Horror Fiction: The Appeal to the Need for Attention

Copyright 2018 by Gary L. Pullman

Animal predators are attracted by sights, sounds, and scents.

Predators' eyes face forward, providing them with binocular vision. The view of one eye overlaps with that of the other eye, allowing a predator to judge the distance to prey and “how fast its prey is moving.” In predators equipped with more than one set of eyes—spiders, for example, which have “clusters of six to eight eyes”—use some of its eyes to “form the image” of its prey, other eyes to “estimate distance, and still others [of its eyes] to detect motion.” Nocturnal predators, both terrestrial and marine, are equipped with 'special mirror-like structures in the back[s] of their eyes,” which provide them with night vision.

Not only do predators have excellent sight, but they also possess superb hearing: “In mammals, external ear flaps can be swiveled forward or backward in order to pinpoint the direction of a sound. The ears of bats are often highly specialized, with strange shapes that help catch the echoes of the calls they make as they fly.” However, some predators don't have to have ears to hear their prey; they perceive vibrations by feeling them in their bodies.

Some predators can smell prey from a mile off, while others can sniff out buried food. Such predators may use their amazing sense of smell to track the prey they hunt.

Their extremely sharp senses of sight, hearing, and smell make predators formidable adversaries, but prey animals have evolved defenses against these hunters, including camouflage, toxic chemicals, and mimicry.

Animals that use chemical toxins are often brightly colored. Their brilliant hues warn other animals, including predators, that seeking to eat them could be a dangerous, perhaps fatal, mistake.

The “coloration, marking patterns,” or general appearance of a prey animal or insect can make them resemble something else, such camouflage lending them the appearance of a leaf or twig or another animal or insect, including toxic plants or animals. 

Mimicry “is similar to camouflage, but in mimicry.” except that the model is generally a similar organism rather than a static part of the background environment.” The common types of mimicry are Batesian mimicry and Mullerian mimicry. In the former, “an edible mimic resembles” one that tastes foul or is poisonous.” in Mullerian mimicry, by contrast, “two (or more) distasteful or poisonous organisms resemble each other.” While only the mimic benefits from Batesian mimicry, “both species benefit” from the latter type of mimicry, “because a predator who learns to avoid one species will most likely avoid the other, too.”

Often, horror fiction appeals to the need for attention by either affirming this need (that is, by showing it as being satisfied) or (far more often) in a negative manner, by denying its satisfaction or by showing that its fulfillment leads to disastrous consequences.

In horror fiction, the need for attention takes many forms, but, no matter which form it takes, it typically leads to misfortune or death.

In many horror movies, the need for attention is exhibited (literally) in characters' shedding their clothes. Nudity certainly attracts attention, quickly and easily, especially if men are present. (Research shows that men tend to respond more strongly to visual, women to tactile, cues.)

Fowles distinguishes between nudity as an appeal to the need for sex and nudity as an appeal to the need for attention. Partly, the nature of the appeal is a matter of context. Who is naked, a man or a woman, and at whom is his or her nakedness directed, at the same or the opposite sex? In general, if a nude woman's image is directed at women, it is probably designed to appeal to the need for attention. However, if a nude female model appears in a sexual context, with a nude male model, the appeal is apt to be to the audience's need for sex. The same is true in reverse: if a nude man's image is directed at men, it is probably designed to appeal to the need for attention. However, if a nude male model appears in a sexual context, with a nude female model, the appeal is apt to be to the audience's need for sex: 

. . . the Jordache ads with the lithe, blouse-less female astride a similarly clad male is clearly an appeal to the audience's sexual drives, but the same cannot be said about Brooke Shields in the Calvin Klein commercials. Directed at young women and their credit-card carrying mothers, the image of Miss Shields instead invokes the need to be looked at. Buy Calvins and you'll be the center of much attention, just as Brooke is, the ads imply; they do not primarily inveigle their target audience's need for sexual intercourse.

In horror movies, nudity is sometimes a prelude to sex, but whether it is or not, disrobing (like sex) is likely to lead to something much less pleasant than romance—namely violence or death at the hands of the villain, who's frequently a psychopathic murderer (Psycho), a supernatural serial killer (Halloween or A Nightmare on Elm Street), or a monster or an alien (Species). In horror movies, a few moments of nudity also provide a distraction that, contrasting with the gore to come, makes violent death seem all the more horrific. (It's also apt to sell more movie tickets.) 

Although nudity is frequently featured in horror movies and is definitely related to the predator's sense of sight, it's not the only way characters seek attention, and, as in regard to the predator's sense of sight, some of the ways characters want to become the center of things align, ironically, with the predator's sense of smell or hearing.

According to vampire lore, the undead are able to smell blood even when it is inside a stopped bottle. In fact, vampire hunters sometimes turned this ability against the predators using a process known as “bottling.” According to

Encyclopedia of Vampire Mythology, blood was poured into a bottle, which was stopped with a cork, sealing wax, and a saint's picture. “Left where the vampire will be able to smell the blood,” the bottle lured the vampire into taking “its invisible form” and entering the bottle, whereupon it was corked and sealed with wax and a saint's image and flung into a fire. The bottle would shatter, releasing the vampire into the fire, which would destroy the vampire. In Anne Rice's novel, Interview with the Vampire, as in other works of such fiction, the undead likewise can smell blood. 

A Quiet Place is a contemporary horror movie that exposes the dangers posed by an extraterrestrial alien with phenomenally good hearing. When we are frightened by a predator, it's natural to scream so as to alert others of the presence of danger, either so that they can assist us or so that they can avoid the menace. However, this need for attention—or, more precisely, this need to draw attention—becomes, ironically, itself a danger. By sounding an alarm, we could attract the attention of the alien, which has hypersensitive hearing and respond to any sound or noise by attacking its source. Thus, to express, or to give voice to, the need for attention in this way is to invite violence, pain, and probable death. 

The movie poster for Alien also suggests that a need that usually facilitates survival can also endanger it. The poster's caption reads: “In space no one can hear you scream.” The unspoken subtext seems to be “scream all you want.” In space, one is not only isolated, cut off from the organizations and institutions that could aid one's survival—police, medical experts and practitioners, military personnel, fire and rescue teams—but one is also in a vacuum, through which sound waves cannot travel. As Jonathan Strickland explains:

Sound waves can travel only through matter. Since there's almost no matter in interstellar space, sound can't travel through it. The distance between particles is so great that they would never collide with each other. Even if you could get a front seat for the explosion of the [Star Wars] Death Star, you wouldn't hear anything at all.

 

As Fowles points out, advertisers appeal to the fifteen basic needs universal to all humankind in two ways, either positively, addressing or depicting their satisfaction, or negatively, by denying the satisfaction of such needs. In either case, an appeal is made to the need. Horror novels and movies do the same, evoking the need for attention either by showing it's satisfaction (by allowing villains [and audiences] a glimpse of bare flesh, for example), or by frustrating this need (by requiring its repression or by preventing it altogether, both on the penalty of death).

However the need for attention is addressed, this need is often one to which horror novels and movies, like other genres of popular fiction, appeals, and this appeal is another reason for its box office success.