Hope You Like Horror

‘Given the problems of defining horror, trying to catalogue everything that falls within that definition is an impossible task.’[1]

‘Horror fiction can be categorized as a Gothic tale, science fiction, or physiological horror’[2] there are further categories that horror can be broken into such as ‘horror of the demonic, horror of the Armageddon, and the horror of personality’[3] as well as ‘supernatural horror … and nonsupernatural horror’[4]. Despite its many subgenres and categories, the horror genre at its core has a ‘focus on creating a feeling of fear’[5] and this ‘feeling of fear’ has an array of purposes.

The horror genre serves as a way of reminding us as readers that ‘behind artifices of comfort and rules, order and stability, wholesome and righteousness, lie the flip sides of these: discomfort, terror, violence, disgust.’[6] Horror is a way of exploring our cultural fears, delving into what would happen if our sensibilities left and society couldn’t help us, all within the safety of fiction. Horror provides us with a way to delve into what we fear within a controlled environment, and then when it is over, we experience what Stephen King describes as ‘”reintegration”’[7] which is the feeling of ‘”the worst has been faced and it wasn’t so bad after all”’.[8] This allows us to look at our present and project onto fiction and indulge our need for fear without having to be faced with genuine fearmongering news that is our reality. As people we tend to be morbidly invested in tragedy and with constant information being given to us, it is hard not to indulge in unrelenting and triggering news stories as ‘fear-based news stories prey on the anxieties we all have and then hold us hostage.’[9] Though horror can use the same anxieties, it offers respite by preying upon them in a different way. When reading horror, we experience the ‘loss of control’[10] that the physical and mental effects of fear create, we can feel fear towards the threats within the story, but the narrative must end eventually giving us that relief. Even in “bad” endings where the monster claims another victim, we still are given a sense of closure even if it is unpleasant. These “bad” endings can still help quell anxieties as it gives us room to imagine how we would do things differently from the protagonist, letting our already hyper aware brain imagine productively rather than be kept wide awake with fear. Current affairs do not give us the same closure as horror as there is always another dilemma, whether that be bomb threats, food that causes cancer or another deadly epidemic. Horror lends itself to be a way of neutralising very real fears and concerns regarding our society, by letting us challenge societies expectations and imagining worst case scenarios safely, without giving into hysteria and buying into fear mongering media.

A key reason why we are drawn to horror as a genre is ultimately because it is enjoyable as the ‘feelings of anxiety, fear and relief, and mastery are certainly an integral part of the pleasure that people derive from the genre’.[11] We love the adrenaline rush we get from hyper arousal; we enjoy the way that a piece of fiction can stimulate our bodies so completely. The horror genre is also fun, no other genre pulls people together with the same vigour as horror, we love group outings to watch horror movies to revel in our mutual fear or share what Goosebumps books kept us up at night as children. I feel part of this comes from the variety of feelings we feel from horror: yes, we feel fear, terror and disgust but there is so many nuances to why it is scaring us. For example, the fright we feel regarding ‘The Embarrassment of Dead Grandmothers’[12] by Sarah Lotz is drastically different to ‘Roundabout’[13] by Muriel Gray. Lotz has a playful and mortifying kind of dread throughout, whereas Gray utilises a suspenseful monster-based story in a unique and modern setting, leaning into the short story format with its ambiguous ending. These different kinds of fears make us feel revitalised by the horror genre with it flexing the broad span of narratives and feelings within its scope of fiction.

References in Order of Use:

[1]Colavito, Jason. Knowing Fear: Science, Knowledge and the Development of the Horror Genre. North Carolina: McFarland & Co, 2008.

[2][3][4]Weaver, James B. Horror Films: Current Research on Audience Preferences and Reactions. Oxfordshire: Routledge, 1996.

[5]The Editors of Encyclopaedia of Britannica. ‘Horror story’. Last accessed on April 16, 2020. https://www.britannica.com/art/horror-story

[6]Gina Wisker. ‘Horror Fiction’. Last accessed on April 16, 2020. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/9781118398500.wbeotgh009

[7][8][11]Fahy, Thomas. (ed). The Philosophy of Horror. Kentucky: University Press of Kentucky, 2012.

[9]Deborah Serani. ‘If It Bleeds, It Leads: Understanding Fear-Based Media’. Last accessed on April 16, 2020. https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/two-takes-depression/201106/if-it-bleeds-it-leads-understanding-fear-based-media

[10]Saliba, David, R. A Psychology of Fear. Washington D.C: University Press of America, 1980. [12]Morris, Mark. (ed).  New Fears: New Horror Stories by Masters of the Genre: 1. London: Titan Books. 2017

Location within horror fiction is undoubtedly important. Location serves as a tool to create atmosphere and can be used as a way for the writer to convey emotion and theme without it coming straight from the psyche of the protagonist. This can be achieved, for example, with pathetic fallacy: using weather to indicate mood or create foreshadowing stirrings that something is not right. Location in horror ‘creates the ambience and the expectation, of terror.’[1] Yet, location in horror goes further than writer’s techniques and creepy exposition, it plays into our cultural fears and stimulates us psychologically.

Location in horror fiction uses elements of Freud’s “uncanny” to unsettle us, this is most evident in the use of “ordinary” settings. Using locations that we see in our day to day life allows us to project the fictional fear onto tangible locations we encounter, keeping the fear we had felt an ongoing occurrence. The “uncanny” comes into play by establishing a suspicion within our homes, our workplaces, and the pillars of our society as ‘what is “uncanny” is frightening precisely because it is not known and familiar.’[2] The ‘familiar’ is, in a way, as equally terrifying as the ‘not known’: we know the boundaries of those places and the idea that there is something invading that comfort of it being familiar, is threatening to everything we hold dear. It is, in some ways, akin to someone breaking into your house: a line has been crossed and now lurking at the back of your mind is the dread it might happen again, whenever you lock your doors or go to sleep.  

‘Roundabout’[3] by Muriel Gray uses an “ordinary” location but twists our expectations of that location. Roundabouts are a fleeting location; we rarely step foot on them, and we barely engage with them physically. Roundabouts also have the ominous quality of being both isolated while also very exposed, though not in a way that is meaningful, so if something horrific occurred on one, who can say if anyone would catch a glimpse of you there.  ‘Roundabout’ is masterful in its use of location as in imprinting horror onto this uneventful location, we have no other lasting impression of it. This means the next time we look to them and see a small wood we think of ‘The Dark Thing’ that resides within and can’t help but feel unnerved.

When something is not right with our surroundings and that fear is played upon, it can unnerve us to no end as ‘Our daily physical surroundings play an important role in creating order, meaning, and stability in our lives, and the cultural rituals that make up the very fabric of social and religious life have historically been inseparable from the physical spaces in which they transpire.’[4] When we defile our physical surroundings with horror, we are removing ‘order’ and ‘stability’ and instead replacing it with new meaning that may work against everything our culture suggests about that space. An example of this is places of care[5] such as hospitals as seeing this location as somewhere hostile makes us remove rationality: the white walls of a hospital are no longer seen as clean and instead are uncomfortably sterile, calculating, unnatural and not human.

References

[1] ‘Setting and Description in Horror Fiction’. Last modified March 19, 2020. http://www.writersdigest.com/wp-content/uploads/Setting-And-Description-In-Horror-Fiction-Extended-Short-Story-Workshop.pdf

[2] Rivkin, Julie. Literary Theory: An Anthology, 2^nd ed. Hoboken: Wiley-Blackwell. 2004.

[3] Morris, M. (ed).  New Fears: New Horror Stories by Masters of the Genre: 1. London: Titan Books. 2017.

[4] Francis T. McAndrew. ‘The Psychology, Geography, and Architecture of Horror: How Places Creep Us Out’. Last modified October 7, 2019. https://www.academicstudiespress.com/asp-blog/how-places-creep-us-out

[5] Matt Elphick. ‘Horrific Locations’. Last modified February 18, 2020. https://winchester.instructure.com/courses/10147/pages/week-6-horror-and-location-matts-groups?module_item_id=510705