"Hidden" Images and Texts

Copyright 2018 by Gary L. Pullman

Although the once-popular concept of subliminal perception has been debunked, the use of “hidden” images and text continues to be included in advertisements, including movie posters, and, indeed, in motion pictures, including horror movies. These posters, in which the word “sex” is discernible, are cases in point.

 (“S-e-x” appears in the woman's hair. There is also the image of a man's head among the palm trees at the bottom of the poster.)

(“S-e-x,” printed in blood, appears on the woman's upper left shoulder.)

(“S-e-x” formed by the branches of the trees, appears on to the right side of the woman's right outer thigh. There's also a vague representation of a female torso among the trees, bare breast in evidence.)

The idea is that such “hidden” text and imagery, registered consciously, but seemingly without notice, heightens the overall picture's erotic and horrific effects.

Novelists and short story writers also often use other “subliminal” ways to effect such emotions, as we have seen in my previous posts, “Background: The Key to Interpreting Foreground,” and “'Heavy-Set': Learning from the Masters,” “Learning from the Masters: Ian Fleming, Part 2,” among others.

One way of creating “subliminal” messages in horror fiction that we haven't discussed as yet is description. For example, in the manner of a fine, impressionistic painter, Stephen Crane describes a forest as if it were a cathedral, the resulting imagery imbuing his novel, The Red Badge of Courage, with symbolic and thematic depth and richness that the story would not possess otherwise:

At length he reached a place where the high, arching boughs made a chapel. He softly pushed the green doors aside and entered. Pine needles were a gentle brown carpet. There was a religious half light.

Near the threshold he stopped, horror-stricken at the sight of a thing.

He was being looked at by a dead man who was seated with his back against a columnlike tree. The corpse was dressed in a uniform that had once been blue, but was now faded to a melancholy shade of green. The eyes, staring at the youth, had changed to the dull hue to be seen on the side of a dead fish. The mouth was open. Its red had changed to an appalling yellow. Over the gray skin of the face ran little ants. One was trundling some sort of bundle along the upper lip.

The youth gave a shriek as he confronted the thing. He was for moments turned to stone before it. He remained staring into the liquid-looking eyes. The dead man and the living man exchanged a long look. Then the youth cautiously put one hand behind him and brought it against a tree. Leaning upon this he retreated, step by step, with his face still toward the thing. He feared that if he turned his back the body might spring up and stealthily pursue him.

The branches, pushing against him, threatened to throw him over upon it. His unguided feet, too, caught aggravatingly in brambles; and with it all he received a subtle suggestion to touch the corpse. As he thought of his hand upon it he shuddered profoundly.

At last he burst the bonds which had fastened him to the spot and fled, unheeding the underbrush. He was pursued by the sight of black ants swarming greedily upon the gray face and venturing horribly near to the eyes.

After a time he paused, and, breathless and panting, listened. He imagined some strange voice would come from the dead throat and squawk after him in horrible menaces.

The trees about the portal of the chapel moved soughingly in a soft wind. A sad silence was upon the little guarding edifice.

The trees began softly to sing a hymn of twilight. The sun sank until slanted bronze rays struck the forest. There was a lull in the noises of insects as if they had bowed their beaks and were making a devotional pause. There was silence save for the chanted chorus of the trees.

Then, upon this stillness, there suddenly broke a tremendous clangor of sounds. A crimson roar came from the distance.

The youth stopped. He was transfixed by this terrific medley of all noises. It was as if worlds were being rended. There was the ripping sound of musketry and the breaking crash of the artillery.

His mind flew in all directions. He conceived the two armies to be at each other panther fashion. He listened for a time. Then he began to run in the direction of the battle. He saw that it was an ironical thing for him to be running thus toward that which he had been at such pains to avoid. But he said, in substance, to himself that if the earth and the moon were about to clash, many persons would doubtless plan to get upon the roofs to witness the collision.

As he ran, he became aware that the forest had stopped its music, as if at last becoming capable of hearing the foreign sounds. The trees hushed and stood motionless. Everything seemed to be listening to the crackle and clatter and earthshaking thunder. The chorus peaked over the still earth.

It suddenly occurred to the youth that the fight in which he had been was, after all, but perfunctory popping. In the hearing of this present din he was doubtful if he had seen real battle scenes. This uproar explained a celestial battle; it was tumbling hordes a-struggle in the air.

The use of another type of “subliminal,” involving a shift in the story's point of view as it is read through the eyes of minor characters, rather than from the perspective of the protagonist, can provide yet another dimension to a story of horror, as we will see in a later post.

Reacting with Fear and Trembling

Copyright 2010 by Gary L. Pullman

Horror posters can be very instructive for writers. Take the one for Wes Craven’s A Nightmare on Elm Street. It shows the movie’s protagonist, Nancy Thompson, a teenage girl, lying in bed, presumably naked (the blanket is pulled up over her breasts, but her shoulders and upper arms, like her neck, are bare), staring wide-eyed; her wild hair is fanned out behind her, upon the pillow. Superimposed upon the headboard (the slats of which resemble prison bars) is a skull with bulging eyes and a bloody metallic hand, the fingers of which are knife- or razor-like blades. The caption reads, “If Nancy doesn’t wake up screaming, she won’t wake up at all.”

Normally, one would suppose that to wake up screaming implies an unpleasant and undesirable experience--a nightmare--so the assertion that “she won’t wake up at all” unless she “wakes up screaming” is intriguing, just as the advertisers no doubt mean it to be. The poster is instructive for writers because it suggests a way by which irony can suggest a storyline in which it is, indeed, better to awaken than not to awaken at all. What’s worse than a nightmare? One from which the dreamer doesn’t awaken--one that kills.



A poster for Alien warns, “In space, no one can hear you scream.” A poster for the movie Anaconda bears a similar caution: “When you can’t breathe, you can’t scream.” Below this caption are a pair of yellow reptilian eyes and a suggestion of scales lost in surrounding darkness, followed by the film’s title and the promise, “It will take your breath away.” You won’t, therefore, be able to scream; your terror will squeeze the breath--and very possibly, it is implied--the life out of you, just as the gigantic snake of the film’s title will squeeze its onscreen victims to death.

The inability to get one’s breath is terrifying (as anyone who has ever choked, for example, certainly is aware), rendering one helpless, frantic, and unable to call for help. A story about such hopelessness is, like Anaconda, likely to be terrifying, and, of course, there are many ways to render a victim helpless besides having them squeezed by an anaconda.



“What do I see,” the Beatles once asked, “when I turn out the light?” Answer: darkness, and darkness is symbolic of the unknown, of evil, of death, and a slew of other unpleasant conditions and states of mind. What if the night were not just the result of an absence of light? What if it were alive? What if it had claws and fangs and could fly? What if it were a vampire ands sucked blood?

This is the premise suggested by the poster for Bats (the title is suspended, from the top edge of the poster, suggesting bats clinging to the ceiling of a cave or other sanctuary). Two luminous eyes appear in the night sky, above the suggestion of a head and leathery wings. Below the outstretched wings is a cluster of other dark, similar shapes and the silhouette of a leafless tree. To the right is a house, black but for the illuminated square of a window in its side. The roof seems to be lifting into sunset that stretches beneath the darkening sky above the red and gold clouds, as if into an invisible whirlwind. A closer look shows that what first appeared to roof tiles are, in fact, part of a flurry of bats. The congregation of bats represent the night itself and all that darkness symbolizes, as the poster’s caption makes clear: “Where do you hide when the dark is alive?”

This poster reinforces the importance of the use of symbolism and metaphor in fiction. Such figures of speech communicate with readers on an unconscious, almost subliminal, level. Writers are well aware of the unconscious mind’s perception of such implied associations, and they use this tendency to good effect. Stephen King, for example, uses Cujo, his rabid St. Bernard, to symbolize the unfaithfulness of his novel’s protagonist, Donna Trenton, and the destructive effect her adultery has upon her son, her husband, and her marriage.

By picturing one’s story as a poster, complete with defining image and caption, a writer can clarify his or her theme and highlight the source of the story’s horror. Alternatively, by studying the posters that promote existing horror movies, an author can discover emotional links between image and text or between the “this” and the “that” of a metaphor, an antithesis, hyperbolic statement, metonymy, simile, and similar figures of speech.

We think by drawing relationships between perceptions and thoughts (or feelings), and by drawing such relationships indirectly and nonverbally, through associations of color, shape, direction, image, figures of speech, and rhetorical and visual devices, we can suggest the “this” of the ordinary may be associated with the “that” of the extraordinary, the “that” of the monstrous, the “that” of the supernatural, or the “that” of the horrific. The unconscious mind isn’t disturbed by incongruity or logical non-sequiturs. It operates on instinct and emotion, not reason, after all, and the suggestion that “this” is “that” is all the cue it needs to react with fear and trembling.

Hieroglyphic Horrors

Copyright 2010 by Gary L. Pullman

When images are used symbolically, to suggest identities, situations, statuses, or other qualities, conditions, or states, a nearly subliminal effect may be obtained.

Stephen Crane, an impressionistic writer, achieves such effects in his writings. In The Red Badge of Courage, for example, he implies that nature is indifferent to humanity. As the protagonist, Henry, wanders away from the horrors of the battlefield, during the American Civil War, he stumbles into a forest, which Crane describes as if it were a cathedral.

At first, he takes heart at the sight of a squirrel that flees when he throws a stick at it, reassured that his own desertion is not a cowardly, but a natural, act. However, as he continues to wander the deep woods, he sees a predatory act: an animal seizes a fish. He encounters the ravaged corpse of another soldier, and he realizes that the forest, despite the resemblance of its canopy to a cathedral, offers no protection from war.

Despite the clashing of the armies and the hundreds and hundreds of dead who rot upon the battlefield, the sky is serene, undisturbed by the catastrophe that men have unleashed upon themselves. The juxtaposition of human struggle against nature’s peaceful disregard, as it were, of this struggle makes it clear to Henry that nature is indifferent to humanity.

Through his narrator’s comments, Crane occasionally offers direct statements concerning how his imagery should be interpreted, but his message is mostly implicit, conveyed through his imagery and the juxtaposition of violent human conduct and nature’s apparent indifference to such behavior as it goes about its own processes. Here is an example from Chapter 7 of The Red Badge of Courage:

This landscape gave him assurance. A fair field holding life. It was the religion of peace. It would die if its timid eyes were compelled to see blood. He conceived Nature to be a woman with a deep aversion to tragedy.

He threw a pine cone at a jovial squirrel, and he ran with chattering fear. High in a treetop he stopped, and, poking his head cautiously from behind a branch, looked down with an air of trepidation.

The youth felt triumphant at this exhibition. There was the law, he said. Nature had given him a sign. The squirrel, immediately upon recognizing danger, had taken to his legs without ado. He did not stand stolidly baring his furry belly to the missile, and die with an upward glance at the sympathetic heavens. On the contrary, he had fled
as fast as his legs could carry him; and he was but an ordinary squirrel, too--doubtless no philosopher of his race. The youth wended, feeling that Nature was of his mind. She re-enforced his argument with proofs that lived where the sun shone.

Once he found himself almost into a swamp. He was obliged to walk upon bog tufts and watch his feet to keep from the oily mire. Pausing at one time to look about him he saw, out at some black water, a small animal pounce in and emerge directly with a gleaming fish.

The youth went again into the deep thickets. The brushed branches made a noise that drowned the sounds of cannon. He walked on, going from obscurity into promises of a greater obscurity.

At length he reached a place where the high, arching boughs made a chapel. He softly pushed the green doors aside and entered. Pine needles were a gentle brown carpet. There was a religious half light.

Near the threshold he stopped, horror-stricken at the sight of a thing.

He was being looked at by a dead man who was seated with his back against a columnlike tree. The corpse was dressed in a uniform that once had been blue, but was now faded to a melancholy shade of green. The eyes, staring at the youth, had changed to the dull hue to be seen on the side of a dead fish. The mouth was open. Its red had changed to an appalling yellow. Over the gray skin of the face ran little ants. One was trundling some sort of a bundle along the upper lip.

The youth gave a shriek as he confronted the thing. He was for moments turned to stone before it. He remained staring into the liquid-looking eyes. The dead man and the living man exchanged a long look. Then the youth cautiously put one hand behind him and brought it against a tree. Leaning upon this he retreated, step by step, with his face still toward the thing. He feared that if he turned his back the body might spring up and stealthily pursue him.

The branches, pushing against him, threatened to throw him over upon it. His unguided feet, too, caught aggravatingly in brambles; and with it all he received a subtle suggestion to touch the corpse. As he thought of his hand upon it he shuddered profoundly.

At last he burst the bonds which had fastened him to the spot and fled, unheeding the underbrush. He was pursued by a sight of the black ants swarming greedily upon
the gray face and venturing horribly near to the eyes.

After a time he paused, and, breathless and panting, listened. He imagined some strange voice would come from the dead throat and squawk after him in horrible menaces.

The trees about the portal of the chapel moved soughingly in a soft wind. A sad silence was upon the little guarding edifice.

Of necessity, motion pictures must also employ images that are packed with symbolic value. They do not, as a rule, have as much time to devote to extended treatments, and although dialogue allows them the opportunity of making direct comments on the images they display, films rarely do so, leaving it to audiences, instead, to interpret the symbolism of these images themselves. However, on occasion, the same or similar images will be repeated to establish a motif by which characters’ actions should be evaluated or interpreted.

For example, in his film version of Stephen King’s novel Carrie (1976), Brian De Palma wants to make it clear that protagonist Carrie White is a target of her peers’ harassment. When she misses a volleyball return during a physical education class, she is bombarded by her fellow students, who take turns slamming the ball into her. Later, surprised by her first menstrual period (her mother, a religious fanatic, has not bothered to tell her the facts of life), Carrie, terrified, calls for assistance, only to be pelted by the tampons and sanitary napkins that the other girls throw at her. Twice, without a word of direct commentary concerning Carrie‘s status (or lack thereof) among her peers, De Palma has identified her as a target of her peers’ hatred and abuse. (He has also made Carrie a sympathetic character, whom the audience pities.)

Tony Williams points out another example of this technique in Hearths of Darkness: The Family in the American Horror Film. Concerning Alice, Sweet Alice (1978) (which is also available by the alternate titles Communion [1976] and Holy Terror [1981]), he observes: “Alice’s credits show a female communicant holding a cross. She lifts it up, revealing its lower end as a blade. . . . This image aptly signifies Catholicism’s repression of female sexuality and its unexpressed eruption into violence. A virginal Bride of Christ is also a psychotic murderer” (169).

A similar image is presented in Cruel Intentions (1999) when, at the end of the movie, Kathryn Merteuil’s hypocrisy in posing as a blameless, virginal, saintly young woman is exposed and her conniving and fraudulent character is revealed as the headmaster of her private and exclusive school opens the crucifix she wears around her neck and the cocaine inside the cross spills into the air, for all to see.

Sometimes, not even an image is needed to reveal character or suggest a theme. A camera angle can be sufficient, as Williams points out. Following Carrie’s death, he says, “a dark legacy remains. As Sue [one of Carrie’s tormentors, now repentant] awakes from a traumatic nightmare in Carrie’s climax, the camera cranes out to show Mrs. Snell comforting her daughter. Her words, “It’s all right. I’m here” are ironic. Mrs. Snell was never a good mother. The final camera movement dwarfs mother and daughter into insignificance” (240).

In a previous article, “Building Suspense the Tobie Hooper Way,” I indicate other examples of writers and moviemakers who characterize or suggest identities, situations, statuses, or other qualities, conditions, or states through the use of images, symbolism, and other forms of indirect communication.

Writers of horror can follow the examples of Crane and moviemakers, using symbolic images to effect subliminal suspense, fear, and other emotions. In doing so, forego direct commentary through narrative exposition or dialogue between characters, and, instead, limit yourself only to the use of symbolic images.

Describe (show) a trait in action (for example, a jealous character acting in a jealous fashion) or associate a character with a physical object, or property, that symbolizes something important about him or her, shows how he or she is regarded by others, or what is at the core of his or her being.

The use of a dream dictionary can help you to select such objects, because such a reference shows what various commonplace things often represent psychologically.

An examination of William Shakespeare’s use of images and symbols in his poems and plays will pay huge dividends, because these works are written not only in blank verse but also, by and large, in symbolic images that, rather often, link to and build upon one another. Seeing how the bard accomplishes this literary feat will help you to become accomplished at it as well.

Finally, another way to research how artists translate intangibles such as thoughts and emotions into pictures is to consider the images in the works of visual artists such as illustrators, painters, and photographers, whose very media are dependent almost exclusively upon their use of symbolic imagery. How does an illustrator represent fear? How does a painter portray hope or despair? How does a photographer suggest victimization, evil, saintliness, or honesty? Search the works of fine artists rather than their popular counterparts, for there is a reason that classic art is classic. Then, sure, take a look at the popular forms, too, after you’ve seen what the masters do. An Internet images browser is a helpful tool in tracking down such images, but I also suggest A World History of Art as an excellent starting point.

Subliminal Horror

Copyright 2008 by Gary L. Pullman

“Subliminal” refers to text, images, auditory statements, or other objects or props that escape one’s conscious notice but (according to theory, at least) are recognized on a subconscious level. Supposedly, subliminal techniques are used to sell everything from movie theater popcorn to alcoholic beverages. Some even go so far as to say that governments, including that of the United States, use such messages to propagandize and brainwash their citizens.

Subliminal messages are also used in printed and filmed horror stories, albeit rarely, it would seem.

In fact, I’ve seen the use of a subliminal image in a horror movie. It occurred at the end of Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho--not in the original film, but in a release of the movie on videotape or DVD (I don’t recall which now, as this experience occurred several years ago, but I believe it was a videotape.) As Norman Bates, at the end of his killing spree, sits in a jail cell, dressed as his mother, Norma, a human skull flashes over his face.

I remember feeling especially uneasy during this scene, although it hadn’t seemed as frightening or eerie when I’d first witnessed the scene, as a child. On an impulse, I played the sequence again, in slow motion, and the skull, which I hadn’t noticed before (consciously, at least) was visible as it appeared briefly, over Norman’s face, and then vanished again, just as abruptly, the superimposition of the skull image over Norman’s face occupying only the space of a few frames. I’d heard of subliminal images, but this was the first time I’d ever seen one myself.

Apparently, subliminal images are used much more widely than one might suppose, not only in advertising, but also in popular entertainment media, including Walt Disney’s art and big-name comic books’ illustrations.

In Who Killed Roger Rabbit, Roger’s wife, Jessica, is shown, sans panties, exiting a taxicab.

 


The cover for the DVD release of Disney’s The Little Mermaid shows an erect phallus among the spires of a castle; a constellation of stars in The Lion King spells out S-E-X; and a nude painting is shown in a background setting in The Rescuers. It seems that, posthumously, Uncle Walt’s not nearly as family friendly as he was when he’d been among the living.




The “S” word also makes its appearance in New X-Men #118--at least 18 times, by one count.

In horror fiction, it’s more likely to be the gruesome and the ghastly or the bloody and the gory that sells, rather than sex, and it’s just such subliminal texts and images that are occasionally found, as in Psycho.

Another example of the use of such images occurs in the original Hitchcock version of the film itself. In three frames (equating to approximately 1/8 of a second) of the shower scene, in which Norman-as-Norma, attacks Marion Crane as she is showering, the knife thrust is reversed, so that it appears to penetrate her lower abdomen.

Although it’s questionable as to whether Hitchcock had any transcendent reason for including the subliminal images of penetration, he apparently did have a thematic purpose in mind for the shower scene itself besides mere titillation. According to Janet Leigh herself, who played Crane in the original film:

Marion had decided to go back to Phoenix, come clean, and take the consequence, so when she stepped into the bathtub it was as if she were stepping into the baptismal waters. The spray beating down on her was purifying the corruption from her mind, purging the evil from her soul. She was like a virgin again, tranquil, at peace.

(Well, as long as Leigh bought the line. . . .)

In The Exorcist, a demon’s face is flashed on the screen on two occasions, once when Father Damien Karras recalls seeing his mother as she is about to enter a subway station and, later, when Regan's mother walks down a hallway, but not so few times per foot of film that it can’t be seen, so this use of imagery doesn’t, strictly speaking, constitute the employment of a subliminal technique.

In a previous post, I showed how Bram Stoker’s deft use of description and innuendo creates what amounts to a sort of literary subliminal coding of the narrative’s text, heightening the story’s fear factor by suggesting that there is some astonishingly powerful force operating behind the scenes, so to speak. Subliminal text and images are today’s equivalents, in extremis, of yesterday’s rhetorical, literary, and cinematographic techniques and, yes, they can be effective. In fact, they can frighten the hell out of you!

Source

Leigh, Janet. Psycho : Behind the Scenes of the Classic Thriller. Harmony Press, 1995.