FREE KINDLE FOR PC

FREE KINDLE FOR PC
So you can read my books

Sunday, October 30, 2011

WHY HORROR?_A HALLOWEEN REFLECTION

Wendy Ewurum has done a great post on Victor :

http://fabulositynouveau.blogspot.com/2011/10/celebrating-legend-of-victor-standish.html

Why are we drawn to horror? Why are good girls drawn to bad boys?

1.) The allure of the forbidden.

That is one of the reasons horror beckons to us from out of the shadows.

Why is that boy, that deserted mansion, forbidden?

It is as old as the blood which pulsed cold and tingling through Eve's veins as she reached for that forbidden fruit on that hauntingly lovely tree.

2.) Curiosity.

It is human nature to want to know what lies over the horizon. It's what drove the pioneers across wild, hostile lands.

What does that locked door conceal? That chained chest. Why those heavy links, that rusted lock?

Is this all there is? Or is there more beyond mere line of sight? We know there is more.

Science tells of us of dark matter piercing the cosmos with light-years long strands of matter invisible to the human eye. We are likewise blind to the world of germs. What other worlds are we blind to?

Give a nugget of uranium, a tiny stone really, to an aborigine. Tell him it is a good luck charm. Tell him to drop it in the village well.

What harm could one tiny stone do? Visit his village two months later. View the many corpses laying strewn like dead dreams all across the ground.

3.) Identification.

We watch and imagine what we would do in like situations. The world dissolves into chaos as random individuals descend slowly into madness.

You are picked up by the local sheriff as you are doing your morning walk with your dog. He orders you and your dog into the back of the car. He presses his gun to your dog's head and rambles on about brains looking like wet oysters. Do you want to see?

What would you do? What could you do?

Life is frightening. Global warming. Diseases that eat the very flesh of your body. We watch horor on the screen to encapsulate the horror of real life. It is not us up there.

We would be smarter, faster, more in control of our emotions.

We like the adrenaline rush sudden scares give us. Safer than driving fast, dating inappropriate guys or gals, and with the thrill of saying mentally, "It's not real; I'm still safe."

4.) The Darkness Within.

Terror versus Horror. Is one more physical; the other more mental? Does revulsion and squriming terror pierce through our mental barriers to stab deep into our unconscious fears ... and desires?

(Take the public fascination with the trilogy of the girl with the dragon tattoo :

she is repeatedly brutalized, raped, shot, and beaten. The books and movies are bestsellers. Is there a darkness in us that wants to roll around in sadism like a cat does catnip?)

You are horrified by the news of the floods in Pakistan. You are terrorized when you wake up one New Orleans morning to the news that the dams have burst, and you look out your front door to see rushing waters swallow your neighbor's home ... then your very own.

Horror is realizing the monsters are real and are out there to get you. Terror is looking into the mirror, seeing yourself becoming one -- but still enough you to scream silently at the sight.

Stephen King said horror literature is a means for us to take out the monster, play with it for a while, and put it back.

But who is the monster?

Is he some squirming presence waiting on the other side of the dimensional wall waiting for a crack to appear? Is he the beloved president whose wife is slowly going insane at the awful reality of who he truly is?

Or does his/her eyes stare back at you from the mirror?

Carl Jung :

"Everyone carries a shadow, and the less it is embodied in the individual’s conscious life, the blacker and denser it is. At all counts, it forms an unconscious snag, thwarting our most well-meant intentions."

Why do you think we read horror? Why are we so drawn to dressing up as monsters or as our secret identities? Why do you write the genres you do? And what role does "control" or "lack of control" play in horror/scary movies and literature?
***


8 comments:

  1. Oh the allure of the dark side is more tempting and full of naughty possibilities than the light! Well in my head anyway!!

    I remember going on the Aliens ride when in Disney World - all it took was for me to get plunged in darkness and for the suggestion that a monster had escaped killing the scientists and was now out to get the rest of us for me to lose it completely. Yes, that was me screaming and crying hysterically to be let out and failing to get out of my harness...!

    Oh but I'd do it again! Take care
    x

    ReplyDelete
  2. I suppose I'm drawn to horror and supernatural fiction because I know there's something more out there than just us. However, since I can't qualify this feeling with anything tangible, I write about it instead.

    Years ago I attended church with a guy who swore he spoke to Satan. Although a huge part of me (huge) wanted to dismiss him as a nut, another small side wondered, what if?? I think the latter side, the more curious side, piqued my interest enough to write stories about these mysteries. Perhaps it's cathartic, I'm not sure, but whatever it is, it's fun to imagine these "what ifs."

    ReplyDelete
  3. Kitty :
    The first ALIEN movie was most definitely horrifying. Alone in space with a slick, totally vicious, without morality or code, monster. Brrr.

    I was listening to a Thea Gilmore song, "Wondrous Thing," praising Love "and the devils who designed it." It's as if it cannot be fun if Light has had anything to do with it. What a world we live in, huh?

    Andrea :
    Where I live, by a meandering bayou, mostly alone in the apartment complex -- it is easy to feel that there is more out there than we know -- or are even able to know.

    That fellow most definitely talking to the Darkness within himself, whatever he called it.

    All my stories and novels, like yours, ask, "What If?"

    Oh, my there is a knocking from WITHIN MY CLOSET. What's that sound? The whisper, "I'm lonely. Let me out."

    Should I?

    ReplyDelete
  4. There's a certain enchantment associated with the paranormal and things we as a species don't really understand. Take the vampire, a combination of evil and sensuality, and still the number one costume for Halloween. Have a Happy Halloween, Roland the wolfman. :)

    ReplyDelete
  5. I really like the Jung quote. Many of the horrific things I have seen (I work in healthcare) came from people who on the surface were seemingly so put together and "normal." The monster is inside of us all.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Laila :
    I'm going to be the undead Texas Ranger, Sam McCord, this weekend, looking for my lost empress, Meilori! No wolfmen allowed! LOL. I've missed you.

    Julie :
    Yes, I've been reading the autobiography of Jung lately. I like how his mind works. Like you, I work in healthcare and some of the most horrendous things came from "normal" people, masking a darkness no one suspected. HAPPY HALLOWEEN! Roland

    ReplyDelete
  7. You are the master at horor Roland :)

    Yep, the more realist it is, the creepier. Hard to look away.

    I have to admit I'm drawn to the genre, both as reader and writer. Thanks for making this spooky weekend spookier :)

    ........dhole

    ReplyDelete
  8. I read/write horror because it is fun, honest, and visceral.

    I don't think anything is more honest than a good jolt. People can fake being brave, but not scared. If you scare the reader (or if you make them cry, or yank out some other emotion), then you (or I) as a writer have done their (or my) job.

    That's why I like it. It's real.


    - Eric

    ReplyDelete