Evolution, Psychology, and Horror, Part IV

 Copyright 2021 by Gary L. Pullman

Source: videobuster.de

Note: This post assumes that you have seen the movie Final Girl (2015). If you have not, Wikipedia offers a fairly detailed, accurate summary of the plot.

What distinguishes the final girl of chillers and thrillers from other characters in such films. Which of her “evolved adaptations,” or traits, enables her to survive when many others in her situation and in similar environments have not?

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The movie’s protagonist, Veronica, benefits from twelve years of martial arts training she receives from William, who takes her in after her parents die, when she is five years old, and from drug-induced hallucinations which result from the drugs William injects into her system so that she can experience her greatest fear, which turns out to be her dread of failing to accomplish her mission. As a result of William’s mentoring, Veronica learns both that she is a “special” person and how to fight.

She accepts a date with one of William’s targets, Shane, and Shane and his friends take her to a forest, where the seventeen-year-old boys hunt her, as they have hunted—and killed—other girls on previous occasions.

Source: regarder-films.net

 Given a head start after tricking three of the four hunters into drinking whiskey laced with a hallucinogen, she dispatches the predators, one by one, as, thanks to the hallucinogen they have ingested, the boys face their greatest fears, just as Veronica had, years ago.

So, what makes Veronica the film’s final girl?

In his article “Evolution, Population Thinking and Essentialism,” Elliot Sober distinguishes between “adaptive traits” and “adaptations.” The human appendix, for example, is an adaptation that is no longer adaptive.

Sober also distinguishes between “phylogenetic adaptations” and “ontogenetic adaptations.” The former “arise over evolutionary time and impact the fitness of the organism,” whereas the latter are “any behavior we learn in our lifetimes, [which] can be adaptive to the extent that an organism benefits from them but they are not adaptations in the relevant sense.” Clearly, the martial arts skills that Veronica learns from William are ontogenetic adaptations. As is true in regard to many other claims, these assertions are controversial and have met with several criticisms.

 Source: earth.com

In providing concrete examples for their points, evolutionary psychologists often refer to the morphological and physiological traits of animals, such as “clutch size (in birds), schooling (in fish), leaf arrangement, foraging strategies and all manner of traits.” This explanatory method can help us to see how Veronica’s fighting skills, her self-image as someone who is “special,” and her fear of failing at her mission promote her survival as a final girl.

 Source: reptilescove.com

As a World Atlas article points out, “Mimicry is an evolved resemblance in appearance or behavior between one organism and another.” Usually, a harmless animal mimics a predator to protect itself from the attack of other, lesser predators. For example, “non-venomous milk snakes appear brilliantly colored like venomous coral snakes [to] deter predators from approaching.” Veronica adopts this same strategy in reverse. A martial artist of the first rank, she is a dangerous predator, but she pretends to be simply a harmless, vulnerable teenage girl. Her attackers learn, too late, that they are the harmless snakes, as it were, and she is the deadly predator, a tactic she has learned from William.

e: pinterest.com

Veronica is also predatory in other ways. She uses her beauty and her sexuality to attract her victims, the way an orb-weaving spider lures its victims (bees in search of nectar) with “web decorations” and the “spiders' [own] bright body colorations.” Veronica’s beauty attracts the attention of Shane and his friends, and, like the beauty of the orb-weaving spider, prove their undoing. While her physical appearance is not a behavior, her use of it as a lure certainly qualifies as an ontogenetic adaptation, or trait, which she learns, again, from William.

Source: inaturalist.com

In giving her would-be victimizers whiskey laced with a hallucinogen, Veronica adapts a defense mechanism used by certain animals, making it an offense tactic. The “large granular glands on the neck and limbs” of the Sonoran desert toad (aka “psychedelic toad”) “secrete [a] thick, milky-white, neurotoxin venom called bufotenine,” which is a “potent hallucinogen.” Although this compound is often fatal in dogs, it can cause hallucinations in humans and, perhaps, in canines, since its symptoms in dogs include a “drunken gait” and “confusion.” Obviously, since William injected Veronica with a hallucinogenic substance so that she could feel what her enemies would experience when she gave them the same hallucinogen, her knowledge of its properties and use as a weapon result from his training and is, therefore, an ontogenetic adaptation.

Source: 7esl.com

The nature vs. nurture controversy is as important (and as controversial) to evolutionary psychology as it is to other disciplines. The question of “what matters more when it comes to personality, nature or nurture?” is important, although it may, ultimately, prove unanswerable. As both Backcountry and Final Girl suggest, we are products of both our genes and our surroundings, of our nature and our nurture.

Source: the-other-view.com

Veronica survives for the same reason as Jen: she is better adapted to her environment than the other characters. Her traits (self-esteem, ruthlessness, and duplicity), coupled with her deadly martial arts skills, make her, not her stalkers, the apex predator, just as her attacker’s traits (sexism, misogyny, perfidy) make them her prey.

Next post:Evolution, psychology, and The Exorcist

Adaptation and Survival: The Selection of Heroic Traits

Copyright 2019 by Gary L. Pullman

 

Laurie Strode, of the Halloween franchise, survived several times against her supernatural adversary Michael Myers (aka “The Shape”). As a final girl, she represents a character who possesses the fitness to adapt to her environment and, therefore, survive to pass her genes to her offspring (unlike those of her peers whose genetic inheritance wasn't sufficient to ensure their own survival). The question arises, What traits helped Laurie to survive against Myers? What was, in the Darwinian sense, special about her?

Her older sister Judith, the first of Myers's victims, was stabbed to death when Laurie was but a young girl. (At the time, Judith was in her teens, and Myers, her older brother, was six years old.) In January 1965, her parents were killed in a car accident, and four-year-old Laurie was adopted by Morgan and Pamela Strode, who changed her last name to theirs. The governor of Illinois ordered that the adoption records be sealed so that Myers would not be able to connect Laurie Strode to his surviving sister. Eventually, Laurie no longer recalled her original family.

By 1978, Laurie had developed into a shy, introverted, 17-year-old girl who preferred books to boys. The Strodes owned the Myers house, in which Laurie grew up, and Morgan asked her to return the keys to the house. On her way to do so, she spotted a male stranger who seemed to be shadowing her. She learned that one of her friends, Lynda, has also been followed by a mysterious man.

While babysitting Tommy Doyle, the son of neighbors, Laurie was visited by her fellow babysitter, Annie Brackett, who asked Laurie to babysit her charge, Linsdey Wallace, so Annie could be with her boyfriend, Paul Freedman. Reluctantly, Laurie agreed, after Annie promised to break the date she'd arranged, without Laurie's knowledge or consent, between Laurie and Bennett Tramer, a boy in whom Laurie was interested. 

 

When Laurie visited the Wallaces' house to check on Annie, Laurie discovered the bodies of Annie, Lynda Van Der Klok, and Lynda's boyfriend, Bob Simms, positioned throughout the house. Myers, who'd returned to Laurie's (and his own) hometown, Haddonfield, Illinois—he'd been the mysterious figure Laurie had spied following her—attacked Laurie, slicing her arm with his knife. Laurie fell off the second-story landing and down the stairs, fracturing her ankle. She managed to limp to the Doyles' house, calling for the children to admit her. When Tommy did so, she entered the house and locked the door. Myers slipped through a window, attacking Laurie again. 

 

She fended him off, stabbing him in the neck with a knitting needle, before running upstairs. Myers pursued her, cornering her in a bedroom closet. Although he attempted to stab her with his knife, Laurie straightened a clothes hanger, using it to jab Myers in the eye, and he dropped his knife. Laurie picked up the weapon, stabbing Myers in the stomach. He fell to the floor, and Laurie assumed she'd killed him. Leaving the closet, she ordered the children to flee the house. Soon thereafter, Myers began to strangle her, but Laurie pulled his mask away, exposing his face. Myers's former psychiatrist, Doctor Samuel Loomis, arrived and shot Myers six times, each bullet driving him backward, through the bedroom window, and he fell from the balcony. Loomis looked, but Myers was nowhere in sight.

Biographies of the victims in the original Halloween movie (Annie Brackett, Lynda Van Der Klok, and Lynda's boyfriend, Bob Simms) suggest that they have mostly negative traits which advance their needs and desires at the expense of the welfare of others, while the survivor, Laurie Strode's personality traits, which are mostly positive, tend to favor both her own welfare and that of others. As such, Laurie's characteristics allow her to unite with others against a common enemy (as she does in later films of the franchise or to act in support of both her own welfare and that of others, as she does throughout the franchise).

Laurie Strode (Final Girl)	Traits (Green + socially sanctioned; red = socially condemned; uncolored = socially neutral)
	Kindness Shyness Introversion Studiousness Defiance Responsibility Persistence Courage Inventiveness
Annie Brackett (Victim)	Deceptive Sarcastic Hasty Exhibitionistic Impertinent Aggressive Presumptuous Defiant Manipulative Irresponsible Promiscuous
Lynda Van Der Klok (Victim)	Disorganized and unfocused Gregarious Extroverted Social Unscholarly Loud Annoying Promiscuous Brash Defiant Teasing Titillating
Bob Simms (Victim)	Athletic Intelligent Deceptive Irresponsible Defiant Rash

Laurie's positive values are those endorsed by her society and culture, the values of secular humanism, or what the philosopher Friedrich Nietsche calls (and condemns as) “herd morality.” According to Nietsche,

Herd morality is a development of the original slave morality which inherits most of its content, including a reinterpretation of various traits: impotence becomes goodness of heart, craven fear becomes humility, submission becomes ‘obedience’, [sic] cowardice and being forced to wait become patience, the inability to take revenge becomes forgiveness, the desire for revenge becomes a desire for justice, a hatred of one’s enemy becomes a hatred of injustice (Genealogy of Morals).

He condemns herd morality, because, he says,

‘Well-being’ in herd morality limits human beings, promoting people who are modest, submissive and conforming . And so it opposes the development of higher people, it slanders their will to power and labels them evil. Belief in its values limits people who could become higher people, leading them to self-doubt and self-loathing ( Genealogy of Morals).

If Laurie, the final girl, the survivor not only of the original Halloween movie, but also of the entire franchise to date, adheres to herd morality, the victims, those who fail to survive, must represent the opposing morality that Nietsche characterizes as a position “beyond good and evil,” the amoral stance of the superman, which reverses the tenets of the herd morality and could, thus be characterized as its opposite, an amoral position opposed to herd morality and to the original slave morality from which herd morality developed, based on the ideas that—

Heroic Amorality	Herd Morality
Goodness of heart	Impotence
Craven fear	Humility
Submission	Obedience
Cowardice and being forced to wait	Patience
The inability to take revenge	Forgiveness
The desire for revenge	Justice
Hatred of one's enemy	Hatred of injustice

If we list Myers's personality traits, as they are presented or suggested by his behavior, we see a predator motivated by impulses that are considered, as Dr. Loomis later describes them, “pure evil.” In other words, Myers is everything civilized society condemns:

Michael Myers (Predator)	Traits (Green + socially sanctioned; red = socially condemned; uncolored = socially neutral)
	Irrational Sociopathic Amoral Emotionless Evil Murderous Schizophrenic Vengeful Predatory Voyeuristic Violent Persistent Thieving Duplicitous Superhuman stealth, strength, endurance, durability, survivability

For Nietzsche, the opposite of the herd is the “Superman,” a “superior man [who] would not be a product of long evolution; rather, he would emerge when any man with superior potential completely masters himself and strikes off conventional Christian 'herd morality' to create his own values, which are completely rooted in life on this earth. Nietzsche was not forecasting the brutal superman of the German Nazis, for his goal was a “Caesar with Christ’s soul.”

Thus, we see that, although Myers may have some of the traits of the Nietzschean superman, Myers, lacking “Christ's soul,” is not such a figure, nor is he a type of Caesar, for Caesar conquered nations; he did not waste his life murdering individuals for no apparent motive, nor were his foes, for the most part, teenagers, women, children, and helpless men, as were Myers's victims.

If anything, he is a rogue figure, without any redeeming qualities, something neither human nor superhuman, but subhuman. Unless one is a Caesar, the herd is needed to resist such a creature, a herd energized by the traits that make up the final girl, Laurie Strode's character, although she might be better off with the defiance exhibited in her smoking marijuana, a substance which, at the time she used it, was illegal, set apart by society as forbidden and dangerous. (It does no good to argue that, today, the recreational use of marijuana is tolerated, if not accepted, by most of the population, as, ordinarily, a character must be judged by the moral standards—and, indeed, by the laws—of the society of the time; although an act or an institution—whether the smoking of marijuana or slavery—may be reckoned as having been right or wrong by later generations, it is a rare person who transcends a contemporary understanding of right and wrong during his or her own lifetime.)

Evolutionary Fiction

Copyright 2018 by Gary L. Pullman

According to the theory of evolution, species survive by adapting to their environment. For biologists—until recently, at least—the environment has been pretty much synonymous with the external, natural world. (More recently, a branch of psychology, evolutionary psychology, has suggested that certain mental processes and personality traits may have survived because they helped the human species to adapt to their physical environment and, therefore, to survive.)

Human beings differ from lower animals in several important ways, one of which is their possession not only of consciousness, but also of self-awareness, of consciousness of oneself as a self. Men, women, and children, in other words, live in two environments, that of the natural world without and that of the subjective world within, the world of beliefs, emotions, reason, will, and values.

In evolutionary fiction, a story begins when one or more changes in one or both of these worlds occur(s), disturbing the protagonist's equilibrium (his or her emotional balance, or calmness of mind), causing him or her to adapt to the environmental change(s) and thereby regain his or her equilibrium: in The Wizard of Oz (1939), Dorothy Gale becomes dissatisfied with her family life (a change in the inner world of her emotions); as a result, she runs away from home (seeks to adapt to the change in her emotions); she develops independence by acting autonomously, dousing the Wicked Witch of the West with water, thus melting her adversary (adaptation); having come to appreciate her home as a result of her experiences in Oz (adaptation), she returns to her family and friends, whom she'd left behind in Kansas. Dorothy's adaptations to the change in her inner world (her emotions) changes her: she recovers her equilibrium because she changes (i. e., adapts to her environment). In The Wizard of Oz, emotion drives Dorothy to act.

The external world can also introduce change to which the protagonist must adapt. In Backcountry (2015), Jenn and her boyfriend, Alex, leave their home in the city, driving to a national park in Canada. Their arrival introduces them to a different environment, a forest, with different challenges than those with which they are familiar. (Alex has some experience in camping, but his many mistakes show that he is by no means the master woodsman he believes himself to be.) Among the challenges the couple face are those of an intrusive and aggressive stranger, Brad; mountainous and forested terrain; and a bear. Alex does not adequately adapt, so he does not survive the couple's ordeal. Ironically, Jenn, who knows less than Alex about camping, but who has better judgment and makes better decisions, does adapt to the challenges of their new environment, and lives. (Alex's many errors of judgment are identified in my post, “Backcountry: A Study in the Cause and Effects of Poor Judgment”). In short, Jenn's intelligence and common sense prevail, while Alex's smug self-confidence and overestimation of his knowledge and abilities fail.

A similar “test” of mental processes and personality traits occurs in the 1993 thriller, Falling Down, with William Foster failing to adapt to the changes in his environments, both internal and external, and Sergeant Prendergast succeeding in doing so in regard to his own, similar challenges. Foster's marriage has ended in divorce; Prendergast's marriage is on life support. Both men encounter hostility, unfairness, and social decadence. They have both lost children, Foster to his wife in their divorce, Prendergast to death. Because he cannot adapt to the challenges these changes introduce into his life, Foster is killed, while Prendergast, who does adapt to similar challenges in his own life, survives.

With these examples in mind, we can construct the formula that is typical of evolutionary narratives:

1. A change in the protagonist's environment, internal, external, or both, occurs.
2. Experiencing disequilibrium as a result of the change(s), the protagonist successfully adapts to the change(s) (comedy) or fails to do so (tragedy).
3. As a result of the success or failure of his or her attempt to adapt, the protagonist survives or perishes, respectively.

Perishing can, but need not, be literal. A protagonist can “perish” figuratively: he or she can go to prison, lose his or her family or friends, go bankrupt, become disabled, lose dignity or respect, and so forth.

In evolutionary fiction, stories become “laboratories” of sorts in which beliefs, emotions, reason, will, and values are “tested” by changes in the external environment, the internal environment, or both environments. Thus, evolutionary narratives suggest the relative survivability strength of various subjective processes and personality traits, whether the stimuli (challenges) are imposed from within or from without the character him- or herself, thereby underscoring the fact that people are both subjects and objects simultaneously. Ironically, then, evolutionary fiction seems to support the idea that human beings occupy a dualistic world that is both matter and “spirit,” that we are ghosts in machines.

In future posts, we will apply the formula for evolutionary fiction to several horror narratives that appear as short stories, novels, or motion pictures.