Should horror be its own genre?
Is horror a genre, or is it an aesthetic? This guest post by Elizabeth Twist, a writer and life-long horror fan, seeks to answer that question and suggest a new understanding of “horror” in film and fiction.
I am a horror fan and much of what I write is horror – or at least, I think of it that way. I am frequently subject to the following exchange:
Well-Meaning Interlocutor: “What do you like to read?”
Me: “I enjoy horror.”
W-MI: “Oh, I hate horror. It’s disgusting and awful. How can you like it?”
I enjoy challenging people on this point. When they say they hate horror, often they mean they hate gore porn or slasher movies. Though I personally appreciate even the gorier manifestations of horror, the reality is, you can find horror in all sorts of flavours. Do you like the original Twilight Zone? Did you thrill to Poltergeist when you were a tween? Ever dip into Stephen King’s massive oevre? Love the spooky chills of classic movies like The Innocents? How about your annual viewing of A Christmas Carol? Any fond memories of Scooby Doo? Casper the Friendly Ghost? Beetlejuice?
All of these works have horror elements. Some are firmly placed in the horror canon; others merely dip their toes in the horror pool.
The problem lies in definitions. For many people, horror is “that gross stuff I don’t like.” It is as if we each have our own sliding scale of what we can handle and what we can’t, and for those who haven’t thought it through, horror is anything that exceeds their tolerances.
It is time for a new understanding of horror.
There have been attempts to argue that horror is tricky because it is not definable in the same way as other genres, like science fiction or fantasy. In his 1982 introduction to the anthology Prime Evil, editor Douglas Winter famously noted,
“Horror is not a genre, like the mystery or science fiction or the western. It is not a kind of fiction, meant to be confined to the ghetto of a special shelf in libraries or bookstores. Horror is an emotion.” (source)
Oft repeated by horror enthusiasts, this statement points out an important part of the horror problem: horror doesn’t behave like other genres.
Rather than retaining discrete characteristics, horror is excellent at infiltrating other genres. Science fiction and horror go together brilliantly: the Alien franchise is ample proof of that. Fantasy and horror have been frequent bedfellows, most recently and ubiquitously in urban fantasy’s trifecta of tropes: vampires, werewolves, and fairies. Pyschological fiction has its fair share of monsters (Hannibal Lecter, anyone?). Mystery quite necessarily gravitates to the seedier side of humanity.
Any literature can invoke the emotion of horror, but too often, that emotion is invisible to the creator or audience of a work, and so the horror label is not necessarily applied. (See William Peter Blatty’s recent claim, in his October 2011 interview with the Huffington Post, that he thought he was writing “a supernatural detective story” when he crafted The Exorcist. Fortunately the novel’s and film’s audience saw things otherwise.)
To give horror its due, I think we have to move past defining it as an emotion. At best, Winter’s is a slippery concept. What freaks you out might not bother me in the slightest. Emotions are not inherent in books or films or art, but in those who experience them. You can’t walk up to your copy of Dracula and ask, “Excuse me, are you the emotion of horror?” We can go further.
As a first step, I propose that horror literature and film are not limitied to evoking fear, disturbance, shock, or terror. There is much more to absorb under the horror umbrella, including the wide range of films and books and comics and cartoons that draw on horror tropes but work to evoke other emotions. Tim Burton has built a career on nostalgic and whimsical explorations of horror tropes through films like The Corpse Bride and Nightmare Before Christmas. Horror tropes can be used to hilarious effect (Christopher Moore’s You Suck, Bite Me, and Bloodsucking Fiends; zom com). Common horror themes – hauntings, monsters, dubious transformations, disturbing discoveries – can work toward a plethora of emotional and cognitive effects, including wonder, sorrow, rage, joy, deep gladness, arousal, paradox and dissonance.
How to resolve this conundrum? How do we define horror when its emotional impact might not be horrible?
I propose this: horror is an aesthetic. The horror aesthetic encompasses a certain typical emotional register, but also common tropes, supernatural and mundane. The horror aesthetic may be put to use by any genre of literature or film. In any given work, it may be so pervasive that the work as a whole must be deemed a work of horror.
Defined as such, horror is free to creep wherever it pleases. It can turn up anywhere, and even colonize a work completely.
Many horror fans have bemoaned the apparent appropriation of horror tropes in recent times. Twilight leaps to mind as a sparkling shining example of a work that uses a traditional horror trope in order to bolster an old-fashioned (and otherwise insupportable) romantic storyline. Fans of bloodsucking fiends have complained copiously about this watering down of their beloved vampires.
Despair not, I say. Rather than view recent manifestations of the vampire and other beasts as an appropriation of the horror aesthetic, I choose to think of them as the first signs of infection. The horror aesthetic is invading the popular consciousness once more, priming the public imagination for a fresh wave of blood. It might not always be at the forefront. It might be easily dismissed or disregarded, but horror will never die.
Elizabeth Twist is a writer, plague enthusiast, and part-time mystic living in Hamilton, Ontario. She earned a PhD in 2005 by combing 400 year old medical manuals for evidence that the plays of Shakespeare might have been inspired by syphilis and the Black Death. Her short fiction has appeared in Escape Clause: A Speculative Fiction Anthology, Enchanted Conversation, and One Buck Horror. She has stories forthcoming in Dark Faith 2 and Suction Cup Dreams: An Octopus Anthology.
Top photo credit: Bloody Heart by Sarah G from Flickr.
Posted on July 9, 2012, in guest blogger, horror, World Weaver Press and tagged entertainment, fantasy, ghosts, horror, literature, monsters, reading, Specter Spectacular, speculative fiction, vampire, World Weaver Press. Bookmark the permalink. 15 Comments.
Very interesting.
Tropes are interesting because they can wander far from their originals. As you say, vampires can be used to write a story that isn’t horror. Or is it? I’m not against subverting tropes as such, but do they still count as horror?
It’s the same in other genres. You can write a story using aliens, that isn’t science fiction (in my opinion). Or time travel– see The Time Traveller’s Wife. A good story, but it didn’t feel like SF to me.
So what is the horror aesthetic? Something that evokes a dark mood? Something which defies the narrative expectation (bad things happen to good people in horror)?
Heya, Debs. I guess we’ve seen a whole lot of vampires appearing in stories that share little with what horror fans view as horror. I would argue that these stories fall under the horror aesthetic.
I would define that aesthetic in a three-fold manner, to include any art that:
1. evokes the feeling of horror – anything that presses the fear button.
2. employs traditional horrors – monsters from folklore, fairy tales, literature. In this category I would include Dracula but also Count Chocula. Without the one, the other would not exist, so there is an aesthetic dependency there.
3. uses any trope or derivative trope from the first two categories, regardless of the emotion it evokes.
What I am aiming to stop here is that slow leakage where people borrow from horror and don’t acknowledge it or outright deny it. Is this any different from what happens with SF and books like The Time Traveller’s Wife? I’m not sure (haven’t read it, though I’m basically familiar with it). That is probably a post for another time, but my sense is that horror is a little more culturally pervasive than SF.
I’m not saying people have to change or even redefine their taste, but I do think that for those of us creating horror, it is helpful and cheering to look out at the world and see all the different flavours of horror out there. The approach I take is, feed it to ‘em, whether they know what it is they’re eating or not. Sort of like evil spinach hidden in a fun casserole, or something.
Reblogged this on The Horrifically Horrifying Horror Blog and commented:
A fantastic article about the state of the horror genre.
I humbly thank you Emma!
I completely agree that horror is an aesthetic, and not a genre unto itself. It’s a way of looking at the world instead of being a subject of observation.
And when horror is effectively infused into a ‘genre’ story it can surprise, entertain, and, as you so correctly pointed out, it can ‘colonize’ the entire story make it all look like ‘horror’.
Ridley Scott pulled this off nicely in “Alien” (ostensible SF into ‘horror’); Cameron with “Aliens” (Action Thriller into ‘horror’) and, my favorite, “Event Horizon” (probably more of a pure exercise in ‘horror’ with a slight but believable veneer of Action/SF whitewashed over it).
And of course I would argue that anyone who thinks Flannery O’Connor’s “Good Country People” isn’t a horror story, well, I just don’t know what to say that….
I’ve read Blackwood, Stoker, Le Fanu, Ligotti, Bloch, etc etc – and the story that leaves me feeling…unsafe in the world..is Kafka’s “In the Penal Colony”. Horrifying.
Thanks for your comment, Bob.
I have spent lots of time arguing with folks that this or that story or film was a horror story. People are weirdly resistant to the label. Now I prefer to snicker while I watch them consume horror under some delusion that they’re reading or viewing something else.
Kafka was the man. I shudder to imagine what it would be like to occupy his particularly twisted consciousness.
Reblogged this on Official Site of Alex Laybourne – Author and commented:
A great post the discusses Horror as a genre and raises a few interesting points about that age old statement…”I don’t like horror.”
Thanks!
I totally agree that horrorr is something much wider than the general consensus would ever admit. There does seem to be a natural image conjured when discussing horror; one of a blood filled 90 minutes, something that is filled with rage and little substance. It is painful to admit, especially as a horror writer myself.
I think this image relates to you comment about people lumping everything over their personal tolerance levels as being horror. Therefore generating the almost standard answer of… I don’t like horror.
I reblogged this post on my own site. I hope you don’t mind.
Thanks for directing attention to the post, Alex. I stopped by your place and left a comment there too.
Back in early 2011 I wrote a post about Lucky McKee’s The Woman (great film, btw). He spoke at that time in an interview about being invited into meetings in Hollywood where the main question asked of him about the film he was proposing was “what are the kills going to be like”? There’s a garbage nonsense mentality that all people want is violence, and (even more insulting) that all horror fans want is violence. I like a little of the old ultra-violence myself from time to time, but it should be meaningful, in my opinion. Horror superfans deserve better than we’ve been getting.
My post on the topic, should you do me the honour of reading it, is here:
http://elizabethtwist.blogspot.ca/2011/01/lucky-mckees-woman-horror-and-offense.html
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