I have stated before that horror is a vast and varied genre. Horror deals in themes that are often ignored by other areas of film and literature. The marginalization of horror has led it to embrace topics that have been marginalized or deemed politically incorrect themselves. However as I stated in my previous post horror is the annihilation of meaning, when whatever it is you use for a moral compass spins like it is resting on a huge chunk of lodestone. At the crux of this idea about horror is the idea that human beings are agents unto themselves. I believe that the reason we can experience horror is because we have agency, compared to a reductionistic or mechanistic worldview. I have academic backing for this idea, but I would rather not bore you with it, unless you ask for it I guess. So that being said let us move into the various types of horror
Wolfman v Dracula – photo by Lunchbox Photography
Horror of Reduction – the annihilation of our agency, and our ability to create meaning, this is the theme of such movies as the Night of the Living Dead, Dracula, and the Wolfman. The loss of self-control and the inability to choose our own goals is a theme of these films, but what makes them horrifying is interesting, because the way in which meaning is robbed from mankind is by reducing man to an appetite that needs to be sated, in other words by reducing him the physical. In the case of the vampire, werewolf, and zombie we see thirst, sex, and hunger. I find this ironic because modern psychology as we know it, is reducing man more and more to nothing but the meat machine, the physical.
Horror of the Agent – Horror is also found when our sense of what should not be able to create meaning suddenly finds itself an agent of choice. Examples of this are when machines gain self-awareness, such as The Terminator, Hal from 2001: Space Odyssey, or in the house in Dean Koontz’s novel Demon Seed. One would think that in making the machine an agent it would connote meaning making, but in the case of the horror story it does not. It is as if the machine has reached something halfway, able to choose its own goals and be purpose-driven like an agent, but does so outside of context. Carl Rogers, a famous american psychologist, espoused a mechanistic theory similar to the above idea called organismic enhancement. Roger put it this way “The needs of the organism are not always consonant with the needs of the self…. The organized sub-field…the I or Me may not have it as a goal to enhance the organism.” Essentially, Rogers is saying that the body sets the goals and our conscious mind has no say in it. This is the same as machines that gain consciousness. They become aware but are still driven by meaningless ‘rigid’ programmed mentation.
Horror of Personality – The scariest aspect of this type of horror is that this is no longer an outside threat, which makes this example the strongest against a mechanistic horror, or simple fear. The threat is not a monster or a catastrophe, but a threat from within. The threat is inside us. In the horror of personality, the Moral is used against humanity. Things that were once thought of as safe and virtuous, such as the family and the home are used to violate and victimize. The Slasher films, such as Halloween, Scream and Saw are all great examples of this concept. The Shining is one of the best examples of this.
In the Shining the once safe home suddenly becomes a death trap as Jack starts to hunt his family with intent to murder them. The parental virtue is twisted as the Jack tries to command his family to obey his murderous intent by virtue of his fatherhood. At one point Jack commands his son to listen to his father and to “come out and take [his] medicine” as he hunts him with an ax.
The Stanley Hotel a.k.a. the Overlook Hotel – photo by seantoyer
This betrayal of the moral by an agent who could have chosen otherwise is truly terrifying because of a paradox involved in the horror of personality. On one hand there is agency, which as we have shown is necessary for meaning, but as the agent chooses to act upon their inner demons their choices lead them closer and closer to insanity and meaninglessness. But that is not the only annihilation of meaning that takes place. The victims also experience a loss of meaning as things like the home and family are violated, madness consumes their universe as well, a madness from which they may or may not recover from, such as the example of Laurie Strode in Halloween.
The Taboo – Because of horror’s marginalization it has the ability to address topics that are often considered taboo, or non-PC to deal with. Taboo is definitly a type of horror that resonates with us viscerally, because taboo subjects are loaded with morals and values. Subjects like God or the Devil; life-after-death or lack there of; sexuality, especially sexuality expressed outside of what is considered socially acceptable e.g. homosexuality, BDSM/Fetish, orgies, etc.; violence; disease/sickness/ageing; racism and xenophobia, this one is huge in early gothic horror like Lovecraft and Machen. When these things are brought up we are made to face our values and evaluate them.
We all have values and stances that we have preset in our minds as to how we feel about these subjects, and good horror will draw on these and then make us squirm.
Cosmic Horror – I read an interesting article today talking about the influence of Mass Effect on the sci-fi universe. I have yet to play any of the Mass Effect games ( I know, I know, I’m missing out. I’ll get to it, I swear), but I was intrigued. The most interesting part about the above article is when it describes the philosophy that the game embraces, that being one of Cosmicism. This philosophy of Cosmicism is what I consider to be an important type of horror.
The article does a great job in explaining what Cosmicism is, and one great line sums it all up, “Something is wrong with the universe, but we cannot place it.” Cosmicism can arguably be said to originate with the writing of H.P. Lovecraft. Ultimatly Cosmicism argues that human beings, and all that we stand for, is totally meaningless. As a matter of fact, all intelligent life, as we know it anyway, is also as equally insignificant in comparison to the grand scope of the cosmos.
Lovecraft developed Cosmicism in his stories like the Call of Cthulhu. Cthulhu is not just a scary sea monster, despite what the meme’s have done to him. He isn’t Godzilla, he actually doesn’t give a rip about humanity. He is not evil, because morality is not a cosmic constant, he is an amoral entity. Our destruction at his hands would not cause him, or the rest of the cosmos, to even blink. This is what makes cosmic horror so incredibly horrifying. It is the sudden realization that there are things in the universe could drive you mad and turn you to ash while your still alive (see The Colour out of Space); not because you deserved it, or because of the its evil nature, just because that is what it does and there is nothing that can be done to stop it, NOTHING.
Mankind has always struggled with the idea that we might be insignificant, and have done a lot to protect our minds from the possibility of that reality. Think about it, before Copernicus we placed our selves that the center of the universe; we fancy ourselves as the most important things on the planet and squash anything in our way to prove it, even each other. Last but not least we have religion; it tells us that we are important and that the universe does make sense because morality must surely be constant. I certainly hope it is right. Still, it is hard to see this image:
- Each point of light is a galaxy, with billions of stars each, and this is but a very small portion of the night sky
and not be struck by the vast cosmic scope of it all, and how insignificant our life can be.
Horror Struck 