Horror Psychology| Realms of Horror (Part 4: The Social)

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 13^th. 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 Psychology | Missing the Mark

I am currently neck-deep into my thesis on the psychology of horror and getting ready to start my doctoral program in Fall, hence the lack of posts of late. I try to keep tabs on the latest stuff coming out about the psychology of horror, which is not a lot, but I find myself ever disappointed by it. There are several things that seem to miss the mark of what horror does. Now I don’t know how many of the researchers are avid horror fans, and I seriously doubt that most of them consume as much horror in a year as I do in a week. However there seems to be a lack of critical thought with most of the current research, so I thought I would take the time to outline what is missing, as I feel that most of the current horror fans, myself included , feel alienated and even offended by what is inferred by some of this research. I will foot note my citation at the end of this for those that are interested.

I know I have ridden this pony since day one of this blog, but it is an important question, What is Horror?  I think it is one of the most important questions that needs to be answered. So important in fact my thesis, and very likely my dissertation are and will be spent answering this question. The reason this question is so important is that nearly all the research that is out there just assumes that there is a common understanding of what horror is and skip onto other things. Their reasoning is usually circular and goes something like “horror is what is depicted in horror film/stories/books/etc.” Slashers, thrillers, ghost stories, torture porn, demonic, and even occasionally sci-fi genre pieces are all lumped together as being the same things. Really? In none of the psychology of horror research that I have reviewed have researchers even bothered to define horror in their work.¹ Until this is defined we have a big problem. Most of the these studies are looking at why do people like horror films, and what makes horror fans tick, they don’t even bother to explore the emotion itself. They implicitly equate horror to various things such as, thrill/pleasure seeking, the ability to live out social roles (often called the cuddle theory of horror). Still other studies look at horror fans as lacking in empathy because of some particular physiological responses rate to violence or some other supposed mental or emotional deficit. These particular theories are often used to all but state that horror fans are closet sociopaths who get off on watching others pain, sex, (insert any other of human vice or suffering here), and while I am sure there are people out there, that does not describe me or any of the myriad of horror fans that I know. The research leaves an important question unasked: Why did you use horror and not some other genre. There are plenty of other genres that display wanton destruction, lust, and violence, why did you choose horror to investigate your questions of empathy, anxiety, psychopathy, etc? In the mountain of articles that I have read they never answer that. These authors do not seem to know what horror is or even have much experience with it,  at least they given no written indication of it anyway. For example, take a look at this article, The Lure of Horror, the author talks about why Stephen King’s novel It is frightening. The author states “…Perhaps clowns (e.g. as in Stephen King’s 1986 novel It) have the capacity to provoke fear because their make-up conceals their true facial emotions, thus thwarting our instinctual desire to read other people’s minds through their faces(it’s notable that many other horror baddies conceal their faces with masks)”. GIVE ME A BREAK! Anyone who has read the novel knows it has nothing to do with children’s proclivity toward coulrophobia. It rarely even appears as the Clown in the novel. And this is not just a one off, it happens multiple times in this article alone.  For another example you get explanations like the one provided by Marvin Zuckerman who is giving a discussion of stimuli habituation to media violence and thrill seeking, all under the banner of The Psychology of Horror Films, and yet not once has is it explained why horror is the target genre or address the kind of horror that I find the scariest, the quiet horror that never uses the violence and cheap thrills that is often stereotyped as horror.  Let me be clear it is not that I have a problem with definitions of horror including any of the aspects found in the above research papers, rather it is the assumptions made about what horror is without defining it as so. Psych research 101 is to define your constructs and give justification for your construct.

So what is horror then? Well my definition is ever evolving but I still think Lovecraft said it best, Fear of the Unknown. However I am not just talking about fear of what you can not see in the dark, although that is a part. It is the unknown that occurs when your most basic premises are violated and your ontological footing is crumbling beneath you; what you have always used to make meaning is life doesn’t work anymore. I am not saying I have hit on the universal definition of horror, nor that my definition wont change over time, but at least it is a position. I hope to raise the standard of work in horror psychology so that horror fans can find the thoughtful emotional-contemplation on the human condition and the strangeness and horror that surround us everyday in my research, rather than being seen as aberration of society and leaving them left horror struck. As horror fans or non-horror fans how do you feel about the way people think about your feelings of the genre? What do you think needs to spoken up about horror to those outside of it? Any other thoughts?

¹Tamborini, R., Stiff, J., & Heidel, C. (1990). Reacting to graphic horror: A model of empathy and emotional behavior. Communication Research, 17(5), 616.
Straube, T., Preissler, S., Lipka, J., Hewig, J., Mentzel, H.-J., & Miltner, W. H. R. (2010). Neural representation of anxiety and personality during exposure to anxiety-provoking and neutral scenes from scary movies. Human Brain Mapping, 31(1), 36–47.
Houran, J., Kumar, V. K., Thalbourne, M. A., & Lavertue, N. E. (2002). Haunted by somatic tendencies: Spirit infestation as psychogenic illness. Mental Health, Religion & Culture, 5(2), 119-133.

Jarrett, C. (2011). The lure of horror. Psychologist, 24(11), 812–815.

Clasen, M. (2012). Monsters evolve: A biocultural approach to horror stories. Review of General Psychology, 16(2), 222–229.   
Just to name a few.

Audio Horror | I Only Am Escaped Alone To Tell Thee

art by Steve Santiago

“Whatever you do, don’t call me Ishmael.”

This is the opening line to one of the best stories I have listened to in a long time, I Only Am Escaped Alone to Tell Thee is a genre bending story by Christopher Reynaga. It is the story of Moby Dick and is also unabashedly Lovecraft’s Call of Cthulhu.

In this tale it turns out that the story we know about Ahab is all wrong, that the man was not a vengeful insane sea captain we all thought he was.  He is insane, and he sails to his death to fight the white beast he has hunted, but that beast is no whale.

As Ahab says himself:

“It is not a whale we hunt, but a god. A tentacled and winged god, greater than the greatest whale that ever lived. You must think me mad, and I am, but mad with knowing whats in store for this earth…It means to kill us all, and not because its the Lord’s instrument hailing the end of days, this beast is the end of all gods and men.”

Ahab is dying, his first encounter with the Leviathan has left him marked, the peg-leg is more than what meets the eye, and he hunts the beast for his wife and son. He does not believe that he can kill it, but only seeks to buy time, if only a few minutes, he will not have died in vein.

The story ends as Moby Dick has always ended, but again the light cast on Ahab is much different

 Ahab rode through it, like a titan going forth to meet a god, buoyed up by the strength of his unnatural leg; his blessed spear gripped in his had “from Hell’s heart I stab at thee” Ahab cried…

I do not know why that great man sacrificed himself for you, but no man here deserves his Providence. You believe Ahab is mad; he is the Christ come to try and deliver us all, and there’s not enough blood in him to save us.

Like all cosmic horror it delivers in the ending, dooming us all to the utter destruction at the hands of Cthulhu. This is an amazing piece of writing and is performed fantastically by Graeme Dunlop. It can be found at the DrabbleCast, here.

For me this is the story of a monster hunter.  The monster hunter is one of more fascinating aspects of the horror genre. I have a great deal more to say about it in an upcoming post, but suffice it to say, the horror psychology in play here is largely existential. The hunters are men and women who have found their will-to-meaning and let nothing deter them in their steady march toward it. Ahab found this in this story where as Ishmael does not. Interestingly even in literature the will-to-meaning makes itself apparent plays out as it does in real life. Those that have it find strength to go on or die trying, and those that don’t fall into despair.

Go take a listen to the story above, the whole podcast is only 30 mins long and is well worth your time, and by the end I can only hope that you, like I, are left horror struck.

Hollywood Horror Movies| Cabin in the Woods

*SPOILERS* If you haven’t seen this movie yet, go watch it, then come back and read this. Or, if you don’t care, keep reading anyway.

Cabin in the Woods has gotten a lot of attention since it came out, and with good reason.

Watching horror movies has become such a different experience for me these days. I watch them in an almost clinical or academic way, and for that exact reason Cabin in the Woods was a perfect movie for me. It took my detached mode of watching a horror movie, deconstructed it and reflected it back at me.

First lets talk about the types of horror present in this movie.

Horror by Reduction: Yes this type of horror is very present in this movie, but not in the typical way. We are not shown humans transforming into zombies, vampires, or demons. However the true horror comes along with what is implied by the Facility and the Controllers. The horror by reduction comes from the idea that we can be reduced to machines controlled completely by our environment. Adjust the temperature, release pheromones  reduce “cognition” through hair dye, and we become helpless puppets on a string. All of these ideas are based on the real-life work of B.F. Skinner, the father of Operational Conditioning,as a matter of fact the technology he created was the Skinner box. Which might look familiar.

Now imagine it with a “monster dispenser” and holographic glass

The other type of horror in this movie is of course, what I am feeling is becoming a site favorite, Cosmicism. A universe filled with ancient slumbering gods who will destroy the world if they awake, sound familiar? This is one of the better Lovecraftian movies that I have seen in a long time and for good reason.  Our heroes come to the knowledge  that they are part of a ritual sacrifice, and not just an isolated ritual, but one run on a global scale filled with redundancies. Unlike the typical trope of horror movies, the sacrifice in Cabin in the Woods is not to gain the favor of some nameless god, but rather to keep him inert, to simply maintain the status quo.  Those who work at the Facility seem to see themselves beyond good and evil, a hallmark of Cosmicism, the Facility is simply trying to keep our pathetic little sphere rolling. And like all good Lovecraft stories it shows us that despite all of our best intentions and attempts, humanity is just not up to the task.

What about the horror psychology of this movie? This movie is very explicitly about agency. Choice is the central theme to the movie, we learn that it is only by their willingness to proceed that the characters can fulfill their role as sacrifices. They choose which of the monster will kill them, and in the end it was a choice to let the Old Gods awaken. But was there ever really any choice? Or rather, is there any meaning to the choices they make? I think the answer to that question is, Maybe, if they chose to find it.

If we were to follow the line of existential thought put forth by Victor Frankl we might arrive at some interesting places. Frankl had some thought provoking ideas when it came to finding meaning in life. He posited that Life always has meaning, even in the most dire of circumstances, our will to find the meaning is our main motivation in this life, and finally that we are free to find meaning in what we do and experience or at the very least in the stand you take when faced with unchangeable horror and suffering.

Ring a bell?  Yeah this is exactly how our two heroes play out the ending of the movie. Knowing that their actions are going to be damning no matter their choice, either the insanity of the sacrifices will continue because of them, or the world will burn and will  have to face a truth it had long ago buried in an attempt to forget, and take responsibility for it. They make a choice and stand for what they believe to be right, whether it was right  or not is a matter of personal opinion, but either way they have made a decision that makes sense for them and their lives, however short they are going to be.

Frankl was no stranger to this kind of horror, and suffering, remember he was a survivor of the Auschwitz death camps of WWII. He often saw these kind of damning choice made and watched as people struggled to find meaning and die with purpose or, like the friends of Job suggest, curse God and die miserable and alone. Freedom and responsibility were key to Frankl and to agency, but being truly free can be enough to leave you horror struck.

What do you think? Was the choice the characters in the film make the right one? Do you think Frankl’s ideas apply to this film or not?

Types of Horror | Horror for Stephen King

As I have been writing this blog I have been trying flesh out a kind of taxonomy of horror. In my Internet roving I ran across this quote of Danse Macabre, Stephen King’s book about writing, where he outlines, rather loosely, his own taxonomy of the horror genre.

“The 3 types of terror: The Gross-out: the sight of a severed head tumbling down a flight of stairs, it’s when the lights go out and something green and slimy splatters against your arm. The Horror: the unnatural, spiders the size of bears, the dead waking up and walking around, it’s when the lights go out and something with claws grabs you by the arm. And the last and worse one: Terror, when you come home and notice everything you own had been taken away and replaced by an exact substitute. It’s when the lights go out and you feel something behind you, you hear it, you feel its breath against your ear, but when you turn around, there’s nothing there…”
― Stephen King

He uses different words, but I think King’s ideas are similar to mine. Meaning is essential, and the part that scares me the most is the idea of everything being exactly the same and yet not. On the surface it is no different, yet the meaning of everything has been radically altered. This is similar to Freud’s Uncanny. That which is familiar yet is not.

Have you ever experienced a moment of Terror as Stephen King describes it?

Horror Psychology | To Live in Fear

One of my favorite movies of all time is the Shawshank Redemption, although not strictly a horror movie, it was written by Stephen King. At the end of the film there is a quote that I think should be considered on this blog. Redd says it as he is struggling to deal with the existential question of his life, outside of the prison that he had become so accustomed to.

Terrible thing, to live in fear. Brooks Hatlen knew it. Knew it

all too well. All I want is to be back where things make sense. Where I won’t have to be afraid all the time.

This particular quote has struck me in a new way. For the last little while I have been reading an insane amount of material about the psychology of horror as I prepare for my thesis. The question that seems to be asked by researchers every where is Why Horror? Inevitably it nearly always comes down to another question. What is wrong with people who enjoy the horror genre? It is assumed that those of us who like horror have something wrong with us, because why else would we subject oursevles to that kind of stimuli.

What do you think? Why do you think, for those of us that love the horror genre, we choose, in one sense of the phrase, to live in fear?

Lovecraft Quotes | The Genuine and Powerful

Lovecraft’s death anniversary was yesterday, but I was too busy with midterms to make a post. So here is my tribute to the Man of Providence

“The question to ask of art, including literature, is not whether it is healthy or pleasant, but whether it is genuine and powerful.” (emphasis added by author).

This one is a recently discovered quote from HPL, found on a postcard held in a private collection, directed as a criticism to one of the weird tales magazine editors. However I think it can give us something to talk about..

Horror I feel is probably one of the most genuine and powerful of all art genres, as it doesn’t pull the punches, and truly dives down to the deepest darkest parts of our psychology. Do you agree or disagree and why?

Great Horror Books | Red Dragon

The Reality of Dragons

Fairy tales do not tell children that dragons exist. Children already know that dragons exist. Fairy tales tell children the dragons can be killed- G. K Chesterton

The Great Red Dragon and the Woman Clothed in Sun by William Blake

It was while reading the Red Dragon by Thomas Harris that I heard this quote for the first time. It was while watching an episode of Criminal Minds, and  I thought it was ironic and synchronistic that I was reading the novel that really started the popularity of the “psychological profiler” in film and TV. I also found that this quote rung true for the novel. This tale about the horror of personality is really a fairy tale story retold, albeit one for grown-ups, but maybe they(yes, I use “they” because I don’t think I will ever consider myself grown-up) are the ones that need to remember fairy tales the most.

This story definitely falls under the horror of personality horror type, even though it would be easy to make it a “creature” story and therefore a horror by reduction. I say “creature “ because at first it appears that the killer, Dolarhyde, is a monster from the beginning, a totally incomprehensible Other. However as the story progresses we learn that Dolarhyde has a monster fighting within him, that at first he embraces, then tries to fight, but ultimately succumbs to; this makes the story a horror of personality.

Despite the story’s modern setting, it is still an ancient dragon-slaying tale. It teaches grown-ups a few things that they have forgotten; one being, just because the good wins the day, it does not mean a terrible price must not be paid by the hero. The protagonist, Graham, ultimately wins against the Red Dragon, but he pays a terrible price in the battle against him. In the end he ends up losing his face(identity), his inner-peace(mind) and puts a strain on the love in his marriage, a marriage that had brought him (soul) back from a previous abyss.This utter annihilation is standard fare for the horror genre, but more closely relates to the horror of Armageddon ( a type of horror we have yet to discuss) than the horror of personality, but this is not an inconsistency. We must understand that the Red Dragon series depicted by William Blake, the paintings that inspire Dolarhyde, represent the Beast of the Apocalypse, thus the Armageddon theme is appropriate.

The story is also full of some interesting post-modern and humanist themes. The villain of the story sees himself as the Red Dragon incarnate. He feels he is becoming a “super-natural” being, but he is pitted against William Graham, a regular human, a psychological profiler. In the end the “super-natural” is defeated by human science and human forces. This whole idea smacks of humanism and the ability for Man to overcome anything. The post-modernism comes to us from a surprising source, Hannibal Lecter. Lecter plays only a small role in this story, however, the author uses him magnificently. At one point in the story Graham has to consult Hannibal, the killer he put behind bars, and who very nearly killed him. This consultation happens for two reasons, first to see if there is any insight Hannibal can give him, an attempt to have a monster explain the monster. The second is to put Graham into the mind-set he requires to profile the criminal. This use of criminal insanity to fight crime is something that would not have been found in a structured modernist theme. Only post-modernism, in its search for any idea to grab a hold of and use it to make some kind of good, could conceive of that idea.

In the end, while it may not be a happily ever after, Red Dragon accomplishes what G. K Chesterton told us a story about dragons is for, it gives us hope in a world where it feels that all hope is lost,and most important of all that the dragons can be slain. The story gives humanism a boost, that humans can accomplish great things, but it also levels a warning to that very humanism that should leave us horror struck: In its greatness humanism has forgotten the first part of Chesterton’s message: Dragons are real.

Welcome to Horror Struck

“Men of broader intellect know that there is no sharp distinction betwixt the real and the unreal…” H. P. Lovecraft.

Welcome to Horror Struck.

Here I hope to explore the vast reaches of the horror genre in a unique way. Horror is a genre rife with opinions. I find that most people are on a spectrum ranging from those that love to hate it, writing it off as a hack genre, not worth the paper or film it is printed on; the casual perusers, those who enjoy a good scare every now and then; and the aficionado, who see horror as an exploration of the visceral man, both literally and figuratively.  I find myself somewhere between the casual and the aficionado, I love horror, but I am very picky about my horror. I believe there is a fundamental difference between the experiences we know as horror and fear. I will post more on this later, but in short, the physiological  roller-coaster we call fear is not the same as the value-challenging experience of horror, I believe this has made me picky. I don’t enjoy gut-ripping for the sake of gut-ripping, or blood sucking vampire sex scenes simply because you can put it in there. While violence and sex both have a well earned place in the horror conversation, they are all too often used, IMHO, to fill in for a poor ability to write horror.  Real horror should challenge us, make us uncomfortable with its message about the human condition, in short it should leave us Horror Struck.

As a graduate student of psychology I have often wondered what would come of a close look at the horror genre from a psychological perspective. What is it that leaves us horror struck? This blog will explore that. I have picked out various categories to explore, some to examine more closely and others to get you, the reader, to ponder more on what the horrific really is. Always looking for that moment when one is Horror Struck.

Types of horror: This will explore the types of horror that are out there, a list of things I have complied from my own research, the archetypes of horror if you will.

Horror Psychology: This category is will probably be more implicit than explicit. I will look at the psychological aspects of horror and what they mean as pertaining to the human experience.

Great Horror Books:  I read a lot of horror novels, in what little down time I have, here I will talk about some of the great horror books and there epic, and quiet, horrifying moments.

Horror Short Stories: As those who follow the horror genre know, the horror short story is the bread and butter of the genre, most of the best horror authors never wrote a novel, but were prodigious in the creation of short stories. We will look at these too.

Hollywood Horror Movies: Need I even mention this , horror has found a larger acceptance in this genre than in any other medium. I watch a lot of horror movies and I will explore them their themes and ideas here.

Lovecraft Mythos: One cannot talk about horror and not talk about Lovecraft. I opened this blog with a quote from him. Lovecraft opened up the gate for me into the realm of cosmic nightmare, and the mythos he spawned has influenced every aspect of the genre. We will look at his themes and contributions with a keen eye of interest.

Lovecraft Quotes: Some from his works of fiction and some from his letters. Lovecraft had a lot to say about the genre and I will post these to help us think about the horror genre.

Supernatural horror: I love the supernatural, I have had a few supernatural experiences myself, and my favorite kind of horror is of the supernatural variety. It’s my little indulgence and I know not everyone’s cup of tea, but I will try to keep things balanced.

I hope you enjoy your time here and that you feel free to participate in what I hope will be a exciting exploration of what happens when we  stare into the abyss and we stand horror-stricken when we realize that it gazes right back.