"Writing Monsters": A Book Review

Copyright 2018 by Gary L. Pullman

Philip Athans's 210-page Writing Monsters offers some good tips on creating such monsters as inhabit fantasy worlds and horror domains.

He lays the foundation for most of his book early on, with "The Monster Creation Form," a tool that helps writers plan their monsters as they consider such questions as:

• What's it called?
• What does it eat, and how does it eat?
• How does it move?
• What does it look like? (Overall form, head, eyes, ears, nose, mouth, limbs)
• How big is it?
• What covers its body, and what color is it?
• How smart is it?
• What motivates it?
• What scares it?
• What hurts it?
• What senses does it possess?
• In what way is it better or more powerful than the average person?
• In what way is it weaker than the average person?

The remaining chapters of his book flesh out these considerations.

 

Philip Athans

The tips are practical, as how-to tips should be. Athans's own advice, observations, and insights are sprinkled among his tips, as are recommendations by other fantasy and horror writers. Lynn Abbey, for example, echoes Edgar Allan Poe's advice, in "The Philosophy of Composition," that writers plot their stories backward: "Start with the monster's fall," she suggests, "then dismantle the characters' knowledge and preparation, then construct the plot details that allow the characters to pick up the pieces they're going to need" to neutralize the monster. 

 

Lynn Abbey

Athans recommends that, as a rule, writers avoid supplying exact measurements of a monster's size. Instead, authors should provide such information indirectly, through comparisons or dialogue. If a monster is "twice as tall as the king's watchtower," the reader can learn that the tower is twenty stories tall by having earlier observed the king as he climbed "twenty flights of stairs" to its top. Likewise, a writer can give readers an idea as to a monster's weight by having it fall through a rooftop before a character observes, "that roof can hold three thousand pounds."

 

Edgar Allan Poe

He suggests that writers reveal their monsters slowly, in a piecemeal fashion, in three phases, "The First Encounter," "The Growing Threat," and "The Tipping Point." The first and third will offer brief glimpses of the monster or perhaps only its effects—the "aftermath" of its visits—whereas the second phase will provide details about the beast, showing its killings of several characters, inept or inconclusive attempts to neutralize the monster, some :misdirection" (e. g., in Jaws, "a shark" is killed, but not "the shark" [emphasis added]). Only toward the end of phase three should the monster be revealed fully, in all his, her, or its glory. (The Tipping Point occurs, Athans says, as the heroes, armed with knowledge about the monster. its qualities, and its behavior, take charge of the situation and seek to kill or otherwise neutralize it.

 

H. P. Lovecraft

Athans illustrates his tips with excerpts of novels and short stories, especially those of Stephen King and H. P. Lovecraft, respectively.

He has other tips that are likely to be helpful to writers interested in creating monstrous monsters. We'll take a look at them in the second installment of this review.

H. P. Lovecraft: An Overview of His Work

Copyright 2018 by Gary L. Pullman

Leslie S. Klinger, in editing The Annotated H. P. Lovecraft, provides an account of the development of the so-called “CthulhuMythos,” citing some of the specific short stories and the single novel by Lovecraft that furnished the hints, bits, and pieces that would become the basis of what another writer, August Derleth, transformed into Lovecraft's supposed mythology. This essay is based on Klinger's analysis and his insights into this topic, as set forward in the “Introduction” of his annotation of Lovecraft's work. Unless stated otherwise, the direct quotations are of Klinger. (Words in bold blue font are defined or discussed in more detail at the end of this essay.)

Derleth, not Lovecraft, is responsible for the idea that Lovecraft meant “to create a permanent or unchanging pantheon.” Actually, as stated, Lovecraft preferred his work to represent an “'open source' universe” that others interested in his work could visit. At most, Lovecraft referred only to an “Arkham cycle,” without identifying which of his stories comprised this group of tales. However, Derleth imagined that he saw, in Lovecraft's fiction, “a fixed framework,” based on the idea that earth had once been home to an ancient alien race who were prepared to repossess it. Lovecraft's supposed “Mythos” is really a creation of Derleth, who invented it in the stories that he, Derleth, wrote as addenda to Lovecraft's canon.

For Lovecraft, the universe is indifferent to human existence and to human aspirations. Rather than offering his readers reassurance as to their place in the cosmos, Lovecraft's fiction suggests that it is up to each individual to make his or her own way in the universe. Critics have labeled Lovecraft's position “cosmicism.”

Klinger identifies these narratives (all of which are short stories except for the novel At the Mountains of Madness) as providing the hints, bits, and pieces of what Derleth claims is Lovecraft's “Cthulhu Mythos.”

“Dagon” is “the earliest [of Lovecraft's stories] to contain any elements of . . . the Cthulhu Mythos”: “truly ancient beings, experiences and sensations that cannot be processed by human brains, and a deep sense of doom.” 

“Nyarlathotep” introduces a “persona” who reappears “in future versions of the Cthulhu Mythos.” 

“The Nameless City” introduces Lovecraft's mythology, such as it is, describing “an elder race and a civilization predating humans” and making references to the mysterious Necronomicon, though not by name). 

“TheHound” specifically names Alhazred's Necronomicon.

In “The Festival,” Lovecraft “revisits the true horror of 'Dagon'—the narrator's discovery that there are things still present on this planet that began before human history.” 

“TheCall of Cthulhu” offers Lovecraft's “first comprehensive view of his cosmicism as it [“The Call of Cthulhu”] expands on 'Dagon.'” 

“Buildingon 'The Call of Cthulhu,'” “The Dunwich Horror” provides an extended excerpt from the Necronomicon.” 

“TheWhisperer in the Darkness” gives an account, in some detail, of the origin and history of the Outer Ones, the alien race mentioned in Lovecraft's earlier story, “Beyond the Wall of Sleep.” 

Atthe Mountains of Madness, Lovecraft's only novel, mentions several themes and elements related to the Arkham cycle and to the Cthulhu Mythos, including the Shining Trapezohedron, Arkham's Miskatonic University, artifacts of a pre-human civilization (the “Elder Things”), and shoggoths (biologically engineered slaves who may have been the ancestors of all life on Earth). (This note is not based on TheAnnotated H. P. Lovecraft). 

“TheShadow over Innsmouth” is set in the New England village that is home to the alien race known as the Deep Ones.

In “The Dreams in the Witch House,” Lovecraft mentions the Old Ones and “tries to imagine the fourth dimension.” 

“The Thing on the Doorstep” recounts personality transference through “dark magic invoking Lovecraft's Cthulhian deities.”

The end of “The Shadow Out of Time” confirms humanity's “relatively minor role on the cosmic scale.”

In addition to providing “the history of an ancient cult,” “TheHunter of the Dark” adds “an element of cosmicism” while hinting that “an extraterrestrial stone [called] the Shining Trapezohedron” may be “a window on all time and space.”

Cthulhu Mythos: “Term coined by August Derleth, biographer and editor of H. P. Lovecraft, writer of supernatural fiction. The term denotes the mythology invented by Lovecraft for a group of horror stories. According to Derleth, Lovecraft once told him, 'All my stories, unconnected as they may be, are based on the fundamental lore or legend that this world was inhabited at one time by another race who, in practicing black magic, lost their foothold and were expelled, yet live on the outside, ever ready to take possession of this earth again' (“Cthulhu Mythos” in Encyclopedia.com). Note: Leslie states that Derleth invented this quotation; Lovecraft himself never made this statement. 

Arkham Cycle: Although Lovecraft never identified the stories he referred to collectively as the “Arkham cycle,” Leslie states that the 22 Lovecraft stories that he, Leslie, includes in The Annotated H. P. Lovecraftcomprise the group that Lovecraft described as the “Arkham cycle”: “Dagon,” “The Statement of Randolph Carter,” “Beyond the Wall of Sleep,” “Nyarlathotep,” “The Picture in the House,” “Herbert West: Reanimator,” “The Nameless City,” “The Hound,” “The Festival,” “The Unnamable,” “The Call of Cthulhu,” “The Silver Key,” “The Case of Charles Dexter Ward,” “The Colour Out of Space,” “The Dunwich Horror,” “The Whisperer in Darkness,” “At the Mountains of Madness,” “The Shadow over Innsmouth,” “The Dreams in the Witch House,” “The Thing on the Doorstep,” “The Shadow Out of Time,” “The Haunter of the Dark.” 

Cosmicism: “Cosmicism sees the human race and all its 'civilization' as senseless against the backdrop of Deep Time . . . . Cosmicism says that beyond the 'reality' defined by our five-senses, human norms are not normal . . . . [Cosmicism views] the Universe is a cold, uncaring place,” i. e., as indifferent to humanity and its affairs. 

Necronomicon: Invented by Lovecraft, the Necronomicon does not exist except in the pages of his fiction. In his work, the Necronomicon is “a tome filled with secrets and rituals that can drive a reader to the brink of insanity. . . . Lovecraft mentions the book in 18 of his stories, more than any other mystical book (real or otherwise) that he references. Many fans of the mythos think of the 'Necronomicon' [sic] as the Bible of Lovecraft's pantheon. . . . the author of the book was the mad Arab Abdul Alhazred, who perished in A.D. 738 after being eaten by one or more invisible monsters. . . . Alhazred mostly wrote about a race of extraterrestrial creatures with cosmic powers. He calls them the Old Ones,” one of whom was Yog-Sothoth; a distant relative of theirs is Cthulhu.” In short, “the book is a fictional history about our world and the creatures that eons ago ruled the Earth and other realms.” 

Outer Ones: The Outer Ones are a group of Cthulhu Mythos deities invented by August Derlerth. They are ruled by Azathoth. 

Deep Ones: “The Deep Ones are a race of intelligent ocean-dwelling creatures, approximately human-shaped but with a fishy, froggy appearance. They regularly mate with humans along the coast, creating societies of hybrids.”

Cthulhian deities: The Cthulhuian deities are comprised of the Outer Gods, the Great Old Ones, the Great Ones, and the Elder Gods. 

Shining Trapezohedron: A stone able to summon a dreaded being from deepest time and space. Once ensconced in a temple, it was thrown, in “The Hunter in theDark,” into the Narragansett Bay. The Trapezohedron is also featured in Lovecraft's “The Whisperer in Darkness,” his novel Atthe Mountains of Madness, and his tale “The Outsider.”

H. P. Lovecraft's Concept of Horror

Copyright 218 by Gary L. Pullman

In The AnnotatedH. P. Lovecraft, editor Leslie S. Klinger presents H. P. Lovecraft's account of his concept of the modern horror story. In such fiction, Lovecraft believed that neither a story's characters nor its plot (the two elements identified by Aristotle as being the most important components of drama and, by extension, narrative fiction) was the most significant or defining attribute of this type of fiction. Instead, supernatural (or, we might add today, paranormal) “phenomena are more important in conveying what is to be conveyed,” which is the thrill of “some violation or transcending of fixed cosmic law” by which readers enjoy “an imaginative escape from palling reality." 

Mundane life, he implies, has the effect of dulling the senses, but a story's presentation of supernatural phenomena awaken them, seeming to heighten reality and to give presence to a world wherein ordinary existence is so taken for granted as to be virtually unnoticed. Therefore, “phenomena rather than persons are the logical “heroes” of weird fiction.

If the description of such phenomena are necessary to horror stories, so are “original” horrors, Lovecraft argues, as “the use of common myths and legends [are] a weakening influence.” (Pointing at “Morella” or “The Fall of the House of Usher,” Poe might disagree, suggesting that it is the novel approach one adopts in using such materials that gives one's work originality.)

(Click to enlarge.)

Although Lovecraft's fiction was not initially well received by writers and critics, more recent authors, if not critics, have welcomed his work. According to Stephen King, Lovecraft's writings have influenced such diverse authors as Clark Ashton Smith, Robert E. Howard, Robert Bloch, William Hope Hodgson, Fritz Leiber, Jr., Harlan Ellison, Jonathan Kellerman, Peter Straub, Charles Willeford, Poppy Z. Brite, James Chumley, John D. MacDonald, Michael Chabon, Ramsey Campbell, Joyce Carol Oates, Kingsley Amis, Neil Gaiman, Flannery O'Connor, and Tennessee Williams—and “this is just where the list starts, mind you,” King claims.

Edgar Allan Poe's Aesthetic

In The Annotated Poe, editor Kevin J. Hayes explains Edgar Allan Poe's theory of creativity as it relates to writing. Poe did not believe “truly original subjects and themes” were possible, Hayes points out (7). Rather, for Poe, an author's originality lies in his or her ability to weave together “pre-existing elements” in new ways (7). 

To illustrate his view, Poe makes reference to the griffin of ancient Greek mythology, a creature cobbled together from parts of various actual animals: its body was that of a lion, its head and wings those of an eagle, its tail “serpentine” (7). This mythical beast was, for Poe, emblematic of the creative writing process.

“All novel conceptions are merely unusual combinations. The mind of man can imagine nothing which has not really existed,” Poe insisted (7). By combining such elements as “genres, motifs, styles, [and] themes,” Hayes explains, a writer attains such “originality” as is possible, putting his or her stamp on the resulting work, and “the best authors combine different pre-existing aspects of literature to create something completely original” (7). 

Both beauty and deformity, Poe says, provide materials that can be selected as components of original tales; by combining such elements, am author can create original works of art. The grotesque is included in Poe's aesthetic (8). 

For Poe, short stories are superior to novels, because the former can (and should) achieve the unity of effect that longer works lack, making short stories more artistically and emotionally satisfying. Unlike the novel, the short story “allows the author to control plot, action, and character, to achieve that which is 'alone worth the attention of the critic—the unity or totality of effect,'” as the story, written according to “a pre-established design,” works toward to a predetermined end (11-12). 

Poe's short story “Morella” is a good example of Poe's concept of the creative process, Hayes suggests:

[In “Morella”] he combines aspects of sentimental fiction, supernatural tales, German metaphysics, and folk legends to create a challenging and original tale about death, resurrection, and the power of the will (8).

Poe considered the length of the short story to be what one could read in a “single sitting,” which he calculated to be between “a half hour to one or two hours.” Longer stories lost their effectiveness because the interruption of one's reading by “worldly interests” would more or less “counteract . . . the impressions of the book,” while stopping reading would “destroy the true unity” of the tale (12).

Nudity in Horror Films: More Than Just Gratuitous

Copyright 2018 by Gary L. Pullman

Displays of nudity, partial nudity, or near-nudity in horror movies are often decried as gratuitous. Nothing more than cheap ploys, they're meant merely to sell tickets, such critics contend, and increase box office receipts for low-budget, less-than-spectacular films. Many a second-rate flick would have lost money had it not been for a bare breast, a flash of buttocks, or, at the very least, a bikini-clad victim. No doubt, these charges are frequently true—in part. But they're not all always entirely gratuitous. In fact, they often have a purpose other than mere titillation.

Consider this full-page print ad.

The model, wearing a braand panty set and a pair of light-tan high-heeled shoes, sits, her posture erect, arms at her sides, right leg slightly forward, left leg slightly to the rear, gazing directly into the camera, as though she were making eye contact with the advertisement's viewer, whose eye probably starts with her face, which is framed by her dark, luxuriant hair, travels down and over her breasts, down her slender midriff, turns to trace her right thigh, and detours, at the bend of both knees, to continue down her left calf.

In the lower left corner of the photo, the product's brand name, in elegant white font against a cream-colored carpet, awaits the viewer's gaze: Fayreform, above smaller text in a different style of font that reads, as though it were a subtitle, the command, “Work your curves.”

As this bidding suggests, the ad is all about the model's curves, curves which any woman who purchases and wears the same bra and panty set as the model wears could likewise “work.” As the eye moves along the model's body, it perhaps takes in the photo's suggestions of the opulence of her surroundings, the enormous gilt-framed painting, the mahogany doors, the hardwood floor, the expensive carpets, an upholstered armchair, and some sort of furniture, only vaguely represented, in the back of the room.

It is only afterward that the viewer may (or may not) notice the other white text, in the same font, under the product's name, as that which issues the command, “Work your curves”: “Bet you didn't notice the armadillo.” If the ad has succeeded, as it often does, the viewer is apt to think, What armadillo? It is only by searching diligently that the viewer is likely, at last, to spy the animal standing in the luxurious armchair. The advertiser wins the bet—and implicitly makes the point that the model is so bewitchingly beautiful, commanding attention so completely, that the armadillo, although undeniably present, remained, as it were, altogether invisible. By implication, the woman who buys and wears the bra and panty set the model is wearing will command equally engrossing attention from her admirers.

To be fair, the armadillo's color is similar to that of the chair, resulting in a sort of camouflage effect. On the other hand, the white text is fairly noticeable against the contrast of the mahogany doors. Had the viewer not been distracted by the near-nakedness of the beautiful model, he or she probably would have seen the text and, alerted by the question it poses, have been looking for the armadillo as well as at the model.

The ad uses the same technique that magicians use to fool their audiences: misdirection. The viewer is too busy admiring the model to notice the armadillo (or the text that references the animal). As a result, it is only after he or she has admired the model, if ever, that the viewer does see the text, the armadillo, or both.

 

Linnea Quinley in Silent Night, Deadly Night

In horror movies, displays of nudity, partial nudity, or near-nudity have the same purpose and the same effect as the near-nakedness of this ad's model. Bare breasts or buttocks or a tantalizingly brief bikini distracts the audience, and, while they are appreciating the display of a lovely young lady's bare flesh, the monster, killer, or other horrible villain abruptly appears, slashing, hacking, skewering, stabbing, shooting, or otherwise spindling, folding, or mutilating the beautiful victim or one of her friends or acquaintances. Titillating displays do titillate, but they do more than simply stimulate the audience's libidos; such exhibitions also draw attention away from the bogeyman who's about to appear. The result is a contrast between the sleek, nude flesh of a beautiful young woman and the same flesh, a moment later, after it's been suddenly slashed or otherwise mutilated. The contrast both conceals and reveals the horror, first distracting from it and then emphasizing it. 

Scream queens help us to vicariously experience (and feel) the terror, the pain, and the horror that the scream queens experience. There's a reason scream queens are called "scream queens," and there's a reason that scream queens are usually naked or only partially dressed. Besides that of selling tickets, we mean.

Edgar Allan Poe on Writing Short Stories That Sell

Copyright 2018 by Gary L. Pullman

Edgar Allan Poe described the nature of the fare in which readers of such publications as The Southern Literary Messenger and Blackwood's were interested:

The ludicrous heightened into the grotesque: the fearful coloured into the horrible: the witty exaggerated into the burlesque: the singular wrought into the strange and mystical. . . . To be appreciated, you must be read, and these things are invariably sought after with avidity.

Unfortunately, he does not offer his own definitions of the terms he uses, implying, perhaps, that he has their standard dictionary definitions in mind, but his explanation suggests the common feature, in each pairing,” whether of “ludicrous” and “burlesque” or “singular” and “strange” and “mystical,” is exaggeration: the ludicrous must be “heightened” to become grotesque; the fearful must be “coloured into the horrible”; the witty must be “exaggerated” before it is burlesque, and the extraordinary must be “wrought” to become weird ad mysterious. It is this sort of exaggeration, these sorts of extreme, that, Poe found, interests and attracts readers. Poe's stories and essays themselves show how he accomplishes these exaggerations.

His tongue-in-cheek essay, “How to Write a Blackwood's Article,” in particular, explains the process of writing sensational fiction, if one reads between the lines, for, it is, after all, both a process analysis essay and a parody of the typical Blackwood's Magazine fare, and his “Loss of Breath: A Tale a la Blackwood's,” parodies the typical Blackwood's story itself, and is, therefore, also instructive in revealing the technique of sensationalizing incidents through exaggeration, its own parodic nature notwithstanding.

Published from 1817 to 1980, this British periodical was originally known as the Edinburgh Monthly Magazine.

In “How to Write a Blackwood's Article,” once Poe gets down to specifics, he has his caricature of the magazine's founder, Mr. William Blackwood himself, tell Signora Psyche Zenobia, who has come to interview him on behalf of an organization of which she is a member, exactly what comprises the typical Blackwwod's fare and how it is produced. First, each story is based upon an improbable, or, often, indeed, an impossible incident. He offers a few examples of such incidents:

“There was 'The Dead Alive,' a capital thing!—the record of a gentleman's sensations when entombed before the breath was out of his body . . . . Then we had the 'Confessions of an Opium-eater'— . . . plenty of fire and fury' . . . . “Then there was 'The Involuntary Experimentalist,' all about a gentleman who got baked in an oven, and came out alive and well . . . . And then there was 'The Man in the Bell' . . . . It is the history of a young person who goes to sleep under the clapper of a church bell, and is awakened by its tolling for a funeral. The sound drives him mad, and, accordingly, pulling out his tablets, he gives a record of his sensations.”

Second, a Blackwood's tale requires vivid descriptions of emotion, or “sensation.” “Sensations are the great things after all,” Mr. Blackwood tells Zenobia. “Should you ever be drowned or hung, be sure and make a note of your sensations—they will be worth to you ten guineas a sheet. If you wish to write forcibly, Miss Zenobia, pay minute attention to the sensations.”

The typical Blackwood's article also delves into the supernatural, the paranormal, the mystical, or the spiritualistic, using the type of cant that Poe, in his poem “The Raven,” characterizes as the sort of “forgotten lore” that fills “many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore.” There is, in such stories, a patina of the esoteric, the occult, the mysterious, and there are references to lost or little-known sources, such as confessions, diaries, historical accounts of past events, all set forth with “erudition.” Indeed, if the sources are unintelligible, so much the better—as long as they sound learned. These sources may be mentioned by the characters in the stories or in an epigram at the head of the story. (In Poe's article, he chooses the latter method, quoting the cry of a Turkish fig peddlar: “"In the name of the Prophet—figs!”)

The Blackwood's writer is careful to choose a tone appropriate to his other story, Mr. Blackwood tells Zenobia, as he identifies various choices:

“There is the tone didactic, the tone enthusiastic, the tone natural--all common-place enough. But then there is the tone laconic, or curt, which has lately come much into use. It consists in short sentences. Somehow thus: Can't be too brief. Can't be too snappish. Always a full stop. And never a paragraph.

“Then there is the tone elevated, diffusive, and interjectional. Some of our best novelists patronize this tone. The words must be all in a whirl, like a humming-top, and make a noise very similar, which answers remarkably well instead of meaning. This is the best of all possible styles where the writer is in too great a hurry to think.

“The tone metaphysical is also a good one. If you know any big words this is your chance for them. . . . I shall mention only two more—the tone transcendental and the tone heterogeneous. In the former the merit consists in seeing into the nature of affairs a very great deal farther than anybody else. . . . Above all, study innuendo. Hint everything—assert nothing.

“. . . As for the tone heterogeneous, it is merely a judicious mixture, in equal proportions, of all the other tones in the world, and is consequently made up of every thing deep, great, odd, piquant, pertinent, and pretty.”

According to Mr. Blackwood, writers of the type of fiction that appears in his magazine—sensational fiction—must sprinkle trivia that has an air of erudition throughout the story, introducing little-known facts as if they are the results of research or personal acquaintance with the scholars who provided the expert tidbits of knowledge. It is acceptable, or even desirable, to present the information in a foreign tongue that is then translated into English (or not). As an example, he offers a line in German, from the philosopher Schiller:

'Und sterb'ich doch, so sterb'ich denn
Durch sie--durch sie!'

Translated into English, the line reads, “'And if I die, at least I die for thee—for thee!” French, Spanish, Italian, Greek, and Latin offer other usable quotations that will give the story a sense of erudition.

The occasion that inspired the Blackwood story might be mundane, but if it is presented according to the principles, using the elements he has identified, Mr. Blackwood implies, it will be properly exaggerated to the point that it is worthy of inclusion in his magazine:

“It is just possible that you may not be able, so soon as convenient, to—to get yourself drowned, or choked with a chicken-bone, or—or hung, or bitten by a—but stay! Now I think me of it, there are a couple of very excellent bull-dogs in the yard—fine fellows, I assure you—savage, and all that—indeed just the thing for your money—they'll have you eaten up, auriculas and all, in less than five minutes (here's my watch!)—and then only think of the sensations!”

In short, it will fit the Blackwood's formula.

In “Loss of Breath: A Tale a la Blackwood's,” Poe furnishes a short story that, parodying those which typically appear in Blackwood's Magazine, also exemplify the principles and techniques he has outlined in “How to Write a Blackwood's Article” as forming the formula for such sensational stories.

For aspiring writers who would like to see a story in the genre itself, rather than a parody, they need seek no further than Poe's work itself, for, according to Paul Collins, the author of the critical study Edgar Allan Poe: The Fever Called Living, assures us that Poe's short story “The Pit and the Pendulum” constitutes “a Blackwood's story to top all Blackwood's stories”: Poe could mock sensational “predicament” stories . . . . but he also knew they sold readily, and he had a magnificent one in “The Pit and the Pendulum.”

Breasts as Emblems of Horror

Copyright 2018 by Gary L. Pullman

Bare breasts are big in horror movies, which begs the question: what's so horrific about mammary glands? 

Internet Movie Data Base (IMDb) devotes several pages to listing “Most Popular 'female-frontal-nudity,' Horror Feature Films.” There are a lot of them on the list: 665, in fact, to date. Perhaps these films may indicate why filmmakers consider women's breasts terrifying enough to feature prominently in the movies they make, if the exhibition of breasts is not merely gratuitous—in other words, presented only to sell tickets.

In TheShining, Jack Torrance, an aspiring writer who is earning money by taking care of a vast hotel that's closed for the off-season, sees a naked succubus. The female sex demon appears to be a beautiful young woman, but she soon reveals her true self, taking on her actual appearance as a withered old crone. Is Jack hallucinating, or has the succubus actually transformed, shedding her youth and beauty? Does her change in appearance have a psychological or a supernatural cause? In the words of Tzvetan Todorov, is she, respectively, a specimen of the uncanny or the marvelous?

In a sense, the succubus embodies the crux of the matter investigated by Stanley Kubrick's interpretation of Stephen King's novel. The producer believed in the possibility of the survival of death. His succubus suggests this state of existence in the presence of the sex demon. However, Kubrick leaves room for a psychological explanation of the female sex demon: maybe Jack is psychotic and she's merely an hallucination. Since the succubus can be understood in either natural or supernatural terms, depending on one's world view, her presence in the film is not gratuitous, but symbolic and thematic.

But what about her nudity? Must she be naked? Again, the answer to this question will be determined by the individual viewer's view of the nature of ultimate reality. If she is regarded as being of a supernatural origin, her nudity is not gratuitous, for it accords with the legend of the succubus, a female sex demon who invariably appears in the altogether as a temptress intent upon collecting human semen. Once successful, according to some stories, she assumes the form of a male sex demon, the incubus, appearing to women, usually during their sleep, to seduce and inseminate them—with the demon (or female sex demon) collected from human males in his (or her) previous incarnations as a succubus. (Demon sex is more complicated than we might have imagined.)

If she is a succubus, though, it is difficult to imagine why she gives herself away by transforming her appearance as a beautiful young woman into a shape that's not merely undesirable, but repulsive. As a succubus, she would be intent upon collecting Jack's seed in order to inseminate a woman. Assuming the appearance of someone who's undesirable doesn't help her to achieve her goals.

Perhaps, then, the succubus isn't a sex female demon, after all, except in Jack's own tormented mind. She is his version of a succubus, a demonic Galatea fashioned in his own image of a desirable woman. As such, she is far from the reality of womanhood embodied by his wife, Wendy, who is portrayed by Shelley Duvall, the same actress who played Olive Oyl opposite Robin Williams's Popeye. Wendy is not undesirable as a woman—Jack married her and fathered a son by her, after all—but, in Jack's twisted mind, if the succubus is a hallucination, Wendy (and all women) becomes so: her transformation isn't real, but a projection of Jack's own thoughts about women, Wendy, perhaps, in particular. Seductive one moment, women can transform themselves (or be transformed by Jack's fears of women) into repulsive monsters—or female sex demon—the next instant. Woman, Jack's ambiguous thoughts about the opposite sex seem to suggest, thy name is mutability.

The scene in which the succubus makes her appearance suggests Jack's ambiguity concerning women, female nudity, and sex. His hand appears from the left, as he slowly opens a bathroom door. The slowness with which Jack opens the door highlights the moment, dramatizing the revelation that is now at hand. This slow movement, like the lighting during the first half of the scene, gives an ethereal quality to the picture, emphasizing the ideal way in which Jack views the nubile young woman.

As the door opens, Jack sees a bathtub and a half-drawn shower curtain. The tub occupies an arched niche at the rear of the bathroom, which, with the shower curtain, gives the alcove the appearance of being a theater, if not, indeed, an altar. Jack has entered a forbidden (or sacred) zone, symbolized by the closed, if not locked, door. He is about to see something half-hidden from his consciousness, as the half-drawn shower curtain suggests. His staring eyes and a close-up shot of his throat as he gulps, his Adam's apple rising and falling, shows his anxiety. The half-drawn shower curtain opens, as a beautiful young nude woman draws it aside. She is wet (with Freudian significance and otherwise), as her breasts are revealed. Again, the slowness with which the curtain is drawn aside focuses viewers on the revelatory aspect of the moment.

Jack's expression changes from one of anxiety to one of enchanted. He smiles, Slowly, the woman rises. Jack's look of enchantment. changes to one of lust, as his gaze intensifies, Slowly, the woman steps out of the tub, one long leg advancing, the other, just as slowly, following. Jack's gaze is riveted. His smile broadens. The seductive woman advances, her gait slow, measured, as if she is walking in tandem with the wedding march. Her gaze is locked on Jack. Returning her stare, he seems transfixed, but then he walks, slowly, to meet her, as the camera turns slightly to view her from a three-quarters angle. Her breasts and pubes seem to fill the screen, as they do Jack's consciousness.

As they face one another, staring into one another's eyes, the woman's fingertips make contact with Jack's abdomen, gliding upward, across his chest. Her movement, as has been typical throughout the scene, is slow and deliberate. Her hands continue to glide, over Jack's shoulders and around his neck. He has not moved, but stands as if he were a statue. Then, he responds, encircling her waist with his hand. She turns this way and that, offering viewers a glimpse of her buttocks, before she kisses Jack, who now fully embraces her. Jack's eyes close. Theirs is a long kiss, an extended kiss, a passionate kiss.

Jack opens his eyes. They widen, as he sees something over her shoulder. The camera shares his view, in a mirror on the wall behind him: the body of the woman he holds in his arms, as revealed in the looking-glass, is scarred. Her upper left arm, her lower back, and her right buttock are marred by massive discolorations and hideous blemishes. Astonished and horrified, Jack begins to back away from the transformed woman.

For a moment, his shaken son Danny's discovery of a dead older woman, lying, partially submerged in the bathtub, scabrous discolorations and blotches on her body, is interspersed.

Jack continues to retreat, his head shaking, just as Danny's head shook when he saw the drowned, older woman's corpse. As he backs through the doorway, the portal of revelation, the hideous crone follows, her arms parted, as if to embrace Jack.

The scene is interrupted again by Danny's sight of the drowned woman, lying, partially submerged in the bathtub, her body displaying terrible scars and bruises.

Jack retreats down the steps, into the suite's living room, followed by the succubus.

Danny trembles, uncontrollably, as the dead woman's body sits up.

Outside the suite, Jack locks the door to the rooms, leaving the key in the lock, as he staggers backwards, down the hall, away from the rooms,leaving the scene of the revelation behind.

It seems apparent that the nude woman whom Jack encountered is the same one Danny encountered, but Jack saw the woman in her beautiful and desirable guise, whereas Danny saw her as an apparition of a drowned, older woman. For Jack, the woman was a female demon; for Danny, a ghost. Danny is too young to conceptualize women sexually; Jack is not. Therein lies the differences in their conscious understanding and their unconscious depictions of the opposite sex. Danny can see a woman in her physical aspect as a body which, despite the presence of breasts and genitalia, is primarily, or even exclusively, merely anatomical. Jack can see a woman as both physical and sexual, and it is to the latter image that he is anxious, while, at the same time, himself sexually responsive.

Essentially, Danny is frightened of death, a it is represented by the female corpse he encounters, whereas Jack is terrified of something other than death. Jack is horrified by female sexuality itself, which is alive with beauty and sex appeal, but, at the same time, diseased and repulsive because capable of transforming in various ways. A woman can become pregnant, deliver a baby, suckle an infant, and age. She seems to be in transition, as she undergoes transformations throughout her life. She is manifold in function and in appearance, seemingly unstable and mutable—in a word, from Jack's point of view, monstrous and demonic.

His encounter with the beautiful nude young woman shows Jack's feelings about women as desirable, but his attraction to them, as they are represented in particular by his wife Wendy, is contradicted by his revulsion of them. He seems to think that, beneath their apparent glamour, they are diseased and hideous.

The sexist dichotomy of women which separates them into virtuous and charming companions versus untrustworthy sluts is alive and well in Jack's subconscious mind. In the hotel, whether through supernatural or psychological influences, this unconscious view of women become conscious, at least until the locks the succubus in the hotel suite (his unconscious mind) by repressing the knowledge, which he finds too threatening to embrace, or accept. Therefore, his view of women, and of Wendy in particular, remains dualistic. At the same time, he sees them as beautiful and desirable, seductive temptresses and as hideous and unwelcome, destructive female sex demons.

In The Shining, as symbols of femininity, of female sexuality, of pregnancy, and of motherhood, breasts, as synecdoches of womanhood, are horrific for Jack because he is unable to come to terms with women as they are in themselves. Women are too complex for him, too changeable, too mysterious, too other. He can conceive of them only as beautiful seductresses or as monstrous female sex demons. Despite his marriage to Wendy, he is unable to view women, including his wife, as they are in and of themselves, as human beings, complex and, yes, in the final analysis, mysterious, as all life is ultimately mysterious.

For viewers, watching the movie through more objective eyes, Jack's behavior, stemming, as it does from his beliefs, is insane. However, from his own point of view, his delusions and hallucinations are real. From his perspective, he sees things as they are. When he acts upon his own understanding of reality, horror results. It is this horror, resulting from his monstrous ideas of women, his wife included, that the true horror of Kubrick's film arises.

Of course, plenty of other horror movies feature breasts as symbols of the particular horrors with which they are concerned. While such horror, in general, centers upon women, who sport these accouterments of femininity, the precise sorts of horror that breasts, as synecdoches of the physicality and sexuality of women, represent for other characters, in other movies, differ, because every man—and some women—are Pygmalions who fashion their ideas of women into psychological and, sometimes theological, representations of women. When those concepts of womanhood are irrational, horror can, and, unfortunately, often does, result. Future essays will consider the additional ways in which, in such movies, breasts are emblems of horror.

Page and Stage

Writers who want to incorporate cinematic techniques into their fiction need, first, to translate the latter into their literary equivalents. I use the word “equivalents” loosely, of course, as there is not precise equivalence between the techniques of the soundstage and the page.

So, what are these “equivalents”?

The camera = description. Everything the camera “sees” can be communicated, in writing, only by way of description. The camera has the advantage of showing everything at once, if it chooses, or of focusing exclusively, and in minute detail, on only one person or object, close up, leaving it to the viewer to perceive that which is displayed and to sort for him- or herself those people (actors) or objects included in the scene upon whom or which he or she chooses to concentrate attention. Of course, through a variety of other techniques—camera angle, intensity, contrast, special effects, and so forth—the director, the cinematographer, and others involved in shooting the scene—can direct the viewer's attention and direct the audience's focus, but, ultimately, it is up to those who watch the movie to see what they will. novelists have a different advantage. Unlike filmmakers, they can appeal to the senses of touch, smell, and taste, as well s to the two senses available for moviemakers' exploitation—sight and hearing. Literary authors can also take their readers inside the minds of their characters, describing their thoughts and feelings about the sights, sounds, tactile sensations, tastes, and sounds they experience during a scene. (A word of caution: novelists should be careful not to overuse description. Unless a picture, or word-picture, is central to a scene or some other narrative element, such as theme, it should be spare, rather than florid. Because filming a movie is enormously expensive, screenwriters have learned to make every image and word count, and most directors plan every second of the filming of each scene. Economy is the filmmaker's watchword, as it should be that of the novelist. As Mark Twain advised, writers should be careful to “eschew surplusage.”)

The camera = point of view. In film, the movie is shown from the camera's point of view, whether the perspective is that of an omniscient, a first-person, or a limited third-person “narrator.” In literary fiction, the point of view can be more complex and experimental and can more easily involve the shifting or alternating perspectives of two or more characters.

Actor = character. It's only partly true that the actor = the literary character, because the screenwriter also creates the movie character. The writer puts the words into the characters' mouths, and, through such dialogue, the character's personality becomes apparent, as does his or her attitude, emotions, values, principles, beliefs, and so forth. By interpreting and projecting these words on the page, actors bring these qualities to life on the screen, making these intangibles tangible.

Audio bridge = transition. In cinema, there are more techniques to indicate a transition from one time to another or from one place to another than there in literary fiction. In the latter, space breaks on thee page or a phrase, or a sentence is all a writer can use to indicate such a shift in time or place. Filmmakers, on the other hand, can use an audio bridge, defined, in Filmsite's “Film Terms Glossary,” as “an outgoing sound (either dialogue or sound effects) in one scene that continues over into a new image or shot [that] connects the two shots or scenes.” As an example of an audio bridge, the Filmsite's article cites Apocalypse Now's use of “the sound of helicopter blades are linked to the next scene of the spinning blades of an overhead fan.” Films also use a number of visual transitions to indicate a change in scene, including the “cut, fade, dissolve, and wipe” (“Film terms Glossary”).

Cut – transition. A cut is “an abrupt or sudden change or jump in camera angle, location, placement, or time, from one shot to another” and may be accomplished in numerous ways.

Fade = transition. A fade can also be accomplished in a number of ways:

[A fade is] a transitional device consisting of a gradual change in the intensity of an image or sound, such as from a normally-lit scene to darkness (fade out, fade-to-black) or vice versa, from complete black to full exposure (fade in), or from silence to sound or vice versa; a 'fade in' is often at the beginning of a sequence, and a 'fade out' at the end of a sequence; a cross-fade means fading out from one scene and into another (often with a slight dissolve or interruption) (“Film Terms Glossary).

Dissolve = transition. A dissolve is “the visible image of one shot or scene is gradually replaced, superimposed or blended (by an overlapping fade out or fade in and dissolve) with the image from another shot or scene.” For example, in Metropolis, this technique “dissolves that transform the face of the heroine Maria into the face of an evil robot.” (“Film Terms Glossary”).

Wipe = transition. A wipe occurs when “one shot appears to be "pushed off" or "wiped off" the screen by another shot replacing it and moving across the existing image.”

There are other film techniques that correspond, roughly, with literary techniques, which is not surprising, since filmmakers, limited to sight and sound, have had to devise ways, using these two methods of storytelling to communicate what novelists accomplish through linguistic means. Now that the stage has largely replaced the page as the storytelling medium of choice for the general public, at least, novelists, in telling their tales, might want to adopt, as far as possible, some of the techniques their cinematographic friends have developed. That mean, first of all, thinking in terms of showing, rather than telling. Thinking as a screenwriter, rather than as a novelist, should facilitate this objective. Again, there is no precise match between the techniques of filmmaking and those of writing novels, but these media's approaches to storytelling are close enough to allow an approximation on the part of the novelist. For example, a novelist cannot use an audio bridge (unless, perhaps, in an audiobook). However, he or she can simulate the use of this technique. Here's an example, using the audio bridge in Apocalypse Now (mentioned above):

The helicopter's whirling rotors were louder and much faster than the leisurely turning blades of the softly humming ceiling fan.

By using sights and sound to appeal the senses of vision and hearing, this transitional sentence imitates an audio bridge, indicating a shift in time and place, as the story's scene changes.

Similar approaches can be taken to suggest many of the other cinematographic techniques motion picture crews use to tell—or show—their stories.

Novelists who want to emulate screenwriters should familiarize themselves with the terms associated with moviemaking and adapt them to the process of writing novels to develop their own set of similar approaches to storytelling. Filmsite's “Film Terms Glossary” is a good resource for this purpose. Novelists who seek cinematographers' techniques for characterization, plot development, story structure, narration, setting, and theme and then, with these (and some actual examples from films) in mind, devise their own similar approaches, are likely to write “cinematographic” novels, which show more than tell. General audiences everywhere will thank them.

Note: Read “The Exorcist: A Marriage of Spirit and Matter in the Style of William Peter Blatty,” my post about William Peter Blatty's use of in his novel The Exorcist for a sense of how a novelist (who was also a screenwriter) uses cinematographic techniques to write a compelling “cinematographic” novel. Novelists can also learn to write this hybrid type of story by reading novels by other screenwriters. Stephen J. Cannel's book, TheProstitutes' Ball, is not only a novel, but, in a sense, a how-to book about writing screenplays and novels!

Poe's Influence on H. G. Wells

Copyright 2018 by Gary L. Pullman

Although H. G. Wells claimed that the only standard for judging the value of a short story is whether it has readers, he also suggests, by way of his literary mentor, Edgar Allan Poe, that a few additional criteria may be used to assess the quality of such a work of fiction. He learned from Poe that a short story exists to create a “single effect.”

Whereas Poe wrote, in “The Philosophy of Composition,” that a writer, after “having deliberately conceived a certain single effect to be wrought, he then invents such incidents . . . combines such incidents, and discusses them in such a tone as may serve him best in establishing this preconceived effect,” Wells wrote, in “The Contemporary Novel,” “a short story is, or should be, a simple thing; it aims at producing one single, vivid effect; it has to seize the attention at the outset, and never relaxing, gather it together more and more until the climax is reached.”

According to J. R. Hammond, having learned this lesson from Poe, Wells “adhered to” it “throughout his long career as a practitioner of the short story” (20).

Based on Wells' own statements, then, it seems that a short story, which he suggests can be read in less than an hour, should be judged on the bases that it:

1. Produces an effect that is both “single” and “vivid”;
2. Seizes the reader's “attention at the outset”;
3. Heightens the reader's attention as the story progresses;
4. Attains a “climax”;
5. Can be read in an hour or less; and
6. Is a work that people want to read.

Hammond elucidates several of Wells' terms. By “effect,” Wells seems to have in mind a narrative outcome that is of a specific sort (“informative, amusing, or terrifying”), “depending on the particular story” and which is also unquestionably real. In other words, the story's effect may be cognitive, diverting, or emotional in nature, relating to epistemology, amusement, or affect (20). Wells' own short stories, Hammond says, are often of a “disturbing quality” (20).

As in Poe's fiction, Wells' short stories are concerned with generating a “single effect”; all incidents of the plot, like the story's tone, are intended to produce what Poe calls “the predetermined effect.” Therefore, of the six elements which Wells suggests are the bases for the criticism of the short story, that of the effect seems paramount.

In writing his stories, Wells developed a formula, or “characteristic devise,” Hammond observes, for depicting the climax of any of his stories: “a moment of revelation or discovery in the life of an otherwise unremarkable individual whose outlook is transformed as a result,” and “the story focuses on the moment of crisis or climax and in doing so sets in motion speculations and doubts in the mind of the reader” concerning what he or she might do in a situation or set of circumstances similar to that of the story's protagonist (20). Due to the abbreviated length of the short story, as compared to the novel, Hammond says, “in place of the leisurely working-out of the plot through character and incident there is a single moment of illumination or decision” (20).

Hammond's elucidations allow the critic, as Wells envisions him or her, to expand on his or her analysis and evaluation of the story's effect, the story's climax, and, possibly, the narrative techniques by which the author motivates people to want to read the story. Therefore, one who is interested in criticizing a short story by Wells should begin by isolating its climax, for this is the “characteristic devise” by which Wells provides the transformational “moment of revelation or discovery in the life of” his “otherwise unremarkable individual.”

Then, if desirable, the critic can contend with the other five elements of what may be called the Wellsian critical approach: the production of an effect that is both “single” and “vivid”; the seizing of the reader's “attention at the outset” of the story; the heightening of the reader's attention as the story progresses; the story's length; and the techniques by which the author motivates people to want to read his or her story. (Part of the heightening of the reader's interest must surely lie in the ironic juxtaposing of the life of the “otherwise unremarkable” protagonist's view of the world “before” the revelation or discovery that shatters his [all of Wells' protagonists are male] complacency and the protagonist's view of the world “after” his complacency has been so shattered.)

Hammond is helpful, once again, in identifying the climax of Wells' short story “A Slip Under the Microscope”: The protagonist, a biology student named Hill, is seeking to “identify a specimen placed on a glass slide under a microscope.” Students are “strictly forbidden to move the slide,” but, as Hill adjusts the instrument, he accidentally slips, moving the slide. No one has seen him do so. Now, he must decide whether to “own up to the fact” or “remain silent.” His actions, Hill says, presents a “grotesque puzzle in ethics” (106).

According to Hammond, the climax of the story should be the vehicle by which Wells presents the “moment of revelation or discovery in the life of” Hill, “an otherwise unremarkable individual whose outlook is transformed as a result.” If the slip hadn't occurred, Hill would have continued in ignorance of the significance of “how easily normal life can be deflected by chance . . . occurrences” (20)

Wells heightens the reader's interest in the outcome of the story by relating Hill's ethical dilemma to a personal situation. Hill resents another student Wedderburn, because Wedderburn, whose parents are wealthy, has both the means and the confidence that Hill himself lacks—and because they are both interested in the same coed classmate. If he does what he believes to be the right thing, he may be expelled and lose any chance to court the coed.

When Hill informs the college's authorities, he is, in fact, expelled. He suspects that Wedderburn, who may also have cheated, chose not to confess; by not telling the truth, Hill's rival remains in school, able to woo the coed student whom they both admire. As Hammond points out, Wells implicitly asks his reader whether any “circumstances” may warrant one's lying by omission. The narrative, in this way, is, in effect, “disturbing,” as most of Wells' short stories are.

Hammond, J. R. H.G. Wells and the Short Story. Basingstoke, Hampshire: Macmillan, 1992. Print.