Showing posts with label films. Show all posts
Showing posts with label films. Show all posts

Sunday, March 8, 2020

A Literary Critic Offers Some Tips for Writing Powerful Horror Stories, Part II

Copyright 2020 by Gary L. Pullman


In Shock Value; How a Few Eccentric Outsiders Gave Us Nightmares, Conquered Hollywood, and Invented Modern Horror (2011), Jason Zinoman offers some insights concerning John Carpenter's 1978 film Halloween.


Jason Zinoman

The movie is an example of what I refer to as an invasion movie, which I define as the invasion of an idyllic community by a corrupting, external evil (think, as a prototype, The Garden of Eden): “Halloween begins,” Zinoman writes, “with a decidedly normal, safe environment, an idyllic middle-class suburb” (178). During the course of the movie, this “familiar” setting and its “ordinary” character “turns into something ambiguous, confusing, and repulsive,” as “middle-class suburbia is [shown to be] the home of unexplainable evil” (208). However, the suburbs is not the only familiar and ordinary environment in such movies; others include “the beach, the hospital, the bedroom, the prom, the highway,” and “right next door” (208).


At the beginning of the movie, the camera views the action from the perspective of “the predator,” as the audience sees what the invisible intruder sees, but the point of view then alternates back and forth, between “the predator” and the “victim” (180). To differentiate the audience from the killer, the director, John Carpenter, shows them the killer's “knife,” which “reminds us that our perspective,” as members of the audience, “is not the same as that of the killer” (180).


Zinoman provides a couple of theories as to why female characters are more often victimized (and killed) than are their male counterparts, including the greater perceived vulnerability of female characters and the established tradition of the presence of a damsel in distress.


The pleasures of horror are more masochistic than sadistic,” he claims (181), which may be another reason for the tendency of horror movies to feature female characters as their victims. By identifying with the film's victims, rather than with its predator, the audience vicariously becomes victims themselves; if they are males, it would seem (although Zinoman does not say this) that they are also, to some extent, feminized, seeing female surrogates of themselves as vulnerable, weak, ineffective, and helpless. However, viewers, male and female alike, presumably, would also learn, through the survival of the so-called Final Girl, that young women can also be survivors, provided that they possess the personality traits it takes to go toe-to-toe with a monster and win.

Zinoman seems more interested in the nature (or lack thereof) of modern monsters than he does in the implied feminization of male audience members. He contrasts monsters past with monsters present. The former, he suggests, was “a stand-in for some anxiety, political, social, or cultural,” but the latter represent something else entirely.


For example, Zinoman contends, “[Michael] Myers doesn't represent anything . . . Myers doesn't represent the cold calculus of scientific progress or a religious conception of evil” (181), the two sources, traditionally, that are used to explain the monstrous. In the past, the monster has usually been a freak of nature (giant ants or a hostile extraterrestrial life form) (or a freak of the scientific lab [Frankenstein's monster or Mr. Hyde] or a freak, as it were, of the supernatural [the devil or a vampire).


The “New Horror” that was spawned by the likes of Dan O'Bannon, John Carpenter, Wes Craven, Tobe Hooper, William Friedkin, and others, on the other hand, is the face of nothingness. Myers is “defined,” Zinoman says, by “the absence of meaning”; it is “by emptying out all the details from the character [that] Carpenter” creates a monster that contains nothing, a monster of the void, who acts without meaning, without purpose, and “has no motive” (182-183).

Although Zinoman often provides food for thought, he is, at times, a bit Emersonian in his tantalizing vagueness and fails to follow up on some of his intriguing insights, such as the effects of sadism as a perspective and, indeed, a technique of the cinema and his insight that the presence of female characters as victims may tend to feminize male members of the audience. Both ideas are stimulating and rich in possibilities, but they are largely undeveloped. Nevertheless, after Shock Value, readers won't be the same moviegoers they were before they encountered Zinoman's highly interesting and suggestive study of “New Horror.”

Tuesday, March 12, 2019

Sources of Incongruity as Inspirations for Horror Plots

Copyright 2019 by Gary L. Pullman



I've written about movie misconceptions, bizarre explosions, Viking inventions and innovations, disciplined photojournalists, horrific acts that are legal in some countries, the first Christmas card, strange phenomena that have stumped experts, famous writers' accounts of public executions, strange and mysterious islands, Halloween pranks gone awry, an innovations coming soon to a mall near you, among many other topics.


My writing has been eclectic, to say the least, although most of my articles have been, like many of my novels and short stories, concerned with the bizarre, the grotesque, and the exceptional. In fact, the site for which I wrote most of my articles specifically requests such fare. To sell, I worked out an approach, listing sources of incongruity from which to draw ideas for such stories.


It's occurred to me that these same sources of incongruity can help writers of horror fiction develop premises for novels and short stories. Here, without further ado, is the list of my sources for incongruity, together with, by way of example, a few of the titles of the articles I derived from them.


Polarity Pendulum: going from one extreme to another: passengers who became pilots midair, lost and found objects, disasters that sparked new safety regulations. 


Prediction Regarding Everyday Life:  futuristic visions of everyday places


Recent Discovery: recently discovered animal species, recently discovered secret caches


Secrets: secret laboratories, secret caches



Incongruous Placement of Objects or Event Location: bodies at the bottoms of wells, objects found in porta potties, underwater rescues, creatures living in people's ears


Ridiculous + Sublime: elaborate gingerbread houses



Great Waste: government boodoggles


Unusal Purpose: objects made from human skulls, dioramas, dollhouses that aren't for play, items made from human corpses


Bizarre Role: bizarre positions in royal courts, stained-glass windows (with various unusual purposes)


Mysterious Phenomena: mystifying mountains, occultists, bizarre skeletons


Sophisticated Early Technology: early special effects, antique prostheses


Precursors: cabinets of curiosity (precursor to museums)


Misrepresentations: deliberate historical errors and misrepresentations, deliberate map errors, accidental map errors


Confusion of Categories: insect imposters


Irony: a hospital stay can make you sicker


Threats to Safety: snake invasions

By categorizing the types of incongruity, a writer can tap a number of sources, ensuring that his or her writing doesn't bog down with only one or two such sources, becoming predictable and less interesting than it could (and should) be. Simply select one of the above categories as your inspiration and develop a story along the lines the selected category suggests.



 

Sunday, March 3, 2019

Developing a Sense of Horror

Copyright 2019 by Gary L. Pullman


Yesterday, as I walked through the house, I imagined the defensive and offensive actions that various inanimate objects might take in response to environmental stimuli if the objects were imbued with personalities, intelligence, and will.



Sound crazy? Perhaps, but personification can be an important source of inspiration and a significant way of developing one's sense of horror.

Here are a few of the ideas I conceived:



Ceiling: offense = inaccessibility (it's a cathedral ceiling); defense = allowing parts of itself to fall upon intruders (or perhaps divesting itself of such "accessory items" as ceiling fans or light fixtures); alternatively, a ceiling (or a floor) can look deceptively solid, only to be insubstantial and, therefore, dangerous

Floor: offense = strength and solidarity of tiles; defense = allowing individual or sections of tiles to break and slide, making an intruder's footing precarious



Cabinet: offense: closed exterior (like that of a turtle's shell)--also, drawers can contain some pretty dangerous items; defense = hiding (the articles of a cabinet are "hidden" when the drawers are closed)

Toilet: offense = closed exterior; defense = elimination of threat by "swallowing" action (and, okay, yes, maybe odor). (By the way, toilets have been known to explode!) (You probably don't even want to consider the possibilities that Porta Potties present!)

Stove = offense = strength, weight (it's not easily moved), and durability; defense = destruction by fire (or gas)
 


Refrigerator/freezer: offense = strength, weight, and durability; defense = cold or freezing temperatures. (In the hands of master storyteller Stanley Kubrick, who directed The Shining, a freezer can help to disorient characters and viewers alike, adding to the sense of confusion and anxiety.)

Curtains: offense: able to sustain considerable damage without total destruction; defense = able to incapacitate by wrapping around an intruder and to kill by strangling him or her. (Curtains of various sorts have also been used in other ways in such movies as Psycho and Hide and Seek.)



Mirror: offense: as Lewis Caroll (and others) have taught us in Through the Looking-glass, mirrors can be gateways to other worlds, some of which are strange and terrifying, indeed; wardrobes can also be portals to other worlds, of course, as C. S. Lewis has demonstrated in The Chronicles of Narnia); defense: shattering into sharp-edged, pointed shards

Wallpaper: offense: it looks harmless (but appearances can be deceiving); defense = it can drive a person insane (Charlotte Perkins-Gilman demonstrates how, in "The Yellow Wallpaper")



By imagining the offensive and defensive capabilities of the everyday objects in a house, a writer can exercise his or her creative abilities; at the same, time, he or she might conceive of a few ideas (by adding a bit of exaggeration, for effect) for a haunted house story. The familiar, everyday world is the source of horror, as often or not, in this genre.



Saturday, February 23, 2019

From Poster to Prologue to Sale?

Copyright 2019 by Gary L. Pullman

I'm browsing horror movie posters again. This time, I'm checking out erotic horror movie posters. There are strong parallels between erotica and horror, after all, so movie posters that advertise a cross between the two are apt to be doubly erotic or horrific or both. That, at least, is my hypothesis.

But I'm also looking for originality, so if there are more than a couple erotic movie posters concerning the same theme—vampires, werewolves, or witches, say—I eliminate those based on this theme. Thus, the poster for Vampire Lesbos, which features a beautiful, topless brunette vampire drinking what appears to be a wineglass of blood, as her largely unseen lover embraces her from behind, ends up, as it were, on the cutting-room floor; so does An Erotic Werewolf in London, whose fanged female rips away her own blouse as she begins to undergo her transformation from woman into wolf.

One of the posters that remain is that for the movie Cadaver. The poster shows a nude female body being sliced, or mutilated, by a scalpel in the gloved hand of someone (presumably, a medical examiner). The surgical knife, instead of making the “Y” incision characteristic of autopsies, cuts through the front of the woman's right breast and down the same side of her abdomen.


Blood, rising from the wound, suggests she isn't dead, after all, because, of course, cadavers don't bleed. She's a victim, it seems, rather than a dead body.


Her ordeal begs the question, Why is she being treated in this manner? Is she being tortured? Did the medical examiner (if he is a medical examiner) mistake a condition or conditions which may mimic death—catatonia, perhaps, coupled with paralysis—for her apparent absence of life? The text, which frequently unlocks the implications of the images on movie posters is, this time, of no help: “The anatomy of evil, the pathology of curse.” The film itself provides an explanation for the bleeding body that potential moviegoers aren't apt to guess.


The movie poster for Hostel: Part II (2007) seems to have been inspired by Washington Irving's short story, “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.” Instead of a headless horseman, though, the poster features the body of an apparently decapitated nude woman, shown from neck to knees, holding what seems to be her own head, the eyes of which are turned up, showing white, and the tongue of which lolls between its parted lips.


Hostel: Part II is nothing like the legend of the headless horseman, in either its American version (Irving's version) or any of its medieval variants. However, the apparent allusion to Irving's story (or, perhaps, more generally, to the legend of the headless horseman per se) may yet be intentional, a red herring, as it were, to imply a reference that doesn't exist and a context irrelevant to the movie's actual storyline. By suggesting parallels where there are none, the advertisers of the film may have intentionally misled potential viewers, the better to intrigue them while, at the same time, preventing them from guessing the movie's plot.


The Maniac (1980) movie poster shows what, at first glance, seems to be a naked young woman wearing a veil. She is beautiful of face and attractive in “all the right places,” as the euphemistic phrase states.


However, as one begins to look closer, it's clear that what seem to be the straps of a transparent bra and the lines of sheer panties are actually seams, and the blue-eyed blonde's staring, vacant gaze suggests there's nothing human behind her stare. She is, in fact, a mannequin—a mannequin that bleeds, for blood appears at her hairline and streams down her brow and the side of her face. (I must admit, I saw these details only after taking in other of the mannequin's features.) The smooth contours of her body, like her erect posture and her empty, glazed look make it clear she's a mannequin, which makes her bleeding all the eerier.

The movie's plot clears up the mystery of the bleeding mannequin, and the explanation actually makes sense, in its own twisted way: the “maniac” implied by the movie's title is a particular type of madman, a man with a fetish for agalmatophilia, like Pygmalion.

By searching for erotic movie posters that don't depend on cliched themes, such as Vampirism, lycanthropy, and witchcraft, one is apt to find more unusual and creative possibilities for accounting for a story's erotic character or, at the very least, as in Cadaver, an innovative use of a rite theme.

But there's another use to which such approaches can be put in a horror novel (or film). A prologue or the opening scene of the story proper, can describe such a situation as a movie poster such as the one's we've considered, without presenting the explanation for its bizarre nature (or with an implied explanation which turns out, for a believable reason, to be false), thereby, like a movie poster or a movie trailer, hooking readers with the mystery of the horror and making them want to read on, even if it makes them buy the book. By the same token, such an approach might hook an editor, making him or her decide to commit to the purchase of the author's rights to his or her story.

Sunday, February 10, 2019

Title and Caption: The Horror of the Evocative

Copyright 2019 by Gary L. Pullman

Often, the titles and captions of horror movie posters are suggestive. They're enticing. They invite their viewers' minds to wander, to speculate, to imagine—and, of course, we imagine much worse things, much worse monsters, than those even the most talented special effects wizards and screenwriters are apt to show us. There's no substitute, when it comes to fear, for the human imagination itself, as H. G. Wells implies in his masterful short story “The Red Room.”

But this post isn't about short stories or novels or horror movies. It's about the suggestiveness of words combined with images, which together explain nothing, state little, and evoke much.


The poster for Dark Was the Night evokes terror, the fear of the unknown, both with its title (notice the use of the past tense), which refers to “dark” and “night,” which can be understood both literally and figuratively, suggesting both nocturnal hours and evil, and the poster's caption, “Evil's Roots Run Deep. . . .”

The text is accompanied by an image of a man wearing a uniform, probably that of a local police department, alone in a forest. Alone, he holds a flashlight in one hand, a rifle in the other, the tool parallel to the weapon. Technology and nature are thus symbolically juxtaposed.

But there is another juxtaposition, too: that of man and beast. Despite his flashlight and his rifle—despite his technological advantages—the hunter has become the hunted, his prey, a gigantic creature that looks simultaneously both fleshly and earthborn, has become the hunter. The creature, which may or may not have a head (if it does, it is low, below chest level, as if the creature crouches, although its body appears to be erect), is behind the human. In the wilderness, technology has its limits; in the forest primeval, engineering and its effects count but little, if at all.

The poster suggests that, in hunting the creature of the woods, the human may, in fact, be hunting himself, or the beast within himself, for its placement suggests that it could be rising from the man, a shadowy figure as much flesh and blood as leaf and dirt. It is the beast within, his on bestial nature, perhaps, that the man hunts, and it is this bestial element of himself which hunts him.

The poster recalls Friedrich Nietzsche's warning, “Beware that, when fighting monsters, you yourself do not become a monster... for when you gaze long into the abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.” This idea of the beast within is reinforced by the letter “i” in “Night,” which is an image of a stunted tree, its branches superimposed upon the limbs of the forest's trees, its roots forming a clawed hand reaching down, into the portrait of man and beast.



By explaining nothing, but evoking much, the poster invites viewers to form their own explanations, to make the text and image mean whatever they think or want them to mean. In this sense, movie posters become Rorschach inkblots or a sort, by which, in projecting one's own thoughts and feelings upon the poster, viewers identify the monster in themselves (just as I myself have done, no doubt, in explaining such posters as Rorschach tests).

A review of the movie shows a few of my interpretations of the poster's significance are false in terms of what actually happens in the film. However, there is a lawman—two in fact: Deputy Donny Saunders and Sheriff Paul Shields, and technology is represented by the tools the victims, a group of loggers, use, who do encounter a monster. The movie makes plain some of the monster's characteristics and behaviors: it snatches the local townspeople's cattle, so, presumably, it's a carnivore, and it “leaves hoof prints in the dirt” and “scratch marks on metals,” suggesting it has powerful, sharp claws.



What about my supposition that the monster arises from the lawman (or from human beings in general)? A couple of the characters suffer from chronic guilt concerning a child for whose lose they blame themselves, but the film doesn't play on their guilt as a symbolic root of the monster and the evil it does; instead, New York Times critic Andy Webster points out, it's a sort ofecologically minded demon that’s some kind of godless instrument of the Devil, as is suggested by the tree dweller['s] . . . fighting encroaching overdevelopment on its habitat (attacking those who don’t 'respect the land,' says a part-Shawnee bartender)” and its subsequent attack upon huddled citizens seeking refuge in a church, as if to assault their faith.”

For Webster, this implicit explanation of the creature's motives, if not its nature, doesn't work well: Even in a horror movie, that’s hard to believe. ” My own idea, that the lawman's own character is the source in which the monster is rooted, seems a better explanation. It worked well for Robert Louis Stevenson, after all.

The creature seems to remain mysterious, although some suggest it might be the devil or a demon, and one reviewer sees it as a contemporary version of Spring-heeled Jack, “as similar creature” that terrorized the population of Devon, England, in the mid 1800s. This same creature, “or something similar,” apparently “made its way to America,” where it became “known as the Jersey Devil.”

Both creatures have interesting (and varied) histories, but neither seems to have arisen, Mr. Hyde fashion, out of their human, Dr. Jekyll, counterparts, so, here, my imagination doesn't dovetail with the movie's plot, but, then, the imagination often doesn't, which is one reason, perhaps, that we often say the imagination provides images not only different from, but superior to, many a movie and, for that matter, many a monster.

Saturday, January 12, 2019

Voyeurism: Playing God

Copyright 2019 by Gary L. Pullman, Author


In voyeurism, the keyhole is a symbol of spying. Intended for the introduction of a key by which a door may be locked or unlocked, the keyhole is emblematic of the means by which to ensure privacy. By locking a door, an individual establishes a private space which is supposed to be inviolate. Behind locked doors, in the privacy of one's home, whether “home” is a house, an apartment or a condominium, or a hotel or a motel room, one is supposed to be sequestered; what goes on behind a locked door is supposed to be private.

The key phrase, of course, is “supposed to be.” In reality, little is truly private anymore, especially in an age of surveillance by camera, drone, and Internet spying mechanisms. Nevertheless, we resent the violation of our privacy, and one's peering through a keyhole, into our private space, into our private lives, into our private behavior is not something most people would accept. Voyeurism is a violation of the law because it is a violation of personal privacy.

There is another reason that voyeurism is, and should be, off limits, horror movies suggest. Peering through a keyhole can violate not only the privacy of the person or persons within the room, but also the voyeur's sense of propriety, of rationality, or even of reality itself. As Hamlet cautions Horatio, “There are more things in heaven and earth . . . than are dreamt of in your philosophy,” or, as the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche warns us all, “If you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss also gazes into you.”


Most horror movies which incorporate an element of voyeurism don't use a literal keyhole as a plot device. Instead, as in Psycho, Peeping Tom, and 13 Cameras, the voyeurism occurs through a hole in the wall or a hidden camera's lens, and the voyeurism as such, like the nudity (when nudity occurs), is incidental; the central part of the story, its theme, deals with the causes or the effects of such an invasion of privacy. The cause, although it may be related, superficially, to the voyeur's sexuality or lack thereof, is, on a deeper level, related to his or her (almost always his) emotional state.

Insecurity, a fear of women or of rejection, or a desire to know all and to be all places, including private ones, is often the basis of the voyeur's spying. In a word, whether the word is “omnipresent,” “omniscient,” or “omnipotent,” the voyeur's sin is a variation upon that of Adam and Eve: he wants to be like God.


However, their desire to be like God is, of course, ludicrous, for human beings are finite, fallible, and mortal; only God can be infinite, infallible, and immortal. Such a desire, the height of arrogance, is also a sin. God suggests as much to Adam and Eve when he warns them, “Of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die,” but they, like the voyeur, prefer to believe, as Satan told them, “Ye shall not surely die: For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.”

The keyhole, the hole in the wall, or the hidden camera's lens allows the voyeur to spy in secret, to know that which he is not supposed to know, to learn that which, ordinarily, would be hidden from him, and it allows him to violate his victims' privacy with impunity (as long as he is not caught). Armed with such secret knowledge, he may blackmail, kidnap, torture, rape, maim, or kill, as he chooses, crime begetting crime, as sin begets sin.


The keyhole is a modern-day equivalent of the Biblical forbidden fruit, allowing secular filmmakers to tap into Judeo-Christian themes from a perspective outside religious faith, transposing the external, supernatural world of Satan and God with the internal, natural (i. e., psychological) environment of the self.

The temptation to be omnipresent, to be ominiscient, to be omnipotent, begins long before one looks through a keyhole, drills a hole through a wall, or hides a camera. In all likelihood, it is a desire that develops over years, slowly, until it becomes an obsession, but it is born of the inclination to know more, to be with, and to be more powerful than one's victim.

Thursday, December 20, 2018

Horrific Body Modification Rationales

Copyright 2018 by Gary L. Pullman


One source of horror results from supplying bizarre or unusual answers to the question why?


This question relates to such categories as cause, motive, purpose, or use.


Ordinarily, we identify and subscribe to ordinary, or at least understandable, reasons for doing something, even if the “something” we do is itself bizarre or unusual. For example, for body modification—a practice that many would regard as bizarre or unusual, at least in its more extreme forms—is explained by the anonymous author or authors of the Wikipedia article on this topic as “often [being] done for aesthetics, sexual enhancement, rites of passage, religious beliefs, [for the] display [of] group membership or affiliation, in remembrance of lived experience, [for the display of] traditional symbolism . . . for shock value, and as self-expression.” 
 

Body modification, the article explains, can be divided into the use of “explicit ornaments” (piercings, implants, tattooing, teeth blackening, and wearing neck rings); surgical augmentation (breast implants, male enhancement surgery, silicone injection, and subdermal implants); removal or splitting (cutting or removing hair, female genital mutilation, clitoral hood reduction, clitoridectomy, infibulation, labiaplasty, circumcision, foreskin restoration, emasculation, genital bisection or inversion, genital frenectomy, “headsplitting” [splitting the glans penis], meatotomy, orchiectomy, penectomy, subincision, nipple cutting or splitting, nullification, lingual frenectomy, and tongue-splitting); the application of long-term force (corseting, cranial binding, breast ironing, foot binding, anal stretching, jelqing, non-surgical organ elongation); and “others” (human branding, ear shaping or cropping, scarification, human tooth sharpening, and yaeba).


Whatever one's demons, when it comes to body modification, horror stories, whether on the page of on the stage (or the sound stage) aren't likely to settle for such (relatively) mundane motives as those identified in the Wikipedia article. When motive is to be the source of a horror story's horror, it stands to reason that the motive must be a horrific, not a generally socially acceptable, one, which begs the question, Why, in horror stories, do characters perform or undergo extreme body modifications?


The following table suggests the motives that some horror movies, at least, have provided.

Movie
Motive
Tattoo (2002)
Profit: A murderer kills victims for their unique tattoos, which he then sells to weirdo collectors.
American Mary (2012)
Profit: Medical student Mary Mason modifies clients' bodies to pay her way through school. Revenge: She later modifies the bodies of men who drugged and raped her.
What's Left of Us (2013)
Scorn: When Ana rejects his love for her, Axel tattoos himself so he will be repulsive to her.
The Human Centipede (2009)
Insanity: A mad doctor wants to create new creatures, so he plays God by sewing women together, mouth to anus, to form a “human centipede.” He also severs tendons in their legs to prevent them from walking, ensuring, thereby, that they must crawl, as befits their new identity.
Taxidermia (2006)
Art for Art's Sake: After removing his own internal organs, a young man named Lajoska, arranges for a machine to decapitate him so he can become a grotesque statue.
The Skin I Live In (2011)
Forced Feminization: Plastic surgeon Robert Ledgard performs a vaginoplasty on a captured man whom Ledgard plans to use as a replacement for his late wife.

Wednesday, October 10, 2018

Monsters in Our Midst

Copyright 2018 by Gary L. Pullman



In horror fiction, monsters originate from only a handful of sources:
  • Natural
    • Physiological (e. g., mutation or birth defect)
    • Natural catastrophe
    • Human
      • Psychological
      • Social
      • Scientific/Technological
  • Supernatural
    • Angelic/Demonic
    • Divine



Within this framework, the specific contents of these categories change, sometimes vanishing (at least for a time) or being replaced by newer understandings of the concept of the monstrous.


For example, among the ancients, hermaphrodites were considered omens from God. Signs of his displeasure, humans with both male and female sex organs were viewed as warnings form God. Their existence bespoke His wrath and the punishment that He would soon visit upon his sinful people.

Today, hermaphrodism is understood as an effect of male hormones, an adrenal glans disorder, or aromatase deficiency. In other words, the condition results from natural, not supernatural, causes. In male-to-female or female-to-male transgender transgender cases, the cause of gender dysphoria is corrected through hormone therapy, gender-confirmation surgery, and other surgical or medical procedures. Its cause is psychological; its remedy is medical and surgical.


With the change in the understanding of the causes of hermaphroditism and transgender conditions, intersex individuals are seldom cast as “monsters” in contemporary horror fiction, and, when they are cast as such, as in Sleepaway Camp (1983), critics, like much of the general public, movie-going and otherwise, are offended by such representations.


Likewise, zombies, as they are depicted today, more often result from radiation, mental disorders, pathogens, or accidents during scientific experiments than from voodoo or magic. These fundamental changes, both in the way we view the world and the basis of epistemology, have led to changes in the nature and origin of the zombie.

In short, the category of horror “monster,” which once included hermaphrodites as omens of God's displeasure and imminent wrath, are now more frequently seen as having experienced a hormonal or glandular problem or as having experienced gender dysphoria. Their conditions are caused by physiological or psychological, not supernatural or divine, agencies. Zombies, likewise, have been given a natural, rather than a supernatural, origin.

Frequently, horror movie monsters are seen as representing metaphors for political, social, or cultural events typical of particular time periods:


Godzilla (1954) has been seen as representing the nuclear bombs that the United States dropped on Nagasaki and Hiroshima, Japan, in 1945.


Them! (1954) ends with a caution about the dangers of “the Atomic Age,” as myrmecologist Dr. Harold Medford warns, “When Man entered the Atomic Age, he opened the door to a new world. What we may eventually find in that new world, nobody can predict.”


The 1966 science fiction-horror movie Invasion of the Body Snatchers, in which people were replaced with alien look-alikes, has been regarded as an allegory for both McCarthyism and communism.


Some critics regard The Fly (1986) as a metaphor for AIDS, although director David Cronenberg said he intended the horror movie to be a metaphor for “aging and death.”


Although no horror movie seems to sum up more recent decades, a film in which political figures instigate armies of ordinary citizens to go to war against one another might be just the type of film to symbolize the current state of affairs in the United States, wherein Antifa and Democratic protesters, encouraged and emboldened by otherworldly or demonic, hypnotic versions of Senator Maxine Waters, who exalts the public confrontation of individuals who disagree with her party, and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who claims civility is impossible between Democrats and those who oppose them, attack their opponents in the street, confront political appointees during meals in public restaurants, disrupt Senate hearings, and attack the Supreme Court Building, eventually precipitating a war that endangers the entire country. Such an allegorical film, called, perhaps, Demonic Uprising would certainly capture the spirit of our age.



Thursday, August 9, 2018

Doctors of Death

Copyright 2018 by Gary L. Pullman


When a doctor goes wrong, he is the first among criminals.” – Sherlock Holmes, “The Speckled Band



Some believe Jack the Ripper was a medical doctor, perhaps a surgeon. Other serial killers are known to have practiced medicine, include H. H. Holmes, Harold Shipman, Michael Swango, Marcel Petiot, Shirō Ishii, John Bodkin Adams, Josef Menegle, Robert George Clements, Thomas Neill Cream, Louay Omar Mohammed ai-Taei, Maxim Petrov, and Kermit Gosnell.

As Sherlock Holmes (okay, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle) observes, medical doctors make splendid criminals. They have the knowledge, the discipline, and the skill to kill, but they also often present the persona of a caring and humanitarian professional in whose hands patients are well-advised to place not only their trust, but also their lives. In fact, their victims often come to them, as patients who are both physically and emotionally vulnerable. They look upon their doctors as their best hopes for survival. Ironically, “when a doctor goes wrong,” he or she is apt to be just the opposite. Alas, patients sometimes learn too late that their trusted physician or surgeon is, in fact, a cold-blooded killer.



Horror movies have featured their share of diabolical doctors, some of whom are researchers, others of whom are medical practitioners or surgeons. Dr. Jekyll, of Robert Louis Stevenson's novel The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, (1886) appears to be a chemist; Dr. Moreau, of H. G. Wells's novel The Island of Dr. Moreau (1896), is a physiologist and vivisectionist; and Dr. Griffin*, of H. G. Wells's novel The Invisible Man (1897), is an optics researcher. (Mary Shelley's Victor von Frankenstein is not a doctor, but an amateur scientist of sorts. Likewise, Dr. Anton Phibes [of the 1972 movie The Abominable Dr. Phibes] is not a medical doctor; he has degrees in music and theology, one of which is a doctorate.)

Several other novels and movies also feature doctors of one type or another, but the ones we've identified are sufficient for our (or, rather, Sherlock Holmes's) thesis: “When a doctor goes wrong, he is the first among criminals.”

* * *


Dr. Jekyll

In creating the dual character of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Stevenson seems to have separated the private person from his persona. The former is the public face, the persona, presented to the world; the latter, the private person, known only to himself (and not entirely known, even then).

All of us are Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. We have private selves and public selves, and these split aspects of our personalities are not always in synchronization with one another. Privately, we desire and fantasize and, perhaps, in some ways act upon less-than-honorable, or even shameful, impulses and proclivities which, in our public lives, we would never dare to acknowledge, much less entertain or act upon.

We are hypocrites, all—or would be, had society not, in its wisdom, allowed us to a differentiate between our private lives, wherein ignominious and disgraceful thoughts, feelings, and secret behaviors are allowed without penalty, as long as they harm no one, and our public lives, wherein we are expected to conform to the mores, traditions, customs, and laws of civilized society.

Wanting to kill, or even entertaining fantasies about murdering, another person is permissible to us in our private lives, the lives that our counterparts to Mr. Hyde live, but such ideas, emotions, and dreams are strictly forbidden to us in our public lives, the lives of our Dr. Jekyll dopplegangers live.

In crossing the line between the private hell of his personal life and the public life of affected propriety, Stevenson's protagonist committed a horror more horrible than the murders he perpetrated. Stevenson's novel is a cautionary tale: this far, one may go, but not a step farther. The boundary between the vile, secret self and the acceptable persona must be respected at all costs. When it is, murders and other immoral acts are unlikely to occur; the monster within is kept at bay.


Dr. Moreau

As we point out in another post, mixing human and animal perverts both natures, dehumanizing the former while objectifying the latter. Men and women, like animals, are better off as men and women or as animals than they would be as manimals or womanimals. By being hybridized as chimeras, neither human nor animal is improved.

Compared to humans animals are not, by nature, very bright. They live mostly by instinct, unable to comprehend the ways of men and women, whom, according to scientists, they regard as alpha members of the pack of which they themselves are lesser members. Unfortunately, with intelligence comes the capacities for treachery, infidelity, malice aforethought, and all manner of other evils. There are no innocent adults, and even children are often cruel to one another. They do not need teachers; such cruelty comes naturally to them. An animal, especially a domesticated one, is more innocent than any child.

By mixing humans and beasts, as Dr. Moreau did, both are made different and are devalued in the process. Indirectly, through is hybrid creatures, Dr. Moreau causes the deaths of others, but his greater crime is the immorality of vivisection as the means he employs for grafting human beings and animals. His means to his ends set him apart in his villainy, just as does Dr. Jekyll's means to his ends set him apart for the same reason.


Dr. Griffin

Humans depend upon their five senses to perceive the world. Primarily, they depend upon sight. To render oneself or anything else invisible is to eliminate the sense of sight, at least as it concerns the persons or objects made invisible. Invisibility blinds us, and blindness hampers our powers to conduct reconnaissance or surveillance and to protect ourselves and defend others. To confer invisibility upon someone or something is to disable those who are thus deprived sight of the person or thing made invisible.

To use a unique and extraordinarily effective ability against others, leaving them vulnerable and defenseless is tantamount to betrayal. Dr. Griffin's invisibility allows him to accomplish just such an immoral act. Instead of using his power to benefit others, he abuses it, even committing acts of murder. Again, his ends to his means is worse than the deaths he inflicts upon his victims, because these ends set him apart from his peers as not only ruthless but also inhuman.

* * *

Stevenson and Wells, although not, perhaps, in the first rank of literature, many might contend, are, nonetheless, superior to the vast majority of writers of their time or, indeed, of any time. The quality of their writing, its urbane and sophisticated style, the subtlety of their novels' various themes, their superb craftsmanship, their attention to detail, and the unhurried manner of their narratives, in which, most often, structure and function are so perfectly balanced as to appear to be one and the same thing, make their stories of such a character that the morality of the tales are not overwhelmed by the sensationalism of their plots. Directly, or by proxy, Dr. Jekyll, Dr. Moreau, and Dr. Griffin are serial murderers. Although their criminal deeds are described in lurid detail, the murders they commit, as extravagant as they are, do not cloud the moral implications of their heinous acts.

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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