reading sontag on photography and eric wilson's new book on horror,  both mention browning's freaks, wilson more obliquely than sontag--neither say, why the moment in freaks, during the dinner scene, many of us find the one of us sign comforting, mostly because we are the monsters, we are the freaks, and we wish to claim the authority of ownership, why whale's frankenstein and bride of frankenstein are so powerful, because for people who are convinced that they are abject, or monsters, whale tells us that we are the martyrs. maybe cabin in the woods is problematic b/c it is not empathic to the monstrous. (wilson's book begins with the epigram the sinister, the terrible never decieve, the state in which they leave us is always enlightenment by ligeti, and the empathic is part of that enlightenment--whedon's problem is sorting thru the mosterous empathic, which he kind of fails in buffy)