Seth Godin + Horror Movies

For the past few days I have been reading Seth Godin's book, Tribes (We Need You to Lead Us). It is a quick 150 page read with no chapters and innumerable subheadings. I thoroughly enjoyed reading it and the only thing I wished is that it had been online with tons of hyperlinks so I could look up all the people he was noting in his anecdotes as I was reading as opposed to getting sucked into the next section and intending to come back to them later. Godin gives you just enough information about these people to be tantalizing.

So what is a tribe? "A tribe is a group of people connected to one another, connected to a leader, and connected to an idea." (1) Godin goes on to note that people enjoy being part of tribes and participate in many of them. Reflect on your own tribes and you will realize this is true. However, I realized that many of the tribes that I would say I participate in do not have a leader so are they therefore not tribes?

For example, I love Horror Movies. When I meet another horror movie fan we enter into our own realm of name dropping and jargon but there is not one horror movie critic or afficiando whose opinion I look to in order to be inspired or motivated to watch more Horror movies. But there is a definitive difference between people who watch horror movies and people who don't.

Seth Godin would call the Horror Movie tribe stuck because it lacks a movement. And this is entirely true. Where have the Wes Cravens and John Carpenters of the world gone? What about the Tom Savinis or the Jamie Lee Curtises? No one has stepped in to fill their shoes. No one is currently leading in the horror movies tribe. For a genre that is incredibly popular there are no names from today's generation or directors or actors/actresses that make you automatically want to go see the horror movie they are in.  It's sad. Horror Movies are stuck.

What would the ideal leader look like? Godin says "Leaders make a ruckus." (19) The guy who directed the Saw movies made a ruckus with the first one. The latter ones...not so much. Maybe he's stuck too. The last movie to make a ruckus was Paranormal Activity and what before that? I'm not sure; which is surprising since the word is almost synonymous with the genre.

What can we as tribe members do? We must transform "our shared interest into a passionate goal and desire for change." (25) What is our goal? To see horror movies that leave us unnerved to leave the shower curtain closed and make us scream. To be fascinated by the dark parts of the mind, lulled into sympathy and then shocked back into the terror of what is happening before our very eyes. (Zombie movies may be the leader?)

In order for an idea to spread it has to be a good idea. And the person with the idea must believe in it. Perhaps we no longer believe there are unique ideas; most everything feels like a play on something else or is an adaptation of something else. What do horror movie fans believe, now?

I think Seth Godin would tell me to get off my soap box and make something happen. New Blog time.

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I realize this post has nothing to do with Christianity, but it's where my mind is right now. I am also pretty sure that the goal of Seth Godin's book was so that it could be applied to any and all tribes. And it did give me a lot to think about in terms of my goals for religious education. The story that stood out most to me was about a woman who wanted to get into the furniture business. Instead of presenting investors with sketches she went out and had her furniture built with the company's signature fabric on it. Similarly, I think if I want middle school RE at my church to go the way I want it to I have to take Godin's advice:

"Do what you believe in. Paint a picture of the future. Go there. People will follow."

Since the semester is almost over I believe I will use this blog for the summer as  away to catalogue both my secular exploits and my creation of a curriculum that does what I believe it should for middle schoolers. Excited doesn't even begin to cover it.