The Horror of Star Power

Copyright 2018 by Gary L. Pullman

In MassAdvertising as Social Forecast, Jib Fowles, a professor of communications at the University of Houston, identifies three “stylistic features” of ads that influence “the way a basic appeal is presented”: humor, celebrities, and images of the past and present. This post concerns how horror novels and movies use celebrities as a way to enhance horror.

Of course, almost every movie features celebrities—the actors who star in the film. However, the use of the celebrities “stylistic feature” Fowles identifies could be interpreted as referring to actors who play celebrities in horror movies. In other words, one or more of the characters in the film is a famous person. Such is the case, for example, with fictional actress Ann Darrow, played by actual actress Fay Wray, who appears in King Kong. It is in thus sense that Fowles's celebrities 'stylistic feature” is understood in this post.

By being identified as a celebrity, a character receives an elevated status, because, in the United States and elsewhere, celebrities are revered; for many, they are the equivalent, in the world of popular entertainment, to royalty, and this is true not only of actors, but of other performers, including singers, athletes, comedians, bestselling authors, politicians, and other entertainers and public figures.

Not only do such characters have fame (and often fortune), but they're also typically regarded as glamorous and charismatic, living the types of lives many believe they themselves would enjoy living. They are treated with adulation by fans, but, at the same time, they may be envied, and their fall, if their careers should fail for some reason, is often as intriguing as their rise.

Horror movies that include fictional celebrities among their casts of characters include, in addition to King Kong, Misery, and I Know What You Did Last Summer.

In King Kong, Darrow's celebrity as an actress allows her to represent Beauty in a way and on a scale denied to ordinary women, despite the beauty many of them undoubtedly possess. As a celebrity, she is herself a representative of the beautiful woman, of Beauty personified. She is both a flesh-and-blood woman and a type, or idea, of woman, the ideal woman, the Beautiful Woman. It is because of her that Carl Denham, the man who hopes to produce a documentary film, has a star who can deliver the box office appeal he needs to market his production.

Darrow also contrasts with Kong: she is a beautiful woman, while he is a gigantic ape. The colossal gorilla's wild nature and prodigious strength makes Darrow's helplessness all the more apparent, as she frequently struggles in his grasp. He takes her where he will, pursues her like a bestial stalker, and finally, according to Denham, at least, dies because of the pint-size femme fatale: “It was Beauty killed the Beast.”

As a human being, Darrow is also obviously a representative of humanity. As such, it is with her plight that moviegoers will identify. Through their identification with her, they will feel her helplessness and her terror. In Kong's hand, they will be grasped as the gigantic ape navigates the jungle on Skull Island. From her vantage point atop cliffs and in caves, where Kong deposits her temporarily for safekeeping, as he battles dinosaurs, she will witness Kong's titanic struggles. The audience will see Kong's pursuit by Darrow's defenders as the gigantic beast views the chase. They will ascend the Empire State Building, in Kong's hand, as he climbs the skyscraper, clutching the actress in his immense, furry fist. From her perspective atop the edifice, they will witness the airplanes' attacks.

When Kong succumbs to technology, falling, mortally wounded, from the building upon which he took his last stand in defense of Darrow as much as himself, audiences will see the difference between Beauty and the Beast and be reminded that, despite certain similarities between the human human and the lower animals, despite their kinship, there is also a huge chasm between the two, an abyss that cannot be overcome. Darrow, despite her “courtship” by Kong, remains a human being, and the two, human and animal, must ever remain distinct.

Paul Sheldon, the bestselling romance writer in Stephen King's Misery, is also a celebrity character. His romance series has made him famous, if not immensely wealthy; his success as a popular writer has set him apart from others. However, his success is predicated upon the interests of his readers. If they sour on his work, he can quickly become a has-been or, as Misery makes clear, a victim of his formerly “number one fan.”

Of course, King's notion that a fan would capture, assault, and attempt to kill a writer simply for killing off a favorite fictional character is over the top. Most fantastic literature, whether of the horror or another genre, is, by definition, exaggerated, which is why Samuel Taylor Coleridge wrote of the need for a reader to “suspend” his or her 'disbelief” as a condition for enjoying such literature.

Annie Wilkes, the psychotic serial killer-cum-nurse who rescues Sheldon after crashing while driving during a snowstorm, attempts to force the writer to resurrect Misery Chastain, the character whom Sheldon killed off in the last novel of his romance series, which he has abandoned in the hope of becoming a serious writer. The presence in the novel of a celebrity character affords King the opportunity of commenting upon relationship between a famous writer and his or her fans—a relationship which, in Misery, becomes more predatory than symbiotic.

According to Grady Hendrix, King's own fans reacted negatively to the novel, seeing it as an expression of King's “contempt” for his readers, and some see the novel as, indeed, a “love/hate letter to his fans.” King apparently tried to mend fences with his “outraged fans” during a “publicity tour” for the book, but it's hard to imagine he succeeded given the fact that he describes the psychotic Wilkes, his self-described “number one fan” as a soulless monster who literally reeks.

The portrait of King's fans is nothing if not ambiguous and begs the question, What sort of writer writes for such admirers? The answer appears to be Sheldon, but how much of the fictional bestselling romance author is a true likeness of King himself? There are similarities: both writers, the real and the imagined, suffered shattered legs; both became prescription pain killer addicts; and both apparently have ambiguous, “love/hate” relationships with their fans. As Hendrix observes,

King has said numerous times, the fans put food on his table. He hates them, but he owes them his life. And there are moments when Paul is waiting for Annie to react to something in the manuscript he’s writing that he knows will thrill her, or upset her, when it feels like her reaction is vital for his continued existence. He imagines her reaction and then revels in it when it comes, and one can imagine this is how King felt too. He has written for his readers (Constant reader as he calls them in his introductions) for so long that to some extent his books are collaborative: if a book is released to the public and no one reads it, does it even exist at all?

Although there are exceptions, celebrities don't typically start life as celebrities. Like everything else, fame must usually be earned. The biographies of most famous people show they paid their dues. Michael Landon, a star of the television series Bonanza, Little House on the Prairie, and Highway to Heaven, not to mention the movie I Was a Teenage Werewolf, began his career as an extra. Clint Eastwood started out as a laboratory technician in Revenge of the Creature. Although they may have appeared in earlier films, many actresses, including Fay Wray (King Kong), Janet Leigh (Psycho), Jamie Lee Curtis (Halloween), Jennifer Love Hewitt (I Know What You Did Last Summer), and Kate Beckinsale (Underworld: Evolution), established their Hollywood careers “scream queens.”

In I Know What You Did Last Summer, Sarah Michelle Gellar plays a “D”-list celebrity, local beauty queen Helen Shivers, who hopes to leave her small town and establish herself in New York City as a major player in the entertainment industry. She finds fame elusive, and returns to her hometown, Southport, North Carolina, where she must settle for work as a “fragrance girl” in her father's department store, her show business aspirations confined to the local beauty pageant and a master of ceremonies spot for the Croaker Queen Pageant. She meets her death at the hands of the serial killer who stalks her and her friends. As far as her part in the film is concerned, the movie seems to suggest that small-town girls typically remain small-town girls, despite their hopes and dreams for something bigger and better than the lives they live as, well, small-town girls.

As with most other aspects of life in horror fiction, celebrity isn't all it's cracked up to be. For one thing, it makes a character stand out from the crowd, and that can be dangerous, indeed. Coming to the attention of—becoming, in fact, the center of attention for—a giant gorilla, a psychotic “fan,” or a serial killer bent on gruesome revenge isn't likely to promote one's career, whether as an actress, a bestselling author, or a beauty queen who wants to break out, both in the theater and from her small-town life. In fact, celebrity, in horror fiction, is likely to be brief, ending in a painful, violent, and bloody death. It's better, perhaps, to be a “nobody” than a Somebody, or, as military personnel learn, in their struggles to survive, to “keep a low profile.”

Horror Fiction: The Appeal of the Need to Dominate

Copyright 2018 by Gary L. Pullman

All of us feel the need to dominate others, Jib Fowles notes. Advertisements, he says, appeal to this universal “basic need.” The desire for “clout,” this need is characterized by “the craving to be powerful—perhaps omnipotent”—and it may take the form of a desire to “dominate and control one's environment.”

Although Fowles doesn't mention these other forms specifically, it seems that the “basic need” to dominate would also occur in such endeavors as those involving social, personal, economic, governmental, and technological ends, to name but a few.

Horror fiction, like other genres of literature, often appeals to the need to dominate.

In one of Stephen King's novels, Gerald's Game (1992), men sexually dominate a woman; in another, Misery (1987), a woman physically dominates a man.

Gerald's Game: After Jessie tells her dominant husband, lawyer Gerald Burlingame, she does not want to engage in another session of bondage and discipline with him, he persists, climbing atop her after handcuffing her to the bed, despite her protests. She kicks him, he falls onto the floor, has a heart attack, and dies. Alone in the remote cabin to which they have repaired, and shackled to the bed, Jessie begins to hallucinate, seeing a figure she calls “Space Cowboy” and hearing voices, each a different aspect of herself that she's repressed. The voices help her to better understand her past as a victim of paternal sexual abuse and her present as a wife who is more valued as a trophy than as a human being who's an equal partner in marriage. She has settled for Gerald, despite his emotional, physical, and sexual abuse of her, because he is financially secure. After several attempts at escape, she finally frees herself of the handcuffs by cutting away enough of the skin on one wrist to lubricate her skin with her blood. She pushes the bed to the bureau, retrieving a key with which to unlock the cuffs and free her other hand. However, the blood loss she has suffered causes her to lose consciousness, and, upon awakening, she imagines she is being pursued by the Space Cowboy and wrecks her car. Later, as Jessie is recovering, a nurse tells her that the Space Cowboy is actually a necrophiliac killer, Raymond Andrew Joubert, who was passing through Maine when he came upon her cabin.

A victim of her father, her husband, and a serial killer and necrophile, all of whom abused and dominated her for their own sexual and sadistic purposes, Jessie is a survivor because she is willing to do whatever it takes—repress horrific memories of her past to the extent that she becomes three personalities, rather than one; kill her husband; and evade a killer who had apparently left her to die in the cabin so he could return to have sex with her corpse.

Misery: Romance novelist Paul Sheldon wrecks his car during a blizzard and is rescued by his “number one fan,” Annie Wilkes, a former nurse who lives in a remote house in the mountains. Angry that Sheldon has killed his heroine, Misery Chastain, in the last book of the series, Annie keeps him prisoner, demanding he resurrect Misery in a sequel, Misery's Return. He discovers she's a serial killer but isn't aware that she plans to kill them both after reading Misery's Return. After Sheldon finishes his manuscript, he sets it ablaze. (In fact, however, the manuscript is merely a counterfeit of the actual document.) He and Annie struggle until Annie collapses after falling and striking her head on the mantelpiece in his bedroom. The next day, he gets the attention of state police who are seeking her in connection with a trooper she'd killed earlier. At first, they cannot find her body, but it is later discovered in the barn. She'd made her way there to get a chainsaw with which to kill Paul, but died from the injuries she'd sustained in their fight. Paul publishes Misery's Return, before working on a literary novel, planning to launch a new career as a serious author.

The ordeal through which Sheldon goes, suffering emotional and physical abuse at the hands of his psychotic “biggest fan,” is not only a testament to his courage, perseverance, and will to survive, but they are also the reasons that he is able to endure the torment to which he is subjected, escapes, and emerges alive, more or less in one piece. His tenacity also allows him to overcome the alcoholism that plagues him and the writer's block he suffers as a result of his ordeal. By showing the traits of character and will that Sheldon requires to come back from the brutal abuse of a dominant personality, King suggests the way forward for actual individuals who have experienced similar barbarity.

As Fowles observes, dominance doesn't have to be sexual or depend on relationships between men and women. In William Golding's The Lord of the Flies (1954), a novel King says he wishes he'd written, the need to dominate is expressed socially.

Economic dominance occurs in Bentley Little's The Store (1998). A national chain of big-box department stores has virtually taken over the brick-and-mortar retail world. The Store is everywhere. Its ever-expanding growth wipes out mom-and-pop stores, most franchises, and any vendors and suppliers who don't want to meet its terms. Stocking anything anyone could ever want to buy, and selling merchandise at discount prices, The Store is quickly becoming the only place to shop. Its benefits—a huge inventory, low prices, thousands of locations, employment for an army of workers, and taxes to local, state, and federal governments, are as numerous as its operations are vast. However, there's a downside to The Store—and, like its benefits, its negative effects are tremendous.

The Store: Juniper, Arizona, wants The Store, so officials offer tax breaks and other incentives to entice its executives to build one in its community. From the beginning, there are indications that The Store may not be the blessing local politicians believe it will be: dead animals—and a human corpse—at the construction site, black vehicles delivering mysterious merchandise in the middle of the night, and The Store's taking over of the town. Bill Davis senses trouble, and he's uneasy when his daughters become employees of The Store. Night Managers terrorize the staff. Employees disappear. Bizarre merchandise, including a line of dildos and other sex toys, show up on the shelves. Through its economic power, The Store runs roughshod over the lives of employees, customers, townspeople, politicians, vendors, suppliers, and other businesses. Just who is The Store's CEO, Newman, and what does he want to accomplish through his domination of the town—and of the nation?

Sometimes, we forget the true power of money, thinking of power in physical terms, as brute strength, weapons, or military force. However, economics is the basis of every enterprise, especially in capitalistic countries, and its potential for evil, like its potential for good, is tremendous. How is such economic clout to be resisted and overcome? How are individuals, families, communities, and nations to survive against such a powerful economic threat to their autonomy, safety, welfare, and liberty? The need to achieve through economic dominance, Little reminds his readers, is a force to be reckoned with.

Dean Koontz's The Taking(2004) depicts attempt to dominate the environment. 

The Taking: After a torrential downfall of semen-scented rain, a mysterious slime appears overnight, coating buildings, streets, trees, lawns, bushes, and the rest of the landscape. The small town in which Neil and Molly Sloan reside is isolated from the rest of the world as telephone, radio, television, and Internet service fail. The Sloans gather a group of their neighbors. Some among them believe the apocalypse is upon them. The truth is that an advance team of alien scientists have arrived, and they're reverse-terraforming the earth to make it habitable for them in preparation for a massive invasion.

By showing the effects on the environment through the lens of an alien invasion, Koontz provides a fresh look at the effects of pollution and energy waste that societies are inflicting on their own planet, offering an ironic portrayal of some of the effects that continuous neglect and abuse of the planet could have on Earth and its inhabitants, including human beings themselves. It's a harrowing story condemning the dominance of the environment that is underway today, as it has been for generations. 

The story is made all the more unsettling, indeed horrible, because of the actual use of pesticides to control weeds and defoliants to denude vast acreages of plants. 

Developed in the 1970s by Monsanto, Roundup, a “glyphosate-based pesticide,” is today used in more than 160 countries, on a variety of crops, despite controversy concerning whether the product is a carcinogen. 

During the Vietnam War, the United States military used Agent Orange to strip the foliage from “3,100,000 hectares (31,000 km²; 12,000 sq mi)” of forest, in the process exposing millions of Vietnamese people and thousands of U. S. military personnel to the agent, which has been linked to a variety of cancers. The “herbicidal warfare” operations occurred from 1961 to 1971, but their effects continue to cause health problems to the Vietnamese people and to Vietnam veterans. 

Whether the intent has been to protect crops by controlling pests or to defoliate forests during “herbicidal warfare” operations, chemical attempts to dominate the environment have had effects even more chilling than those of which Koontz writes in The Taking, because, unlike his novel's horrors, those that resulted from the use of pesticides and defoliants are real, not imaginary. 

Both King's and Koontz's novels also chronicle the results of attempts by the federal government to dominate society. King's Firestarter (1980) and Koontz's Watchers (1987) depict how ruthless the United States government can be in its quest to use science and technology as instruments of government dominance.

Firestarter: “Charlie” McGee develops telekinesis and the ability to “push,” or make hypnotic suggestions using the power of thought, after her father, Andy, participated as a subject in a clandestine government experiment. Over time, Charlie's powers become enormously powerful. She and Andy are hunted by government agents, including an assassin known as Rainbird, after they escape from the government laboratory, “the Shop.” Eventually, they escape to a cabin in Vermont, but they are subsequently captured and taken to a secret location in northern Virginia. Using their powers, they escape again, destroying the government facility, although Andy is killed. Charlie informs a national publication of her experiences.

Watchers: Travis Cornell, formerly of the Delta Force, stumbles upon a golden retriever and a hulking creature, the outsider, which have escaped from a top-secret government laboratory. The latter is pursuing the former, in an attempt to kill the canine. Because of the retriever's extremely high intelligence, Cornell names the animal “Einstein,” and he and the dog save a woman, Nora Devon, from a sexual predator. They become a trio, pursued by the Outsider, federal agents, and a Russian operative, Vince Nasco, who wants to kill the scientists involved in the experiments that produced Einstein and the Outsider and capture the dog to sell.

What makes these novels truly terrifying is that they address issues that have actually occurred in similar government experiments in which the human rights of test subjects were wantonly violated with impunity. In 1953, during MKUltra, the Central Intelligence Agency administered lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) to Frank Olson, an army biologist, without his knowledge or consent. As a result, he leaped to his death.

For forty years, from 1932 to 1972, the United States Public Health Service conducted the Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male. Six-hundred-and-twenty-two poor black men, supposedly receiving free medical care, were monitored without being treated for the disease, despite the proof that penicillin could cure them. None of the participants in the study were notified that treatment was being withheld, and none of them consented to the withholding of treatment. Forty of their wives contracted the disease, and nineteen children were born with congenital syphilis.

During Operation Top Hat (1953), the United States Army Chemical Corps deliberately “exposed personnel” to biological and chemical warfare agents, including phosgene, a suffocant; blister agents; and nerve agents, so decontamination methods could be tested.

James Patterson's novel Humans, Bow Down (2017), written with Emily Raymond, focuses upon technological dominance, as do the films the Terminator (1984-present) franchise, Demon Seed (1973), and many others.

Humans,Bow Down: In a war between humans and smart robots, which occurred some time ago, robots were the victors. Now, as the title of the novel suggests, humans have been subjugated to their conquerors. Whenever a robot leader appears, humans are ordered to “bow down,” showing their submission to their dominant masters. When a small band of humans dares to defy their mechanical overlords, there is hope that humans may regain their freedom, but liberty will not come cheaply, if at all.

Terminator: In the future, smart robots rule the Earth, and humans live minimal lives in filth, discomfort, and poverty, until John, the son of Sarah Connor, leads his fellow humans in a war against their brutal conquerors. To prevent this event from happening, the robots send one of their own, The Terminator, into the past to kill Sarah before she can conceive him. However, Sarah is not alone: her son also sends a soldier of the resistance back through time to protect her.

Demon Seed: Dean Koontz's 1973 novel, which was adapted to the big screen under the same title (1977), features Proteus, an artificially intelligent, state-of-the-art computer that plans to impregnate Susan, a wealthy divorcee whose home is controlled by a computer system. After commandeering Susan's home computer system, Proteus imprisons her in her home, in effect putting her under house arrest, and uses hypnosis and subliminal perception on her, interacting physically with her by using “pseudopod” tentacles that Proteus designs and constructs in the nearby university that houses “him.” From their union, a monstrous human-hybrid creature results, their “child,” with which Susan must do battle. 

Since the Industrial Revolution, technology has been used to dominate workers and consumers, the economies of both domestic and foreign markets, military forces, politicians, and, indeed, entire political systems. It is only now becoming possible, some believe, for technology to dominate individuals in personal ways, such as by enslaving them or transforming their sex lives through the use of “sexbots” (robots designed as surrogate sex partners). If this proves to be the case, such visions as those presented in Humans,Bow Down, Terminator, and Demon Seed may be closer to realization than many might imagine. 

Although horror and science fiction are both forms of fantasy, writers of each genre have made some fairly horrific speculations about the abuses that stem from the need to dominate others and the environment.

In the past, it seems, more authors were likely to be optimistic about the future effects of present-day personal, social, economic, governmental, and technological efforts to dominate the world. After experiencing such horrors as two world wars, the medical experiments of Josef Mengele, the gassing of millions of Jews and others by the Nazis, the effects of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and such covert operations by American organizations against their own citizens, as carried out during the Vietnam War, the MKUltra project, the Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male, and Operation Top Hat (to mention only a few), contemporary authors do not seem to share such an optimistic view of the need to dominate, as Gerald's Game, Misery, The Store, The Taking, Firestarter, Watchers, Humans, Bow Down, Terminator, and Demon Seed unanimously suggest.

The need to dominate may be universal among all individuals, but that doesn't mean its practice will necessarily produce beneficial outcomes.

Robert R. McCammon's Bram Stoker Awards

Copyright 2018 by Gary L. Pullman

It's unclear how prestigious the Bram Stoker Award is beyond the Horror Writers Association (HWA), whose members bestow the prize to writers (mostly among their own ranks) for “superior achievement” in the genre. The prizes were first awarded, in a variety of categories, in 1987. Winners receive a statuette made by Society Awards, the same firm that makes the Emmy Award, the Golden Globe Award, and the GLAAD Media Award.

Four HWA members have won multiple Bram Stoker Awards for the novel.

Robert R. McCammon took home the Bram Stoker Award for Swan Song (1983), which tied with Stephen King's Misery; for Mine (1990); and for Boy's Life (1991).

In the absence of HWA specific criteria for determining who should and should not receive a Bram Stoker Award for his or her novel, we'll take a look, backward in time, in this post, to see how the critics of the day assessed McCammon's prize-winning novels. In a future post, we'll consider Sarah Langan's “superior accomplishment.”

Either the book reviews of Swan Song written in 1983, the year of the novel's publication, are no longer available on the Internet or the novel was passed over by professional critics. There are a few reviews of the book online, but none by established, recognized critics or national publications of record and repute, so we must pass on to McCammon's 1990 Bram Stoke Award winner, Mine.

The Kirkus Review of the novel, after recounting details of the plot, which includes a series of events more typical of the thriller than a horror novel (e. g., “a ferocious chase that features, among other over-the-top attractions, a blizzard, enraged pit bulls, homegrown surgery, a mutilated FBI agent on a rampage”—suggests that Boy's Life tries hard to be a winner, but left the reviewer somewhat unimpressed.

Despite the novel's delivery of “prime suspense and explosive payoffs,” which made Mine a “maximum overdrive, page-whipping thriller,” it lacks originality (“nothing new here”) and has a “completely predictable resolution.” There are action and suspense, but nothing to get excited about with regard to innovation or surprises. Sounds like a grade of “B-,” which certainly wouldn't qualify for the receipt of a prize for “superior achievement.” Besides, isn't the book more a thriller than a horror novel?

For Gene Lyons, the secret of Boy's Life success as a novel is its nostalgic revisiting of the past and its “naive and sentimental” storytelling. The plot is complex, Lyons suggests, and a little rough around the edges, a sort of unevenly sewn patchwork of plots and subplots, “enough . . . to fill a half-dozen ordinary novels.” Despite these flaws, Lyons assigns the novel an “A-,” characterizing it as a guilty pleasure adults will enjoy reading despite themselves.

However, he points out that the book isn't really a horror novel; it's more like an “autobiographical fantasy,” or what McCammon calls “fictography.” Again, if this book isn't a horror novel, why was it awarded a Bram Stoker Award? Only the Horror Writer Association's judges could answer that question, but they will say only that the award is bestowed upon a writer whose work exhibits “superior achievement,” which Boy's Life achieves, according to Lyons, at least, albeit only barely.

Kirkus Reviews also praises Boy's Life. It tells a rich, evocative story of childhood in the deep South, constituting an “idyll of small-town America—an idyll that McCammon paints with a score of bull's-eye details.” Both a bildungsroman, or coming-of-age story, and a murder mystery of sorts, and a hybrid story mixing realism with fantasy—there's not only “a raging flood, a shootout, a showdown with bullies—but also . . . [such] often darkly, magical wonders as . . . a living dinosaur; precognitive nightmares; [and] the grotesque life after death of Cory's dog.”

Despite the novel's “few false notes,” the reviewer sees it as being on par with Stephen King's and ray Bradbury's “childhood-elegies,” but cautions prospective readers about the novel's “jarringly melodramatic climax.”

Although the Kirkus Review reviewer doesn't grade the book, as Lyons did, it seems likely, had a grade been awarded, it would have been an “A-” or a “B+,” as, overall, the assessment is much more positive than negative. For the sake of argument, then, let's say that Boy's Life does reflect the “superior achievement” that the HWA claims is the basis—the sole basis, perhaps—for winning the Bram Stoker Award for Novel. So far, of the thirteen books we've considered, only one seems to merit the HWA's award for “superior achievement,” which equates to just over seven percent.