On Horror

[benlehman]

This is just a thought.

There is a school of horror that is all about squamous things from beyond space and time. It draws its horrific aspect from things that are totally alien to our experience. I'm thinking of Lovecraft, yup, but also others. It is about the alien. We might call it insulated horror.

Also, though, there is another school of horror, which takes the personal or everyday and turns it into a metaphor for something human and horrible that we cannot think about it directly. This is the horror that Polaris has, when it has horror. We might call this subversive horror.

I propose that subversive horror is really just superior. Thoughts?

Comments

[psychotropek.livejournal.com]

I like the second better, but I really like horror that is exceedingly personal and psychological and about humans being monsters. Blee!

[relevance.livejournal.com]

I think that you overstate the alien-ness of insulated horror. It is ultimately a narrative manifestation of fear of the unknown and/or the unknowable, which is a very familiar and very human emotion.

I would argue that insulated horror is not always tentacular and otherworldly, that's just one manifestation of it. A very similar effect could easily be evoked by a toy chest that a boy is terrified to open, that gives him increasingly horrific nightmares about what might be within. What could be inside that is so awful? How will it end? The closed lid taunts the reader with the promise of the unspeakable. The object is mundane, but the effect is the same as that of insulated horror.

[unrequitedthai.livejournal.com]

I don't really think these are different, except cosmetically, and by observation.

Lovecraft isn't really about liquescent horrors from the deeps of space; it's really about the desolate idea that there isn't really a smiling old man in the sky who made us and is looking out for us, and the painful loneliness of a world that really just doesn't care.

I guess that, distanced from the culture that assumed Warm And Friendly God Power, and immersed in a society that's all about the cold uncaring world, that aspect loses its impact, and that's part of why Lovecraft's writings are blunted to us. So like we read At the Mountains of Madness and expect it to be scary, and we have to invent something to be scary because nothing really is but there is supposed to be, so we decide, "Oh! It must be this weird cabbage alien and the albino penguin city! Tekeli-li!"

So, in conclusion, I'm guessing here that insulated horror is subversive horror that depends on something that we canour own horror here, generated by real emotional responses to the content of the text; it's just where we see the symbols of horror and so we say, "That is horrific;" it's fossilized into a linguistic response.

[nikotesla.livejournal.com]

GURPS Horror does a really nifty job of defining horror by what you're afraid of, rather than the media through which you horrify: fear of death, fear of disease, fear of the unknown...

It's one of the greats on the GURPS library, in no small part because it's about how to build a story, rather than historical or fictional facts.

Also, it's great because it was written by Kenneth Hite who writes lots of neat things and who thinks Dogs in the Vineyard is the bee's knees.

Incidentally, I recently read some of the "original" Conan stories and was surprised to see how Lovecraftian they are when dealing with magic. Sorcery is a matter of dealing with alien technologies. Seen through the eyes of the simple, honest Conan, it is therefore bizarre and terrifying. To my 21st century eyes, it makes Conan look like a rube, frankly. And Howard look like a garden variety racist, but that's another issue. Anyway, it backs up what unrequitedthai was just saying: it's supposed to fly in the face of the assumption you, as a reader in 1930, make about God, but instead it impresses me with how differently we (or at least I) think about the universe now that people have left the planet.

[pete-darby.livejournal.com]

Well, you can look at it this way: xenophobia, fear of the alien, (or heterophobia, fear of the different) is probably our oldest horror, and, in a primitive state, the most functional. In it's more common forms, it's also conservative and re-assuring: as long as we stay with our own kind and guard the borders vigilantly, we can protect ourselves from the horrors from outside, whether they are extraterrestrial face eaters or economic migrants.

Meanwhile, internal horror, would be either autophobia (fear of oneself) or the literal translation of homophobia, fear of those like oneself, is radical and progressive: it is the challenge to the status quo, in saying we, ourselves, our society, is a source of horror.

I wouldn't argue that either is superior: the first is more closely wired to our primitive brains but, by extension, the second is more disturbing to our preconceptions. For RPG, the latter is probably heightened in it's effect, because it is the horror filled reaction of the individual to society, whereas the first is the horror filled reaction of society to the individual.

[zigguratbuilder.livejournal.com]

I propose a new division of horror: The Milli school and the Vanilli school:



Milli horror is all about the horror of human emotions: Vice, greed, fear... They come out in movies like Se7en, Saw, and even movies like Carlitto's Way or plays like Othello or The Merchant of Venice.

Vanilli horror, however, is all about people being put into situations that are beyond their control: The situation, not an emotion, is the catalyst of horror. Movies like the Hellraiser series (1 and 2: The rest of the Hellraiser movies are not Hellraiser movies, though they bear the title), Silent Hill and Zero/Fatal Frame games, Lovecraft, the last 5 minutes of the remake of They, that episode of Saint Elsewhere where whatshisface dies and ends up in Purgatory for a while.

I have no point in this, really, as they're both cool and creepy. But I like making fun of early 90s pop icons.

[bob-goat.livejournal.com]

Horror, like everythng else, is about human issues so the most effective is the one that hits you personally. Subjective and shit. For me, one of my greatist fears is losing control. So stuff about losing your grip on your life freaks the shit out of me. North by Northwest is kinda a horror movie for me, cause the idea that everthing is out of Grants control freaks me out. I find most other stuff boring cause, well I'm an atheist so shit from beyond doesn't bother me one wit.

[xiombarg.livejournal.com]

I'm a big fan of Lovecraft, but I agree that personal horror is generally better. It's notable that one of my most favorite Lovecraft stories combines the personal with the cosmic: "The Rats in the Walls"

[chgriffen.livejournal.com]

On a related note, I've talked to several people about their horror movie preferences, and it often comes down to this: people are either more scared by supernatural killers, or by human ones.

The supernatural killers are just unstoppable. That's where the helplessness comes in. They tend to be alien, too, at least in some ways. People who are scared more of this kind of threat think they could whoop a human's ass, or at least do something.

The human killers are just more real. It could happen. It actually does. People who are more rationalists and can dismiss Freddy Krueger are more likely to feel the horror of an insane person who's just out to get you.

I think the same applies to alien vs. known horror. One is more real. The other is more powerful. That's just another aspect, along with what's already been said.

Alien vs. non-alien

[redcrosse.livejournal.com]

The difficulty with most "alien"-style horror is that the alien events, creatures, or other phenomena displayed therein tend to find us utterly incomprehensible as well, to the point of taking no active interest of any real kind. As such, the alien only disturbs us directly when it catches us in the whooshings of its vast apparently random alienness. As you suggest, this has a very real cap on how disturbing it can be: the greatest horrific sentiment we can draw from this is "the world and things within it are truly vaster than we are, and we can be harmed by this on occasion." True. Wise, even. But not so horrific.

True horror comes with a one-way comprehension: the alien understands us. Perhaps not completely, certainly not fully enough to give us what we need (or at least, what we want,) but for whatever reason it takes an active and direct interest in our affairs for its own incomprehensible ends (note that by "incomprehensible," I do not necessarily mean "indescribable." Many incomprehensible desires can be put into words.) The alien is still alien, but for whatever reason, it cares, and you don't want that.

The most compelling form of horror, to me, is when known horror, people killing people for accepted human reasons, is taken out of its normally accepted context and made alien by definition within the narrative. (Dogs in the Vineyard, run the way I would see as properly, would be an excellent example of this, though less horrific than some; after all, without some serious conspiracy, the demons aren't on their home turf.) Naturally, I find this sort of horror most appealing and horrific because I have an active belief in the supernatural and alien, and as such find this style more realistic than standard realism; I'm not certain whether this would apply for others.