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Existential Horror
May. 7th, 2019 11:38 pmOne of the running you could say jokes in my house is that I've written several published short stories and short films and an unpublished novel which I consider to be horror but which most horror fans would not like at all because I do it wrong.
Ciro and I talk a lot about what horror is and what an audience might get out of it. It seems to me that slasher fans enjoy being startled or revolted or otherwise having their adrenaline go. This doesn't work for me. I tend to automatically tamp down or ignore fear if I know I'm not in danger, and with fiction I'm not in danger, so my feeling afterward is exhaustion from having to emotionally regulate, rather than a rush of fun adrenaline.
For Ciro, horror needs to have an element of the supernatural, and I would call this style of horror fan lovecrafty. I'd hazard to guess that this kind of horror is satisfying because it takes a more generalized anxiety and concentrates or exaggerates it, usually in a person or malevolent and deliberate force, and this is a relief. Probably there is an element of this same "oh thank goodness I can be scared of this specific thing instead of the milder more frequently encountered versions of this thing" in "scary clown" or "hundreds of spiders crawling on you." There's also a potential for resolution, even if the resolution is "yes, the villain won, the end." I often find this style of horror interesting but not frightening.
Then there is true crime, which may or may not count as horror, which I would say is appealing partly because it lets you be glad you've survived and partly as a rehearsal because you're worried you might not later on. I sometimes like true crime, but I mostly feel sad for the real people, who I don't encounter as though they are me. Something it's missing, from a horror perspective, is suspense. For me, it's mainly tragedy. I don't like to read much of it because I feel bad about reducing the victims to their endings instead of their lives. It would feel profane. Instead I get depressed about people who should be alive not being alive. And I don't change my behavior because it's statistically unlikely these things would happen to me, plus I benefit from being friendly and adventurous and don't think I should stop that.
Meanwhile, where I experience horror is in something other people are more likely to call tragedy, which is: the horror I like takes place in a setting where it is fairly evident from fairly early on that the majority of the people in the story are going to die, and it is going to be pointless death that serves nobody's purpose (there's no monster or death trap maker or serial killer), and it is going to be drawn out and isolated. The horror part comes in my knowing that it's possible some of the people will make the situation worse for some of the other people, and I watch with the hope they won't even though I know they will. Sometimes these people are well-meaning. Sometimes they are not. It's excruciating.
I couldn't tell you why I would choose that kind of narrative or what I get out of it. It does not make sense that I seek out engineering disasters and mountaineering disasters and shipwrecks. It maybe has to do with my appreciation for the people who remain gracious and kind, or bear up and become more noble, as people often do in disasters, or at the very least do not make things worse, the relief I feel when encountering those people or characters. It probably has something to do with reaffirming that I can find value and meaning even in a world of large unsolvable conflicts, or with Camus' short story "The Guest."
Ciro and I talk a lot about what horror is and what an audience might get out of it. It seems to me that slasher fans enjoy being startled or revolted or otherwise having their adrenaline go. This doesn't work for me. I tend to automatically tamp down or ignore fear if I know I'm not in danger, and with fiction I'm not in danger, so my feeling afterward is exhaustion from having to emotionally regulate, rather than a rush of fun adrenaline.
For Ciro, horror needs to have an element of the supernatural, and I would call this style of horror fan lovecrafty. I'd hazard to guess that this kind of horror is satisfying because it takes a more generalized anxiety and concentrates or exaggerates it, usually in a person or malevolent and deliberate force, and this is a relief. Probably there is an element of this same "oh thank goodness I can be scared of this specific thing instead of the milder more frequently encountered versions of this thing" in "scary clown" or "hundreds of spiders crawling on you." There's also a potential for resolution, even if the resolution is "yes, the villain won, the end." I often find this style of horror interesting but not frightening.
Then there is true crime, which may or may not count as horror, which I would say is appealing partly because it lets you be glad you've survived and partly as a rehearsal because you're worried you might not later on. I sometimes like true crime, but I mostly feel sad for the real people, who I don't encounter as though they are me. Something it's missing, from a horror perspective, is suspense. For me, it's mainly tragedy. I don't like to read much of it because I feel bad about reducing the victims to their endings instead of their lives. It would feel profane. Instead I get depressed about people who should be alive not being alive. And I don't change my behavior because it's statistically unlikely these things would happen to me, plus I benefit from being friendly and adventurous and don't think I should stop that.
Meanwhile, where I experience horror is in something other people are more likely to call tragedy, which is: the horror I like takes place in a setting where it is fairly evident from fairly early on that the majority of the people in the story are going to die, and it is going to be pointless death that serves nobody's purpose (there's no monster or death trap maker or serial killer), and it is going to be drawn out and isolated. The horror part comes in my knowing that it's possible some of the people will make the situation worse for some of the other people, and I watch with the hope they won't even though I know they will. Sometimes these people are well-meaning. Sometimes they are not. It's excruciating.
I couldn't tell you why I would choose that kind of narrative or what I get out of it. It does not make sense that I seek out engineering disasters and mountaineering disasters and shipwrecks. It maybe has to do with my appreciation for the people who remain gracious and kind, or bear up and become more noble, as people often do in disasters, or at the very least do not make things worse, the relief I feel when encountering those people or characters. It probably has something to do with reaffirming that I can find value and meaning even in a world of large unsolvable conflicts, or with Camus' short story "The Guest."
