Evolution, Psychology, and Horror, Part III

Copyright 2021 by Gary L. Pullman

 

Note: This post assumes that you have seen the movie Backcountry. If you have not, Wikipedia offers a fairly detailed, accurate summary of the film's plot.

 

 Source: boomstickcomics.com

As we saw in Part I, Alex is a foil to Jen; his traits, which are opposite to those of hers, highlight Jen's traits, or “evolved adaptations,” as they are known in evolutionary psychology. But, just as Alex is Jen's foil, Brad is a foil to Alex; Brad's traits are different from those of Alex and, therefore, highlight Alex's evolved adaptations, just as Alex's traits highlight those of Jen.

Source: netflix.com

Brad appears at Alex's and Jen's campsite while Alex is away, chopping firewood. After leaving his hatched stuck in a tree trunk, Alex returns to their campsite, where he is both surprised and annoyed to see Brad. Jen tells her boyfriend that she has invited Brad, a tour guide, to have dinner with them. Brad has offered to contribute a hefty string of fish he has caught.

Source: cinemamontreal.com

From the beginning of their encounter, Brad seeks to assert his dominance over Alex. Clearly, Brad is an alpha male, and he expects to lead, not follow, even if only during the meal he shares with his hosts. A skilled woodsman, Brad is confident, competent, knowledgeable, experienced, decisive, and aggressive.

Source: dailymotion.com

During their conversation, Brad suggests that, both as a woodsman and as a man, Alex is insecure, incompetent, ignorant, inexperienced, indecisive, and passive—the opposite of Brad himself. Brad's contribution to their meal are the fish that he himself has caught. Significantly, Jen provides her and Brad's contribution, which they bought in a store. Brad's contribution was caught, live, in the wild. Theirs was purchased in a package, already prepared. Brad's fish are animals; Jen's and Alex's contribution is bloodless vegetables harvested and packaged by strangers. When Jen offers to prepare a vegetable as a side dish, Alex chooses one kind, while Brad selects another. Jen sides with Alex, but Brad orders her to prepare the vegetable he wants, not the one Alex has chosen. Diplomatically, she says she will prepare both. Alex does not challenge Brad; he lets Jen answer their guest, despite Brad's usurpation of Alex's own authority as host.

 Source: fischpott.com

Brad also implicitly insults Brad. When Brad tells him that he plans to start a landscaping business, Brad replies, in a racist statement, that he that thought “Mexicans” did that type of work. On the other hand, Brad admires Jen's profession, law, which is, in Brad's view, superior to the manual labor that Alex names as his intended vocation. Brad has a “manly” profession: he is a tour guide with expert knowledge about the park, its trails, and its flora and fauna, a man at home in the wilderness, who can fend for himself while directing others in his charge.

Brad boldly violates propriety when he stands, his back to Jen and Alex, unzips his fly, and urinates. Most men would not only object to such conduct, but be willing to come to blows with any man who presumed to do such a thing in their girlfriends' presence. Alex neither says nothing to Brad nor reacts violently. He merely looks at Jen in disgust and says something to her: “Really?”

 Powassan, Ontario, Canada. Source: Wikipedia

Brad also impugns Alex's knowledge of the park that Alex claims to know well, asking him which side of the park's waterfall someone should climb down. When Alex correctly answers, “The right side,” Brad smirks. “Good guess,” he says.

Finally, as he is about to depart, Brad asks Alex what he'd meant when Alex had said Jen's inviting him to have dinner with them might have been dangerous. When Alex demurs from answering, Brad insists. Finally, Alex tells him that Jen did not know Brad; Brad had been a stranger. As far as Jen had known, Brad might have been “a nut.” By the time Brad takes his leave, he has dominated, insulted, humiliated, defied both Alex and Jen, but especially Alex. He has also make it clear that, in a hostile or dangerous encounter with nature, he is likely to triumph or, at least, survive; audiences cannot be as certain about Alex's fate under the same circumstances.

The conflict between Alex and Brad further defines Alex, just as his relationship with Jen defines him. In both cases, Alex loses. His traits, or evolved adaptations, might serve him well in other environments, but they are unlikely to help him survive in the wild, no matter how well he thinks he knows the provincial park or the ways of the woods and its wildlife.

Next post: Evolution, Psychology, and Final Girl.

 

Nietzsche, BDSM, and Horror

 Copyright 2021 by Gary L. Pullman

Friedrich Nietzsche. Source: thefamouspeople.com

The title of this post suggests strange bedfellows, as it were. How could there be a link between the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche, bondage and discipline (BDSM), and the horror genre? The idea seems ludicrous.

At the very outset of my post, I must clarify that, when I reference Nietzsche, it is as he is misunderstood. Frequently, in the public understanding--or misunderstanding--of Nietzsche's thought, the philosopher's view is not what he actually professes. Nietzsche did not write about a depraved "superman" who defies the morality of the "herd," becoming a "superman" who exists "beyond good and evil," as a law unto himself, only so that he can do as he pleases.

Instead, Nietzsche writes of the happiness that can result from adopting the "aristocratic" values and attributes needed for such a state: wealth, strength, power, and being true to oneself. If one did not adopt such values and attributes, he would become a "slave" by virtue of his poverty, weakness, and powerlessness. However, by adopting and living according to aristocratic values and by using aristocratic attributes, he could become an exceptional person, a "superman," pursuing his own interests and achieving greatness in such pursuits. 

 Alexander the Great. Source: Wikiquote.org

The Nietzschean superman is not Hitler, but Alexander the Great; not Caligula, but Shakespeare; not Nero, but Galileo. The superman is creative, not destructive; a contributor to civilization, not a leech; or, in modern-day terms, a producer, not a consumer.

In the popular understanding (misunderstanding) of the Nietzschean superman, this individual is not an individual who rises to the top of a profession and transforms his world (and, quite possibly, the future world), but a petty-minded, self-absorbed, tyrannical fool who is fortunate to be stronger, both in body and in will, to others and who is able, therefore, to dominate others, a person for whom right is determined by might. With this misunderstanding of the Nietzschean superman in mind, the (perverted) superman's link, in the popular mind, with both the "master" or "dominant" participant in a BDSM relationship and the monster of horror fiction is, perhaps, clear.

 Vacuum bed. Source: Wikimedia Commons

Except to note that many are designed to exalt the dominant while humiliating the submissive participant, we need not delve deeply into the practices associated with BDSM. However, it is necessary, it seems, to characterize the dominant participant in such activities. A survey of BDSM fare shows such a person to be physically powerful, dominant (socially and otherwise), controlling, aggressive, authoritative, often cruel, sometimes merciless, usually narcissistic, and tyrannical. He (or she) tends to prey on others who are physically weaker, submissive, easily controlled, passive, meek, kind or gentle, merciful, altruistic or "giving," and obsequious.

Let's compare the BDSM "master" with human monsters of horror fiction.

 Anthony Hopkins (aka Hannibal Lecter). Source: nl.wikipedia.org

Hannibal Lecter doesn't just kill his quarry; he often eats their corpses afterward, regarding them as much as food as prey. He is thought to be based on Alfredo Balli Trevino, a homosexual Mexican physician-become-serial killer who murdered and mutilated his lover and killed and cut up several hitchhikers.

 Hannibal Lecter (aka Anthony Hopkins). Source en.wikipedia.org

Thomas Harris's Hannibal Lecter is a cannibalistic serial killer. Intelligent, suave and sophisticated, he cannot abide rude people, for whom, because of their behavior, he has, quite literally, developed a taste. In various of Harris's novels, Lecter is described as a "sociopath," a "monster" who witnessed his sister Mischa being murdered and eaten.

In short, Lecter sounds very much like the mistaken, popular view of the Nietzschean superman who defies the principles of conventional morality, acts strictly for pleasure's sake, delights in dominating others, and is, if not physically superior to others, certainly their intellectual better.

Despite his sophistication and his having become a physician, he, nevertheless, wastes his life in pursuing objectives unworthy of a true Nietzschean superman, who finds happiness in pursuing worthy goals that result in contributions to culture, rather than seeking merely to destroy his inferiors.

Let's examine one other instance of a human "monster," this time one that is featured exclusively in horror films. (Although Lecter appears in movies, too, our analysis is based on his appearance in Harris's novels.)

 John Kramer (aka "Jigsaw"). Source: ru.wikipedia.org

In a sense, John Kramer (aka "Jigsaw"), the villain of the Saw franchise, tests his victims to see whether they possess the superman's will to power. Do they have the attributes to survive? To determine whether they have the right stuff, Kramer subjects his captives to a series of tests which cause them to inflict pain on others (as the dominant participant in a BDSM relationship may often do) or on themselves (as a submissive person who is oriented toward masochism frequently does).

Saw trap: en.wikipedia.org

The tests, furthermore, are meant to represent the "flaws" Kramer sees in his victims' characters. Those who fail his tests die, because, in Kramer's view, they lack "the survival instinct," which Nietzsche would see as preliminary and necessary to the will to power. Ultimately, he hopes the survivors--those who "pass" his bizarre tests--will learn to appreciate their existence and fully embrace life.

Theatrical release poster. Source: wn.wikipedia.org
 

Kramer's narcissism is revealed in his belief that he can and should play God, not only testing his captives' mettle, but also determining, by such tests, who should live and who should die. Indeed, he believes he is doing his victims a favor by imparting a great (but, in reality, a rather mundane) truth: life has great value and should be not only enjoyed, but also fully appreciated.

His quest to impart this simple lesson, he believes, justifies his controlling, aggressive, authoritative, often cruel, sometimes merciless, usually narcissistic, and tyrannical behavior toward those whom he would instruct. It also justifies his infliction of pain on them or, as the case may be, their infliction of pain on others. Although, possessed of a Messiah complex, he believes himself to be a sort of superman, Kramer is, instead, a failed psychopath.

Part of the appeal, in horror, of the misinterpreted Nietzschean superman is his amoral, dominant, and powerful existence. As so conceived, he is wild, "beyond good and evil," a force to be reckoned with, without scruples, qualms, or conscience. He is a bestial human, intelligent but ferocious; rational, but ferocious; subjective, but cruel. He will inflict pain. He will injure, He will kill. He may even cannibalize his victims' remains. At the same time, he is capable of communicating, of enjoying life on his own terms, of doing as he will, whenever and wherever and to whomever he chooses. His victims, on the other hand, are merely things, their humanity denied, whom he uses as he desires, as he pleases, as he needs. They are foils, whose puny opposing traits and values highlight his own superior attributes and values. 

In the safety of their homes or that of movie theaters, audiences enjoy being dehumanized; they enjoy playing the victim; they enjoy being pursued, captured, humiliated, and subjected to the will of one who is motivated only by his own need to appease his desires.

Woman kneeling and bound--BDSM. Source: Wikimedia Commons.
 

But, paradoxically, audiences often play all the roles exhibited by the characters in stories or actors on the screen or stage. They are also the monster, who dehumanizes, pursues, captures, humiliates, and subjects other, lesser men and women to their will, seeking only to appease their own sadistic or monstrous needs.

 Maitresse Francosie. Source: Wikipedia Commons.

In horror movies, we are both the victim and the victimizer, the pursuer and the pursued, the captive and the captor, the humiliated and the humiliating, the killed and the killer. With our own implicit consent, horror makes victims and monsters of us all.

The Humor of Horror (Or Is It the Horror of Humor?), Part 3

Copyright 2020 by Gary L. Pullman

Besides Gahan Wilson and Charles Addams, a third cartoonist who often finds humor in horror (or horror in humor) is James Thurber.

Thurber's cartoons often rely on implication. His artwork and captions, working together, suggest a conclusion, which Thurber leaves to his readers to infer. Thus, his work is one part of a two-way communication between himself, as artist, and his reader. Of course, in most instances, Thurber is pretty clear about the conclusion to be drawn.

His female figures often dwarf his male figures, suggesting the way his men—often husbands—see their wives. Henpecked, the submissive male characters are timid; they are careful not to offend or annoy their bigger, dominant spouses, women who could crush them by their sheer size alone.

In one cartoon, a large woman is seated on a couch with a much smaller male figure. She looks demure, with her hands folded on her lap, as she looks down at the little man beside her (whose posture makes it appear that he is about to bolt from her presence). Smiling, but looking directly at him, with a gaze that suggests the possibility of danger, if not madness, declares, “If you can keep a secret, I'll tell you how my husband died.”

Despite the fact that the body of the man beside her is turned—he has to look over his shoulder to maintain eye contact with her—and he looks as though he is about to flee for his life, his closeness to her suggests he might be a suitor, one who, perhaps, is having second thoughts about becoming involved with her. If so, is she asserting her dominance over him now, by delivering an indirect threat against his life. If she murdered her husband, as her maniacal leer and her possession of a secret concerning the cause of his death suggests, perhaps she is suggesting that the same fate could await him, should he attempt to assert his will in their relationship.

Role reversal, once again, suggests a horror that might not be apparent, the secret terror that may lie at the heart of a relationship in which one person asserts absolute dominance over another under the ever-present threat of death.

Another of Thurber's cartoons has an existentialist bent. Engaged, presumably, in a rat race, finely dressed men and women rush past each other, in opposite directions, without exchanging so much as a glance, a smile, or a greeting. Behind them, in back of a wrought-iron fence, the “DESTINATIONS” mentioned in the cartoon's caption await them in a cemetery whose headstones bear common names, such as “Bill,” “Mary,” and “Jones” or, in the distance, are altogether illegible and, therefore, anonymous. The cartoon almost begs the question, What value does life—and ambition—have when it ends in death?

Finding humor in opposites, especially those as significant as life and death or purpose and meaninglessness, can be an effective means of unearthing horror.

The 15 basic Appeals of Horror Fiction

Copyright 2018 by Gary L.Pullman

Jib Fowles helped thousands of people better understand how advertisements, print and otherwise, manipulate viewers using fifteen basic appeals to various desires, emotions, and needs. He characterized five of these needs as “needs to,” eight others are “needs for.” Generally speaking, people can satisfy “needs to” on their own, but they require the participation or, at least, the presence of others to fulfill “needs for.”

Fowles identifies these “needs to”:

The need to aggress.

The need to escape.

The need to feel safe.

The need to nurture.

The need to satisfy curiosity.

The “needs for” are:

The need for aesthetic sensations.

The need for affiliation.

The need for attention.

The need for autonomy.

The need to dominate.

The need for guidance.

The need for prominence.

The need for sex.

The fifteenth basic need is a group, the physiological needs, which include the needs for food, drink, sleep, and so forth.

His essay explains in detail each of these needs and provides several examples of each type of appeal advertisements make in promoting their products.

The same fifteen basic needs make horror novels, short stories, and movies appealing to their readers and viewers. Let's take a look at these needs, in regard to horror novels and movies, in the same order in which Fowles himself discusses these needs in relation to the appeal of advertisements, as we cut back and forth between the two analyses.

* * *

1. The Need for Sex

Only a small percentage of ads appeal to sex, because such an appeal can overwhelm the product being advertised. As Fowles says, “it is too blaring and tends to obliterate product information. Nudity in advertising has the effect of reducing brand recall.” In other words, sex and nudity are distracting, and they are more memorable than the product they supposedly promote.

Whether or not an ad containing nudity or sexual imagery actually evokes the need for sex depends on the context of the nudity or sexual images. Such an ad in Playboy magazine, aimed at men, may be an appeal to the need for sex, but one featuring a scantily dressed young woman and aimed at other young women is more likely an appeal to the need for attention.

2. The Need for Affiliation

The need for affiliation is the need to belong, to be part of a group. In a positive approach, such ads often show a person surrounded by friends or family members whose affection and loyalty are valued. Ads may also appeal to the need for affiliation by taking a negative approach and showing it as absent or as threatened” “If we don't use Scope, we'll have the 'Ugh!' Morning Breath' that causes the male and female models [in the ad] to avert their faces [from one another].” Ads also show the solutions to such problems—the products featured in the ads.

There are “several types of affiliation”: romance, courtship (dating), family togetherness, and friendship. The AT&T telephone ad that encouraged people to “reach out and touch someone” appeals to the need for affiliation.

3. The Need to Nurture.

The need to nurture is the need “to take care of small, defenseless creatures,” such as children and pets. Taking care of children and pets can involve feeding, helping, supporting, consoling, protecting, comforting, nursing, healing, and guiding them. Both men and women have the need to nurture.

4. The Need for Guidance

The need for guidance is the opposite of the need to nurture. These pitches are made by celebrities; fantasy figures (the Green Giant, Betty Crocker, Mr. Goodwrench); authority figures, real and imagined (“When E. F. Hutton talks, people listen”); or icons of “tradition or custom” or of “American history.” Kool-Aid appeals to the need for guidance through tradition, stating, “You loved it [Kool-Aid] as a kid. You trust it as a mother.”

5. The Need to Aggress

Everyone has the need to behave aggressively, to aggress. Ads that appeal to this need must be careful, in doing so, not to alienate consumers so that they do not turn “public opinion . . . against what is being sold.” Jack-in-the-Box offended customers by destroying the company's mascot, the Jack-in-the-box, until the violence was “toned down.”

6. The Need to Achieve

Ads that appeal to this need evoke the need to excel, to “accomplish something difficult” by overcoming “obstacles . . . . surpass others,” and “attain a high standard.” Athletes are often featured in such ads. However, ads may create their own “role models,” as Dewar's Scotch ads do in their profiles of successful people.

Ads based on the need to achieve often use superlatives: “best,” first,” “finest,” to suggest the “need to succeed.” Ads for sales and bargains also belong in this category, because they suggest that one has seized “an opportunity” and come “out ahead of others.”

7. The Need to Dominate

Fowles sees the need to dominate as a “craving to be powerful—perhaps omnipotent.” This need, he suggests, can be associated with “the need to . . . control one's environment' and a desire for “clout.”

Like the other needs, this one is universal, as applicable to women as it is to men.

8. The Need for Prominence.

This need, says Fowles, is related to “the need to be admired and respected, to enjoy prestige and high social status.” Wealth does not have to symbolize prominence, as Fowles points out by referencing the American Express advertisement, in which 'we learn that the prominent person is not so prominent without his American Express card.”

9. The Need for Attention.

Distinguishing the need for attention form the need for prominence, Fowles points out that the former concerns the need to be “looked up to”; the latter, to “the need to be looked at.” he cites a Brooke Shields advertisement in which the actress wears Calvin Klein jeans not so that men will pursue her, but so that she will stand out from other young women.

10. The Need for Autonomy

We tend to want to do things our own way, to be independent and to set our own tasks, according to our own agendas. “ The focus here is upon the independence and integrity of the individual,” Fowles says, and it is opposite to the need for guidance.

11. The Need to Escape.

“Escape” can be actual, literal escape or to figuratively and emotionally escape from the responsibilities and routines of everyday life. The latter type of escape is motivated by a search for pleasure and the freedom to do as we please. The need to escape can include other people besides oneself; a group can escape together as easily as a solitary individual.

12. The Need to Feel Safe

It's only natural to want to feel safe, and advertisements can appeal to this need directly, by showing models who are safe, or indirectly, by showing models who are in danger, because, even when we're at risk, we feel the need to be safe. Product durability often plays upon this need, as do references to natural ingredients.

13. The Need for Aesthetic Sensations.

“Aesthetic” refers to persons, places, or things that are beautiful or otherwise bring pleasure. Everyone has a need to see, hear, smell, taste, or touch beautiful objects, visit beautiful places, meet beautiful people, and dine on delicious food. Anything that satisfies the need for aesthetic sensations can be used to make this type of appeal.

14. The Need to Satisfy Curiosity.

This need involves “a need for information” and addresses people's natural sense of curiosity. In advertisements, Fowles says, “ Trivia, percentages, observations counter to conventional wisdom . . . all help [to] sell products,” and “any advertisement in a question-and-answer format is strumming this need.”

15. Physiological Needs.

Physiological needs are the needs of the body: food, drink, and sleep, among them. Many food advertisements make this basic appeal.

Styles

Fowles also identifies three “styles” that many advertisements employ to influence “the way a basic appeal is presented”: humor, celebrity endorsements, and “time imagery.”

Although humor can backfire, overwhelming the advertisement's message or offending people, “softer appeals” using a humorous approach can be effective.

Celebrity endorsements can backfire when celebrities behave obnoxiously or offend people, but this approach can work well; it allows famous men and women to “introduce” a sponsor's product, using one or more of the basic appeals, such as the need for guidance, the need to achieve, the need for aesthetic sensations, the need for affiliation, and the need to escape.

Time imagery can supply advertisers with historical heroes, traditions, and artwork, appealing to such needs as those for achievement, guidance, aesthetic sensations, affiliation, and escape. Nostalgia, the fond remembrance of times past, is an example of a time imagery approach.

* * *

How does Fowles's analysis pertain to horror fiction? We offer examples in upcoming posts.