Copyright 2018 by Gary L. Pullman
As we saw in the last post
(the first in this series), Jib Fowles identifies 15 basic appeals
used in advertising. These same appeals, we argue, are frequently
employed in horror fiction; indeed, their presence in horror novels
and movies accounts for much of the appeal of these types of fiction.
In this post, we'll take a
look at the appeal to readers' or viewers' need for sex. The
fulfillment of the “needs for,” as opposed to the “needs to” on
Fowles's list, require the presence or participation of another
person or persons besides oneself. While it is possible to satisfy
oneself sexually, by masturbation or other means, to find true sexual
fulfillment, one requires a partner (or, some might contend,
partners), whether of the male, the female, both, or another gender.
In horror, the need for sex characteristically involves perversion. Since all communication is reducible to seven basic questions, the forms of sexual perversion about which horror writers may write take seven possible types of forms. (A type, as we're using it, means a sexual behavioral set identifiable by shared characteristics.) These types of perversion (i. e., a deviation, corruption, or distortion of the original nature of purpose of a person, place, or thing) can be subsumed under these questions:
Who?
|
What?
|
When?
|
Where?
|
How?
|
Why?
|
How many?
or
How much?
|
We can further refine
these questions by associating each of them with specific referents:
Who?
|
What?
|
When?
|
Where?
|
How?
|
Why?
|
How many?
or
How much?
|
Agent (actor)
|
Object
|
Age, time or duration
|
Location
|
Method, process, or technique
|
Cause, motive, or purpose
|
Quantity (in volume or number)
|
Let's add a couple more
rows, identifying an example of a horror novel or movie that perverts
human sexuality by deviating from, corrupting, or distorting the
original nature of purpose of a person, place, or thing involved in
sexual behavior:
Who?
|
What?
|
When?
|
Where?
|
How?
|
Why?
|
How many?
or
How much?
|
Agent (actor)
|
Object
|
Age, time, occasion, or duration
|
Location
|
Method, process, or technique
|
Cause, motive, or purpose
|
Quantity (in volume or number)
|
Demon Seed (1973
novel; 1977 film)
|
The Exorcist (1973)
|
Maleus Maleficarum
(1487)*
|
The Devils of Loudon (1952
novel; 1972 film [The Devils])
|
Alien (1979)
|
Rosemary's Baby (1967
novel; 1968 film)
|
The Devils of Loudon (1952
novel; 1972 film [The Devils])
|
A computer becomes a woman's
sexual partner.
|
Regan MacNeil, the possessed girl,
masturbates with a crucifix.
|
A demon, having assumed a female
form, spends so long in intercourse with her victim that
she absolutely drains him of semen and he thereafter dies.
|
Naked nuns conduct sexual orgies in a
convent.
|
Parasitic pregnancy ends in
the fetus's bursting through the human host's abdomen.
|
After being raped by a demon,
Rosemary Wood-house conceives a demonic child.
|
Naked nuns conduct sexual orgies in a
convent.
|
As the above table shows,
the same movie may contain two (or more) of these types of sexual
perversion: The Devils of Loudon (1952
novel; 1972 film [The Devils])
contains orgies involving many individuals participating
simultaneously in various sex acts; it also takes place in a convent.
Likewise, these types of perversions can vary in how they are
represented.
For
example, a perverse location need not be a geographical place or an
architectural space (a convent); it could be an anatomical site, as
in Teeth (2008), in
which a young woman discovers that she has two sets of teeth, one in
her mouth, the other in her vagina. Other possible variations? One's
partner could be a poltergeist, as in The Entity
(1982) (Who?); human corpses, as in the necrophilia scenes in the
novel Under the Dome
(2009) (What?);
or a man transformed into metal kills his girlfriend after his penis
becomes a power drill, as in Tetsuo:The Iron Man
(1989) (How?).
Writers
are limited pretty much only by their imaginations, their sense of
morality, their personal taste, and the law of the land. Publishing
houses will print and distribute just about anything that promises to
make a buck. It seems unlikely, though, that the majority of readers
or viewers are likely to have a need
for extreme types of sex, even when it occurs in horror stories.
* Although the Malleus Maleficarum is a book—a manual
for prosecuting witchcraft trials—rather than a novel or a movie,
it contains supposed accounts of demonic sex, one of which suggests
such a long-lasting (and fatal) encounter between a succubus and
“her” victim, a hermit, that the hermit was completely drained of
his semen:
When he [the hermit] was done and had arisen, the demon
said to him, “behold what you have done, for I am not a girl or a
woman but a demon,” and at once he disappeared from view, while the
hermit remained absolutely astonished. And because the demon, with
his great power, had withdrawn a very great quantity of semen, the
hermit was permanently dried up, so that he died at the end of a
month's time.
One can imagine the use of this description of demonic
sexual activity as the basis for a terrifying sex scene in a horror
novel or movie!
Note:
For you may also want to read my post “Note:
You may want to read “Bentley
Little: Aberrant Sex as Symbolic of the nature of Sin.”
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