Horror: The Contributions of Personification and Dehumanization

Copyright 2018 by Gary L. Pullman

Horror movie monsters often have offensive capabilities modeled upon those with which nature has equipped terrestrial animals. Sil, Species's female alien-human hybrid created through a synthesis of alien and human deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA), is a case in point. An extended description of her appearance and her abilities shows that, despite her human characteristics, she is, at heart, much more alien than human:

Her human form is, in truth, merely a disguise and her true alien form is an exotic, sensual, alien mockery of the human form. Her form is chitinous and reptilian, somewhat reminiscent of the creatures from the film Alien, but still humanoid in appearance. Her “hair” is a mass of prehensile tentacles which are slicked back behind her head. She possesses two sets of teeth with the internal set being razor sharp. Her breasts, rather than storing fat or mammary glands, instead store long, slimy tentacles which emerge from her “nipples.” She can use her breast-tentacles as weapons but they are also used in her amorous mating ritual (as shown in the second film). Sil has long sharp spines up her back that she can retract and extend at will. These seem to be utilized as a weapon in Species 2 by Eve. Last but not least, Sil's infamous tongue. Her long tongue is tipped with sharp spines and is her primary defense mechanism (or weapon). When threatened, she can simple impale her aggressor with her tongue. This "kiss of death" is shown in each of the franchise's films at least once. Sil’s alien form is also capable of holding its breath underwater for an extended period (“Sil's Appearance”).

A conglomeration of insect, reptile, mollusk, feline or bird, and human, Sil possesses anatomical weapons that resemble those of the shark (her “two sets of teeth”), the octopus (her “prehensile tentacles”), spiny lizards (the sharp spines on her back), and cats or birds (her barbed tongue). In biological terms, she is more than simply a hybrid, or cross-bred organism; she is, in fact, a chimera, “an organism or tissue that contains at least two different sets of DNA.”

The surrealist artist H. R. Giger, who helped to develop the designs for Sil, the original of which, for her tongue, was festooned with shark's teeth, said, “My original idea was for a death kiss in which Sil forces her lethal tongue down her lover's throat, and pulls it out tearing his insides out with it. It was not to smash through the skull as in the final film.” From the beginning, Giger envisioned Sil's tongue as an anatomical weapon: “My original idea was for a death kiss in which Sil forces her lethal tongue down her lover's throat, and pulls it out tearing his insides out with it. It was not to smash through the skull as in the final film, exactly as it was done in Alien and Alien3.”

Giger also designed the spines that project from Sil's back, “hair with flaming tips,” breast tentacles, and “claw[-]like nails.” Oh, yes—she would be fire-resistant as well. Although he wasn't satisfied by the way his designs were incorporated, sometimes in an altered fashion, in the film, without his creative ideas, the movie would have been as original and as, well, surreal.

Before his work on Species, Giger also designed the Alien alien that has come to be known, unofficially, as the xenomorph. The creature's five-stage “life cycle” (Ovomorph, Facehugger, Chestburster, adult, and Queen) is elaborate and reminiscent, to some extent, of that of “wasps of the Chalcidoidea and Ichneumonoidea families, which lay their eggs on live prey that are then consumed by the hatching larvae.”

A mobile ovary with finger-like appendages and a phallic proboscis, the Facehugger attaches itself to its host's face after emerging from an egg laid by the Queen. After incapacitating its host with “a cynose-based paralytic chemical,” the Facehugger uses its proboscis to implant the creature's egg (formed during the first stage of the alien's life cycle) in its victim's chest. It then detaches itself, “crawls away and dies.” (While it's still attached, its “acidic blood prevents” its removal.)

The attachment of the Facehugger to its victim's face and its subsequent death are somewhat reminiscent of the fate of the male anglerfish, except that it attaches itself to the larger female, withering away until it becomes nothing more than a pair of testicles.

This stage of the xenomorph's “life cycle,” some contend, is a parody of the human reproductive process, substituting rape by means of something akin to oral sex for penile-vaginal intercourse performed in a context of mutual love and respect. (Alien is not recommended by feminists.)

The implanted egg is not only parasitic, but also tumorous in its growth, and it's like a virus, commandeering the host's body to use the host's DNA and other “biological material” to develop its own body, which includes assuming some of the host's own “physical traits [e. g., bipedalism] via a process known as the DNA Reflex.” Once the egg develops into a Chestbuster, it bursts through the abdomen of its host and flees, rapidly increasing in size until, within mere hours, it reaches its adult dimensions.

In short, Giger's design for the xenomorph's “life cycle” envisions reproduction as a monstrous process involving sodomy, rape, parasitism, infection, disease, and death. In his view, sex is not lovemaking, but rape combined with sexual perversion, which leads to death as well as birth, and may substitute a male host's abdomen for the uterus: the fetal Chestbuster erupts from the chest; it does not emerge from the womb. Sex, as Giger envisions it, isn't merely messy; it is itself a confusing and contradictory mess devoid of love and respect, involving violence, invasion, parasitism, infection, and disease.

Daniel D. Snyder sees the xenomorph as representing “obvious distortions of the standard human physique.” Although I'm not sure what he has in mind by “the standard human physique,” his observations are, otherwise, intriguing. Giger's alien, Snyder says, “is a filthy, primal parasite whose very survival is contingent on it's [sic] continued rape and exploitation of other species.” As such, Snyder believes the xenomorph reflects the Darwinistic struggle to survive not only by adaptation, but also through the reproduction of the species, or as Snyder himself puts it, “the cold, mechanical struggle to survive.”

He sees in Giger's monstrous vision of sex, an experience that can cause “pain” and death, and a fusion, in the xenomorph's phallic form, or “phallus and . . monster” that suggests “that thing between your legs [if one happens to be male] is also an instrument of evil.” The monstrous creature of Alien is not ourselves, exactly, but “a penis come to life [and] running amok.” As such, it is also somehow “our own weapon [turned] against us” to show “the terror of what we do to each other and the creatures we torture and exploit every day as a matter of simple survival.”

While Snyder may go a bit over the top with his xenomorphy-as-exploiting-human “run amok,” his understanding of the xenomorph's phallicism is certainly on target, as I have likewise suggested, and the creature's complex, perverse “life cycle” obviously does parody, if not critique, sexual reproduction in general.

In such monsters as Sil and the xenomorph, both personification and dehumanization are at work simultaneously, as they often are when non-human organisms or objects are given human characteristics or abilities and human beings are regarded as less than human. A mermaid is a woman—in part—but she is also a fish—in part. That's why the mermaid is extraordinary and, it must be admitted, not only eldritch, but also horrible.

By increasing or decreasing the quality of a person, an animal, or a thing, we alter it. We transform it, so that it is no longer itself. Whether, in doing so, we make it more or less than it as before, we have meddled with its identity and its essential character. We have played God, creating Sil, or the xenomorph, or whatever in our own image and likeness. That which we have changed remains changed, as does it nature, its existence, and, if it is sentient or intelligent, its experience. Where “man-made monsters” are concerned, this is the true and lasting horror, the horror of Pygmalion and Prometheus and Frankenstein: the creator becomes more monstrous than his or her creation.

Like the bat, a pit viper (the bushmaster, copperhead, and rattlesnake, among others) is equipped with a heat-seeking organ located between its eyes. This organ helps the snake to “accurately aim its strike at its warm-blooded prey.” (The bat uses its heat-seeking organ to locate blood.) Not only the chameleon and other lizards, but also plenty of other animals, including insects, fish, birds, and mammals, use various forms of camouflage, as do soldiers, to conceal themselves from predators. Insects have green blood. So does Papau New Guinea's green-blooded skink. But blood doesn't exist only in red and green; some species of octopi have blue blood, and the ocellated icefish has clear blood. Although, as far as I know, no animals have luminescent blood, many of them, including lightning bugs, or fireflies, glowworms, Jellyfish, and anglerfish, to name a few, are bioluminescent.

The alien creature in the Predator movie (1987) senses body heat, can camouflage itself (using a cloaking device, rather than natural means), and has luminescent green blood. Its traits and abilities are extraordinary, but they're not unique. Appearing in, or exhibited by, a biped creature of humanoid shape, these traits and abilities do seem novel, however, making the extraterrestrial marauder seem to be truly out of this world. They make the monster seem more nonhuman, even as its bipedalism, use of tools, and thinking ability make it seem not altogether unlike its human prey. Again, the monster is both enhanced by personification and degraded by dehumanization. The combined personification and objectification of the creature makes it seem uncanny and, therefore, all the more horrible and frightening.

Body Horror and the Ghost in the Machine

Copyright 2018 by Gary L. Pullman

In a nutshell, metaphysical dualism is the belief that the mind and the body are distinct from one another. The former is physical; the latter is not. However, in some mysterious manner, they interact. The French philosopher Rene Descartes, a dualist, expressed the mind's imprisonment, as it were, inside a body of flesh and blood as “the ghost in the machine”—The Ghost in the Machine: what a fantastic horror story title that would make!

It's not difficult to see why Descartes would describe the plight of the mind in such a fashion. The center of consciousness, or awareness and self-awareness (the awareness of the self as a self), of memory, and of will, among other aspects of intelligence, the mind controls the body, but only partially. The mind is also a prisoner of the body, which goes through changes during puberty, middle age, and old age that the mind does not experience, or at least not in the same ways and to the same extent. Thus, adolescent boys are embarrassed by their “changing” voices, girls are concerned about the development of their breasts and the onset of menstruation, middle-aged men and women sometimes undergo a “mid-life crisis,” and the elderly say they're “young at heart,” despite their balding pates, wrinkled faces, and flagging strength and stamina. The body limits the mind in many other ways as well, demanding food and drink, sleep and rest, medical care and equilibrium.

The body is also constrained and controlled to some degree by the mind, which can push it to the limits of its endurance, compel it to attempt feats both unwise and dangerous, and entertain thoughts and memories that cause stress or depression.

Metaphysical dualism, whether it is true or not (no one seems to know for certain), is the basis for the horror subgenre known as “body horror.” In body horror fiction, the changes the human body undergoes are much more extreme than those of puberty or aging; they're also horrific, often involving deviant sex, violence, injury, deformity, or death. They remind us that, as Descartes suggests, our conscious selves, our minds, are, indeed, imprisoned within our bodies. As Edgar Allan Poe observes, horror fiction is about exaggeration, sensationalism, luridness. Fans of horror fiction (and of other popular genres) want not just the ordinary, but the extraordinary—indeed, the paranormal or the supernatural, if they can get it; in short, the public wants:

The ludicrous heightened into the grotesque: the fearful coloured into the horrible: the witty exaggerated into the burlesque: the singular wrought into the strange and mystical. . . . To be appreciated, you must be read, and these things are invariably sought after with avidity.

Such grotesque exaggeration is typical of body horror no less than it is of any other type of popular fiction. The body in which the mind is trapped frequently experiences deviant sex, violence, injury, deformity, or death of the most horrific kinds, as these examples attest:

Bentley Little's novels. As we observe in “Bentley Little: Aberrant Sex as Symbolic of the Nature of Sin,” this author frequently describes scenes of deviant sex acts, not only to titillate his readers, but also to suggest that such behavior “is a shorthand way of suggesting the sinfulness and impiety of modern humanity.” Since we've already examined Little's use of sadistic and other deviant forms of sex in this previous post, there's no need to revisit it in detail in this essay. Those interested in the discussion need only access the link (above).

Slasher movies and splatter films. Violence and injury are staples of most horror fiction, but they are especially prevalent in such slasher flicks as I Know What You Did Last Summer (1997), A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984), Scream (1996), and Halloween (1978), to name but a few, and in splatter films, such as Dawn of the Dead (1978), I Spit on Your Grave (1978), Cannibal Holocaust (1980), Hostel (2005), Turistas (2006), Saw (2004), and many others. In many splatter films, the violence is so extreme and so gratuitous that this subgenre is also known as “torture porn.” Even these movies, though, don't deliver the shock and horror of the exploding head in Scanners (1981).

The mutant cannibals of The Hills Have Eyes (1977; sequel, 1995), the Phantom in the silent film The Phantom of the Opera (1925), Dr. Phibes (The Abominable Dr. Phibes [1971]), Belial (Basket Case [1982]), Freddy Krueger (the Nightmare on Elm Street series [1984-2010] [so far]), and Seth Brundle (The Fly [1986]) are among the most grotesque and, in some cases, to some extent, the most pitiable deformed characters in horror movies.

Death is so ubiquitous in horror movies that a list of the movies in which it appears is probably unnecessary, but films in which the causes of death are among the most horrific include Elvira Parker's smashed head (Deadly Friend [1986]) (although it does look less than realistic) and, again, it's hard to top the exploding head in Scanners (1981). A runner-up might be the death inflicted by the otherworldly embryonic “chest-buster” in Alien (1979).

Movies are good at showing the blood, guts, and gore associated with body horror, but they can't compare with the printed word, because body horror is not as much about blood, guts, and gore as it is the suffering that goes on in the mind. Body horror is more about the mental anguish that we suffer as minds trapped inside the prisons of our flesh. It is in the mind, not the body, that horror, terror, and disgust occur. These emotions are the effects of these afflictions, but, in body horror, the effects count more than their causes. That's the reason that a master of horror such as Poe can cause mental anguish—more horror and terror and disgust—in a short story such as “The Premature Burial,” which takes place inside the coffin of a man who's been buried alive, than even the best horror movie producer can create. Poe has the power of the written word, the medium of cognition, at his command; the director must rely on nothing more than pictures and sounds. The body, without the mind, is only an object. A corpse has no fear of the dentist—or of the psychotic serial killer. It is only when the mind and the body are alive and the mind is trapped inside the body, a “ghost in the machine,” that the dentist's drill or the serial killer's knife is a thing of terror beyond imagining.

Breasts as Emblems of Horror

Copyright 2018 by Gary L. Pullman

Bare breasts are big in horror movies, which begs the question: what's so horrific about mammary glands? 

Internet Movie Data Base (IMDb) devotes several pages to listing “Most Popular 'female-frontal-nudity,' Horror Feature Films.” There are a lot of them on the list: 665, in fact, to date. Perhaps these films may indicate why filmmakers consider women's breasts terrifying enough to feature prominently in the movies they make, if the exhibition of breasts is not merely gratuitous—in other words, presented only to sell tickets.

In TheShining, Jack Torrance, an aspiring writer who is earning money by taking care of a vast hotel that's closed for the off-season, sees a naked succubus. The female sex demon appears to be a beautiful young woman, but she soon reveals her true self, taking on her actual appearance as a withered old crone. Is Jack hallucinating, or has the succubus actually transformed, shedding her youth and beauty? Does her change in appearance have a psychological or a supernatural cause? In the words of Tzvetan Todorov, is she, respectively, a specimen of the uncanny or the marvelous?

In a sense, the succubus embodies the crux of the matter investigated by Stanley Kubrick's interpretation of Stephen King's novel. The producer believed in the possibility of the survival of death. His succubus suggests this state of existence in the presence of the sex demon. However, Kubrick leaves room for a psychological explanation of the female sex demon: maybe Jack is psychotic and she's merely an hallucination. Since the succubus can be understood in either natural or supernatural terms, depending on one's world view, her presence in the film is not gratuitous, but symbolic and thematic.

But what about her nudity? Must she be naked? Again, the answer to this question will be determined by the individual viewer's view of the nature of ultimate reality. If she is regarded as being of a supernatural origin, her nudity is not gratuitous, for it accords with the legend of the succubus, a female sex demon who invariably appears in the altogether as a temptress intent upon collecting human semen. Once successful, according to some stories, she assumes the form of a male sex demon, the incubus, appearing to women, usually during their sleep, to seduce and inseminate them—with the demon (or female sex demon) collected from human males in his (or her) previous incarnations as a succubus. (Demon sex is more complicated than we might have imagined.)

If she is a succubus, though, it is difficult to imagine why she gives herself away by transforming her appearance as a beautiful young woman into a shape that's not merely undesirable, but repulsive. As a succubus, she would be intent upon collecting Jack's seed in order to inseminate a woman. Assuming the appearance of someone who's undesirable doesn't help her to achieve her goals.

Perhaps, then, the succubus isn't a sex female demon, after all, except in Jack's own tormented mind. She is his version of a succubus, a demonic Galatea fashioned in his own image of a desirable woman. As such, she is far from the reality of womanhood embodied by his wife, Wendy, who is portrayed by Shelley Duvall, the same actress who played Olive Oyl opposite Robin Williams's Popeye. Wendy is not undesirable as a woman—Jack married her and fathered a son by her, after all—but, in Jack's twisted mind, if the succubus is a hallucination, Wendy (and all women) becomes so: her transformation isn't real, but a projection of Jack's own thoughts about women, Wendy, perhaps, in particular. Seductive one moment, women can transform themselves (or be transformed by Jack's fears of women) into repulsive monsters—or female sex demon—the next instant. Woman, Jack's ambiguous thoughts about the opposite sex seem to suggest, thy name is mutability.

The scene in which the succubus makes her appearance suggests Jack's ambiguity concerning women, female nudity, and sex. His hand appears from the left, as he slowly opens a bathroom door. The slowness with which Jack opens the door highlights the moment, dramatizing the revelation that is now at hand. This slow movement, like the lighting during the first half of the scene, gives an ethereal quality to the picture, emphasizing the ideal way in which Jack views the nubile young woman.

As the door opens, Jack sees a bathtub and a half-drawn shower curtain. The tub occupies an arched niche at the rear of the bathroom, which, with the shower curtain, gives the alcove the appearance of being a theater, if not, indeed, an altar. Jack has entered a forbidden (or sacred) zone, symbolized by the closed, if not locked, door. He is about to see something half-hidden from his consciousness, as the half-drawn shower curtain suggests. His staring eyes and a close-up shot of his throat as he gulps, his Adam's apple rising and falling, shows his anxiety. The half-drawn shower curtain opens, as a beautiful young nude woman draws it aside. She is wet (with Freudian significance and otherwise), as her breasts are revealed. Again, the slowness with which the curtain is drawn aside focuses viewers on the revelatory aspect of the moment.

Jack's expression changes from one of anxiety to one of enchanted. He smiles, Slowly, the woman rises. Jack's look of enchantment. changes to one of lust, as his gaze intensifies, Slowly, the woman steps out of the tub, one long leg advancing, the other, just as slowly, following. Jack's gaze is riveted. His smile broadens. The seductive woman advances, her gait slow, measured, as if she is walking in tandem with the wedding march. Her gaze is locked on Jack. Returning her stare, he seems transfixed, but then he walks, slowly, to meet her, as the camera turns slightly to view her from a three-quarters angle. Her breasts and pubes seem to fill the screen, as they do Jack's consciousness.

As they face one another, staring into one another's eyes, the woman's fingertips make contact with Jack's abdomen, gliding upward, across his chest. Her movement, as has been typical throughout the scene, is slow and deliberate. Her hands continue to glide, over Jack's shoulders and around his neck. He has not moved, but stands as if he were a statue. Then, he responds, encircling her waist with his hand. She turns this way and that, offering viewers a glimpse of her buttocks, before she kisses Jack, who now fully embraces her. Jack's eyes close. Theirs is a long kiss, an extended kiss, a passionate kiss.

Jack opens his eyes. They widen, as he sees something over her shoulder. The camera shares his view, in a mirror on the wall behind him: the body of the woman he holds in his arms, as revealed in the looking-glass, is scarred. Her upper left arm, her lower back, and her right buttock are marred by massive discolorations and hideous blemishes. Astonished and horrified, Jack begins to back away from the transformed woman.

For a moment, his shaken son Danny's discovery of a dead older woman, lying, partially submerged in the bathtub, scabrous discolorations and blotches on her body, is interspersed.

Jack continues to retreat, his head shaking, just as Danny's head shook when he saw the drowned, older woman's corpse. As he backs through the doorway, the portal of revelation, the hideous crone follows, her arms parted, as if to embrace Jack.

The scene is interrupted again by Danny's sight of the drowned woman, lying, partially submerged in the bathtub, her body displaying terrible scars and bruises.

Jack retreats down the steps, into the suite's living room, followed by the succubus.

Danny trembles, uncontrollably, as the dead woman's body sits up.

Outside the suite, Jack locks the door to the rooms, leaving the key in the lock, as he staggers backwards, down the hall, away from the rooms,leaving the scene of the revelation behind.

It seems apparent that the nude woman whom Jack encountered is the same one Danny encountered, but Jack saw the woman in her beautiful and desirable guise, whereas Danny saw her as an apparition of a drowned, older woman. For Jack, the woman was a female demon; for Danny, a ghost. Danny is too young to conceptualize women sexually; Jack is not. Therein lies the differences in their conscious understanding and their unconscious depictions of the opposite sex. Danny can see a woman in her physical aspect as a body which, despite the presence of breasts and genitalia, is primarily, or even exclusively, merely anatomical. Jack can see a woman as both physical and sexual, and it is to the latter image that he is anxious, while, at the same time, himself sexually responsive.

Essentially, Danny is frightened of death, a it is represented by the female corpse he encounters, whereas Jack is terrified of something other than death. Jack is horrified by female sexuality itself, which is alive with beauty and sex appeal, but, at the same time, diseased and repulsive because capable of transforming in various ways. A woman can become pregnant, deliver a baby, suckle an infant, and age. She seems to be in transition, as she undergoes transformations throughout her life. She is manifold in function and in appearance, seemingly unstable and mutable—in a word, from Jack's point of view, monstrous and demonic.

His encounter with the beautiful nude young woman shows Jack's feelings about women as desirable, but his attraction to them, as they are represented in particular by his wife Wendy, is contradicted by his revulsion of them. He seems to think that, beneath their apparent glamour, they are diseased and hideous.

The sexist dichotomy of women which separates them into virtuous and charming companions versus untrustworthy sluts is alive and well in Jack's subconscious mind. In the hotel, whether through supernatural or psychological influences, this unconscious view of women become conscious, at least until the locks the succubus in the hotel suite (his unconscious mind) by repressing the knowledge, which he finds too threatening to embrace, or accept. Therefore, his view of women, and of Wendy in particular, remains dualistic. At the same time, he sees them as beautiful and desirable, seductive temptresses and as hideous and unwelcome, destructive female sex demons.

In The Shining, as symbols of femininity, of female sexuality, of pregnancy, and of motherhood, breasts, as synecdoches of womanhood, are horrific for Jack because he is unable to come to terms with women as they are in themselves. Women are too complex for him, too changeable, too mysterious, too other. He can conceive of them only as beautiful seductresses or as monstrous female sex demons. Despite his marriage to Wendy, he is unable to view women, including his wife, as they are in and of themselves, as human beings, complex and, yes, in the final analysis, mysterious, as all life is ultimately mysterious.

For viewers, watching the movie through more objective eyes, Jack's behavior, stemming, as it does from his beliefs, is insane. However, from his own point of view, his delusions and hallucinations are real. From his perspective, he sees things as they are. When he acts upon his own understanding of reality, horror results. It is this horror, resulting from his monstrous ideas of women, his wife included, that the true horror of Kubrick's film arises.

Of course, plenty of other horror movies feature breasts as symbols of the particular horrors with which they are concerned. While such horror, in general, centers upon women, who sport these accouterments of femininity, the precise sorts of horror that breasts, as synecdoches of the physicality and sexuality of women, represent for other characters, in other movies, differ, because every man—and some women—are Pygmalions who fashion their ideas of women into psychological and, sometimes theological, representations of women. When those concepts of womanhood are irrational, horror can, and, unfortunately, often does, result. Future essays will consider the additional ways in which, in such movies, breasts are emblems of horror.

The Monster as Sexual Menace

Copyright 2018 by Gary L. Pullman

On one level, most horror fiction is about sex. Monsters are rapists. Monsters are penises. Monsters are sperm. Monsters assault, force their way in, invade. Their victims are vaginas, wombs, and ova, disguised as men and women or, less often, children. Because monsters are often of or related to body parts or their secretions—saliva, mucus, semen, blood—they themselves often produce visceral reactions and such dark emotions as fear and loathing, disgust and repulsion.

What is the Frankenstein monster but the womb bypassed? It is the embodiment of technological, rather than natural, reproduction and the denial and the dismissal of woman as a necessary participant in and contributor to the replenishment of the human species.

The vampire is an embodiment of non-procreative sex or, more specifically, oral sex. It's love bites represent its sex life. There is need for neither vagina nor penis, ovary nor testicle, ovum nor sperm. The end served by the vampire is not new life, however, but the end of life; it is death.

In some stories, such as The Creature from the Black Lagoon, the monster as sexual threat is merely suggested in its seeking out of female victims. In others, such as Species, the message is explicit and direct: the monster (whether male, as in Lagoon, or female, as in Species) is out to kill us, and its modus operandi is sexual, whether the scriptwriter is circumspect or in our faces about it.

It helps, in writing (and reading) horror fiction to remember the lesson of Freud: everything is sexual, because there are two forces, eros and thanatos, in conflict with one another, with human beings their battleground, no matter the shape and the name the monster, in its present disguise, takes, and whether the story being told is classic or contemporary, literary or popular. Such text (or subtext, as the case may be) enriches horror fiction, just as it grounds it in both the human anatomy and human experience.

Giger's Art: A Lesson for Horror Writers of the Biomechanical Age

Copyright 2011 by Gary L. Pullman

Horrific sex is about domination and submission, about control and being controlled, about power and powerlessness, about pleasure and pain, about joy and misery, about elevation and degradation. Its fulcrum is neither love nor affection, but power. It is the use and abuse of another human being--not only sexually, but also physically and emotionally--for one’s own purposes. It is the reduction of a person to a thing and the use of him or her as a means to the end of satisfying one’s own psychosexual needs and desires.

H. R. Giger’s art is horrific because it depicts such behavior. In his nightmarish biomechanical worlds, men and women--mostly women--are cyborgs--part human and part machine, and their situations (and their postures) are indicative of their degradation and humiliation. Indeed, the very purpose of Giger’s art seems to portray, as starkly as possible, the abject nature of fleshly incarnation, of the fleshly aspects of human existence, of the body that houses the soul. It is in the flesh that humanity is lost; it is in flesh that the animal within is to be found--except that, in Giger’s art, even the flesh and the animality of human existence is transformed; it is reduced to an even lower level, that of the mineral and the mechanical. In Giger’s art, free will is denied in favor of the mechanistic and the material, the mechanical and the determined. At best, people (mostly women) are what is leftover of them--half faces, half bodies, partial personalities, all immersed in a mechanical apparatus that is greater than themselves, in which they are, quite literally, mere cogs in a machine.

When a face does appear, amid the wires and cords, plates and pipes, tubes and gears, hose connectors and clamps, presses and compressors, motors and switches, the eyes usually show only their whites. The irises are missing, signifying, perhaps, the agony or the death of the individual enmeshed in the machinery. Emphasis, in general, is given to the sex organs--breasts, vagina, buttocks, anus, penis, and testicles--the animal parts of men and (mostly) women. These organs are hooked into the machinery or, in some cases, have become one with the machines of which they are part, penises becoming pistons, vaginas sockets, breasts dome-shaped lids with nuts instead of nipples.

Paradoxically, it is humanity itself who has manufactured the machinery that enslaves men and women, that dehumanizes them, that humiliates them. Human beings have created of the natural world a hell on earth, wherein they have reduced themselves, along with nature, to something lower than the beasts. They have become one with, and part and parcel of, their machinery, as determined and soulless as the engines that perform ambiguous functions without direction or, it appears, purpose. Having been set in motion, they do whatever task they have been designed to do--usually something, in Giger’s art, that is as horrific as it is bizarre and absurd. The human (mostly female) cogs in his machinery are there, it seems, mostly to be raped, tortured, and possibly killed. This is the earth that we have made, Giger’s work suggests; this is the world as we would have it to be, not a garden of Eden but a nightmarish mechanical world in which we are not the image and likeness of God but cogs in a giant and incomprehensible, but horrific, machine of our own making. The biomechanical world is the world that we have created in our own image and likeness.

In Giger’s art, sadomasochism is taken to new heights--or lows. It has become passionless, it has become a matter of course, it is mechanical and perfunctory, operating under the same laws of physics as any other impersonal force in the universe. Penile pistons pump back and forth inside tubular vaginas without love, affection, or any kind of emotion, except, perhaps, mute horror, with the machine-like efficiency of a cog in a machine. Impaled, women seem to be all but unaware of their rape by the monstrous machines that ravish them, sometimes vaginally, sometimes orally, sometimes anally--sometimes in all these ways, simultaneously--to no purpose or end but, it seems, efficiency of motion, for, obviously, no machine is capable of inseminating a woman, nor is a woman who is partly--or even mostly--machine able to conceive or bear a child. The sex in Giger’s art is mechanical and purposeless, as absurd as the rest of the machinery in his factories of the damned. Sex, which, in times past, united couples, does not depend upon even the presence of a complete man or woman. All that is needed is the sex organs themselves and a face to register the misery and horror of dehumanized, mechanical existence in a determined and material world apart not only from God but from spirituality itself. This is the true horror of Giger’s horrific art.

In fantasy, science fiction, and horror, the theme had emerged--and had been emerging--for decades, even centuries. Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein had warned of artificial reproduction which bypasses sexuality. Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack warned us about the dangers of bestiality in King Kong. Dean Koontz portrayed the dangers of sex with computers in Demon Seed. Some fundamentalist Christians are also warning us that sex with robots might not be without menace. According to “Why Sex With Robots Is Always Wrong: The Impending Demise of the Human Species,” a somewhat histrionic, and perhaps tongue-in-cheek article (it‘s written as if its incidents occur in the 2030 and “is not about sex with robots at all,” but “increasing sexual perversion and increasingly pervasive virtual sex happening through the expanding acceptance of online pornography”), “the idea that sex with robots will radically effect the attitudes of practitioners also comes from studies of those involved with pornography on a regular basis,” and “studies have found that viewing of pornography results in“ the following outcomes: 

1. increased callousness toward women
2. trivialization of rape as a criminal offense
3. distorted perceptions about sexuality
4. increased appetite for more deviant and bizarre types of pornography (escalation and addiction)
5. devaluation of monogamy
6. decreased satisfaction with a partner’s sexual performance, affection, and physical appearance
7. doubts about the value of marriage
8. decreased desire to have children
9. viewing non-monogamous relationships as normal and natural behavior

Even in the “real world,” some are predicting that men and women may, within the present century, fall in love with, marry, and have sex with robots.  According to Dr. David Levy, a researcher at University of Maastricht in the Netherlands, as paraphrased by Charles Q. Choi in the MSN online article, “Sex and marriage with robots? It could happen,” “psychologists have identified roughly a dozen basic reasons why people fall in love, “and almost all of them could apply to human-robot relationships.” Some, if not all, of these reasons could be programmed into robots, Levy argues: “For instance, one thing that prompts people to fall in love are similarities in personality and knowledge, and all of this is programmable. Another reason people are more likely to fall in love is if they know the other person likes them, and that's programmable too.”

So far, the robots resemble human beings. “There's a trend of robots becoming more human-like in appearance and coming more in contact with humans,” Levy said. Indeed, he predicts that realistic sex dolls of the type manufactured by RealDoll will be the prototypical robotic paramour: “It's just a matter of adding some electronics to them to add some vibration,” Levy contends, and maybe equipping the robots with the ability to coo a few sweet nothings. “That's fairly primitive in terms of robotics, but the technology is already there.” Levy’s is only one vision of the future of sex with robots, however, and it is a decidedly utopian dream Alongside it is Giger’s dystopian nightmare. It remains to be seen who, Levy, the artificial intelligence expert, or Giger, the surrealistic artist, will prove more prophetic.

Demonic Aspects of Demon Art

Copyright 2011 by Gary L. Pullman

Okay, I admit it: I have never seen a demon.

Not a real one, not a demon in the flesh, as it were.

I know a couple of people who have seen demons--or claim that they have, at any rate. Their statements are somewhat like those who claim to have seen extraterrestrial spaceships: they tend to contradict one another. Of course, “seem” is the key word here. Perhaps they are not contradictory at all. There may be enough demons to warrant varying descriptions of them. In all probability, one would think, there would be as much variety, at least, among the infernal hordes as there are among any other creatures. I mean, who would believe that such a creature as a starfish could be real, if one didn’t know that they actually exist? Or a jellyfish? Or a chameleon? Each of these animals seems highly unlikely, and, certainly, they are all quite different in appearance and characteristics, yet they all exist. Variety, as they say, is the spice of life, in nature as in anything else, demons, one might conclude, included.

In any case, what I’m more concerned with in this post are the aspects of demons--the characteristics that make the, well, demonic--that is, terrible, horrible, and just plain scary. As usual, one can discover quite a bit by simply taking a gander at artists’ conceptions of these infernal fiends, seeking, where possible, to identify similarities that suggest generalizations and differences which suggest differentiae.

The first thing I notice, in perusing pictures of fallen angels, is that most of them have human--or humanoid--faces. They have eyes, noses, ears, mouths--the usual--but these features are not typical of the ones a person would see in the mirror--well, hopefully not. For one thing, the complexion is likely to be of a most unusual color--yellow, red, green, perhaps--which is, of course, nothing like any skin tone that one is likely any time soon to encounter among human beings. Their features are also likely to be deformed in some way. They may have no irises, for example, the whole of their eyes being a glutinous white, or their pupils may be elongated and elliptical, like those of a serpent’s eyes. Some demons’ eyes actually glow like hot coals, if artists’ conceptions of the infernal folk are reliable guides. Demons’ ears may taper to points like the ears of a goat. Their teeth may include one or more sets of fangs. Their tongues may be forked like a snake’s tongue.

Besides the deformity of facial features, demons also sometimes come equipped, as it were, with attributes borrowed from animals: horns, scales, tails, cloven hooves, claws, that sort of thing. Those who have wings don’t, as a rule, have feathery pinions, but leathery, bat-like appendages. A few artists depict demons, usually of the female sort, with snakelike, Gorgon curls. The ancient Greeks’ satyrs (fauns in ancient Roman mythology) served as models for the more traditional type of demon familiar to many.

From Wolfman’s Gallery

However, more imaginative artists, including Hieronymus Bosch, H. R. Giger, and Javier Gil have rendered demons with more individuality and grotesquery.

Bosch’s demons tend to be anthropomorphic birds and beasts, often armed with weapons, or strange mixtures of several animals, hybrids of his fevered imagination. His The Temptation of St. Anthony and The Garden of Earthly Delights showcase some of Bosch’s more bizarre concepts of demonic creatures, each of which has a symbolic character that is now, alas, largely forgotten. In the vision of hell that is part of the Garden triptych, Bosch includes a demon--perhaps Satan himself, seated upon a chair that is a combination of throne and toilet. The demon, which wears an upside-down cauldron for a miter, and clerical garb, but has a transparent, insect-like abdomen, which projects downward, through the throne-toiler, devours men alive, defecating them into a round cistern below its seat. Not far from this demon of apostasy, there is a fiend whose hindquarters alone are shown, its upper body hidden in the cannibalistic demon’s flowing sash. It exhibits its buttocks to a naked woman who is seated against one of the legs of the popish demon’s throne-toilet. Instead of flesh, however, the kneeling demon’s posterior is a mirror in which the woman’s face is reflected. Straddled by the mirror-bottomed demon, whose legs end in antlers or barren tree branches, the seated woman is gripped from behind by an ass-headed fiend. A toad, symbolic of sexual lust, rests above her breasts. Her besetting sin appears to be vanity or, as psychologists would characterize her personality disorder today, narcissism.

Hieronymus Bosh, The Garden of Earthly Delights

Better known for his extraterrestrials (Alien, Species), H. R. Giger has also offered his own highly imaginative take on a ancient, albeit not particularly well understood, demon known as Baphomet. In his painting, a nude white woman--white not in the sense of Caucasian, but literally white, both of hair and of flesh--is suspended before a wheel, above and behind a bust of Baphomet, below whose head, upon the pillar which it tops are the heads of entwined serpents (or maybe birds with long necks; it’s hard to say which). The nude woman wears an inverted cross about her neck and brandishes, one in each hand, a pair of sharp-pointed objects that resemble the ends of a demon’s horns. Mounted upon the wheel, and facing in, toward her, are a series of hypodermic syringes whose needles appear to penetrate her outer thighs. The Baphomet head seems half dead: its ears are at half-mast, so to speak, its whiskers look wilted, and its eyes are half-closed, one showing only its whites, the other an iris that is rolling upward, into the skull. In lieu of a necklace, a hinge or metal plate resembling the end of a belt is fastened to the neck of the pillar, a buckle seeming to fasten it in place. The goat-head’s beard is tightly braided, one lock extending into a tail-like strand that ends in an arrowhead shape.

Two long, curving horns rise from the demon’s head, a third, smaller, straight horn ending in a bony crown, between them. The long horns frame the nude woman, and the crown atop the third horn rises between the woman’s spread thighs, occupying the space at which her sex would appear, were it not so obstructed. In viewing the placement of this decidedly phallic horn, one gets the impression that penetration is occurring, although it is not: the horn is in front, not inside, the woman’s sex. She seems both to be crucified and to float. Above her, in place of INRI, the acronym for the Latin phrase “Jesus Nazareth King Jews,” is the Roman numeral “XV.” There is no indication as to what the number signifies. It seems clear, however, that the nude woman is a demonic, probably satanic, priestess, possibly a temple prostitute, who worships the devil, mocking the sacred work of Christ by the inverted cross she wears as her necklace.

Although some moviegoers might not make the connection, supposing that the appearance of the beautiful woman who turns into an ugly old hag in Stanley Kubrick’s movie version of Stephen King’s The Shining is just another of Jack Torrance’s many hallucinations and is, as such, a manifestation of his madness, the temptress is a modern-day example of an ancient demon, the succubus, a female demon that was believed to have sex with men, usually in their sleep. (The male counterpart is the incubus.)

H. R. Giger, Baphomet

As I observe in my “Sex and Horror” series, sex, as it is depicted in horror fiction, is typically of a perverted sort that is intended to defy God’s commandment to humanity (through his directive to Adam and Eve) to “be fruitful and multiply” in order to “replenish the earth” with future generations of the human species. Anything that is not reproductive (and, by definition, therefore, heterosexual) is sinful, mainstream theologians argue. Indeed, non-reproductive sex between heterosexuals is also sinful, such thinkers contend. Javier Gil’s demonic art (i. e., his work which features demonic figures) typically portrays just such sexual activity--activity that is of a non-reproductive character, including orgies, homosexual unions, bestiality, and assorted perverse behavior. Most of his works of erotica which include demonic revelers are too pornographic for display in Chillers and Thrillers, but I offer the following picture as a milder representation of Gil’s demonic art.

Javier Gil, Untitled

What may we conclude from our examination of demons as they appear in artists’ conceptions of them? They resemble us, but they represent the worst aspects of ourselves, or of humanity: unbridled animality, sin, moral and sexual perversion, disobedience to God, an elevation of the fleshly aspects of human existence above the spiritual elements of human nature, blasphemous and sacrilegious communications, false religions or religious doctrines, and of a concern for pleasure without regard for propriety (or sanctity). These are the demonic aspects of human nature, reflected in artistic conceptions of demons as personifications of such impulses, conditions, and conduct. Writers of horror and fantasy fiction can take a clue or two from their more visual counterparts concerning what is evil and how it may be represented. (The article, “Demons,” in the online edition of The Catholic Encyclopedia has some interesting insights into the subject matter, too, especially concerning the positive and negative, or good and “sinister” senses of meaning that the word had in the original Greek usage!)

"Gideon’s Sword": The Verdict

Copyright 2011 by Gary L. Pullman

In a note at the end of their latest Aloysius Pendergast novel, Fever Dream, Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child promised to debut the protagonist of a new series of thrillers, Gideon Crew. In Gideon’s Sword, they make good on their promise, introducing a younger man than Special Agent Pendergast. In his twenties, Gideon is billed (on the novel’s dust jacket) as a “trickster, prodigy,” and “master thief.” After avenging the death of his father, Gideon comes to the attention of a well-heeled private organization that hires him to, well, save the world. More specifically, his mission is to steal plans for a secret doomsday weapon from a Chinese agent who may or may not be defecting from his homeland. One thing leads to another (they way one thing should do in a thriller), and, before long, Gideon is in the company of prostitutes, call girls, female CIA agents, and others as he flees a Chinese martial arts expert-cum-assassin who is known only by the name of Nodding Crane.

It’s all good fun, but I find the plot, at times, unbelievable and, at other times, hard to believe. The characterization is fairly solid, although Gideon lacks (at this point, at least) the likeability of Pendergast. The Gideon books are apparently designed to appeal to younger-than-Pendergast novel-readers, which is all well and good, which probably explains the slightly more risqué (and sometimes crude) language, the references to prostitutes and call girls, and the double entendres (a few of which fall flat). Dialogue is not one of the authors’ particular strengths (although it is not a weakness, either), and, occasionally, what is intended to sound witty sounds more contrived than clever. Here’s an example:

“Bur Dubai Hotel is rather nice,” Mindy Jackson said as they passed through customs and headed for the taxi queue. “You owe me a stiff one.”

He spread his hands, “Drink, or . . . ?”

She colored. “Drink. A stiff drink. What a mind you have” (172).

Overall, though, the 342-page novel is exciting enough, although I wouldn’t go as far in my praise for it as those who supply the back cover’s blurbs (not all of which seem to have been written specifically for this Preston and Child novel). Would I read another Gideon Crew novel? Sure.

Trailer Tease

Copyright 2011 by Gary L. Pullman

The text is minimal, mostly phrases, interspersed with film footage, which has a cumulative and climactic effect:

A small town. . .

A way out. . .

A helping hand. . .

A new breed. . .

. . . of evil

is on the hunt.

In the example shown above, which constitutes the trailer, or preview film clip, of Prowl, young adults (the ladies wearing bikinis, of course) leap into a swimming pool, enjoying themselves at a party.

Text--“A small town”--appears on the screen, above an image of a two-lane blacktop cresting a hill between stands of trees, a mountain in the distance.

The characters talk excitedly. A van travels down a snowy road, away from the camera, as the words “A way out” appear on the screen. The driver and passengers are shown enjoying their ride before their vehicle breaks down, leaving them stranded alongside the road. They wait, impatiently, inside for a few moments before deciding to flag down another vehicle.

As “A helping hand” appears on the screen, a big rig stops for them, and they climb inside the trailer, where they resume partying, dancing and drinking. Two of the women, one half-dressed, attempt to kiss, but the big rig slams on its brakes, and the passengers are thrown about inside the trailer. One of the ladies tries to make a call on her cell phone, but to no avail. Another attempts to peer through a hole drilled through a wall of the trailer, and one of her companions discovers blood on the floor of the trailer. The occupants bang upon the walls of their mobile prison, demanding to be let out. The door to the trailer is lifted, but it is dark outside.

The scene shifts, and the young adults are inside a large, cavernous building, which turns out to be an abandoned meat-packing plant, and the words “A new breed” appear on the screen as a figure leaps from several stories. He seems to be disfigured or to be wearing a mask.

“Of evil” appears on the screen as another figure glides below the ceiling of the vast building, looking like a flying squirrel. He tackles a fleeing woman. A third figure scampers down a wall. Several of the group are lifted into the air. A woman stabs one of the predators in the eye with a knife. The bloody blade falls to the floor.

“Is on the hunt” appears on the screen, followed by a small army of predatory figures. Two of the victims hide around a corner, their backs to the wall, crying and lamenting their fate. A male victim looks upward, following the beam of his flashlight. A spread-eagled figure leaps from above. Someone on fire runs through the building. Two of the young women kick at panels in the wall, seeking escape. More images of flight and pursuit are displayed. A fire sweeps through the building.

The film’s title, Prowl, appears on the screen. A young man and a young woman are buried up to their necks inside a bin. He places his hand over hers, reassuring her. There is a blurred movement, and she screams. “In 2011” appears on a screen gone black.

Examined from the perspective of narrative or dramatic structure, the teaser has a beginning (a problem is indicated: the young adults become bored with their lives in a small town); a middle (a possible solution is proposed [seek an apartment in Chicago]; another problem is introduced [their vehicle breaks down, leaving them stranded in the middle of nowhere], a possible solution occurs [a trucker stops to offer them a ride]); and an end (the horror begins [vampires hunt the trapped travelers inside an abandoned warehouse]). The trailer also sets the scene--or scenes--”a small town,” rural countryside, and a meat-packing plant--introduces the characters--bored young adults who take a road trip together, encountering a trucker who leads them to a building infested with vampires--and establishes the basic situation--the victims are hunted by vampires (who happen to be in training).

Like paperback novel blurbs, horror movie trailers are useful tools, when analyzed, in illustrating the elements of plot that intrigue fans: a problem-solution approach, characters involved in a personal undertaking, an encounter with evil, and a fight-or-flight sequence in which young adults strive to survive against all odds. (A little sex and/or nudity is, for horror movies, if not paperbacks, prerequisites, too, of course.) By making sure that one’s own story contains these elements, a writer is likely to interest his or her readers or moviegoers in similar fare. What is more, carefully chosen phrases, like those displayed in the Prowl trailer, provide a skeleton that can be fleshed out, so to speak, with cause-and-effect-related action sequences unified by purpose and theme. By studying horror movie trailers, writers can become more adept in grabbing audiences or readers by their throats and holding on for dear life until the last foot of film or the last page of a novel.

Sex and Horror, Part 9

Copyright 2011 by Gary L. Pullman

Having provided both Freudian and Christian definitions and examples of erotic horror, I would now, in the final installment of my “Sex and Horror” series, like to offer my own thoughts concerning this subgenre of horror fiction (or, depending upon one’s point of view, this subgenre of erotic fiction). Although I fervently disbelieve in psychoanalysis, I also believe that Sigmund Freud’s theory of personality does provide some insights that may be, in some sense and to some extent, valid and applicable to the horror genre in general and to the erotic horror subgenre in particular. I likewise believe that the Christian criticism of such fiction, both Catholic and Protestant, offers valid insights concerning sex and horror.

Freud’s emphasis upon unconscious drives and impulses as wellsprings of human behavior is certainly valid, as is the Christian insistence that non-reproductive sex necessarily involves one in human relationships and possibly human-divine relationships as well and may constitute “sinful” conduct. Unless masturbatory, sex must involve at least two individuals, after all, and even masturbatory sex doesn’t occur in a vacuum--a whole web of social and cultural values, taboos, and inducements, including religious ones, apply--even in the commission of solitary sexual activities.

For me, however, sex and horror merge mostly in the duality of human beings as, on the one hand, material-animal beings and, on the other hand, as spiritual-human beings. As ghosts inhabiting machines, men and women are both part and parcel of the natural world and, at the same time, transcend the natural world. As minds, or spirits, people are able to freeze experience in thought and to react or respond to it emotionally and imaginatively; they can project themselves forward in time and imagine a variety of sexual pathways, alternatives, and futures, both for themselves as individuals, for others as individuals, and for society.

In addition, one may find that he or she does not measure up to the expectations of others, whether the “other” involved is one’s partner or one’s society. Perhaps a man may discover that he is impotent, that he cannot perform, or please his lover; a woman may find that she is more highly sexually charged than society deems correct or that she prefers one of her own, to the opposite, sex. Men and women may have trouble relating to anyone else, male or female, on intimate emotional, physical, and sexual levels. They may fear not sex itself but what it will reveal concerning innermost secrets of the self which they would conceal at all costs.

Moreover, social mores shift from time to time, and what is permissible in one era may be impermissible in another; what was once “right” may now be “wrong”--or what was impermissible or wrong in an earlier time may be acceptable or right today. The recognition of the relative and ethnocentric nature of morality is usually disturbing, whether it occurs through reflection upon one’s sexual behavior (or sexuality) or upon human experience in general, and erotic horror is often a product of a character’s discovery of such limitations.

Sex is a physical act in which the heart rate increases as muscles flex and contract, blood flows more copiously, the lungs pant, and body fluids, ultimately, are exchanged. In short, sex reveals human beings’ animality, an aspect of themselves that, in polite society men and women generally take pains to obscure, preferring to think of themselves as “a little lower than the angels” rather than as “higher animals.” Paradoxically, sex, which can generate life, is also a reminder of death. People are animals. They are meat. They will die. Sex brings men and women close to the physical--and, indeed, the visceral--components of themselves and, in doing so, with their own imminent mortality.

But sex is also about power, too. It is about conquest. It is about seduction. Men sometimes regard themselves as conquerors, sex as a means of conquest, and women as the conquered. Sex is, such men suggest, a "war" in which, sooner or later, women are likely to become "casualties." Sex is a series of ongoing "battles" in which the strongest will survive, and men are stronger than women.

Some women, on the other hand, consider sex a means of seduction. In nature, the male animal is bright, beautiful, and alluring, but, among human beings, women adorn themselves, attract and lure, seduce, and claim as their own the suitors who fight among themselves for the exclusive claim to women’s charms. In either vision, the male or the female, sex itself is about power, especially the taking of it from one person--and from one sex--and the conferring of the taken power upon oneself--and one’s own sex.

Many of the icons of horror fiction are used to suggest the multivalent nature of erotic horror: the demon, its amoral quality; the ghost, the repressive social and cultural limitations associated with it and the personal and psychological responses to such restrictions and taboos; the vampire, its predatory aspects; the werewolf, its animality; and the witch, its seductive character. Often, scenes of so-called bondage and discipline highlight the sexual, the social, and the sadomasochistic qualities of sex, suggesting that it is emotionally, physically, and sexually painful and that there is a dynamic of power and powerlessness, of dominance and submission, involved in every expression, of whatever variety, of the sex drive.

Sex is primal and instinctive; sex is personal and secret; sex is social and cultural; sex is revelatory and fearsome--it is a complex set of behaviors, including thoughts and emotions, because humans are themselves complex dualities which are neither exclusively physical or material nor completely incorporeal or spiritual. Men and women live in a number of twofold worlds, but they are defined by none of them: the material and the spiritual, the animal and the human, the temporal and the eternal, the private and the public, the barbaric and the civilized, the natural and the cultural (and, indeed, it may be, the natural and the supernatural). These crossroads of being come together, as it were, as many intersections, the centers of which are often sexual.

Sex unifies us, both as individual persons and as societies and cultures, just as, at the same time, it separates us, both from ourselves and one another. At the heart of erotic horror is our duality as material-spiritual beings who have a foot in both the world of nature and the world of the supernatural, ghosts in machines for whom neither oneness with God or the universe nor oneness with our own fleshly existence is completely comfortable or sufficient. Therefore, sex will always be both a delight and a horror, the center and the fulcrum of erotic horror.