Copyright 2012 by Gary L. Pullman
Source: kickstarter.com
According to evolutionary psychologists, human behavior evolved through adaptations that had survival, including reproductive, value. Although not without its critics, who see the school as seriously flawed, evolutionary psychology may offer some insights of value to readers and writers of horror fiction.
Leda Cosmides and John Tooby. Source: news.uscb.edu
According to evolutionary psychologists Leda Cosmides and John Tooby, the discipline regards the brain as “a computer designed by natural selection to extract information from the environment” and this organ generates the behavior of individuals based on its “cognitive programs,” adaptations that “produced behavior” that “enabled [our ancestors] to survive and reproduce.”
Einstein's brain. Source: thespec.com
Therefore, to understand what makes people tick, these programs must be understood and explained. As a result of natural selection, the brain consists of “different special[-]purpose programs” rather than having “a . . . general architecture.” Finally, the description of the “evolved computational architecture of our brains 'allows a systematic understanding of cultural and social phenomena.'”
Psychological Methods. Source: slideshare.net
The method of evolutionary psychology is not entirely scientific. After detecting “apparent design in the world” (e. g., in the brain), they seek to produce a “scenario” that suggests the selective processes that could account for “the production of the trait that exhibits [this] apparent design” and then put their hypotheses to the test of “standard psychological methods.” Thus, their approach seems part thought experiment, part scientific method and has been challenged on both counts.
For example, men, shown illustrations of potential female mates exhibiting “varying waist[-]hip ratios,” preferred those depicting “women with waist/hip ratios closer to .7,” because hips wider than waists suggested that the women who possessed them would be likely to be more “fertile” and, as such, better able to “contribute to the survival and reproduction of the organism.”
"Would you survive?" Source: thequiz.com
One theme of horror fiction is the survival of the threat posed by the villain or monster. Both novels and movies often show their characters' use of a variety of attempts at, or methods of, survival, most of which prove futile. Often, in the slasher sub-genre, the sole survivor of the group's encounter with the antagonist is the so-called final girl.
These films implicitly invite audiences to compare the methods of survival—i. e., the behavior—of the characters: who did what to survive, and which one, ultimately, succeeded. Why did she succeed? Why did each of the other characters fail? Not only do slasher (and, of course, other types of horror fiction and drama) thus provide models for analyzing and evaluating both failed and successful survival adaptations, but the slasher also offers a list, as it were, of each.
Let's take a look at three horror movies that focus on the characters' attempts to survive the threat of an antagonist. The first, Backcountry (2014), involves a predatory animal; the second, Final Girl (2015), features a band of men who hunt a woman for sport; the third, The Exorcist (1973), presents a supernatural threat. The first involves a “woman vs. nature” plot; the second, a “woman vs. men” plot; the third, a “man vs. supernatural monster” plot. Each involves a final girl as the survivor of her respective threat.
Next post: Jen's survival