Zombies: A Questionable Scientific Explanation

Copyright 2020 by Gary L. Pullman

For a while, back in the 1980s, people believed that science had an explanation for zombies.

 

Clairvius Narcisse, in fact, was one himself.

He had been transformed into one of the living dead through the use of the pufferfish's venom tetrodotoxin and Datura, a plant poison that causes respiratory depression, arrhythmias, hallucinations, psychosis, and even death (Guerico, Gino Del (1986) “The Secrets of Haiti's Living Dead,” Harvard Magazine (Jan/Feb) 31-37. Reprinted in Anthropology Annual Editions 1987/88 188-191).

At least, such was the claim of Harvard-educated anthropologist Wade Davis, who explained all in his 1985 book The Serpent and the Rainbow. Wade claimed that cultural beliefs, combined with the effects of tetrodotoxin and Datura, convinced men like Narcisse that they had died and been brought back to life by voodoo practitioners who then controlled them.

According to The Serpent and the Rainbow, “zombie powder” (tetrodotoxin) kept victims in a state of “mental” slavery, and produced “the initial death and resurrection that convinced the victims and those who knew them that they had become zombies.”

After their “deaths,” the victims were buried, exhumed, and then “enslaved as brain-damaged zombies.”

Narcisse and other zombies were then kept compliant through the administration of “regular doses of” Datura, “which produces amnesia, delirium, and suggestibility.”

Zombies were no longer merely horror story characters; they were real, and Wade had shown just how they were created.

Or so people thought, until scientists could find only little, if any, tetrodotoxin in samples of the zombie powder that Davis provided. In addition, some of Davis's colleagues took issue with his claim that zombies could be kept “in a state of pharmacologically induced trance for many years.” However, both Wade himself and other scientists defend his claims on various grounds.

For fiction writers, the truth or falsity of Wade's explanation is less relevant than it would be to anthropologists and other scientists. For example, Renfield's Syndrome is known to be a hoax meant, by its creator, as a parody of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM) that is the Bible, so to speak, of the professions of psychology and psychiatry. 

Nevertheless, this supposed syndrome is still referenced as an authoritative, medically supported condition when it suits the purposes of a horror author to pretend that it is so. The same use can be put to Wade's pharmacological-cultural explanation of zombification when horror writers find that Wade's explanation advances their own narrative ends.

Nevertheless, writers should know that the anthropologist's views have been challenged and are not accepted by all of his peers. At best, his explanation seems questionable.

On the plus side, Wade's book was adapted to the screen as a pretty good horror flick.

Werewolves: Three Scientific Explanations

Copyright 2020 by Gary L. Pullman

Chillers and Thrillers has devoted quite a bit of space to several articles on Tzvetan Todorov's insightful analysis of the literary fantastic. At this point, despite the oversimplification that results, we can say, for Todorov, the fantastic usually resolves itself into the explained and the unexplained. The former he calls “uncanny”; the latter, “marvelous.” Only when there is no resolution, one way or another, does the fantastic remain fantastic.

In our first post in this series, “Ghosts: A Half-Dozen Explanations,” we include a few examples of each type of story.

We also noted that, to write such a story, an author must allow either of two understandings of the action: either reason or science can explain the phenomena, bizarre though they may, as natural events or the strange phenomena are beyond explanation and, as such, may actually be of an otherworldly or supernatural origin. The tension between these two alternatives creates and maintains suspense. It is only when the story shows that the action is natural (explicable by reason or science) or supernatural (inexplicable by reason or science) that the story itself is no longer fantastic, but either uncanny or marvelous, respectively.

It helps, therefore, to know how scientists explain seemingly fantastic phenomena, such as (for example) ghosts, vampires, werewolves, and zombies.

Werewolves are, like most beasts, especially hairy. Sometimes, so do human beings, due to hypertrichosis, a genetic disorder that results in the covering of the face and body in thick hair resembling an animal's fur. Before genetics was understood (about the turn of the twentieth century), this condition could have led people to believe that victims of hypertrichosis were men or women who'd transformed into wolves—in other words, werewolves (in Old English, “wer” means “man” and “wulf” means “wolf”).

Porphyria, a condition mentioned in a previous post, could have contributed to people's belief, in earlier times, in werewolves: the condition “is characterized by extreme sensitivity to light (thus encouraging its victims to only go out at night), seizures, anxiety, and other symptoms.” (Often, scenes of people transforming into werewolves include behavior that closely resembles seizures, as does this scene from the movie The Howling [1977].)

A medical condition known as clinical lycanthropy is more about the mind that the body: it causes its victims to believe that they are werewolves, which, in turn, causes them to act accordingly. Serial killer Peter Stubbe is a case in point. He believed he owned “a belt of wolfskin that allowed him to change into a wolf.” His confessions to his murders were extracted under torture, as his “flesh was . . . ripped out with hot pincers and his limbs [were] crushed with stones.”

Once again, scientific accounts of the werewolf phenomenon offer suggestions about characters, including therapists, psychologists, psychiatrists, police officers and detectives, medical doctors and specialists, and even torturers. In addition, the offices of these personnel might occur as settings in some scenes, but, depending on the century in which a story is set, settings might also feature dungeons, torture chambers, prisons, or mental asylums. Of course, forests are a virtual certainty with regard to the settings of such stories.

There have been many movies about werewolves, including Silver Bullet (1985), which is based on Stephen King's 1983 novella Cycle of the Werewolf. Such imaginary beasts have also been popular with well-known short story authors, Robert Louis Stevenson (“Olalla” [1887]), Algernon Blackwood (“The Camp of the Dog” [1908]), Bram Stoker (“Dracula's Guest” [1914)], and Robert E. Howard (“Wolfshead” [1968]). Alexander Dumas wrote a novella on the subject, The Wolf-Leader (1857), and Guy Endore penned a novel, The Werewolf of Paris (1933). (There's even a werewolf romance subgenre!)

 Studying these stories will show readers how such writers give new blood, so to speak, to a truly ancient horror trope.

In our next post, we'll take a peek at what science says about zombies.

Vampires:Three Scientific Explanations

Copyright 2020 by Gary L. Pullman

Chillers and Thrillers has devoted quite a bit of space to several articles on Tzvetan Todorov's insightful analysis of the literary fantastic. At this point, despite the oversimplification that results, we can say, for Todorov, the fantastic usually resolves itself into the explained and the unexplained. The former he calls “uncanny”; the latter, “marvelous.” Only when there is no resolution, one way or another, does the fantastic remain fantastic.

In our first post in this series, “Ghosts: A Half-Dozen Explanations,” we include a few examples of each type of story.

We also noted that, to write such a story, an author must allow either of two understandings of the action: either reason or science can explain the phenomena, bizarre though they may, as natural events or the strange phenomena are beyond explanation and, as such, may actually be of an otherworldly or supernatural origin. The tension between these two alternatives creates and maintains suspense. It is only when the story shows that the action is natural (explicable by reason or science) or supernatural (inexplicable by reason or science) that the story itself is no longer fantastic, but either uncanny or marvelous, respectively.

It helps, therefore, to know how scientists explain seemingly fantastic phenomena, such as (for example) ghosts, vampires, werewolves, and zombies.

First, “Vampires: Fact, Fiction, and Folklore” explains why human vampirism is unlikely: imbibing blood on a regular basis would probably result in the imbiber's development “of haemochromatosis (iron overdose),” which is apt to lead to such serious health problems as damage to the nervous system and the liver. Drinking blood for a living is not advised, to say the least!

Another interesting refutation of human vampirism is mathematical in nature: If, at the end of a month, a vampire transforms a victim into a second vampire, and they both then transform two more people into vampires at the end of the next month, and so on, in two and a half years, everybody would be a vampire, and there would be no humans left to supply the blood the bloodsuckers need to survive. (Math can be pretty scary stuff!)

Although actual human vampires do not exist (or, at least, there is no proof that human corpses can be possessed by demons and go about their day “undead,” without eventually rotting, subsisting only on the blood of their living brethern—“Happy Meals with legs,” as Spike, a vampire on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, calls his human hosts)—it is true that some people claim to be vampires; they may even truly believe that they are vampires.

They aren't. Here's why.

Porphyria may explain the belief, by some, in human vampirism. This condition causes sensitivity to light due to “irregularities in the production of heme, a chemical in the blood,” which produces “toxins” that erode “the lips and gums,” creating a “corpse-like, fanged appearance.”

Another explanation for the belief in human vampirism is found in some of the effects of tuberculosis. This disease causes pale skin, an aversion to sunlight, and the coughing up of blood due to lung damage. The highly contagious disease easily spreads from one person to another, a fact which might explain the belief that vampirism can be “transmitted” from vampire to victim through a bite.

Catalepsy, which causes victims to become rigid and immobile, was sometimes mistaken, in times past, for death, as it is in Edgar Allan Poe's short stories “The Premature Burial” and “The Fall of the House of Usher.”

There's also Renfield's syndrome, or clinical vampirism, an obsession with drinking blood. People who suffer from this psychological malady believe that drinking blood is beneficial to their health. The condition is marked by stages. First, a prepubescent child is sexually excited by blood or by consuming blood. Next, at puberty, the child begins to indulge in sexual fantasies concerning the consumption of blood and starts to devour his or her own blood; practicing autovampirism. Finally, the child preys upon animals or, perhaps, other human beings.

Sounds about as reasonable as anything in Freud, right?

And it is, which is to say, Renfield's Syndrome is 100-percent fake. Clinical psychologist Richard Noll invented Renfield's Syndrome as a parody of the psychobabble characteristic of the psychiatric and psychological professions' Diagnostic and Statistical Manual.

In doing so, Noll seems to have inspired his colleague, Katherine Ramsland, who is a professor of forensic psychology at DeSales University in Pennsylvania, to invent her own “diagnosis,” “vampire personality disorder (VPD)” for her book The Science of Vampires.

And now we know how psychology is actually practiced, behind the scenes.

For more background reading (i. e., “research”) regarding social vampirism, check out “The people who drink blood.”

As is the case with ghosts, scientific explanations of vampirism suggest both fictional settings and characters.

Let's start with characters. Phlebotomists might be advisable, as might therapists, psychologists, or psychiatrists. (A writer might even toss in a mathematician or two.) There's certainly a place for a general practitioner and a few specialists, such as a hematologist, a neurologist, a pulmonologist, and maybe a dermatologist. There could even be a journalist or an author writing a series of articles or a book on vampirism. The police might be involved as well.

Obvious settings, for scenes if not entire stories, are laboratories; offices of therapists, psychologists, or psychiatrists; medical doctors' offices; mental institutions; and, possibly, jails or prisons.

Of course, thinking outside the box is often one of the things that distinguishes a writer like Poe from other authors of horror fiction. For him, a man aboard a ship is one of his victims of catalepsy, a berth on the ship the victim's actual resting place, and the grave in which he believes he's been buried alive an effect of his nightmares. Writers should be aware of their colleagues' treatments of themes and tropes, but they should also conceive of new treatments, perspectives, and approaches.

In our next post, we'll take a peek at what science says about werewolves.

Ghosts: A Half-Dozen Explanations

Copyright 2020 by Gary L. Pullman

Chillers and Thrillers has devoted space to several articles on Tzvetan Todorov's insightful analysis of the literary fantastic. At this point, despite the oversimplification that results, we can say, for Todorov, the fantastic usually resolves itself into the explained and the unexplained. The former he calls “uncanny”; the latter, “marvelous.” Only when there is no resolution, one way or another, does the fantastic remain fantastic.

Here are a few examples:

Uncanny stories: “The Damned Thing” by Ambrose Bierce; “The Red Room” by H. G. Wells; The Taking by Dean Koontz; Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson; The Island of Dr. Moreau by H. G. Wells

Marvelous stories: “The Monkey's Paw” by W. W. Jacobs; “1408” by Stephen King; The Exorcist by William Peter Blatty; “The Masque of the Red Death” by Edgar Allan Poe; The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde; “Dracula's Guest” by Bram Stoker.

Fantastic stories: The Turn of the Screw by Henry James, “The Signal-man” by Charles Dickens, The Possession of Emily Rose (Scott Derrickson, director)

To write such a story, an author must allow either of two understandings of the action: reason or science can explain the phenomena, bizarre though they may, as natural events or the strange phenomena are beyond explanation and, as such, may actually be of an otherworldly or supernatural origin. The tension between these two alternatives creates and maintains suspense. It is only when the story shows that the action is natural (explicable by reason or science) or supernatural (inexplicable by reason or science) that the story itself is no longer fantastic, but either uncanny or marvelous, respectively.

It helps, therefore, to know how scientists explain seemingly fantastic phenomena, such as (for example) ghosts, vampires, werewolves, and zombies.

Scientists offer six possible explanations for ghosts: low-frequency sound, mold, carbon monoxide, suggestion, drafts, and the enjoyment of fear.

Although people have trouble hearing low-frequency sound, it registers on some level, causing them to feel “uneasy”; some interpret this emotional queasiness as resulting from the presence of unseen ghosts.

Breathing mold is unhealthy for many reasons, not the least of which is that it can cause neurological symptoms like delirium [and] dementia” as well as “irrational fears”—just like ghosts!

Similarly, breathing carbon monoxide can cause not only hallucinations, chest pressure, “an unexplained feeling of dread.” Oh, yes: it can also kill.

Some folks are susceptible to suggestions by others, including suggestions that ordinary events have ghostly explanations.

The exchange of cold for warm hair that's caused by drafts resulting from the opening of doors or windows can create “cold spots” in a room, which, for some reason (or no reason) some people attribute to the presence of ghosts.

Some people like being scared. Like Fox Mulder of The X-Files, they may want, therefore, to believe. Unlike Mulder, they may give in to their desire and believe in ghosts simply because they want to believe in ghosts.

Knowing possible scientific explanations for ghosts allows writers to have a skeptical character explain them to another who's a rue believer. Whether the ghost is thus explained (uncanny) or proves inexplicable (marvelous) is up to the writer, of course. In rare cases, the ghost may even remain fantastic, defying categorization as either a natural or an unnatural phenomenon.

Knowing scientific explanations for ghosts can also help a writer to establish the story's setting. If the ghost is due to low-frequency sound effects, there has to be a device that emits such sounds; if mold or carbon monoxide is the culprit, there has to be a source for mold or carbon dioxide; a drafty place, such as a castle, perhaps, has to be part of the setting if there are to be drafts.

A knowledge of scientific explanations for ghosts can also help a writer to establish the story's characters. If it's “the power of suggestion” that causes a haunting, a character must be susceptible to such suggestion; he or she probably doesn't know much about science, is apt to be gullible, and is likely to be a follower, rather than a leader.

What kind of character wants to be scared badly enough to believe without any foundation but his or her own delight in fright? I picture a character who lives an uneventful life or who wants more glamour and attention than he or she usually receives. Often, if a person (or a fictional character) is involved in bizarre, seemingly inexplicable events, he or she will become either famous or notorious. Either way, such a character will not want for attention or excitement.

In our next post, we'll take a peek at what science says about vampires.

Freaks of Nature (and Applied Science)

Copyright 2020 by Gary L. Pullman

Horror movies of the 1950s often feature bizarre freaks of nature, in the films' titles as well as in the movies themselves: The Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954), giant ants (Them!) (1954), Godzilla (1954), Monster from the Ocean Floor (1954), Tarantula! (1955), The Mole People (1956), Attack of the Giant Leeches (1959), The Alligator People (1959), The Wasp Woman (1959), The Return of the Fly (1959), and on and on . . . and on.

Victims include scientists' assistants, the expedition ship's crew members, and scientists, (The Creature from the Black Lagoon); a store owner, a state trooper, an FBI agent and most of his family (Them!), ships' crews, islanders, and residents of Tokyo (Godzilla), a diver (Monster from the Ocean Floor), a scientists and a laboratory assistant (Tarantula!), an archaeologist (The Mole People), an adulteress and her lover (Attack of the Giant Leeches), a hermit handyman and a newlywed bridegroom (The Alligator People), a cosmetics company owner (The Wasp Woman), a spy, and a scientist (The Return of the Fly).

Although some victims are simply in the wrong place at the wrong time, others are attacked because, as investigators or scientists, they play integral roles in the campaigns to stop the monsters or support such individuals, as the ships crews and lab assistants do. They are troops, as it were, in the perpetual war of science vs. nature.

The Creature from the Black Lagoon succumbs to massive gunfire. Sub-machine guns and flamethrowers dispatch the giant ants in Them! Godzilla is asphyxiated by a secret weapon that destroys oxygen molecules. A napalm attack, courtesy of a squadron of Air Force fighters, kills the giant tarantula of Tarantula. The Mole People find it difficult to withstand the debilitating effects of natural sunlight. Dynamite explosions end the menace of giant leeches. A faceful of carbolic acid and blunt trauma from a fall from a height is too much for the wasp woman. The Return of the Fly's human fly reverts to being only a human after the process that transformed him into a human fly is reversed. Only the fate of the alligator people is ambiguous.

These films suggest that freaks of nature are overcome—that is, annihilated—in one of two ways. Nature kills them, or they are destroyed by an application of human technology. While the Mole People are subdued by nature, the Creature of the Black Lagoon, Godzilla, the giant tarantula, the giant leeches, and the human fly are destroyed by human technology. The wasp woman is destroyed by both human technology (carbolic acid) and nature (gravity).

Interestingly, these films' freaks of nature are the spawn both of nature itself and of human technology. More often than not, the latter both produces and destroys these freaks. The theme of these movies seems to be that, yes, technology can backfire—it can produce monsters—but so can nature itself. In either case, though, technology can be counted on to destroy monsters, whether they are of natural or technological origin (or both). Through technology, even when meddling with nature itself causes monstrous results, science saves!

Scientists may not be gods. They err, because, well, to err is to be human. But they also know how to fix their mistakes. That's not ideal, these films imply, but it's the best we can do, and being a demi-god isn't half bad.

Religious and Scientific Accounts of Sex Demons

Copyright 2020 by Gary L. Pullman

In Eros and Evil, R. E. L. Masters theorizes that the accounts of sex with demons that women often provided during medieval witchcraft trials, frequently while they were undergoing torture, included sexual practices that, until fairly recently, were considered unnatural and perverse. Indeed, Masters further suggests, contemporary pornography provides a release by which many of today's sexually repressed readers find release for their own pent-up passions.

For writers who enjoy offering their readers a choice as to whether the supposedly supernatural events in their stories actually are supernatural or are really nothing more than unusual natural events, science offers some ideas as to how some apparently supernatural events may be explained in rational, natural, or scientific terms; at the same time, however, readers who believe that there may be a supernatural order of existence transcendent to this world (or universe) also have recourse to the supernatural explanation of the same events.

For example, sex demons appear in several films and in a few written works (poems, short stories, and novels) as well. Incubi (singular “incubus”) are male demons who have sex with human females (or who could do so, at least); succubi or succubae (singular “succubus”) are female demons who have sex with human males (or who could do so, at least).

In The Woman's Dictionary of Symbols and Sacred Objects, Barbara G. Walker traces the origin of incubi to the feminization of the demonic among ancient Greeks, suggesting that incubi represent “men's fears of sexual inadequacy, since the demons were said to give [women] more pleasure than their husbands did” (241). Originally, incubi were “priests” who presided over the “womb chamber” with which each temple was equipped. By spending the night in this chamber, “people in search of enlightenment or healing could 'incubate' . . . in anticipation of a spiritual rebirth or vision.” When Christianity became the dominant religion in the Middle East and elsewhere, these priests were transformed into “incubi,” or “demons who seduced women” (260).

A well-known example of an incubus is the entity, who appears in The Entity.

A familiar instance of a succubus is the woman whom Jack Torrance (The Shining) sees in a suite of the Overlook Hotel. However, many other films and books include sex demons, especially those of the succubus type. (Hollie Horror lists many movies featuring sex demons of both varieties, complete with posters, plot summaries, and trailers.)

Mark Blanton's art often depicts incubi, in the form known to ancient Greeks as satyrs, engaged in activities with mortal women of a nature that, in today's parlance, would definitely be considered not safe for work (NSFW).

Lilith

The Greek myths of satyrs, he said, were examples of incubi. Such sex demons can be considered to be fallen angels who mate with mortal women. This view might have developed from an account of such a creature in The Epic of Gilgamesh and from the Biblical reference to “giants in the earth,” who were thought, by St. Augustine, to have been the offspring of incubi (the fallen “sons of God”) and mortal women (“the daughters of men”). Also, in Jewish folklore, Adam's first wife, Lilith, became a succubus after leaving Adam, and then had intercourse with the archangel Samael. “The daughters of Lilith,” Walker says, were “interpreted as demonic succubae.”

Thomas Aquinas and Augustine

St. Thomas Aquinas, however, disagrees with Augustine on this point, holding that such sex demons merely “assumed” bodies and used sperm that they had collected from men with whom they'd previously had intercourse as incubi to fertilize women to whom they appeared as succubi. (Yes, demon sex is complicated!)

Science offers a different explanation for such sex demons. Both the incubi and the succubi, according to the scientific view, might be caused by sleep paralysis, and, in men, nocturnal emissions may suggest the sexual component of the delusion.

The Skeptic's Dictionary offers a summary of sleep paralysis and how the condition might inspire a belief in one's having been visited by a sex demon (or, for that matter, extraterrestrials):

The condition is characterized by being unable to move or speak. It is often associated with a feeling that there is some sort of presence, a feeling which often arouses fear but is also accompanied by an inability to cry out. The paralysis may last only a few seconds. The experience may involve visual, auditory, or tactile hallucinations. The description of the symptoms of sleep paralysis is similar to the description many alien abductees give in recounting their abduction experiences. Sleep paralysis is thought by some to account for not only many alien abduction delusions, but also ghost sightings and delusions involving paranormal or supernatural experiences (e. g., incubus and succubus).

By allowing the possibility of a natural and a supernatural explanation for the same bizarre phenomenon and leaving it to their readers to decide on the explanation they prefer, horror writers can let their readers have their sex demon or their hallucination, as they see fit, and, at the same time, enrich the possibilities for their stories, resting assured that the sex demons (and their behavior) are both strange and horrific, whatever the explanation a reader adopts.

(By the way, Tzvetan Todorov offers an insightful discussion of these alternative sources of explanation, the scientific, or natural, and the supernatural, but uses the terms “uncanny” for phenomena that are explained scientifically and the term “marvelous for phenomena that are explained with recourse to the supernatural. Phenomena that cannot be resolved as either uncanny or marvelous, he says, remain “fantastic.”)

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.”

Scientist Turned Ghostbuster (and Vampirebuster)

Copyright 2019 by Gary L. Pullman

Are you afraid of vampires?

Do you sleep with a cross or a crucifix around your neck?

Does your house (and your breath) smell like garlic?

Do you keep a bottle of holy water on hand?

Are you careful to be home by dark every day?

Could an unsuspecting guest stumble upon a few wooden stakes and a mallet stashed in your dresser?

If so, you need not fear bloodsucking dead people any longer!

A scientist has come to the rescue with a mathematical proof against the possibility of the existence of vampires!

University of Central Florida physics professor Costas Efthimiou starts with the human population on January 1, 1600, which was 536,870,911. On this day, the first vampire appears and bites one person each month. On the first day of February, there are two bloodsucking freaks. On March 1, 1600, there are four vampires. In 2.5 years, there are no more humans to feed on, because everyone on the planet has been turned into a vampire! There's no food left for the bloodsuckers, so they die of starvation. (On the downside, there are no more people, either.)

Not even doubling the human birthrate (if such a gambit were possible) could save the human species, Dr. Efthimiou says: “In the long run, humans cannot survive under these conditions, even if our population were doubling each month. And doubling is clearly way beyond the human capacity of reproduction.”

So, there you have it, thanks to Professor Efthimiou: there's no need to fear the existence of vampires. If there were, both vampires and humans would have disappeared in mid-1603. Since we humans, at least, are still here, there obviously are no such things as vampires.

For some folks, ghosts are scary phenomena, too, but there's no need to worry about these spectral beings, either, another scientist says.

Dr. Brian Cox, a physicist, has proved there aren't any ghosts, either. If they did exist, they'd be entities of pure energy, since, by definition, they're incorporeal. According to the second law of thermodynamics, energy is always “lost to heat”; therefore, ghosts, as beings of pure energy, would soon drift apart and cease to exist. 

 

Plotting Board

Copyright 2019 by Gary L. Pullman

In this post, I offer a few tips on plotting, many of which are implied, if not directly stated in Monsters of the Week: The Complete Critical Companion to the X-Files by Zach Handlen and Todd VanDerWerff. 

The Truth Is in Here

Characters' motives and goals make a simple story meaningful and significant. Make conduct personal to make it momentous.

Sitdrams Work, Too

Some of the subtitles the authors give to the reviews of X-Files episodes they discuss identify each of the episodes' respective situations; rather than being a situation comedy, or sitcom, The X-Files, it seems, is often something of a situational drama, or sitdram, as it were: “Pilot,” “In which Mulder meets Scully”; “Deep Throat:” “In which a massive conspiracy takes shape”; “Fire”: “In which Mulder faces an old flame”; “Young at Heart”: “In which Mulder has to track down an old foe”; “The Calusari”: “In which there are even more evil twins”; “Piper Maru”: “In which we meet some very strange oil”; and plenty of others.

The Connect-the-Dot Plot

Some X-Files episodes offer a series of images connected by their plots: “Pilot” shows disappearances, Handlen observes, “strange happenings in the woods, . . . little bumps on people's skin [and] . . . a weird, inhuman corpse in a coffin” (4). This connect-the-dots approach to plotting maintains mystery and suspense while providing unity and coherence by delaying the revelation or explanation of the cause of the strange events.

Balancing the Marvelous and the Uncanny

As Tzvetan Todorov points out, the fantastic exists only as long as it is not resolved as either natural (scientifically or rationally explainable) or as supernatural (scientifically or rationally inexplicable). In the former case, the apparently fantastic is uncanny; in the latter, it's marvelous.

Like most other fantastic fiction, The X-Files balances the marvelous and the uncanny, allowing a series of events to be explicable or not, depending upon one's perspective: For Mulder, science or reason can explain little, if any, of the bizarre incidents he observes, while, for Scully, almost everything she witnesses (including most of what Mulder sees) can be explained by science or reason.

For example, as Todd VanDerWerff explains, there is, in episode two of season one, “a spirited argument about whether the phenomenon the two [Mulder and Scully] observed has a paranormal or a scientific explanation” (11). The same is true, pretty much, throughout the series.

Plot Generators

The X-Files uses two plot generators to keep the action coming, episode after episode, week in and week out: “mythology” and the Monster of the Week (MOTW): “The first two episodes of the first season introduced some of the ideas that would power the mythology,” such as “alien abductions, UFO sightings, government conspiracies, and secrets,” while the MOTW provided variety, preventing the series from rehashing these elements and becoming boring an “repetitive” as a result.

As Handlen explains, “The genius of The X-Files as a premise lies in its infinite potential. Centering the show around a department of the FBI devoted exclusively to investigating strange or inexplicable cases means The X-Files can encompass any number of urban legends [and] can cross between science fiction, fantasy, and horror with ease” (11-12). (Later, to this list, the authors add “weird science” and “dramatic stories” of “the personal lives of Mulder and Scully” (14), the latter of which approach sometimes gives the series a soap opera-like character.

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