A Division of
Horror
Horror seems to be more of a modern
era fascination. Perhaps at one point, everyday life was too much of a horror
story to be able to enjoy tales of the same. Perhaps the general populace was
more superstitious and felt such tales were better not repeated. Perhaps in
modern times people’s lives are too sedate and they crave a heart rate spike.
One could spend hours speculating why people read, watch, or have a fascination
with horror. Another approach is to accept the fascination and explore the
material.
One way to subdivide the genre of
horror is to break it down into three general categories of horror, horror
comedy, and something in between. The first is horror that is meant to terrify
and send shivers down the spine of the reader. The Cthulhu Cult by H. P.
Lovecraft was likely intended to fall into this category. I say intended
because it is not truly terrifying compared to other works, such as those by
Edgar Alan Poe or Stephen King. That isn’t to say it doesn’t have the potential
to be truly terrifying with a few adjustments. Horror is not so much about the
story, but about the delivery of the story. There is an art to knowing which
scenes should be stretched to add suspense, and which to rush through to
overwhelm the reader.
The second category is horror that is
meant to be humorous. The characters from regular horror stories are featured,
(ghosts, aliens, robots, werewolves, madmen, demons etc.) but they are often
found to be incompetent and bungle their plots. The authors play on the
accepted stereotypes of the characters and make them more extreme. The authors
try to make light of monsters and scary situations. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to
the Galaxy is an example. Another example is the Scary Movies. If someone is expecting
a terrifying read, this can turn out rather disappointing.
The third category is one where the horror
is meant to be horrifying, but is way over the top, so that it becomes ridiculous
and possibly humorous. It is not always clear if the author intended the story
to be humorous or simply went over-board. The third category can be a bridge
between fear-induced nail biting and horror comedy. The Final Destination
series falls into this category. It is designed to scare, but at the same time
the deaths are so unlikely and bizarre it is comical. The short story “Young Goodman
Brown” also has aspects that are humorous. Specifically, the imagery of Goodman
Brown tearing through the forest, and later the priest recounting the misdeeds
he was privy to. This may be the most subjective category as well, because what
one finds funny will cause another to have nightmares and vice versa.
Many horror stories have been turned
into movies and some horror stories have started out as movies. Certain horror
stories have been overdone to now be considered trite. To name a couple: giant
shark attacks, aliens destroying the world, zombie apocalypse (any sound
familiar? http://www.strangehorizons.com/guidelines/fiction-common-horror.shtml)
There are so many different flavors of horror out there, there is bound to be
something for everyone.
(P.S.Do not Google horror images)
Chana, very interesting post about the different types of horror. I find it really interesting that humans spend so much time, effort, and money on producing movies and books based on a disturbing theme such as horror. Based on what Chana explains above, we even take the time to differentiate between different type of horror as well, as, I quote Chana, “One way to subdivide the genre of horror is to break it down into three general categories of horror, horror comedy, and something in between.”
ReplyDeleteAnother interesting point you make is that H.P. Lovecraft’s short story is an attempt at true horror while in reality “it is not truly terrifying compared to works, such as those by Edgar Alan Poe or Stephen King.” I’d like to suggest that the reason why Lovecraft does not succeed in making a book that is as terrifying as Poe or King, is because Lovecraft’s story revolves around more superstition and unrealistic plot lines, where as Poe tends to delve into horror involving more realistic situations. Additionally, in some of Poe’s stories, such as The Black Cat, Poe writes through the eyes of the mentally unstable main character. This causes intense terror for two reasons. Firstly, it is written in first person with the ‘I’ being the mentally imbalanced ‘bad guy’ and thus the reader feels much more of a connection with the terrifying quality of the story. Secondly, the terror is due to a more realistic horror—that of mental illness. Psychiatric issues are much more realistic than crazy cults (as in Lovecraft), and thus I think induce much greater levels of terror and horror.
In high school I took a “Survey of Science” literature class where we read novels with scientific bases to them. For example, Hot Zone, Jurassic Park, and The Cobra Event. We also watched a film called The Bad Seed. This movie is about an 8 year old girl, Rhoda, who does not feel emotions. It is truly a terrifying story. It is also in black and white, which I think actually adds to the terrifying qualities of this story. Not only does it depict a plausibly realistic situation, but it also does it extremely well, (despite the fact that it is an older film). I think mental illnesses, especially with regards to not feeling emotions, such as when sociopaths are involved, cause extreme terror, even more so than the unrealistic vampire, monster scenarios.
If anyone is interested in watching this film, here’s the trailer:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4NWGyG4W5DI
Interesting post, Chana--and also a good comment above by Tamar. Regarding these categories for horror, Lovecraft is a bit of an odd duck, because he had serious aspirations toward philosophical fiction. He had an idiosyncratic, grim, and, well, rather horrifying way of thinking about questions that are normally answered by religion or science. He was an early advocate of ideas of creation and the cosmos, of the nature of man and our fate in the universe, that have since taken root more in science fiction than in horror like Stephen King. He wanted to be a philosophical allegorist, like Hawthorne, but both his prose and his ideas were far more extravagant. In this way he differed from Poe, who claimed he wanted to avoid allegory (though stories like "The Masque of the Red Death" seem to invite it anyway).
ReplyDeleteTo me your categories for horror work better for horror films than historical fiction, perhaps because the genre as such hadn't really been developed yet. Poe was playing off of an older tradition of sensational tabloid literature that often featured weirdos and sinner of all stripes suffering horrible fates as a mode of both puerile entertainment and cautionary tale. Poe wanted to sell his stories, but he also wanted to be recognized as a great writer, and he approached his weird tales with greater elegance than his predecessors and set a new standard for this kind of writing.
Believe it or not, a lot of people do find Lovecraft scary--or at least go through a phase when they do. He is quite popular with teenage boys and young men in their early twenties. Later, as adults, his writing seems more funny than scary, but a lot of people still have a nostalgic regard for him.
Me, I couldn't really get past the racism, which isn't the casual racism of so many in his era but is a racism worked out through a philosophical system, a form of racism more disturbing because he is so self-conscious of it that he works it into his weird cosmology of the universe. Still, he is pretty important culturally and as an influence on both the horror genre and monster flicks like Godzilla, etc. Not sure if I would teach him again though, to be honest.
Thank you Chana, Tamar, and Professor Miller; your posts were fascinating to read. I can’t think of anything to add, but I do want to share this one thing that I found.
ReplyDeleteSo, has anyone ever wondered, "Hey, what if Dr. Seuss published Call of Cthulhu?" (What?) No, it's not exactly something that comes to mind. But nevertheless, I thought this might be of interest. Someone made a Dr. Seuss-like translation of Call of Cthulhu, complete with Seussian illustrations.
http://drfaustusau.deviantart.com/gallery/34469914
Clicking on the first picture and using the arrow keys to scroll between pages is easiest, I've found.
I thought it was a whimsical and witty portrayal of the classic horror story, even if the rhyming was sometimes forced. Also, despite it's juvenile appearance, the plot is unchanged, so I wouldn't recommend reading it as a bedtime story to an unsuspecting younger sibling.
Thank you for posting this, as it clarifies what was happening to the story more than Lovecraft's wordiness could.
DeleteAdditionally, I feel that Lovecraft's wordiness kills the story by overly stretching it.
The Seuss format stretches out the story to provide the suspense and fear that the wordiness had provided in the original story without the words killing the suspense as well.
Basicly I am a big fan of this version, because we all know pictures make everything better
In regards to what we have read since this post I was wondering where someone would classify Grendel in terms of horror. I find it amusing if only because of the monsters narration, but given the story it can definitely qualify as horror. (It happens to be that I find that most of the stories we covered this semester that take the myth and magic seriously turn into horror because the magic becomes scary or inherently was scary...)
ReplyDeleteAnyway I was wondering what other people thought about concerning where this story would fit in, or if anyone else thought Grendel was kind of, well, horrifying.
I generally find something horrifying when there is suspense involved. While Grendel is creepy and sorta gross, I wouldn't necessarily call it horrifying. I don't think every monster group is horror, sometimes they are just fantasy or sci-fi, etc. So it was horrifying in terms of the grossness, and that things like that could happen, but it was not a Horror story per say.
DeleteNice post, Chana, and it certainly has a lot of food for thought.
ReplyDeleteI would, however, disagree that horror is more of a modern era fascination. There's not much to prove it either way, but I don't think that the part of the human psyche that is unhealthily attracted to violence and fear is anything new. Scary literary works like Frankenstein and The Picture of Dorian Grey and even Beowulf have thrilled humans for centuries, as well as Greek myths and oral tales told over the campfire (like the Ichabod Crane was obsessed with in Washington Irving's "Legend of Sleepy Hollow"). However, I guess I would say that improved technology and relaxation of social norms has led to an increase in horror's magnitude and intensity.
But otherwise, I liked your classification. I wasn't sure what you meant at first by classifying The Hitchhiker's Guide as horror, but I guess you were talking about the inflation of conventionally horror-inducing ideas to comedic effect.
Finding out what scares people is actually really interesting. I have a good friend who tried to introduce me to CSI, or a show like that with corpses that I found blatantly terrifying, while she seemed to brush the horrifying images off. But to her, something like Doctor Who was scary, with its bizarre, alien creatures.
Between eras, horrifying stories can also lose their effect, because specific fears seem to be very culturally ingrained. Naked, objective fears like murder and pain generally don't go very far on their own, because they're too blunt, and too common. Real scary things are a subtle subversion of reality, a creeping, uneasy distortion of what the observer thinks should be. It needs a realistic subversion of the viewer's cultural and social assumptions, and those change quite fast.
I would still say it comes down to fear of the unknown. Once we're repeatedly exposed to certain conventions of horror they stop being horrifying, but the first time we come in contact with it, it's blatantly terrifying. Your friend probably flinched the first time she saw a show with corpses in it, but after a full season the novelty wears off and so does the horror. It's not unknown anymore, so it's not horrifying. It becomes familiar. It might still be objectively terrible, but it won't elicit the same reaction as the first time did. Same thing between eras, I'd say: trends come and go, what was a horrific, sensational novelty becomes trite in the light of time and repetition until the next novelty comes along. When you say "A creeping, uneasy distortion of what the observer thinks should be" it is a really great description. It's the introduction of an unknown quantity to the normal and understandable which brings the monsters under the bed back to life
DeleteHi Chana,
ReplyDeleteI particularly like your post about horror, because I think it has a lot of relevance to us today, as entertainment horror-seekers of magnitude, no other era has ever seen. I like how you broke up the concept of horror into 3 parts: the horror, horror-comedy, and the something-in-between. As a total scaredy-cat of all things bloody, gory, spooky, and chilling, I am not a horror fan in the slightest, especially when it comes to movies. However, I find that horror of psychology, a la Edgar Allen Poe, is fascinating and gripping because it forces you to confront the monsters lying dormant inside our own psyches - because everyone has them, it's inevitable. I think that the people who deny that fact, or choose to feel apathy have even more nightmares than those who choose to willingly see the horror that goes on in the world, and confront the perverse, dark sides to our minds.