State College since 2005, has work included in a new book, "The Philosophy of Horror," edited by Thomas Fahy (University Press of Kentucky, 2010). His essay is titled "Kitsch and Camp and Things that Go Bump in the Night; or Sontag and Adorno at the (Horror) Movies."
In his essay, Johnston examines the horror movie genre through the relationship between two modes of understanding popular art: kitsch (commonly defined as low-brow art that appeals to base emotions) and camp (works presented or received with an "over-the-top" outlandishness). Tracing the history of horror movies from their earliest examples to contemporary offerings such as "Scream" and "Scary Movie," Johnston applies these concepts to works as varied as the original "Dracula" and "The Rocky Horror Picture Show" to explain how a camp sensibility can rescue works that would otherwise be dismissed as mere kitsch.