Horror
Horror
The horror genre essentially deals with anxiety in the twentieth century. Much like fairytales like Snow White, Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty articulated fears and anxieties of their day (making a good marriage, ensuring that children have good manners and that little girls grow up to be good wives and mothers etc.), the contemporary horror text defines a newer world of phobia and fear characterized by economics, politics and technology. Horror, perhaps more than other genres, interrogates the depth of change in culture and plays upon, even relies upon, our social fears at any given time.
As Paul Wells (2000) notes:
Horror films have been analyzed within a range of theoretical paradigms and discourses. The genre has been addressed in the light of these theological and moral perspectives, its sociological and cultural dimensions, its politics of representation, and its configuration as a set of texts particularly conducive to psychological approaches. Problematically, the horror genre has no clearly defined boundaries, and overlaps with aspects of science fiction and fantasy genres. Also, in recent years, many of its generic elements have been absorbed into the mainstream thriller. Arguably, there is no great benefit in attempting to disentangle these generic perspectives,. It may be more constructive to proceed on the basis of addressing the distinctive elements of any one text within a particular historical moment[...]
It may be noted that the horror genre is predominantly concerned with death and the impacts and effects of the past, while science fiction is future-oriented, engaging with how human social existence could develop and dealing with humankinds predication for self-destruction. While science fiction is potentially utopian (although often critically grounded), the horror genre is almost entirely dystopic, and often nihilistic in outlook[...]
The horror genre has become increasingly concerned with the relative and fragile nature of existence. Although the monster may be understood to operate within the doubling framework on many occasions, it is pertinent to conceive of it as a metaphor; a projection of particular threats, fears and contradictions that refuse coexistence with the prevailing paradigms and consensual orthodoxies of everyday life. The monster may also be the direct and unfettered expression of the horrors that surround us.
--From The Horror Genre: From Beelzebub to Blair Witch, London, Wallflower Press.
So, can horror be broken down into component parts? Psychological horror texts depend on emotion in order to invoke fear. Arguably, these are the elements of horror that affect you because you are in control of your emotions or, at least, your emotional reaction is something that you are responsible for. You are, therefore, also responsible for the horror element--if you can't relate to the film, to the horror element within the film as it relates to your own emotional reaction/experience, then it is just a reaction to the visual. Which brings us to slasher films like Friday the 13th films, A Nightmare on Elmstreet films, Halloween films. Slasher films rely on you visually seeing a scary or frightening aspect of life-- ie. a large knife, blood, a scary mask with a psychotic killer behind it. These kinds of horror films are often bloody and, more crucially, of the body, not of the mind.
In horror, many would argue that the suggested is much more frightening than the visual. As we will see in The Blair Witch Project, the suggestion of a terrifying supernatural presence, and the build up to this presence and the power that particular presence has over the helpless victims in the depths of the forest--without ever seeing that supernatural presence at all--is what makes the film frightening (we can reserve debate on this particular film until later in the Course). Similarly, films like The Shining, The Stepford Wives, Rosemary's Baby and the like each mess with your sense of self and what you know to be reliable about self; in turn, films that make you think about the psychological or political aspects of your fear also threaten your sense of self, reason, and/or beliefs. Romero's Night of the Living Dead, is hardly frightening because there are slow moving Zombies that we could all out-run in any circumstance. Rather, the film is frightening because of its political statements and without understanding the context in which Romero expresses himself in the film, or without an understanding of the metaphors he employs with his zombies, one can miss the significance and the genuine fear that the film evokes.
Yet is there is still something to be said for the psycho in the Slasher film? Certainly teens whose primary experience was babysitting and being pressured to have sex with boyfriends certainly related to films like Halloween, Nightmare on Elm Street and Friday the 13th. Morever, if we return to contextualizing texts, there is much to comment on in terms of politics: cultural reactions and attitudes toward mental illness, societal views on pre-marital sex after the freedom of the 60s and 70s, and social commentaries on drinking and partying during adolescence (this is where we might easily return to the Fairy Tale analogy with which this commentary began). Indeed, the Slasher films of the 90s are significant to the horror genre as they rely on the audience succumbing to what they represent a particular era of the visually frightening, but they still address threats that were at the fore of societal and political concerns. Sex (always premarital), drugs and rock n roll were the most significant politics to address and warn a young audience about: fear the body--if you are having pleasure with the body, you will die. Scream's success as a postmodern horror was predicated on its interrogation of the genre itself. The following is a dialogue from the film (the scene-- several teenagers are watching Halloween, starring Jamie Lee Curtis):
TEEN #1
Look, here it comes. SPLAT!
TEEN #2
The blood's not the right color.
Why do they do that? It's too red.
RANDY
Here comes another …
TEEN #3
Predictable. Knew he was going to
bite it.
BORED TEEN
How can you watch this shit over
and over?
RANDY
Shhhhh.
STU
I wanna see Jamie Lee's breasts.
When do we see Jamie Lee's breasts?
RANDY
Not until TRADING PLACES in '83.
Jamie Lee was always the virgin in
horror movies. She didn't show
her tits until she went legit.
BOY TEEN
No way.
RANDY
That's why she always lived. Only
virgins can outsmart the killer in
the big chase scene in the end.
Don't you know the rules?
Stu finishes his beer.
STU
What rules?
Randy hits the pause button on the remote and stands in front
of the television, explaining.
RANDY
There are certain rules that one
must abide by in order to
successfully survive a horror movie.
For instance: 1. You can never
have sex. The minute you get a
little nookie--you're as good as
gone. Sex always equals death. 2.
Never drink or do drugs. The sin
factor. It's an extension of number
one. And 3. Never, ever, ever,
under any circumstances, say "I'll
be right back."
STU
Wanna another beer?
RANDY
Yeah.
STU
I'll be right back.
Everybody "ooohhs".
As I've argued elsewhere, Scream is an interesting diversion from conventional horror in its intertexuality, self examination, and deconstructionist techniques. To that end, Randy is quick to point out later in the film that the cops don't watch enough movies, implying that if they did, they might catch more killers. "If it gets too complicated, you lose your target audience," he explains. "If they [the cops] watched Prom Night, they'd save time. There's a formula to it! A very specific formula." Scream also addresses the gendering of the horror film several times, most notably when Sidney states that she doesn't "watch that shit" (horror films) because "there'll all the same. Some stupid killer stalking some big breasted girl who can't act, and she's always running up the stairs when she should be going out the door. It's insulting."
INDEED! Pioneering in its attempt to deconstruct the contemporary horror film, Scream is perhaps the exception to the rule that transgressions are never allowed. Unfortunately, as we will see throughout this Course, this is not the case for most horror films.