Friday, August 24, 2018

Horror Fiction: The Appeal to the Need to Escape

Copyright 2018 by Gary L. Pullman


In advertisements, the need to escape, Jib Fowles informs the readers of Mass Advertising as Social Forecast, is often figurative, referring to the need to get away from it all for a bit of rest and relaxation. For this reason, the need to escape is often associated with pleasure, and it need not be “solitary.” Two or more people can “escape together into the mountaintops” or to a resort, or a couple may escape on a romantic getaway designed for just the two of them.

Of course, an escape can be literal, too. One can seek to escape from physical danger or incarceration. The type of escape in horror fiction may start with the former type of escape, as it does in I Still Know What You Did Last Summer (1998), and turn into the latter type of escape, or it may begin with a trapped or imprisoned character seeking to escape from his or her confines, as in Edgar Allan Poe's short story “The Pit and the Pendulum” (1842), Hide and Seek (2005), or the series of Saw (2004-present) movies. In horror, after all, the theme is loss. In the case of horror fiction that appeals to the need for escape, escape is difficult or impossible, and it is likely to be denied altogether, although, in rare cases, escape may be permitted.

“The Pit and the Pendulum”: Poe's short story was inspired by his reading of an account of Napoleon Bonaparte's general, Antoine Charles Louis, Comte de Lasalle's, visit to the Palace of the Inquisition in Toledo, Spain, after his entry into the city. As Kevin J. Hayes points out in The Annotated Poe, Poe alters the sequence of events as they were reported in his source, “Anecdote towards the History of the Spanish Inquisition,” having the general arrive after his own story's protagonist has been sentenced to death, so that the Inquisition's enemy can rescue the condemned prisoner just before he is killed, thereby preserving his narrative's “tension and terror.” Poe's story is a relatively rare example of a protagonist who escapes his horrific fate, thanks to the intervention of another.

Hide and Seek: After the suicide of his wife, Allison, psychologist David Callaway takes his nine-year-old daughter Emily to upstate New York, hoping the change of scenery will help Emily recover from the loss of her mother. Instead, Emily is placed in extreme danger: David has developed dissociative identity disorder, or multiple personality disorder. He now has both his own personality and that of the murderous “Charlie,” who emerged to murder Allison after David witnessed her being unfaithful to him during a New year's Eve party. He himself has blocked the memory of Charlie's murder of Allison and truly believes she drowned herself in their bathroom.
When David discovers he has never unpacked the boxes in the study of the house he is renting, despite having been in the room on multiple previous occasions, he realizes he has another personality. By now, he has killed again, having pushed a local woman, Elizabeth, from his daughter's bedroom window, and he kills a third time when the local sheriff questions him about Elizabeth's disappearance. His family friend, Dr. Katherine Carson, also a psychologist, pays a visit, but David shoves her down the basement stairs, where she sees the sheriff's body. David then initiates a game of hide and seek with Emily, who escapes from her bedroom, and hides in the cave in which she first encountered Charlie.
Taking the sheriff's firearm, Katherine forces her way out of the basement and discovers David hunting for Emily. After Emily distracts David, Katherine shoots him, thereby rescuing Emily. The movie provides four alternate endings. In the first, which is used in the version of the film shown to United States audiences, Emily, living with Katherine, seems well adjusted, despite the horrific trauma she has suffered. However, when she leaves the table, where she has been drawing while eating her breakfast, to accompany Katherine to school, the camera shows that she has drawn herself with two heads, suggesting that, like her father, Emily has developed multiple personality disorder, in which case she may have escaped her ordeal physically, but she has not escaped the experience mentally. In another possible ending,

Emily's drawing of herself shows her with only one head, implying that she does not have multiple personality disorder.
Like the ending shown to U. S. Audiences, alternates three, four, and five suggest that Emily has developed multiple personality disorder.

The third ending shows Emily in a bedroom. As Katherine tucks her in, she assures Emily that she loves her. As Katherine leaves the room, Emily asks her to leave the light on, but Katherine says she cannot do so. She shuts the door, which contains a screened window, and locks it from outside, revealing the bedroom's location as that of a psychiatric hospital. Emily gets out of bed, starts to count, and enters the bedroom closet, and grins at her reflection in the mirror.
The fourth alternate ending is identical to the third, except that, in this version, Emily does not count.
The fifth possibility starts the same way as the third, but the bedroom is in Emily's new home, not in a psychiatric ward. After Katherine tucks Emily into bed and reassures her that she loves her, Emily gets out of bed to play Hide and Seek with her reflection.
Although one of the five endings suggests that Emily has escaped, both physically and psychologically, from her father's murder of her mother and two other adults and his attempted murder of her, the existence of the four alternative endings imply that she is psychologically damaged and may well have developed multiple personality disorder. If, on the basis alone of the number of possible endings, we calculate the odds that Emily did, in fact, psychologically escape her ordeal, her chance of having done so is only twenty percent—not very good odds.
I Still Know What You Did last Summer: After Julie James accompanies her friends to an island resort, the holiday retreat loses power as a hurricane advances toward the island. Later, their only remaining means of communication, a two-way radio, is destroyed, and they are left alone with a killer, a fisherman named Ben whom Julie and some of her friends had thrown into a lake last summer. They'd thought they'd killed him when their vehicle, the driver of which was drunk, struck him on a mountain road.

One by one, Julie's friends are killed. Only three survive: Julie, her boyfriend Ray, who joined the party late, after evading an earlier attempt on his life, and Karla, Julie's Boston roommate. The Coast Guard rescues them, and Julie marries Ray. While he brushes his teeth, the bathroom door is shut and locked. Julie, seated on the bed in their bedroom, sees Ben under the bed. She screams, as he grabs her with the hook that replaces a long-lost limb, and she is hauled beneath the bed, her fate remaining a mystery.
Did Julie escape her past? Although she goes to the island retreat hoping to forget the painful memories and nightmares associated with her participation in the events of last summer, Julie encounters Ben again, as she and her friends are stalked, and Ben kills several of them. Julie is almost killed herself, but Ray rescues her. The Coast Guard takes them back to the mainland, and they escape the island and the hurricane.
Although she seeks happiness, marrying Ray, Julie is captured again at the end of the movie by her nemesis, and her husband and protector is locked in the bathroom. Audience members are not shown Julie's fate, but it seems she may not have escaped her past, after all. A year after he was left to die in the lake, Ben has returned to avenge himself, and he kills again, as he had a year ago. Now that he has captured Julie, it seems unlikely she will escape the doggedly persistent serial killer.
Saw series: The Saw series of horror movies focus on the lengths to which captive men and women will go to escape. “John Kramer, also called the 'Jigsaw Killer' or simply 'Jigsaw' . . . . was introduced briefly in Saw and developed in more detail in Saw II. Rather than killing his victims outright, Jigsaw traps them in situations that he calls 'tests' or 'games' to test their will to live through physical or psychological torture and believes if they survive, they will be rehabilitated.”
Ordered to kill his fellow prisoner, Adam Stanheight, by six o'clock or have his wife and daughter killed instead, Dr. Lawrence Gordon saws off his own foot to escape. After cauterizing his wound with a steam pipe, Gordon leaves Stanheight in a bathroom as he goes to save his family and obtain assistance for Stanheight, and Kramer makes Gordon his apprentice as a sort of perverse reward for having survived the test. In Saw III, flashbacks reveal that another of Gordon's apprentices, Amanda Young, kidnapped Stanheight and murdered him to put him out of his misery.
Other sequels subject other victims to a variety of other mechanical traps invented by Kramer. Kramer carves out a jigsaw-shape of flesh from subjects who failed to escape his tests to show that they lacked the “survival instinct,” a practice which led the media to refer to him as the “Jigsaw Killer.” To date, there are eight movies in the series.

Due to its gory effects, the Saw series has been severely criticized, with detractors referring to it as “torture porn.” The series certainly appeals to the need for escape in an extreme fashion, and it's not for everyone. It does suggest that the “survival instinct” is such, in some individuals, at least, that a captive subjected to physical and psychological torment will do anything to escape, but it also shows that others will not. Gordon, for example, cuts off his own foot rather than killing Stanheight and then seeks help for the man he was ordered to kill.
It appears that Kramer admires Gordon's courage, if not his altruism, because he “rewards” the doctor for defying the command he was given and finding an alternative way to escape without sacrificing either Stanheight or his own family. Perhaps it was Gordon's intelligence, as much as his courage, that Kramer admired. In any case, the fact that Kramer would “reward” Gordon shows that, despite his own cruelty and monstrous capacity for evil, there remains the ability, at least, to appreciate certain attributes of human nature that transcend those of base instincts.
It's not surprising that the horror genre would include appeals to the need to escape. What may surprise is its examination of the effects of callous behavior on surviving victims. These effects include the development of mental disorders; lifelong guilt, fear, distrust, and misery; and death, but, on occasion, they also reflect courage, compassion, and a regard for others that's greater than one's own need to escape. Horror fiction is about loss, but, as horrific as its losses are, they are not always complete, and there is the chance that victims may not only survive, but eventually live at least a semblance of normal life.
But first, of course, they have to escape.

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Paranormal vs. Supernatural: What’s the Diff?

Copyright 2009 by Gary L. Pullman

Sometimes, in demonstrating how to brainstorm about an essay topic, selecting horror movies, I ask students to name the titles of as many such movies as spring to mind (seldom a difficult feat for them, as the genre remains quite popular among young adults). Then, I ask them to identify the monster, or threat--the antagonist, to use the proper terminology--that appears in each of the films they have named. Again, this is usually a quick and easy task. Finally, I ask them to group the films’ adversaries into one of three possible categories: natural, paranormal, or supernatural. This is where the fun begins.

It’s a simple enough matter, usually, to identify the threats which fall under the “natural” label, especially after I supply my students with the scientific definition of “nature”: everything that exists as either matter or energy (which are, of course, the same thing, in different forms--in other words, the universe itself. The supernatural is anything which falls outside, or is beyond, the universe: God, angels, demons, and the like, if they exist. Mad scientists, mutant cannibals (and just plain cannibals), serial killers, and such are examples of natural threats. So far, so simple.

What about borderline creatures, though? Are vampires, werewolves, and zombies, for example, natural or supernatural? And what about Freddy Krueger? In fact, what does the word “paranormal” mean, anyway? If the universe is nature and anything outside or beyond the universe is supernatural, where does the paranormal fit into the scheme of things?

According to the Online Etymology Dictionary, the word “paranormal,” formed of the prefix “para,” meaning alongside, and “normal,” meaning “conforming to common standards, usual,” was coined in 1920. The American Heritage Dictionary defines “paranormal” to mean “beyond the range of normal experience or scientific explanation.” In other words, the paranormal is not supernatural--it is not outside or beyond the universe; it is natural, but, at the present, at least, inexplicable, which is to say that science cannot yet explain its nature. The same dictionary offers, as examples of paranormal phenomena, telepathy and “a medium’s paranormal powers.”

Wikipedia offers a few other examples of such phenomena or of paranormal sciences, including the percentages of the American population which, according to a Gallup poll, believes in each phenomenon, shown here in parentheses: psychic or spiritual healing (54), extrasensory perception (ESP) (50), ghosts (42), demons (41), extraterrestrials (33), clairvoyance and prophecy (32), communication with the dead (28), astrology (28), witchcraft (26), reincarnation (25), and channeling (15); 36 percent believe in telepathy.

As can be seen from this list, which includes demons, ghosts, and witches along with psychics and extraterrestrials, there is a confusion as to which phenomena and which individuals belong to the paranormal and which belong to the supernatural categories. This confusion, I believe, results from the scientism of our age, which makes it fashionable for people who fancy themselves intelligent and educated to dismiss whatever cannot be explained scientifically or, if such phenomena cannot be entirely rejected, to classify them as as-yet inexplicable natural phenomena. That way, the existence of a supernatural realm need not be admitted or even entertained. Scientists tend to be materialists, believing that the real consists only of the twofold unity of matter and energy, not dualists who believe that there is both the material (matter and energy) and the spiritual, or supernatural. If so, everything that was once regarded as having been supernatural will be regarded (if it cannot be dismissed) as paranormal and, maybe, if and when it is explained by science, as natural. Indeed, Sigmund Freud sought to explain even God as but a natural--and in Freud’s opinion, an obsolete--phenomenon.

Meanwhile, among skeptics, there is an ongoing campaign to eliminate the paranormal by explaining them as products of ignorance, misunderstanding, or deceit. Ridicule is also a tactic that skeptics sometimes employ in this campaign. For example, The Skeptics’ Dictionary contends that the perception of some “events” as being of a paranormal nature may be attributed to “ignorance or magical thinking.” The dictionary is equally suspicious of each individual phenomenon or “paranormal science” as well. Concerning psychics’ alleged ability to discern future events, for example, The Skeptic’s Dictionary quotes Jay Leno (“How come you never see a headline like 'Psychic Wins Lottery'?”), following with a number of similar observations:

Psychics don't rely on psychics to warn them of impending disasters. Psychics don't predict their own deaths or diseases. They go to the dentist like the rest of us. They're as surprised and disturbed as the rest of us when they have to call a plumber or an electrician to fix some defect at home. Their planes are delayed without their being able to anticipate the delays. If they want to know something about Abraham Lincoln, they go to the library; they don't try to talk to Abe's spirit. In short, psychics live by the known laws of nature except when they are playing the psychic game with people.
In An Encyclopedia of Claims, Frauds, and Hoaxes of the Occult and Supernatural, James Randi, a magician who exercises a skeptical attitude toward all things alleged to be paranormal or supernatural, takes issue with the notion of such phenomena as well, often employing the same arguments and rhetorical strategies as The Skeptic’s Dictionary.

In short, the difference between the paranormal and the supernatural lies in whether one is a materialist, believing in only the existence of matter and energy, or a dualist, believing in the existence of both matter and energy and spirit. If one maintains a belief in the reality of the spiritual, he or she will classify such entities as angels, demons, ghosts, gods, vampires, and other threats of a spiritual nature as supernatural, rather than paranormal, phenomena. He or she may also include witches (because, although they are human, they are empowered by the devil, who is himself a supernatural entity) and other natural threats that are energized, so to speak, by a power that transcends nature and is, as such, outside or beyond the universe. Otherwise, one is likely to reject the supernatural as a category altogether, identifying every inexplicable phenomenon as paranormal, whether it is dark matter or a teenage werewolf. Indeed, some scientists dedicate at least part of their time to debunking allegedly paranormal phenomena, explaining what natural conditions or processes may explain them, as the author of The Serpent and the Rainbow explains the creation of zombies by voodoo priests.

Based upon my recent reading of Tzvetan Todorov's The Fantastic: A Structural Approach to the Fantastic, I add the following addendum to this essay.

According to Todorov:

The fantastic. . . lasts only as long as a certain hesitation [in deciding] whether or not what they [the reader and the protagonist] perceive derives from "reality" as it exists in the common opinion. . . . If he [the reader] decides that the laws of reality remain intact and permit an explanation of the phenomena described, we can say that the work belongs to the another genre [than the fantastic]: the uncanny. If, on the contrary, he decides that new laws of nature must be entertained to account for the phenomena, we enter the genre of the marvelous (The Fantastic: A Structural Approach to a Literary Genre, 41).
Todorov further differentiates these two categories by characterizing the uncanny as “the supernatural explained” and the marvelous as “the supernatural accepted” (41-42).

Interestingly, the prejudice against even the possibility of the supernatural’s existence which is implicit in the designation of natural versus paranormal phenomena, which excludes any consideration of the supernatural, suggests that there are no marvelous phenomena; instead, there can be only the uncanny. Consequently, for those who subscribe to this view, the fantastic itself no longer exists in this scheme, for the fantastic depends, as Todorov points out, upon the tension of indecision concerning to which category an incident belongs, the natural or the supernatural. The paranormal is understood, by those who posit it, in lieu of the supernatural, as the natural as yet unexplained.

And now, back to a fate worse than death: grading students’ papers.

My Cup of Blood

Anyone who becomes an aficionado of anything tends, eventually, to develop criteria for elements or features of the person, place, or thing of whom or which he or she has become enamored. Horror fiction--admittedly not everyone’s cuppa blood--is no different (okay, maybe it’s a little different): it, too, appeals to different fans, each for reasons of his or her own. Of course, in general, book reviews, the flyleaves of novels, and movie trailers suggest what many, maybe even most, readers of a particular type of fiction enjoy, but, right here, right now, I’m talking more specifically--one might say, even more eccentrically. In other words, I’m talking what I happen to like, without assuming (assuming makes an “ass” of “u” and “me”) that you also like the same. It’s entirely possible that you will; on the other hand, it’s entirely likely that you won’t.

Anyway, this is what I happen to like in horror fiction:

Small-town settings in which I get to know the townspeople, both the good, the bad, and the ugly. For this reason alone, I’m a sucker for most of Stephen King’s novels. Most of them, from 'Salem's Lot to Under the Dome, are set in small towns that are peopled by the good, the bad, and the ugly. Part of the appeal here, granted, is the sense of community that such settings entail.

Isolated settings, such as caves, desert wastelands, islands, mountaintops, space, swamps, where characters are cut off from civilization and culture and must survive and thrive or die on their own, without assistance, by their wits and other personal resources. Many are the examples of such novels and screenplays, but Alien, The Shining, The Descent, Desperation, and The Island of Dr. Moreau, are some of the ones that come readily to mind.

Total institutions as settings. Camps, hospitals, military installations, nursing homes, prisons, resorts, spaceships, and other worlds unto themselves are examples of such settings, and Sleepaway Camp, Coma, The Green Mile, and Aliens are some of the novels or films that take place in such settings.

Anecdotal scenes--in other words, short scenes that showcase a character--usually, an unusual, even eccentric, character. Both Dean Koontz and the dynamic duo, Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child, excel at this, so I keep reading their series (although Koontz’s canine companions frequently--indeed, almost always--annoy, as does his relentless optimism).

Atmosphere, mood, and tone. Here, King is king, but so is Bentley Little. In the use of description to terrorize and horrify, both are masters of the craft.

A bit of erotica (okay, okay, sex--are you satisfied?), often of the unusual variety. Sex sells, and, yes, sex whets my reader’s appetite. Bentley Little is the go-to guy for this spicy ingredient, although Koontz has done a bit of seasoning with this spice, too, in such novels as Lightning and Demon Seed (and, some say, Hung).

Believable characters. Stephen King, Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child, and Dan Simmons are great at creating characters that stick to readers’ ribs.

Innovation. Bram Stoker demonstrates it, especially in his short story “Dracula’s Guest,” as does H. P. Lovecraft, Edgar Allan Poe, Shirley Jackson, and a host of other, mostly classical, horror novelists and short story writers. For an example, check out my post on Stoker’s story, which is a real stoker, to be sure. Stephen King shows innovation, too, in ‘Salem’s Lot, The Shining, It, and other novels. One might even argue that Dean Koontz’s something-for-everyone, cross-genre writing is innovative; he seems to have been one of the first, if not the first, to pen such tales.

Technique. Check out Frank Peretti’s use of maps and his allusions to the senses in Monster; my post on this very topic is worth a look, if I do say so myself, which, of course, I do. Opening chapters that accomplish a multitude of narrative purposes (not usually all at once, but successively) are attractive, too, and Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child are as good as anyone, and better than many, at this art.

A connective universe--a mythos, if you will, such as both H. P. Lovecraft and Stephen King, and, to a lesser extent, Dean Koontz, Bentley Little, and even Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child have created through the use of recurring settings, characters, themes, and other elements of fiction.

A lack of pretentiousness. Dean Koontz has it, as do Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child, Bentley Little, and (to some extent, although he has become condescending and self-indulgent of late, Stephen King); unfortunately, both Dan Simmons and Robert McCammon have become too self-important in their later works, Simmons almost to the point of becoming unreadable. Come on, people, you’re writing about monsters--you should be humble.

Longevity. Writers who have been around for a while usually get better, Stephen King, Dan Simmons, and Robert McCammon excepted.

Pacing. Neither too fast nor too slow. Dean Koontz is good, maybe the best, here, of contemporary horror writers.


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