Showing posts with label cannibalism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label cannibalism. Show all posts

Friday, June 11, 2021

An Essay on the Monstrous

 Copyright 2021 by Gary L. Pullman



Source: Public domain

What is “monstrous”? Does the concept change, thereby altering the understanding of the meaning of the term; do merely the specific instances, the incarnations, so to speak, of the monstrous change; or is there a modification of both the understanding and the incarnations?

 
Source: Public domain

Certainly, the idea of the origin of monsters has changed. Once, monsters were considered omens, or signs warning of divine displeasure, or anger, concerning various types of behavior. Later, monsters were regarded merely as mistakes, or “freaks,” of nature. The origin of monsters, once supernatural, became natural. The hermaphrodite became Frankenstein's creature; the Biblical behemoth became the great white shark of Jaws. (Between these extremes, perhaps, as the great white whale, Herman Melville's Moby Dick.)

 

 Source: Public domain

Prior to the shift from a supernatural to a natural cause of monsters, there had been a shift in the way in which the world, or the universe, was understood. When God had been in charge of the universe He'd created, the universe and everything in it had had been meaningful; in God's plan, there was a place for everything, and everything was expected to stay in its assigned place. The universe was an orderly and planned place, because it had been created according to God's plan, or a design, and existence was teleological. Monsters were beings or forces that disrupted the orderliness of the universe, sought to disrupt God's plan, or showed disobedience to God's will, either by tempting others to sin or by giving in to sin (and sin itself was, quite simply, disobedience to God's will). Anything that differed form God's plan was a monster or was monstrous.

Source: Public domain

When the idea of an accidental, mechanical universe replaced the concept of a divinely created and planned universe, only nature existed (or, if God were to be granted existence, He was seen, first, as indifferent to the universe, as the Deists viewed him, or as irrelevant.) Offenses became unnatural actions, behavior which was not grounded in nature. Anything that “went against nature” was a monster or monstrous. Indeed, a naturalistic understanding of the universe is seen in the change in viewing monsters and the monstrous that is indicated in the etymology, or history, of the word “monster,” which, according to the Online Etymology Dictionary, originally referred to a “"divine omen (especially one indicating misfortune), portent, sign” and, only about the fourteenth century became understood as meaning “malformed animal or human, creature afflicted with a birth defect.”

 Source: Public domain

Although some continue to believe that God exists, that He created the world and human beings, the latter in his own “image and likeness,” according to a plan and that the universe is consequently not only orderly, but purposeful, teleological, and meaningful, many others believe that God either does not exist or, if He does, His existence is inconsequential and that human beings must chart their own courses. In the former conception of the universe, wrongdoing is evil, and it is evil because it involves intentional disobedience to God's will; in the latter conception of the universe, wrongdoing is immoral because it is counter to that which is natural. In the former universe, the monstrous takes the form of demons and unrepentant sinners. In the latter universe, evil takes the form of “freaks” of nature, such as maladapted mutants, victims of birth defects, or the psychologically defective: grotesques, cripples, and cannibals.

Alternatively, in a naturalistic universe, monsters may be social misfits. Not only serial killers, sadists, and psychopaths, but also any group that is unconventional, or “other,” or is vilified or ostracized by the dominant social group (e. g., a community or a nation), examples of whom, historically, include homosexuals, Romani people, “savage” “Indians,” current or former martial enemies, cult members, and so forth.

 
Source: Public domain

Our line of inquiry leads, at last, a question and a conclusion. First, what happens when we run out of monsters? As our ideas of the monstrous change, monsters lose their monstrosity: homosexuals, Romani people, Native Americans, the nations that joined together as World War II's Axis powers, members of religious organizations once condemned as “cults” and “sects” have, today, become acceptable. Their members are no longer monsters. As the pool of candidates for monstrosity shrinks, what shall become of the very idea of monstrosity itself? Who will become the monsters of the future, when all the monsters of the present and the past are no longer considered monstrous?

 
Source: Public domain

 The answer to this question, it seems, is that we shall be left with the few actions that are universally condemned, that are unacceptable in all lands, everywhere. We might list among such behaviors incest, rape, premeditated murder that is unsanctioned by the state (that is not, in effect, condoned as a necessary wartime activity), child abuse, and, perhaps, cannibalism, which leaves, as monsters, the incestuous lover, the rapist, the murderer, the child abuser, and the cannibal. These could be the only monsters that remain in the future.

Source: Public domain

But they won't be. Here's why: horror is a type of fantasy fiction. As such, it includes characters, actions, places, causes, motives, and purposes that are unacceptable in more realistic fiction or drama. There is room for demons and witches, alongside werewolves and vampires, as well as the monsters embodying truly universally condemned behaviors and the people (or characters) who perform them. For this reason, horror fiction will never be without the monsters of old, even if, metaphysically, epistemologically, scientifically, and otherwise, they have long ago worn out their welcome. Fantasy has had, has, and always will have a home for them.

Meanwhile, however, the history of horror fiction has provided a way to identify threats that, rightly or wrongly, dominant societies have considered dangerous to their welfare or survival, and these threats, once they are seen as no longer threatening, have likewise shown what perceived menaces, in the final analysis, are not dangerous to social welfare, just as they identify the true menaces, the true monsters, that are condemned not just her or there for a time, but everywhere, at all times.


Sunday, March 14, 2021

Top 10 Wilderness Horror Movies Based On Horrific True Stories: Introduction

 Copyright 2021 by Gary Pullman




In the wilderness, we have little control over our surroundings, and, whether a provincial park, a rain forest, a crocodile-infested area along a flooded river, or another forbidding location, our environment can be hostile, dangerous, or even deadly.

Trees obscure lines of sight; darkness impedes vision; sounds in the darkness seem ominous. Especially in remote locations, the wilderness isolates us, cutting us off from civilization and the assistance that social institutions and government agencies could otherwise provide. No ambulances, fire trucks, or police cruisers are standing by; no emergency telephone operators await our calls; no infrastructure of highways, hospitals, and other resources is available.

In movies that combine horror with wilderness environments, characters are likewise vulnerable and helpless. They are alone, in the dark, among wild animals or other threats. They may find themselves in the presence of killers, some of whom could be family members or friends. These 10 wilderness horror movies based on horrific true stories may make us think twice about power outages, camping, traveling, or even staying home alone.

The listicle for which the above paragraphs are the introduction appears on Listverse.

 

Wednesday, April 8, 2020

Hungry Again: A Review of Sult, a Short Horror Film

Copyright 2020 by Gary L. Pullman


Sult (2018), a Norwegian short erotic horror film runs about seven minutes and thirty-six minutes (not counting the credits that roll as the end of the action). In English, the movie's title is Hunger. A brunette hairstylist, Vera (Sarah-Stephanie Skjoldevik) has an appetite for an aloof blonde, Suzanne (Marianne Lindbeck), but Vera's love, if not her passion, is unrequited. However, Suzanne does seem attracted to brunettes: the woman with whom she cheats on Vera is also a dark-haired beauty.


The film starts in the present. It's Friday, and Vera joins Suzanne in a booth in a bar. Suzanne wears the necklace that Vera gives her (in a flashback scene not yet shown). Suzanne does not look overjoyed to see Vera; in fact, Suzanne appears barely able to tolerate the brunette. Vera drinks a glass of wine on the rim of which is a split cherry. Then, Vera strokes Suzanne's cheek, throat, and chin, as Suzanne appears to put up with Vera's attentions, rather than to enjoy them. However, when Vera kisses Suzanne, the women exchange a series of additional kisses, during which Suzanne, becoming aroused, slips the tip of her tongue into Vera's mouth. Reaching behind her own back, Vera removes a pair of scissors from her waistband. Biting Suzanne's tongue, Vera snips the tip of it off with her scissors, and Suzanne falls back, against the seat in the booth, a bloody mess, in pain, disbelief, and horror.


During a flashback, Vera is at home. It's Tuesday, and she prepares for her date with Suzanne. Later, they play billiards, and Suzanne wins. Afterward, Vera gives Suzanne a necklace—the same one the blonde wears in the bar in the film's opening scene. However, Vera seems indifferent about the gift—she even rolls her eyes as Vera fastens it about her neck—and, indeed, Suzanne seems to care nothing for Vera's love for her. The next day, Vera visits Suzanne's modest apartment, where the brunette sees Suzanne kissing and caressing another woman, who is also a brunette. On Thursday, while styling a client's hair, Vera cuts her finger, which seems to suggest the revenge she takes upon Suzanne.

Back in the present, watching Suzanne bleed and shudder, Vera, now shows the same indifference toward Suzanne's pain and horror as Suzanne had earlier shown concerning Vera's gift. After retrieving the necklace she'd given Suzanne, Vera takes the tip of Suzanne's tongue from Suzanne's bloody hand, inserts the severed piece of the appendage into her own mouth, chews, and swallows, before abandoning Suzanne, who continues to bleed and shudder in the booth.


Sult is a revenge film, but there is a bit more to the interpersonal dynamics between Vera and Suzanne than simply courtship. When she meets Suzanne in the bar, Vera wears a black leather outfit that suggests a penchant on her part for BDSM. In a stereotype dating from pulp fiction lesbian erotica, Vera's hair color and dress characterize her as a dominant, or top, while Suzanne's contrasting blonde locks identify her as a submissive, or bottom. Throughout the film Vera displays her dominance over Suzanne. She makes Suzanne wait for her to arrive at the bar. Vera always initiates the action between them. Vera gazes upon Suzanne as though the blonde is a prized possession, rather than a person. Vera bestows a gift upon Suzanne, which identifies the blonde as the recipient of Vera's generosity.

Suzanne maintains a relationship with Vera, but it is a superficial one. She tolerates Vera, but she does not love her. She waits for her. She endures Vera's kisses and caresses, but she never initiates the intimacy between them, and she does not appear to treasure the gift of the necklace. She accepts it the same was that she tolerates Vera, with aloofness, with coolness, with indifference. She even expresses her disdain by rolling her eyes as Vera fastens the clasp of the necklace about her lover's neck. There is the suggestion, in Vera's large, luxurious apartment, in her clothing, in her gift, and in her bearing, of a woman who has money, but she is a controlled, as well as a controlling, mistress: she wears tight, restrictive clothing—the leather outfit and the corset into which she laces herself quite tightly as she prepares for her date with Suzanne.

It is because of Vera's money, rather than for Vera herself, perhaps, that Suzanne unenthusiastically tolerates Vera and her romantic inclinations. It is clear, though, that Suzanne does not love Vera, despite the occasional passion that Vera's lovemaking ignites in Suzanne.


Certainly, Vera is not Suzanne's only paramour. Suzanne embraces, kisses, and caresses the woman in her own apartment, and, although Vera later watches Suzanne grope and be groped by another woman—a brunette, like Vera herself—and pleasures herself, it is clear that Vera does not like sharing Suzanne with someone else.


Suzanne's intimate interaction with the other woman also suggests that Suzanne is not exclusively submissive, for, in these interactions, Suzanne not only takes the lead, but she treats her lover in a manner similar to the one in which Vera treats Suzanne herself: Suzanne, in these interactions, is the dominant person. With Vera, she reverses this role, albeit reluctantly. Suzanne, like Vera, appears to be a naturally dominant person. If such is the case, she may well resent submitting to Vera, which could explain Suzanne's reluctance and indifference to her playing the role of the submissive participant in her relationship with Vera.


It is when Vera accidentally cuts herself while styling another woman's hair—and a blonde woman, like Suzanne, at that—that Vera conceives her plan to cut off the tip of Suzanne's tongue. She will punish Suzanne's infidelity. She will hurt Suzanne, as Vera has just hurt herself. Indeed, the same pair of scissors with which she accidentally cut her own finger become the instrument with which she severs Suzanne's tongue.


The tongue is an instrument of taste. It is an instrument of communication, helping to form words. The lips resemble the labia, and, in lesbian lovemaking, the lips are often a primary instrument in providing pleasure for one's lover—in Suzanne's case, Vera. However, Suzanne has betrayed Vera with her lips and her tongue, kissing other women, women with whom Suzanne takes the lead, acting as the initiator, conducting herself in an aggressive, dominant manner.

By cutting off the tip of Suzanne's tongue, Vera mutilates her, degrading Suzanne's beauty while eliminating or severely reducing Suzanne's ability to provide erotic pleasure to other lovers. In a sense, by this act, Vera claims Suzanne as her own. However, she does so only to abandon her, to leave her moaning in horror and pain, shuddering and bloody. Henceforth, if she survives, Suzanne will be less beautiful and less able to attract and please other women.

The “hunger” that Vera feels for Suzanne is sexual, but it is also psychological. Vera wants Suzanne both physically and emotionally. Vera wants to dominate Suzanne, body and soul, When Suzanne refuses to give Vera what she wants most—her autonomy, her freedom, her will, her very existence—Vera takes it. Courtship becomes assault, physical, sexual, and emotional.

 
In certain societies, consuming part of a vanquished enemy's body—usually, the heart—indicates that the consumer has ingested the foe's courage, literally taking it into himself, so that the enemy's attribute becomes an attribute of the vanquishing hero himself. By eating the tip of Suzanne's tongue, Vera symbolically takes into herself Suzanne's own beauty and passion; Suzanne's characteristics become Vera's own. It is the final act of dominance, of control, of possession.

The question is, Does the cannibalistic act satisfy Vera's hunger? Can such a hunger ever be satisfied? Will Vera, at some time in the future, become hungry again?

Wednesday, March 25, 2020

The Humor of Horror (Or Is It the Horror of Humor?), Part 2

Copyright 2020 by Gary L. Pullman

Charles Addams bases most of his cartoons on a family of monsters that not only look human, but also often act like ordinary, typical people. The humor of his work derives, in large part, from his depiction of ordinary human behavior as being, in some way, eccentric, grotesque, or outrageous. Often, however, there is an additional element that makes a particular cartoon in his oeuvre unique.

Sometimes, only a thin line separates fantasy from reality. For example, despite steady scientific progress and technological innovations such as space satellites, computers, and the Internet, many people, even today, embrace an essentially medieval worldview. The possibility, in fiction, if nowhere else, of both supernatural and natural states of existence allows the opportunity for what Tzvetan Todorov calls the “fantastic,” the “marvelous,” and the “uncanny.”

According to Todorov, the fantastic exists only if seemingly inexplicable phenomena remain inexplicable—that is, if they cannot be resolved as being either marvelous or uncanny. A phenomenon is marvelous if it defies rational and scientific explanation; it is uncanny if, although strange, it can be explained by either reason or science. For example, some contend that Henry James's novella The Turn of the Screw is fantastic, while H. G. Wells's short story is uncanny and Stephen King's short story “1408” is marvelous.

Whether Addams was aware of Todorov's paradigm or not, his drawing of stone gargoyles atop a balcony's wall and the shock of a woman who, gazing upward while her companions photograph the carved monsters, sees the shadow of a flying gargoyle on the wall above, fits perfectly into Todorov's scheme. Into the world of the ordinary, the marvelous appears, for the statue cannot be explained as one of the gargoyles on the wall. Its shape does not match any of those of the statues, none of the statues is detached from the wall, and the shadow is so situated that no unseen statue among the others could cast it. Therefore, the existence of the statues cannot itself explain the presence of the shadow. In Todorov's terms, the cartoon seems implies a marvelous resolution of the apparently fantastic.


Another of Addams's cartoons reflects the criticism of the homogenized sameness of some suburban housing tracts that Malvina Reynolds popular song “Little Boxes” also satirizes:

Little boxes on the hillside,
Little boxes made of ticky tacky,
Little boxes on the hillside,
Little boxes all the same.
There's a green one and a pink one
And a blue one and a yellow one,
And they're all made out of ticky tacky
And they all look just the same.

According to Charles H. Smith and Nancy Schimmel, Pete Seeger Reynolds said, “as she drove through Daly City, . . . Bud, take the wheel. I feel a song coming on.”

However, Addams's cartoon suggests more. The houses, indeed, “look just the same” as one another, but the residents differ considerably—and strangely. Each is bizarre but individual; each is “different” in his or her own way, yet each is regarded as normal by both him- or herself and by his or her spouse and child. Each also appears content and confident and seems to have positive self-esteem.


The first figure, at the left of the drawing, initially catches the viewer's attention, which is not surprising, since he is the largest and we are taught, in the United States, among other nations, to read from left to right. Once we notice his difference—or differences (he has three eyes, two noses, and two mouths—we may turn our gaze to the others who, like him, seem to be off to work, as their wives and children (one each to a couple), standing at their respective doorsteps, bid them farewell.


The second figure is portly. Doffing his hat, as the first figure does, he turns to face his family. His wife smiles and waves; his son waves. The gentleman wears a sports jacket, tie, and slacks, but his feet are bare, revealing sharp, pointed toes that match those of his sharp, pointed fingers.


The third figure is tiny, but game; undaunted by the rolled newspaper under his arm, which is half his own size, he looks over his shoulder, as he waves goodbye to his normal-size wife and son, who wave back.


Next, an obese man performs the same action as his neighbors, waving at his family as he departs for his day at work.


The next figure is a human octopus, with eight arms and no legs. As he shuffles down his walk, he doffs his hat to his wife and child, his wife returning his wave.


The final figure shown in the cartoon is tall and extremely thin, and he doesn't look back at his wife and child as he makes his way out of their front yard, but he has doffed his hat.

Although all the houses are identical, down to the tapered conical shrubs flanking their front doors, as are all the wives and children, the male residents differ a good deal from one another. Their wives and children seem to be exhausted by their roles; they are not individual persons but, each and all, The Wife and The Child. The horror of the cartoon comes from the sameness of the domestic lives the women and children—and, yes, the men—live. Despite the fact that the male characters are distinguished by their appearance, they live much the same lives as their wives, who look identical to one another.

The way of life, in identical houses on identical lots, and the identical papers carried by the men, who, despite their apparent individuality, live in the same type of houses, dress in a similar costume of coat, tie, slacks, and (except in the case of the figure with the sharp, pointed feet and the octopus man) shoes are what makes the characters in the cartoon as much the same as their houses and their families. A strict conformity to standard mores and social expectations are the horrors that have made everyone the same, even when significant differences exist, at least superficially.

Repetition is the technique that reveals the theme of Addams's cartoon. In and of itself, some find repetition eerie, especially when its reiterations seem unending. When such repetition is combined with a hard-and-fast conformity to rigid social conventions, its demonstration of the effects of such dehumanization is horrific, indeed, despite the humorous situation Addams's cartoon depicts. 

A third Addams cartoon exhibits a bit of ethnocentricity, the valuing of a another culture by the standards of one's own culture.


As a party of four black men wearing loincloths sit or stand about a huge cauldron at the edge of a bamboo forest in the background, one of them stirring its contents with a stick, a woman of their tribe, naked but for a string of beads around her neck, bends forward at the waist to offer a white man in khakis a bowl of food, presumably from the cauldron. A shelf below the thatched roof of a nearby hut displays four human skulls, seeming to suggest that the tribe are cannibals. Her guest grimaces in disgust, refusing to accept the bowl, which prompts the woman to say, as a parent might remonstrate with a stubborn and unreasonable child, “How do you know you don't like it if you won't even try it?”

The cartoon's readers may also find the idea of eating human flesh to be repulsive for the same reason that the disgusted man to whom the bowl is offered does. He need not sample the food to find it objectionable; he accepts his own culture's taboo against cannibalism as justified. In short, he finds human flesh, as food, obnoxious on principle. There is no need to “try” the dish to determine whether he would enjoy it.

From the native woman's perspective, her guest is being childish. She finds his position to be unreasonable. Experience, she suggests, should be the test of approval or disapproval. From her standpoint, he should “try” the meal; from his, eating human flesh is simply unthinkable.

By juxtaposing the standards of conduct dictated by two societies that differ sharply from one another, Addams suggests that some horrors are horrible only because taboos make them so. If one were a member of the woman's culture, he or she would find her guest's refusal to even “try” the dish she offers him—an affront to her people's hospitality—as rude as it is incomprehensible. If a member of his culture, one would find her offer of such a meal unenlightened at best and as horrific in any case.

As seen from the perspective of the man in khakis, the humor of the cartoon depends upon the reader's acceptance of the Western taboo against cannibalism, which makes the woman's chiding of him, as if he were a child, humorous because of the patent incongruity of it.

In a second reading of the cartoon, its humor depends upon seeing the guest, a grown man, acting in a petulant, childish, rude, and thoroughly unreasonable manner. If there is nothing intrinsically wrong with eating human flesh, he is the stubborn, unreasonable child she thinks he is.

Finally, the cartoon can also be seen as a satirical comment on the nature of morality itself, if morality is viewed as relative and ethnocentric, rather than as absolute and universal.

Wednesday, September 5, 2018

Horror Fiction: The Appeal of Physiological Needs

Copyright 2018 by Gary L. Pullman


The last of the fifteen basic needs Jib Fowles identifies in Mass Advertising as Social Forecast are the set of physiological needs, such as eating, sleeping, and drinking. (Although these needs include the need for sex, Fowles treats sex separately.)


In restaurants' advertisements, Fowles observes, “The art of photographing food and drink is so advanced . . . the crab meat in the Red Lobster restaurant ads can start us salivating, the Quarterpounder can almost be smelled, the liquor in the glass glows invitingly imbibe, these ads scream.”

Horror fiction is quite that obsessed with depicting food and drink, and the fare which this genre's short stories, novels, and movies features, which includes such delicacies as human flesh and blood, isn't nearly as delectable as crab meat and beef.


Horror often obtains its effects by perverting the normal order of things. By depicting substances that society prohibits people from eating or drinking as food or beverages, horror fiction generates fear and disgust. A reader or moviegoer is not apt to fear eating beef or pork and vegetables or drinking wine, milk, or a soft drink, because society recognizes and accepts these items as legitimate foods (with the exception of vegans and vegetarians, for whom such products, regarded as food or drink, might well be regarded with horror).


Although cannibalism has been practiced in extreme situations by members technologically advanced societies, as during the ill-fated Donner expedition, and until relatively recent times by certain tribes, in general, the consumption of human flesh and blood is not only taboo but also regarded as abhorrent. Consequently, describing or depicting cannibal tribes or families indulging in this practice evokes horror among readers or viewers. Indeed, horror movies involving cannibalism have been roundly censored or banned outright by numerous countries. One in particular, Cannibal Holocaust (1980) was banned at one time or another in Iceland, New Zealand, and Singapore.


Nevertheless, cannibalism has been featured in over 330 films, many of them in the horror genre, including, most recently, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning (2006) and the Wrong Turn series of films (2003-2014).


Vampires thrive on blood, often imbibing it directly from the wounds their fangs open in the necks of their human prey. The undead are a staple among horror story villains, appearing in such novels as John William Polidori's The Vampyre (1819), Varney the Vampire (1847), Alexandre Dumas's The Pale Lady (1849), Sheridan le Fanu's Carmilla (1872), Bram Stoker's Dracula (1897), Richard Matheson's I Am Legend (1954), Stephen King's 'Salem's Lot (1975), Anne Rice's Interview with the Vampire (1976), Whitley Strieber's The Hunger (1981), Paul Wilson's The Keep (1981), Robert McCammon's They Thirst (1981), John Skipp and Craig Spector's The Light at the End (1986), Poppy Z. Brite's Lost Souls (1992), and many others. In addition, such heavyweights as Samuel Taylor Coleridge (Christabel [1816]) and Lord Byron (The Giaour [1813]) penned narrative poems featuring vampires, and nearly fifty series of novels concerning vampires have been published.

In horror fiction, the appeal of physiological needs can also be perverted by the manner in which such foods are produced and the cost—in the coin of moral decadence, social degeneration, physical suffering, and emotional trauma—of producing them. Here are a couple of examples.


Soylent Green (1973) takes place in the wake of worldwide ecological decline, overpopulation, and unemployment. People rely on Soylent Green, green wafers produced from “high-energy plankton” harvested from the ocean. When Detective Frank Thorn of the New York Police Department investigates the murder of his friend, Police Analyst Solomon “Sol” Roth, he discovers that the wafers are no longer made from plankton, but from human corpses. At the end of the film, having been wounded during a fight with Sol's killer, the police analyst's bodyguard, tab Fielding, and others, as he is being taken away on a stretcher, Thorn cries, “Soylent Green is people!”


The Stuff (1985), part science fiction, part satire, and part horror film, is based on director Larry Cohen's original story, which, he says, was inspired by his distaste for “the consumerism and corporate greed found in our country and the damaging products that were being sold.” In particular, he says, he was concerned about both “foods being pulled off the market because they were hazardous to people’s health” and by “the sheer volume of junk food we consume every day.” In the movie, a delicious, no-calorie, addictive white substance pours out of the ground. Miners discover it and market it, and American consumers can't get enough of The Stuff. Unfortunately, the substance is alive, and it's a parasite. Taking over its hosts' brains, it reduces them to a zombie-like state and consumes them from within. At the end of the film, The Stuff's owners are forced to eat their product, as FBI agent David “Mo” Rutherford asks, “Are you eating it, or is it eating you?


Horror novels and movies have also appealed to the need for sleep. The movie Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) and Stephen King's novel Insomnia (1994) are two memorable examples.


Adapted from Jack Finney's 1954 science fiction novel The Body Snatchers, the 1956 half-science fiction, half-horror movie classic, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, features extraterrestrial seed pods that duplicate and replace humans while the victims sleep. The “invasion” spreads from town to town, until Dr. Hill, a psychiatrist, alerts authorities, who seek to contain the invasion. 



According to film critic Leonard Maltin, critics generally regard the movie as an allegory for the U. S. Senate's hearings on communism under Senator Joseph McCarthy during the late 1940s and 1950s. According to this view, the sleep during which the invaders act could symbolize unawareness of or indifference to dangerous social and political realities or blindness to one's own paranoia about dehumanizing social and political forces more powerful than oneself.


In Insomnia, retiree Ralph Roberts develops insomnia. Sleeping less and less each night, he begins to see auras around people and “little bald doctors,” becoming convinced that the “doctors” actually exist, albeit in another dimension. In this alternate universe, two cosmic patterns, The Purpose and The Random govern affairs, the “doctors” working for The Purpose to murder people when “their time” to die is at hand. With Ed Deepneau as his agent, The Crimson King, an inhabitant of the other dimension, seeks to disrupt the equilibrium between The Purpose and The Random. Roberts, recruited by The Purpose, battles Deepneau. Amid the details of the confused and confusing plot, King targets anti-abortion protesters. The novel is pretty much another of King's many chaotic messes, and it's hard to understand how the book was nominated for a 1994 Bram Stoker Award (or maybe not; see my series of posts on the award.) In King's novel, sleep—or maybe it's sleep deprivation—becomes something like an altered state of consciousness.

Physiological needs have long supplied horror authors and filmmakers with a number of topics related to food, drink, and sleep, and it's likely that this set of needs will continue to do so, long into the future.

Friday, August 17, 2018

Horror Fiction: The Appeal of the Need to Aggress

Copyright 2018 by Gary L. Pullman


According to communications professor Jib Fowles, we all have the need to aggress, or to be aggressive. He attributes this need to the pent-up frustrations and tensions of everyday life. Typically, people repress the impulse to act aggressively, as society frowns upon eruptions of violence. We are taught to use our words, rather than our fists (or knives or guns). For advertisers, appeals to the need to aggress can backfire, Fowles warns, causing potential consumers to “turn against what is being sold.” Therefore, advertisements often substitute gestures (a raised middle finger, sarcastic “gibes,” or the insistence of getting “the last word in”).




Horror movie directors don't need to be quite as sensitive to alienating their audiences, although even they are not granted total license. In the United Kingdom (UK) and elsewhere, Cannibal Holocaust was banned for its extreme violence. The UK and other countries have also banned The Human Centipede, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The Cemator, Peeping Tom (aka Le Voyeur), Friday the 13th, Dead and Buried, The House on the Edge of the Park, The Devils, Just Before Dawn, Antichrist, Nekromantic, I Spit on Your Grave, Saw VI, Hell of the Living Dead, The Return of the Living Dead, Halloween, Land of the Dead, and Evil Dead. Although some of these films were banned for legal reasons (e. g., obscenity), religious (e. g., blasphemy), or political reasons (e. g., unflattering depictions of a particular regime), most were banned because of the extreme violence of their contents. In particular, the slasher film is often cited by feminists and others as misogynistic, sexist, and chauvinistic, since the victims are mostly, if not exclusively, women and the serial killer is almost always a male who kills his prey using a knife or other “phallic” weapon.




On the other side of the coin, critics who defend even extreme violence in cinema and other forms of fiction, such as novels, contend that such displays or descriptions of violence provide an emotional outlet for the impulse to injure or kill, helping people to vent these antisocial and dangerous emotions. Aristotle is one of the earliest critics to argue a similar point in his Poetics's theory that drama promotes catharsis.




Reading horror novels or watching horror movies has been shown to cause physiological responses, such as an increase in respiration and heartbeat, muscle tension, elevated cortisol levels (cortisol is the 'stress hormone”), increased eye movement, a “spike: in adrenaline levels, and a release of dopamine. Most likely, these responses are associated with the fight-or-flight impulse. If we believe that we can eliminate a perceived threat, we will fight; otherwise, we will take flight. Our physiological responses to fear energize and otherwise equip us to take either action.

In a psychological and aesthetic context, some believe that these physiological responses may be a reason that readers and audiences enjoy being frightened. At the same time, theorists believe, readers and audiences are secure in the knowledge that the events unfolding on the page or the screen are purely imaginary, so there is no existential threat to them.

In any case, it seems clear that the appeal of horror fiction lies, in part to its appeal to the need to aggress that everyone feels but, fortunately, few act upon and fewer still to the degree shown in the most violent horror films or described in the pages of the most ferocious horror novels.

Tuesday, August 24, 2010

Shirley Jackson: Horror as a Slice of Life

Copyright 2010 by Gary L. Pullman

I am reading The Lottery and Other Stories by Shirley Jackson, and, as I do so, I am struck, again and again, by the strong similarity between her style and that of Flannery O’Connor’s. There is a directness to their sentences, a no-nonsense, straightforward cadence that marches resolutely forward, even as it describes and narrates unlikely stories typically involving grotesque characters. Despite the improbable tales and the fantastic characters, Jackson’s narratives are frequently slice-of-life stories, or narratives that involve mere segments of their characters’ lives without exposition, with little overt action, with minimal conflict, and with an inconclusive denouement. Her stories start in media res, characterizing their protagonists and antagonists as they go, seemingly on the fly. The incongruity, and, often, the irony, that results from this bare-bones approach in which realistic portrayal is juxtaposed to, or is the vehicle for, the grotesque and eccentric, is jarring. To get a sense of the meaning of any of Jackson’s stories, one must reread them, usually several times. The reward for one’s time and effort, however, is well worth the trouble.

Since most of her stories start, progress, and end the same way, an analysis of one is a sufficient introduction to Jackson’s method. I choose to illustrate her approach with an examination of “Trial By Combat,” which originally appeared, in 1944, in The New Yorker.
The plot is deceptively simple. Emily Johnson, a young woman working in New York City, while her husband is away in the Army, possibly at war, lives in a rooming house, where, during the past two weeks of her six-weeks’ residence to date, she begins to notice that someone is pilfering her belongings. Handkerchiefs, costume jewelry, perfume, and “a set of china dogs” have disappeared from her room.

One day, when she is returning to her room from the roof, where she has been sunning herself, she sees “someone come out of her room and go down the stairs,” and Emily recognizes her “visitor” as her downstairs neighbor, Mrs. Allen. (It is “an old house,”wherein the tenants’ skeleton keys fit one another’s, as well as their own, rooms.) Emily goes to Mrs. Allen’s room, where the two women have a cordial conversation about their respective husbands and their fondness for flowers and plants before Emily makes oblique references to someone’s having come repeatedly into her room and pilfered her belongings, declaring that the trespassing and theft “has to stop” or she will be obliged to “do something about it.”

Emily sees that Mrs. Allen’s room is almost identical to her own in its furnishings: “the same narrow bed with the tan cover, the same maple dresser and armchair; the closet. . . on the opposite side of the room, but [with] the window. . . in the same relative position” (42). Although Mrs. Allen is twice her own age, the widow’s late husband, “dead for nearly five years,” was a soldier. The couple was childless, although photographs of “several” children cluster about his photograph, his “nephews and nieces,” Mrs. Allen explains. When Emily expresses her fondness for flowers as a means of brightening her room, lamenting that they “fade so quickly,” Mrs. Allen tells her that she can prolong their color by adding an aspirin to the water so that “they last much longer” and “make a room look
. . . friendly.”

Despite her visit to Mrs. Allen’s room, the thefts continue: “The following evening, when Emily came home from work, a pair of cheap earrings was gone, along with two packages of cigarettes which had been in her dresser drawer” (45). Emily responds to these additional thefts by calling in sick to work and biding her time in her room until she hears Mrs. Allen go downstairs, at which point Emily goes to the elderly lady’s room. After looking “for a moment at the picture of Mrs. Allen’s husband,” Emily opens the top drawer of the widow’s dresser and finds her own belongings inside: “Her handkerchiefs were there, in a neat, small pile, and next to them the cigarettes and the earrings. In one corner the little china dog was sitting” (46).

Mrs. Allen returns, catching Emily in the act of rifling her drawers. And Emily tells herself, “now turn around and tell her,” but instead of accusing the widow of having stolen her belongings, Emily says that “I had a terrible headache and I came down to borrow some aspirin. . . . and when I found you were out I thought surely you wouldn’t mind if I borrowed some aspirin” (47). Mrs. Allen accepts Emily’s explanation, gives her the aspirin, and tells her that “I’ll run up later today. . . just to see how you feel” (47).
Much of the meaning of this seemingly simple, six-page story is derived from what is left unsaid rather than from what is directly stated. The similarities between Emily and Mrs. Allen bind them together. The widow is almost an older version of the protagonist, an embodiment of Emily’s own future. They both live in a rooming house, in Spartanly furnished, nearly identical rooms. Their husbands are both away--Emily’s in the Army, Mrs. Allen’s a soldier taken by death, perhaps (the story’s title suggests) as a casualty of war. They seem lonely (Mrs. Allen’s only “companion” is the Woman’s Home Companion she is reading when Emily visits her, and the widow tells the younger woman, “It’s so seldom one meets anyone really. . .nice. . . in a place like this” [42]).

The flowers and plants they purchase to “brighten up” their rooms and make them seem friendlier also suggest the loneliness and barrenness of their lives, as does Mrs. Allen’s (and, indeed, Emily’s own) childlessness, which is emphasized by the children’s photographs clustered around the dead soldier’s photograph, as if his nephews and nieces were his and Mrs. Allen’s surrogate children. As the story’s title indicates, both women have endured a “trial by combat,” and it is the commonality of their experience that appears to draw them to one another.

They lead pitiful lives, but their empathy allows them to pity each other. Moreover, both women are lonely and confide in one another that they have been eager to meet one another, which suggests that, in their misery, they seek company: “I’ve seen you, of course, several times,” Mrs. Allen tells Emily, “and thought how pleasant you looked.” Emily replies, “I’ve wanted to meet you, too” (42). Their common plight allows Emily to overlook Mrs. Allen’s thefts and to conspire with her in pretending that they are nothing more than neighbors, or even friends, not strangers, who are concerned about one another’s health and well being.

There seems to be a darker, somewhat horrific subtext to this story, too. It may be that Mrs. Allen practices a sort of symbolic cannibalism. Her kleptomania seems to be an attempt to secure for herself some of Emily’s “nice” and “pleasant” circumstances. By taking items that belong to Emily, the older widow seems intent upon becoming like Emily, at least in part, by performing a ritual similar to that of ancient and medieval warriors who ate the hearts of their vanquished foes in order to take into themselves their enemies’ courage and military prowess by literally ingesting the presumed seats of their souls. If such an interpretation is accepted (admittedly, it is controversial), the implication of Emily’s observation, addressed to Mrs. Allen, “You’ve made yours [i. e., Mrs. Allen’s room] look much nicer than mine” and Mrs. Allen’s rejoinder, “I’ve been here for three years. . . . You’ve only been here a month or so, haven’t you?” much more significant--and macabre--than this dialogue might seem otherwise. Has Mrs. Allen been stealing from other tenants’ rooms for “three years”? Are her thefts the reason that her room looks “much nicer” than Emily’s, and will Emily, who has already trespassed upon Mrs. Allen’s room, as Mrs. Allen has trespassed upon Emily’s, likewise become a kleptomaniac, whose thefts improve the appearance of her room, making it “nicer,” brighter looking, and friendlier? Will Mrs. Allen’s ways become Emily’s ways? Will the widow become the mentor and Emily the apprentice in cannibalizing the lives of other tenants, as it were, by stealing bits and pieces from their neighbors’ lives?

“Trial By Combat” is a much eerier story than the text which meets the reader’s eye, because its subtext opens itself to unusual, even grotesque, interpretations, largely because of the technique that Jackson employs in writing slice-of-life stories involving mere segments of their characters’ lives, told without exposition, with little overt action, with minimal conflict, and with an inconclusive denouement. Writers, aspiring or professional, can learn a lot by apprenticing themselves to such a master as Shirley Jackson, author of “The Lottery,” The Haunting of Hill House (which is one of the inspirations for Stephen King’s television miniseries Rose Red), and many other haunting tales.


Jackson, Shirley. The Lottery and Other Stories. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1982. Print.

Tuesday, May 18, 2010

from Formula Fiction?: An Anatomy of American Science Fiction, 1930-1940

Today’s post carries no byline because it’s really a summary of observations by Frank Cioffi, author of Formula Fiction?: An Anatomy of American Science Fiction, 1930-1940 (Greenwood Press, Westport, CT, 1982). What Cioffi notes concerning science fiction also works for horror fiction and, as he points out, for most other genres of popular literature as well.

“Status quo” science fiction. . . . opens with a conventional picture of social reality. . . . This reality is disrupted by some anomaly or change--invasion, invention, or atmospheric disturbance, for example--and most of the story involves combating or otherwise dealing with this disruption. At the story’s conclusion, the initial reality (the status quo) reasserts itself (ix). Status quo science fiction served to affirm existent reality in much the same way that other popular genres of the troubled 1930s affirmed values such as family, the love ethic, manly heroism, the American Way, and the like (ix). The “subversive” formula. . . [is] a variety of SF that comes directly out of the status quo formula and, in fact, closely resembles it. . . . In the subversive formula, the anomaly is not expelled, but somehow incorporated into society; in short, society is subverted by it (ix.) Rather than demonstrating how society snaps back to normal after any disruption, subversive science fiction depicts how society adapts to and incorporates the anomalous. . . . The anomaly is making an impact on the social structure depicted: altering it, subverting it, destroying it (x). The “other world” formula. . . Displays no explicit, representational society: conventional society is bypassed altogether in this formula, though it is of course the implied referent for the fictive world. . . . A story of the other world type might show a number of slightly confusing pictures of an entirely alien culture culminating in a revelatory scene that suggests some connection to a conventional or familiar reality, thereby shaping the protagonist’s (and reader’s) perception of the foregoing events. This formula can also be seen as a variant on the status quo or subversive type which starts from an alternative social reality. The initial “status quo” of this formula is some entirely projected fantastic world, often a version of contemporary social reality or a future evolution of it. . . . This variety emphasizes perfection. How should values be formed in the absence of a familiar cultural context? How would our world’s values look to complete outsiders? (x). The typology of 1930s SF may be used to identify most subsequent examples of the genre (xi). Instead of depicting the expulsion of the anomaly, the subversive story shows society adapting (or crumbling) in response to it (12). This anomaly’s plausibility elevates science fiction out of fantasy, and into a realm where it must be taken seriously. The way the anomaly first appears and how characters react to it determine its plausibility. The critic, however, need not make explicit connections between the story’s anomaly and actual current events (13). The first, most obvious level of analysis concerns acceptance of the anomaly by characters within the story: is the anomaly valuable or repulsive, good or bad, useful or destructive?. . . . In the third formula. . . the anomaly’s general utility vis-à-vis experiential reality has to be inferred from the author’s stance [rather than from “the interaction between the real world and the anomaly,” because “the other world structure radically departs. . . from any specific(or even slightly veiled) depiction of the author’s social/experiential milieu; its terms and events are almost entirely removed from the identifiably naturalistic” (12)] (15). After the initial reaction of experiential reality to the anomaly is discerned--either in the story itself or through the author’s stance--the reader distances him/herself (with the author) one more degree from the story, and determines whether that reaction is right or wrong. . . . Many SF stories use dramatic irony to show things about society and groups that these societies or groups themselves cannot see but which are manifestly clear to the reader (15). A banal plot can. . . be given weight--or publish ability--by injection of terms and situations ordinarily associated with serious, important matters (17). Where the scientific terms gravitate toward encompassing all society and suggest a typicality or repeatability of situation, fantasy terms would suggest an individuality or singularity, and would thrust the story into am entirely new realm--that of the supernatural (17). This ur-text. . . is of the status quo variety (17). The general methodology brought to bear on all SF formulas will essentially be the same archaeological procedure. . . : uncovering component parts (anomaly, reality, authorial stance) and looking for relationships among them that suggest meaning (17). The “classic detective story” (as defined by John G. Cawelti) takes a similar structure [to that of the status quo formula story]. Into a fairly conventional and familiar world a crime intrudes, and by the story’s conclusion, the crime is solved, and the integrity of society is reinforced (40). It even more closely resembles the “fantastic journey” variety of adventure story: the protagonist of a central group of characters journeys into the unknown or the forbidden but safely returns to the comforting, familiar world by the end of the story. Horror stories often exhibit a similar structure. The horror element is introduced into a conventional world (or sometimes arises through placement of conventional types in a horror setting such as a haunted house) and causes excitement, chills, and thrills; but finally the real world reasserts itself and order reigns (41). An ur-text. . . is formed by looking for conventional plots, heroes, conflicts, and anomalies which appear in large numbers of stories but only rarely appear all at once in any one tale. The ur-text, then, is a composite picture of the most oft-repeated and conventional features of a formula. . . . The ur-text . . . is entirely conventional, containing more clichés than a writer would ever be able to sell in one story. Conversely, no story would be able to sell without at least a good portion of these ur-text features (42). Things are uneventful. . . . People go about their business in a routine way. . . . There is a real stasis. . . and against this (often only implied) background of static reality, various characters appear who seem to be restive, driven, or obsessive--or who are sometimes simply the pawns of chance--on whom the action will focus. More often than not, the main character will e a “hero-type” of the kind usually associated with adolescent literature. Successful in many phases of endeavor, he is young, brilliant (often in scientific work), unmarried. Seldom. . . is this main character a woman. Seldom is the hero either stupid or very poor. . . . Wealth and some social status are usually accessible to him. . . because these accoutrements increase possibility, and the early part of the story must brim with the possible, the potential adventure. . . . And the more conventional the first part is, the greater the shock of anomaly (42). Onto this comfortable familiarity disruption descends. This disruption can take many forms: a breakthrough occurs in the laboratory; a freakish discovery is made by a scientific expedition; contact is established with a faraway planet. In the early 30s stories, the disruption often results from happenstance: a meteor falls; a letter or telegram arrives. . . . The familiar world of the first part crumbles almost entirely at this stage. The story focuses instead on the anomalous circumstances--the civilization found under the sea, the dangers of another planet, or the like. . . . The change can be effected in many different ways; but generally, the more severe the dislocation, the more dramatic the struggle against it, and the more heroic the act that is needed to overcome it (43). The struggle between the agent of the known reality and the anomaly can take many forms. Ordinarily, two main conflicts operate in the status quo story. First, the values, ethics, or morals embodied by the agent of reality (usually the hero) are suddenly thrust into a world in which they no longer matter. A new morality, therefore, is at least implied--particularly since survival usually ranks of paramount importance--and it always worked against the known, accepted, fairly conventional values the hero embodies. He must do any number of things to save himself--fill, bribe, appear nude before or sleep beside women he does not know. Such actions flout the code and rules he has always lived by, but are accepted actions when he finds himself among aliens, immersed in the bizarre. A second moral conflict involves the alien force’s actions. They know no ethical restrictions or guidelines o at least they don’t obey ours (43). All sorts of taboos, such as unfettered sexuality, polygamy, homosexuality, sadomasochism, incest, bestiality, cannibalism, human sacrifice, torture, and genocide, can be carried on by agents of the anomaly. Readers could devour such fare with no sense of guilt or shame because the underlying message is always the reassuring one that this behavior is wrong, the product of creatures or cultures entirely removed from the human realm. The reader could be comfortable knowing not only that such actions are being condemned, but that they are the ones that the agents of the familiar world actively works to defeat (44). The classic response to this anomaly is expulsion. Accomplished by a variety of means, the danger is averted, and the familiar world reestablishes itself at the story’s conclusion. The scientific method often establishes the real hero. . . . Conventional values work to actively oust or abandon the anomaly: pertinacity, self-awareness, love, loyalty, patriotism. Usually, opposition to the anomaly is deliberate. . . . And this expulsion of the anomaly is usually presented as the correct response, too. The themes that such stories center on--invasion, evil aliens, awful biologioes, destructive technologies--generally threaten society. The reassertion of “reality” at the story’s conclusion-no matter how it is effected--is accepted as essentially the best resolution to what was potentially an enormously threatening chain of events. In short, the status quo stories usually have a happy ending (44). There are a number of ways the status quo formula avoids being a simple reenactment of one well-worn, conventional plotline. Any established plot formula. . . always operates against the background of what could conceivably be. That is, no fulfillment of the formula or fulfillment of a contrary formula is--in the better stories--always threatened or imminent. In the status quo SF story, for example, the anomaly introduced could come very close to wreaking havoc; or reality could be so grossly altered that it would no longer be recognizable (45). Status quo stores can bypass a tedious conventionality through their depiction of social taboos (46). Another artful tack the writer of the status quo SF story can take involves creating a tension between the attractiveness of the SF anomaly and the anomaly’s potential for evil or destructiveness. A writer can spark the reader’s enthusiasm for and appreciation of an anomaly. It can seem like a perfectly good idea, a reasonable experiment, say, with intelligently planned and practical ends. Yet a small misgiving that may appear early on magnifies as the experiment and the story move toward their conclusions. Nat Schachner’s “The 100th Generation” (AS, May 1934) follows such a pattern. It concerns the eugenics experiments of a millionaire scientist, Bayley Spears, and his friend Radburn Phelps (the narrator). Spears outlines his experiment: using the sperm and ova of famous people, he plans to produce a super race. . . . [Phelps] becomes caught up in the millionaire’s enthusiasm and earnestness--and indeed the reader is caught up, too. . . . When Phelps finally does voice his objections, they seem after-the-fact, possibly even petty: he says the creatures will not have responded to environmental influences, and will be too inbred. He then distances himself from the experiment altogether, and lets Spears go to a remote island with the embryos (47-48). The tensions between the possibility of carrying out such an experiment--compressing three thousand years into twenty--and the experimental technique’s unforeseen ramifications resolves itself when Spears sends Phelps a telegram requesting that the remote island be immediately blown up. The experiment apparently ended in failure. Schachner consciously creates an interesting tension: when Phelps lands on the island, the first creature he sees is a beautiful woman, seemingly the ideal result of eugenic experimentation. Why blow up the island?. . . . She [Una] proves, however, to be the exception to the rule, and the rest of the hundredth generation are so monstrous that they plan to vivisect the landing party. Fortunately, this plan fails. Reality reestablishes itself in the form of a romance that springs up between Phelps’s son and Una. Throughout, Schachner skillfully divides the reader’s feeling between an enthusiasm for the experiment--reified fully in the person of Una--and fear of its terrifying failure (48). [Another story that uses this same technique is Michael Crichton’s Jurassic Park.] The attractiveness-repulsiveness dichotomy in status quo SF formulas ultimately became so central that its writers shaped the status quo story into other versions of itself. Some stories show the anomaly as entirely positive, so much so that reality (flawed as it is) cannot accept it. This pattern I called the inverted status quo. Another version, the transplanted type status quo formula, begins with an anomalous situation (such as a space flight to Andromeda) into which an even more anomalous agent intrudes (a “black hole” appears in space, for example). As the anomaly becomes more and more attractive, the desire to expel it becomes weaker: instead of chronicling the machinations of expulsion, the latter, more complex and more sophisticated status quo formulas question the necessity of such expulsion, and examine the underlying instincts and motivations for the reader’s attraction to this anomalous element (48). [Alien, It! The Terror from Beyond Space and The Thing both use “the transplanted type status quo formula” as well.] And this second anomaly forms the focus of the action and excitement in the transplanted status quo tale (57). The transplanted status quo tale usually opens with a picture of the transplanted reality. The opening phase of the story is either characterized by restiveness--the crew I anxious to dock, say, or to find excitement--or by a prevailing indolence. In both instances a sense of something about to happen pervades the opening sequences. Often a slightly distracting minor incident whets the reader’s appetite for excitement. A power failure almost occurs on board the spaceship, or one of the crew members falls ill (57). An alternative pattern starts with the depiction of the anomaly or alien that the transplanted reality will no doubt encounter, but it, too, is in either a passive or a dormant state. A. E. Van Vogt’s “opening line to “Black Destroyer” (ASF, July 1939) is an excellent example of alien dormancy: “On and on Coeurl prowled!” This is a state from which adventure will be generated, an opening that promises action and conflict. The conflict usually comes gradually rather than all at once. The anomaly is either encountered by the agents of a near-recognizable reality, or these familiar types actively seek out the anomaly (58). The anomaly itself is usually some kind of alien life form whose destructiveness and evil are gradually revealed to the crew (and to the reader) as the story unfolds. Occasionally, the life form is not overtly vile, but insidiously evil. Such a situation prolongs the reader’s tension over what portion of the anomalous situation is usual and what is threatening. Yet this variation does not really change the pattern of action. As the story moves to a climax, and the true nature of the anomaly is revealed, the interaction between it and the reality agents degenerates into some fairly conventional action sequence--fight, chase, showdown, and the like: most SF stories generally have more intriguing openings than endings (58-59). In the better transplanted status quo tale, the imagery used throughout the conflict usually suggests some easily identifiable earth-bound concern--hunger, sexuality, or work, for example--and it is finally that image pattern that suggests the meaning of the story (59). At the story’s end, order is restored, the alien or evil anomaly is thrust out, and the transplanted reality survives. . . . The Enterprise of “Star Trek” [sic] continues to “explore new world, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no man has gone before”--week after week (59). [In the transplanted reality formula] the action and characters are isolated throughout from the rest of civilization. Such a feature is apparent in sea stories, air stories, Gothic tales (especially those set in castles), and many detective stories (59). The popular form closest to the transplanted SF tale is the western (59-60). The transplanted status quo eventually evolved into the story of the alternative world, in which the focus was not so much on earth values, or earth-like personalities but on the very strange. The transplanted story is evidence of how SF writers were attempting to transcend their popular culture antecedents and find their own set of conventions and situation, ones that were not entirely analgous to those found in other forms (67).

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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