In this fourth installment about the realms of horror we will look at the social aspects of the horror experience
photo by Elena Gatti
Horror in the Social
The third realm of the horror experience that I will talk about in this paper is horror as it is experienced in the social realm. There are many aspects of the social realm that affect the experience of horror, far too many to discuss them all here(for further treatment on horror in the social I would refer the reader to studies like Clasen,2012; Zillmann, Weaver, Mundorf, & Aust,1986; and Mundorf, Weaver, & Zillmann, 1989, for a good primer). We react as social beings to a horror experience, and here I will show an exemplar of how the social zeitgeist affects what kinds of things are considered horrific to members of a society at large.
Like many of the monsters that make up its stories, horror has had many faces over time. It started with the gothic novels and weird tales of horror’s early days, then moved into the iconographic B horror movies made famous by Universal Studios; from there it was on to giant, irradiated, this-that-and-the-other that brought us through the 1950’s. The 60’s and 70’s brought us Hitchcock, Jaws, the advent of Stephen King with Carrie and the subsequent film, and the Exorcist. Then the game changed. The 80’s brought with it the Slasher sub-genre, in the forms of Halloween, Nightmare on Elm St. and Friday the 13th. Horror became “excessive”, and with this shift “older forms of horrific imagery and storytelling [had] vanished” (Crane, 1994). Gone are the days when Karloff’s iconic Frankenstein’s monster or giant puppet ants could scare audiences. Horror aficionados seemed to have developed a taste for blood and gore, and wanted more of it, and 30 years later this thirst has not been slaked.
The inevitable question is, Why? Why do horror audiences seek to experience something that in all rights should be unpleasant? Critics of the genre were quick to assume the worst; condemning horror audiences “along these lines, either you identify with the slasher—you’d like to have a razor sharp, foot-long machete in your hand as well—or you identify with the worthless victim whose spectacular dismemberment becomes the death you too merit” (Crane, 1994, p.3). This argument essentially boils down to that there is a mental deficiency of one kind or another in horror fans, and has been taken up by many researchers as the quintessential answer (cf. Hoffner & Levine, 2005; Straube et. al, 2010; Tamborini, Stiff and Heidel, 1990; Tudor, 1997). All of these researchers have utilized an operational definition of horror based on it violence alone. This seems fair enough given the trend in horror film and literature, but it is never explained why other genres that depict violence seem to get a social stamp of approval and horror does not.
One researcher in particular, Jonathan Crane, looks into this very question, and attempts to explore the need for the brinkmanship portrayal of violence in the genre. In regards to the social acceptance of horror violence, Crane (1994) said “It is not violence per se that render the contemporary horror film a distasteful read. It is the nihilistic content in which the violence occurs that makes the horror film irredeemable. Violence in the contemporary shocker is never redemptive, revelatory, logical, or climactic (it does not resolve conflicts)” (p.4). While this answer explains the social stigma of horror and it unacceptability it still does not answer why people would want to experience this. Crane’s argument is that horror is an answer to our zeitgeist. The nihilism espoused in horror violence is a response to the way the future is presented to us. The future is presented as the “end times…heralded by a diverse set of calamitous phenomena” and that “the future belongs to nothing and no one. The only possible future is one lived by resigned individuals whose sole link to one another is the sure knowledge that we are all equally damned.” (Crane, 1994, p.6) He makes the argument that when the possibility of being shot while at your local school or fast-food restaurant are all too real, or that the very food you eat is going to kill you; then it is no wonder why films of yester-year are not scary any more. With this in mind Crane (1994) sums up his argument by stating:
“Only the contemporary horror film comes close to the terror of everyday life. The horrific constructs available do not offer any possibilities beyond that of being able to confront terror. The engagement with such images is neither cathartic nor reassuring; it is simply demonstrates that one’s sight if nothing else, still clearly registers the world. Watching a horror film is a reality check” (emphasis in original p. 8).
While I do not share the nihilistic view point of Crane, he is however an exemplar of the kind of thinking towards horror that again invokes Capra’s (2014) argument for an understanding of the system. Horror does not occur in a vacuum, and to understand the horror experience we need to understand the environment it came from. Just as the giant irradiated ants from Them have ceased to be frightening to us today,but they were scary in the 50’s, because the social zeitgeist is not the same, shows how social context is important to the horror experience.
Thus far it has been demonstrated that there are distinct elements to the horror experience, however each of the above areas and their respective examples try to explain horror as contained in one area, it is my position however, that the horror experience is in reality a synthesis of these three. This synthesis of the mind, body, and social realms not only brings the horror experience into an emotional focus, but this synthesis can bring a greater level of understanding about oneself and the world around them. Interestingly this synthesis in relation to horror has been argued for, for some time, but has not really been explored by psychologists, rather it has been by literature critics and philosophers. The next section will outline an exemplar of these ideas of synthesis.
Horror Struck 