Horror Fiction: The Appeal of the Need to Dominate

Copyright 2018 by Gary L. Pullman

All of us feel the need to dominate others, Jib Fowles notes. Advertisements, he says, appeal to this universal “basic need.” The desire for “clout,” this need is characterized by “the craving to be powerful—perhaps omnipotent”—and it may take the form of a desire to “dominate and control one's environment.”

Although Fowles doesn't mention these other forms specifically, it seems that the “basic need” to dominate would also occur in such endeavors as those involving social, personal, economic, governmental, and technological ends, to name but a few.

Horror fiction, like other genres of literature, often appeals to the need to dominate.

In one of Stephen King's novels, Gerald's Game (1992), men sexually dominate a woman; in another, Misery (1987), a woman physically dominates a man.

Gerald's Game: After Jessie tells her dominant husband, lawyer Gerald Burlingame, she does not want to engage in another session of bondage and discipline with him, he persists, climbing atop her after handcuffing her to the bed, despite her protests. She kicks him, he falls onto the floor, has a heart attack, and dies. Alone in the remote cabin to which they have repaired, and shackled to the bed, Jessie begins to hallucinate, seeing a figure she calls “Space Cowboy” and hearing voices, each a different aspect of herself that she's repressed. The voices help her to better understand her past as a victim of paternal sexual abuse and her present as a wife who is more valued as a trophy than as a human being who's an equal partner in marriage. She has settled for Gerald, despite his emotional, physical, and sexual abuse of her, because he is financially secure. After several attempts at escape, she finally frees herself of the handcuffs by cutting away enough of the skin on one wrist to lubricate her skin with her blood. She pushes the bed to the bureau, retrieving a key with which to unlock the cuffs and free her other hand. However, the blood loss she has suffered causes her to lose consciousness, and, upon awakening, she imagines she is being pursued by the Space Cowboy and wrecks her car. Later, as Jessie is recovering, a nurse tells her that the Space Cowboy is actually a necrophiliac killer, Raymond Andrew Joubert, who was passing through Maine when he came upon her cabin.

A victim of her father, her husband, and a serial killer and necrophile, all of whom abused and dominated her for their own sexual and sadistic purposes, Jessie is a survivor because she is willing to do whatever it takes—repress horrific memories of her past to the extent that she becomes three personalities, rather than one; kill her husband; and evade a killer who had apparently left her to die in the cabin so he could return to have sex with her corpse.

Misery: Romance novelist Paul Sheldon wrecks his car during a blizzard and is rescued by his “number one fan,” Annie Wilkes, a former nurse who lives in a remote house in the mountains. Angry that Sheldon has killed his heroine, Misery Chastain, in the last book of the series, Annie keeps him prisoner, demanding he resurrect Misery in a sequel, Misery's Return. He discovers she's a serial killer but isn't aware that she plans to kill them both after reading Misery's Return. After Sheldon finishes his manuscript, he sets it ablaze. (In fact, however, the manuscript is merely a counterfeit of the actual document.) He and Annie struggle until Annie collapses after falling and striking her head on the mantelpiece in his bedroom. The next day, he gets the attention of state police who are seeking her in connection with a trooper she'd killed earlier. At first, they cannot find her body, but it is later discovered in the barn. She'd made her way there to get a chainsaw with which to kill Paul, but died from the injuries she'd sustained in their fight. Paul publishes Misery's Return, before working on a literary novel, planning to launch a new career as a serious author.

The ordeal through which Sheldon goes, suffering emotional and physical abuse at the hands of his psychotic “biggest fan,” is not only a testament to his courage, perseverance, and will to survive, but they are also the reasons that he is able to endure the torment to which he is subjected, escapes, and emerges alive, more or less in one piece. His tenacity also allows him to overcome the alcoholism that plagues him and the writer's block he suffers as a result of his ordeal. By showing the traits of character and will that Sheldon requires to come back from the brutal abuse of a dominant personality, King suggests the way forward for actual individuals who have experienced similar barbarity.

As Fowles observes, dominance doesn't have to be sexual or depend on relationships between men and women. In William Golding's The Lord of the Flies (1954), a novel King says he wishes he'd written, the need to dominate is expressed socially.

Economic dominance occurs in Bentley Little's The Store (1998). A national chain of big-box department stores has virtually taken over the brick-and-mortar retail world. The Store is everywhere. Its ever-expanding growth wipes out mom-and-pop stores, most franchises, and any vendors and suppliers who don't want to meet its terms. Stocking anything anyone could ever want to buy, and selling merchandise at discount prices, The Store is quickly becoming the only place to shop. Its benefits—a huge inventory, low prices, thousands of locations, employment for an army of workers, and taxes to local, state, and federal governments, are as numerous as its operations are vast. However, there's a downside to The Store—and, like its benefits, its negative effects are tremendous.

The Store: Juniper, Arizona, wants The Store, so officials offer tax breaks and other incentives to entice its executives to build one in its community. From the beginning, there are indications that The Store may not be the blessing local politicians believe it will be: dead animals—and a human corpse—at the construction site, black vehicles delivering mysterious merchandise in the middle of the night, and The Store's taking over of the town. Bill Davis senses trouble, and he's uneasy when his daughters become employees of The Store. Night Managers terrorize the staff. Employees disappear. Bizarre merchandise, including a line of dildos and other sex toys, show up on the shelves. Through its economic power, The Store runs roughshod over the lives of employees, customers, townspeople, politicians, vendors, suppliers, and other businesses. Just who is The Store's CEO, Newman, and what does he want to accomplish through his domination of the town—and of the nation?

Sometimes, we forget the true power of money, thinking of power in physical terms, as brute strength, weapons, or military force. However, economics is the basis of every enterprise, especially in capitalistic countries, and its potential for evil, like its potential for good, is tremendous. How is such economic clout to be resisted and overcome? How are individuals, families, communities, and nations to survive against such a powerful economic threat to their autonomy, safety, welfare, and liberty? The need to achieve through economic dominance, Little reminds his readers, is a force to be reckoned with.

Dean Koontz's The Taking(2004) depicts attempt to dominate the environment. 

The Taking: After a torrential downfall of semen-scented rain, a mysterious slime appears overnight, coating buildings, streets, trees, lawns, bushes, and the rest of the landscape. The small town in which Neil and Molly Sloan reside is isolated from the rest of the world as telephone, radio, television, and Internet service fail. The Sloans gather a group of their neighbors. Some among them believe the apocalypse is upon them. The truth is that an advance team of alien scientists have arrived, and they're reverse-terraforming the earth to make it habitable for them in preparation for a massive invasion.

By showing the effects on the environment through the lens of an alien invasion, Koontz provides a fresh look at the effects of pollution and energy waste that societies are inflicting on their own planet, offering an ironic portrayal of some of the effects that continuous neglect and abuse of the planet could have on Earth and its inhabitants, including human beings themselves. It's a harrowing story condemning the dominance of the environment that is underway today, as it has been for generations. 

The story is made all the more unsettling, indeed horrible, because of the actual use of pesticides to control weeds and defoliants to denude vast acreages of plants. 

Developed in the 1970s by Monsanto, Roundup, a “glyphosate-based pesticide,” is today used in more than 160 countries, on a variety of crops, despite controversy concerning whether the product is a carcinogen. 

During the Vietnam War, the United States military used Agent Orange to strip the foliage from “3,100,000 hectares (31,000 km²; 12,000 sq mi)” of forest, in the process exposing millions of Vietnamese people and thousands of U. S. military personnel to the agent, which has been linked to a variety of cancers. The “herbicidal warfare” operations occurred from 1961 to 1971, but their effects continue to cause health problems to the Vietnamese people and to Vietnam veterans. 

Whether the intent has been to protect crops by controlling pests or to defoliate forests during “herbicidal warfare” operations, chemical attempts to dominate the environment have had effects even more chilling than those of which Koontz writes in The Taking, because, unlike his novel's horrors, those that resulted from the use of pesticides and defoliants are real, not imaginary. 

Both King's and Koontz's novels also chronicle the results of attempts by the federal government to dominate society. King's Firestarter (1980) and Koontz's Watchers (1987) depict how ruthless the United States government can be in its quest to use science and technology as instruments of government dominance.

Firestarter: “Charlie” McGee develops telekinesis and the ability to “push,” or make hypnotic suggestions using the power of thought, after her father, Andy, participated as a subject in a clandestine government experiment. Over time, Charlie's powers become enormously powerful. She and Andy are hunted by government agents, including an assassin known as Rainbird, after they escape from the government laboratory, “the Shop.” Eventually, they escape to a cabin in Vermont, but they are subsequently captured and taken to a secret location in northern Virginia. Using their powers, they escape again, destroying the government facility, although Andy is killed. Charlie informs a national publication of her experiences.

Watchers: Travis Cornell, formerly of the Delta Force, stumbles upon a golden retriever and a hulking creature, the outsider, which have escaped from a top-secret government laboratory. The latter is pursuing the former, in an attempt to kill the canine. Because of the retriever's extremely high intelligence, Cornell names the animal “Einstein,” and he and the dog save a woman, Nora Devon, from a sexual predator. They become a trio, pursued by the Outsider, federal agents, and a Russian operative, Vince Nasco, who wants to kill the scientists involved in the experiments that produced Einstein and the Outsider and capture the dog to sell.

What makes these novels truly terrifying is that they address issues that have actually occurred in similar government experiments in which the human rights of test subjects were wantonly violated with impunity. In 1953, during MKUltra, the Central Intelligence Agency administered lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) to Frank Olson, an army biologist, without his knowledge or consent. As a result, he leaped to his death.

For forty years, from 1932 to 1972, the United States Public Health Service conducted the Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male. Six-hundred-and-twenty-two poor black men, supposedly receiving free medical care, were monitored without being treated for the disease, despite the proof that penicillin could cure them. None of the participants in the study were notified that treatment was being withheld, and none of them consented to the withholding of treatment. Forty of their wives contracted the disease, and nineteen children were born with congenital syphilis.

During Operation Top Hat (1953), the United States Army Chemical Corps deliberately “exposed personnel” to biological and chemical warfare agents, including phosgene, a suffocant; blister agents; and nerve agents, so decontamination methods could be tested.

James Patterson's novel Humans, Bow Down (2017), written with Emily Raymond, focuses upon technological dominance, as do the films the Terminator (1984-present) franchise, Demon Seed (1973), and many others.

Humans,Bow Down: In a war between humans and smart robots, which occurred some time ago, robots were the victors. Now, as the title of the novel suggests, humans have been subjugated to their conquerors. Whenever a robot leader appears, humans are ordered to “bow down,” showing their submission to their dominant masters. When a small band of humans dares to defy their mechanical overlords, there is hope that humans may regain their freedom, but liberty will not come cheaply, if at all.

Terminator: In the future, smart robots rule the Earth, and humans live minimal lives in filth, discomfort, and poverty, until John, the son of Sarah Connor, leads his fellow humans in a war against their brutal conquerors. To prevent this event from happening, the robots send one of their own, The Terminator, into the past to kill Sarah before she can conceive him. However, Sarah is not alone: her son also sends a soldier of the resistance back through time to protect her.

Demon Seed: Dean Koontz's 1973 novel, which was adapted to the big screen under the same title (1977), features Proteus, an artificially intelligent, state-of-the-art computer that plans to impregnate Susan, a wealthy divorcee whose home is controlled by a computer system. After commandeering Susan's home computer system, Proteus imprisons her in her home, in effect putting her under house arrest, and uses hypnosis and subliminal perception on her, interacting physically with her by using “pseudopod” tentacles that Proteus designs and constructs in the nearby university that houses “him.” From their union, a monstrous human-hybrid creature results, their “child,” with which Susan must do battle. 

Since the Industrial Revolution, technology has been used to dominate workers and consumers, the economies of both domestic and foreign markets, military forces, politicians, and, indeed, entire political systems. It is only now becoming possible, some believe, for technology to dominate individuals in personal ways, such as by enslaving them or transforming their sex lives through the use of “sexbots” (robots designed as surrogate sex partners). If this proves to be the case, such visions as those presented in Humans,Bow Down, Terminator, and Demon Seed may be closer to realization than many might imagine. 

Although horror and science fiction are both forms of fantasy, writers of each genre have made some fairly horrific speculations about the abuses that stem from the need to dominate others and the environment.

In the past, it seems, more authors were likely to be optimistic about the future effects of present-day personal, social, economic, governmental, and technological efforts to dominate the world. After experiencing such horrors as two world wars, the medical experiments of Josef Mengele, the gassing of millions of Jews and others by the Nazis, the effects of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and such covert operations by American organizations against their own citizens, as carried out during the Vietnam War, the MKUltra project, the Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male, and Operation Top Hat (to mention only a few), contemporary authors do not seem to share such an optimistic view of the need to dominate, as Gerald's Game, Misery, The Store, The Taking, Firestarter, Watchers, Humans, Bow Down, Terminator, and Demon Seed unanimously suggest.

The need to dominate may be universal among all individuals, but that doesn't mean its practice will necessarily produce beneficial outcomes.