Bad Conscience: Or, Why Horror Matters

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Sara Steinberger December 21st, 2011 If we were to watch the crowds exiting a multiplex, I wonder if we might be able to pick out the horror movie spectators by body language alone. Horrors play upon the body seems to create a lasting impression of physical and psychical rigidityguarded posture, furrowed brow, clenched jawthat no other genre equals. This contrast in demeanor brings to mind Andr Bazins writing on the difference between the theater and cinema spectator. The former, he claims, leaves the playhouse with a better conscience.1 The film spectator, on the other hand, has endured a more rigorous psychological experience because s/he has engaged in a greater degree of identification with the characters onscreen. In the darkened cinema, the resistance of the individual consciousness becomes overwhelmed. I suggest that, just as the theater leaves us with a better conscience than cinema, certain film genres leave us with a better conscience than others. Included in this list is certainly not the horror film. My argument is that the bad conscience horror leaves us with is a good thing. By remaining keenly aware of our status as spectator, we become better observers of the cultural problems horror films seek to resolve. I have chosen to formulate this argument by establishing the three stable characteristics of the horror genre and exploring each one in turn. Defining the Horror Genre I build my definition of the genre by applying some aspects of Thomas Schatzs generic criticism. To begin broadly, we must consider that any genre is both static and dynamic. Schatz writes that genre is a familiar formula of interrelated narrative and cinematic components that serves to continually reexamine some basic cultural conflict, but that it must also respond to changes in culture, industry, and the influence of innovative new films.2 Correspondingly, we can examine a genres deep structure (its stable qualities) and its surface structure (individual films). While we can more easily identify the various cultural functions of horror through examining its subgenres, the genre as a whole is best defined by its effect on the viewer. We can say that the most stable feature of the horror genre is its intent to elicit a fear-based response. According to Schatzs critique, we can also define horror as a genre of determinate space, which means that it takes place in a familiar symbolic arena of action in which cultural conflicts are violently resolved.3 Though horrors sites of conflict are not as uniform as in the Western or gangster film, they are conceptually stable. Whether we consider the castles, cabins, or insane asylums of the horror film, they all fit Carol Clovers idea of the Terrible Place: a corrupted space that might initially seem safe but serves to entrap the films victims.4 Though Clover uses the Terrible Place as part of her conceptual model for the slasher subgenre, it can be found in most horror films: from Count Orloks castle in Nosferatu, to the Hudson house in What Ever Happened to Baby Jane, to Elis apartment in Let the Right One In. Horror films rarely play out in the open, and the entrapment of victims in these enclosed spaces is almost always what forces confrontation with the monster and the films violent resolution.

Andr Bazin, "Theater and Cinema," Film Theory & Criticism, ed. Leo Braudy and Marshall Cohen (Oxford University Press, 2009). pg 347. 2 Thomas Schatz, "Film Genre and the Genre Film," Film Theory & Criticism, ed. Leo Braudy and Marshall Cohen (Oxford University Press, 2009). pg 564. 3 Ibid., pg 571, 574. 4 Clover, Carol. "Her Body, Himself: Gender in the Slasher Film." Dread the Difference: Gender and the Horror Film, ed. Barry Keith Grant (University of Texas Press, 2003). pg 78.

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The final aspect of the horror genre I want to consider is the historical record it creates. Schatz suggests that resolution is the most important feature of genre because it represents the cooperative efforts of filmmakers and audiences to tame the threats that destabilize every-day life.5 Additionally, resolution is important because it links our cultural past and present. We can look at the history of horror films to observe how our attitudes toward social problems have changed (or not!) over the decades. Horror operates on a feel as opposed to know basis so, while not factually accurate, horrors emotional textualization of traumatic events renders it an excellent tool for examining our cultural history. Therefore, based on Schatzs model of generic identification, I propose that the horror genre can be defined as including films that 1) evoke fear-based response to the 2) violent resolution of 3) resilient cultural problems. Following, I explore the horror genres utility by examining these three stable characteristics. The Startle Effect One of the most notorious examples of films ability to provoke a powerful physical reaction is the response of spectators at an 1895 screening of Lumires Arrival of a Train. Christian Metz claims that the spectators ran from their seats when they saw the train hurtling toward the camera because they were afraid they would be run over.6 He uses their panicked flight as an example of spectatorial oscillation between incredulity and credulity; we know that what we are watching is not real, but a part of us genuinely accepts what we can see. While I wish to retain Metzs larger argument that seeing is (to some extent) believing, I also refer to Tom Gunnings critique of Metzs claim that these spectators were motivated by fear. Gunning argues, instead, that the fleeing spectators were astonished by the transformative powers of a new technology. He sees Arrival of a Train as part of a larger cinema of attractions, which uses a series of visual shocks to amaze the spectator who remains aware of the act of looking, the excitement of curiosity and its fulfillment.7 Though Metz and Gunning differ, each identifies a component of our response to startling images that I would like to combine into one argument. I suggest that we recoil at the imagery in horror films because 1) we are really seeing something, but that 2) our awe is sourced in films power to bring terrible things to life for our amusement, meaning that we are aware that what we are watching is a construction. There is great benefit in being aware that we are watching spectacle, even if it is not immediately apparent. In fact, many people reject horror altogether for its obvious tinkering with our bodies and brains. Horror provides us with a constant reminder of our presence within a dark theater (which is otherwise the perfect place to lose ourselves); thus, in horror we find the ultimate cinematic distraction. Walter Benjamin makes the case for distracted viewing because it allows the spectator to better examine what s/he is being shown. The horror audience, who sits squirming and jerking in their seats, is perhaps the model distracted mass. Benjamin writes that although the person who concentrates before a work of art is absorbed by it . . . the distracted mass absorbs the work of art.8 What are the bodies of horror spectators doing if not physically absorbing the films deliberate shocks, which constantly call attention to its construction? Thus, the distracted spectator (in this case the horror spectator) becomes an absent-minded examiner: placed in the position of critic without quite realizing it.9 I suggest

Thomas Schatz, "Film Genre and the Genre Film," Film Theory & Criticism, ed. Leo Braudy and Marshall Cohen (Oxford University Press, 2009). pg 571. 66 Christian Metz, "Disavowal, Fetishism," Film Theory & Criticism, ed. Leo Braudy and Marshall Cohen (Oxford University Press, 2009). pg 708. 7 Tom Gunning, "An Aesthetic of Astonishment: Early Film and the (In)Credulous Spectator," Film Theory & Criticism, ed. Leo Braudy and Marshall Cohen (Oxford University Press, 2009). pg 743. 8 Walter Benjamin, "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction," Film Theory & Criticism, ed. Leo Braudy and Marshall Cohen (Oxford University Press, 2009). pg 683 9 Ibid., pg 683.

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that horror is a socially valuable genre because its play upon the body thwarts all pretense to objectivity. The idea of horror as a subjectifying experience warrants further exploration. If we consider that objectivity and subjectivity are gendered male and female (respectively), we might conclude that horror is awarded such low cultural status because it is female. In Linda Williams writing on body genres, she suggests that horror is considered low because the body of the spectator involuntary mimics the body onscreen, which is often female.10 Plugged into the most rigid binaric system, the subjectifying effect of horror becomes the equivalent of forced feminization, resulting in its cultural devaluation. Even if we consider horror films that prominently feature male victims, the effect on the viewers body, of producing uncontrollable convulsion or spasm, renders the experience as one of bodily surrender: as female.11 The subjectifying benefits of horror, therefore, are also the same reason it is dismissed as low-brow and vulgar. Violent Resolution Though horror films build tension through atmosphere, they primarily elicit fear by depicting acts of violence. Even in psychological horror films like The Shining, in which only one character is actually murdered, we are shown visions of blood-filled hallways and the mangled bodies of children. But horror is not the only genre that contains graphic violence. Indeed, the more socially-acceptable action, gangster, and fantasy genres often outcompete horror in terms of the sheer volume of violence (if not its intensity). According to one estimate, the highest body count recorded in a film is 836 and belongs to The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King.12 According to the same source, only ten of the films on the Top 100 body count chart are horror and six of them are zombie films (meaning that the vast majority of victims were already dead).13 The difference between action and horror must lie in how violence is deployed. We are not frightened by horror films because they are violent; psychological and supernatural horror films often operate on a perceived threat of violence. Instead, what makes a horror film frightening is the way it uses violence to conceptually explore the gruesome effects of cultural problems. We arent upset by the six-hundred deaths by skewering, decapitation, and bludgeoning in Zak Synders 300 because, intentionally or not, it celebrates the idealized male body, political saber-rattling, and Western prejudices against Orientals. One reviewer has pointed out that 300 fits Susan Sontags definition of fascist art because it glorifies surrender, it exalts mindlessness, it glamourizes death.14 300 is not frightening because it uses violence to celebrate dominant cultural values. What makes a film like The Shining horrifying is that it shows a failed provider turning against his family, articulating real anxieties about fading patriarchal control. And, because Jacks only victim is black, the film also raises the issue of race in a confrontational manner. Thus, I suggest that horror uses violence as a way of showing us the things we should be scared of: the things that need our attention. Because violence in the horror film has an allegorical function, it is hardly excessive. Linda Williams argues that, like all popular genres, [body genres] address persistent problems in our culture, in our sensualities, in our very identities. The deployment of sex, violence, and

Linda Williams, "Film Bodies: Gender, Genre, and Excess," Film Theory & Criticism, ed. Leo Braudy and Marshall Cohen (Oxford University Press, 2009). Pg 605 11 Ibid., pg 605. 12 Movie Body Counts, "Top Movies." http://moviebodycounts.com/Top-Movies.htm. 13 Ibid. 14 Moore, Roger. Orlando Sentinel, "300 as Fascist Art." Last modified March 7, 2007. Accessed December 20, 2011. http://blogs.orlandosentinel.com/entertainment_movies_blog/2007/03/300_as_fascist_.html.

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emotion is thus in no way gratuitous.15 This is not to say that it is wrong to be horrified or disgusted by the violence in horror films, but that horror films use violence to 1) draw our attention to the things that should horrify us and 2) confront those awful things. For example, the slasher subgenre that thrived from the late seventies to late eighties earned a great deal of attention for its ferocious deployment of violence against transgressive women. Although slasher films contain male victims too, Carol Clover noted that the murders of women are filmed at closer range, in more graphic detail, and at greater length.16 However, while the repeated stabbing and strangling of the female body would seem to condemn the slasher as an exercise in misogyny, Clover came to an interesting conclusion about the problems and solutions it presents. What Clover also noticed in the slasher was the emergence of the heroic Final Girl: the one character able to see danger coming and meet the killer in violent confrontation. If, as Linda Williams claims, the horror film attempts to solve the problem of violence related to sexual difference with more violence, we can think of the Final Girl as the slasher films solution.17 The slasher film deals with the problem of the male (subject) punishing the female (object) by combining masculine and feminine characteristics into the Final Girl character, who is able to slay the punishing male figure.18 While Clover admits that the slasher film is not the first genre to invite the audience to identify with a female hero, she points out that what distinguishes the slasher is the absence or untenability of alternative perspectives, which makes the invitation explicit.19 While horrors method of resolving problems might be repulsive on the surface, a deceptively progressive approach to cultural problem solving lies beneath. Feeling History In Alexandra Heller-Nicholas case study of Night of the Living Dead, she argues that we can use the horror film to learn about history not as the usual names/places/dates paradigm; instead, we can begin to understand the crucial factor of lived human experience."20 In other words, horror is useful because it allows us to feel history, to isolate the events which frighten us the most. If we consider the spectre of nuclear warfare, it becomes apparent that the horror film contains the most earnest explorations of our fears about this technology. In contrast, serious films about the Bomb glorify its creation or deployment while ignoring its effects. In defense of this argument, I refer to the tagline for Fat Man and Little Boy: the story of the extraordinary people who changed our world.21 This film focuses solely on the relationships between the exceptional creators of the nuclear bomb and, worse, the cursory moral question it raises about whether or not they have the right to play God is never addressed in any meaningful way. Conversely, we can identify a long line of horror films that address the fear of living in a post-nuclear world through atomic monsters, mutated freaks, and landscapes ravaged by nuclear fallout. A film like The Road, in which a man and his child navigate a dead, grey world

Linda Williams, "Film Bodies: Gender, Genre, and Excess," Film Theory & Criticism, ed. Leo Braudy and Marshall Cohen (Oxford University Press, 2009). pgs. 611-612. 16 Clover, Carol. "Her Body, Himself: Gender in the Slasher Film." Dread the Difference: Gender and the Horror Film, ed. Barry Keith Grant (University of Texas Press, 2003). pg 82. 17 Linda Williams, "Film Bodies: Gender, Genre, and Excess," Film Theory & Criticism, ed. Leo Braudy and Marshall Cohen (Oxford University Press, 2009). pg 612. 18 Clover, Carol. "Her Body, Himself: Gender in the Slasher Film." Dread the Difference: Gender and the Horror Film, ed. Barry Keith Grant (University of Texas Press, 2003). pg 105. 19 Ibid., pg 86. 20 Alexandra Heller-Nicholas, "History and horror: living the past through the living dead," Screen Education, no. 58 (2010). pg 53. 21 IMDB, "Fat Man and Little Boy." http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0097336/taglines.

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filled with bands of roving cannibals, more accurately articulates our fear of world-destroying technologies, whereas masturbatory war films simply celebrate the fact that we possess them. Another function of horror is its constant re-remembering of significant traumas. Adam Lowenstein uses Freuds idea of psychological re-transcription to explain this theory. The argument goes something like this: Freud treated a woman named Emma who was unable to enter a shop alone. By tracing Emmas memories backward to the source of the original trauma (a shopkeeper had fondled her through her clothes when she was a child), Freud concluded that Emmas deferred hysteria was only made possible once she passed through puberty and became aware of her sexuality.22 Though Lowenstein is careful to assert that he is not attempting to diagnose films or spectators, he suggests that there is some structural affinity between Freuds idea of deferred action and the re-transcription of trauma in horror films.23 We can see this re-transcription occur in 28 Weeks Later, in which an American-led NATO force attempts to re-populate a Green Zone in London after a zombie outbreak. The parallels to the Iraq War are explicit and one of the films most horrifying scenes involves snipers being ordered to fire indiscriminately on zombies and living humans in the plaza below them. The futility of defending a scrap of land against hostile inhabitants and being unable to tell friend from foe make 28 Days Later a useful tool for deciding what counts as a terrifying depiction of trauma as the American occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan ages ungracefully. The horror film also allows the spectator to bear witness to traumatic events from the safety of the cinema; we see terrible things, but without the distorting effects of mental anguish. Siegfried Kracauer writes, Elemental catastrophes, the atrocities of war, acts of violence and terror, sexual debauchery, and death are events which tend to overwhelm consciousness. In any case, they call forth excitements and agonies bound to thwart detached observations.24 However, Kracauer claims that the cinemas purpose is not simply to recreate these horrific and awe-inspiring events, but to transform the agitated witness into conscious observer.25 This argument seems especially well-tailored to horror, which depicts horrific events over and over in some attempt to address (if never solve) the source of terror. Through watching horror films, we can observe some small part of traumatic events that we were lucky enough to have avoided. Because horror films provide us with a more emotionally accurate portrait of warfare, injustice, and catastrophe, and because they dont make us feel good about these things, I argue that they serve an important cultural function. Conclusion To risk veering into the anecdotal, I recently had the displeasure of seeing The Human Centipede 2, which seems nearly impossible to defend in any regard. When the credits rolled and everyone filed out of the theater, I noticed the lack of the usual hum of chatter. As I opened the door and saw the Saturday night streets awash with rosy-cheeked bar-hoppers, I wondered whether I looked guilty or not. However, I spent most of the films 88 minutes questioning why I was watching it. This period of difficult self-reflection was worth the ticket price if not the bad dreams. My point is that a good conscience rarely leads to the volume and quality of questions that a bad one provokes. In this regard, the horror film provides us with particularly fertile ground for debate about spectatorship. When we leave a horror film, we do not placidly smile at each other and say I liked it. Instead, we engage in a period of contemplation or discussion about

Adam Lowenstein, "Living Dead: Fearful Attractions of Film," Representations, 110, no. 1 (2010), pg 114 Ibid., pg 115 24 Siegfried Kracauer, "The Establishment of Physical Existence," Film Theory & Criticism, ed. Leo Braudy and Marshall Cohen (Oxford University Press, 2009). pg 270. 25 Ibid. pg 271.
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what the hell we just saw, which is almost always a violent interrogation of our cultures most resilient social ills.

Bibliography Bazin, Andr. Theater and Cinema. Film Theory & Criticism, 345-355. Edited by Leo Braudy and Marshall Cohen. New York: Oxford University Press, 2009. Print. Walter Benjamin, "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction," Film Theory & Criticism, 665-685. Edited by Leo Braudy and Marshall Cohen. New York: Oxford University Press, 2009. Print. Clover, Carol. Her Body, Himself: Gender in the Slasher Film. Dread the Difference: Gender and the Horror Film, 66-113. Edited by Barry Keith Grant. University of Texas Press, 2003. Print. Gunning, Tom. An Aesthetic of Astonishment: Early Film and the (In)Credulous Spectator. Film Theory & Criticism, 736-750. Edited by Leo Braudy and Marshall Cohen. New York: Oxford University Press, 2009. Print. Heller-Nicholas, Alexandra. "History and horror: living the past through the living dead." Screen Education. no. 58 (2010): 52-56. Print. IMDB, "Fat Man and Little Boy." Accessed December 20, 2011. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0097336/taglines. Kracauer, Siegfried. The Establishment of Physical Existence. Film Theory & Criticism, 262272. Edited by Leo Braudy and Marshall Cohen. New York: Oxford University Press, 2009. Print. Lowenstein, Adam. "Living Dead: Fearful Attractions of Film." Representations. 110. no. 1 (2010): 105-128. http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1525/rep.2010.110.1.105. Accessed December 20, 2011. Metz, Christian. Disavowal, Fetishism. Film Theory & Criticism. Edited by Leo Braudy and Marshall Cohen. New York: Oxford University Press, 2009. Print. Moore, Roger. Orlando Sentinel, "300 as Fascist Art." Last modified March 7, 2007. Accessed December 14, 2011. http://blogs.orlandosentinel.com/entertainment_movies_blog/ 2007/03/300_as_fascist_.html. Movie Body Counts, "Top Movies." Accessed December 20, 2011. http://moviebodycounts.com/Top-Movies.htm. Schatz, Thomas. Film Genre and the Genre Film. Film Theory & Criticism, 705-709. Edited by Leo Braudy and Marshall Cohen. New York: Oxford University Press, 2009. Print. Williams, Linda. Film Bodies: Gender, Genre, and Excess. Film Theory & Criticism, 602-616. Edited by Leo Braudy and Marshall Cohen. New York: Oxford University Press, 2009. Print.