Fear-Wielding Fundies

It's been a while--over a week, in fact. In the midst of editing the July Willows, I came down with a summer cold which has severely inhibited my ability to write. I compose this article in the hope that I'm coherent again.

When the first legends were whispered by firelight, the shamans who composed them must have been seeking explanation; an entity or entities to whom they could attribute the baffling phenomena of their world. The rising sun and moon, the howling winds, the dancing shadows in the forest--all, they concluded, must be the work of minds both benevolent and malevolent. In time, they devised ways to please these forces, and taught these rituals to their family groups. Religion was born.

But the human mind seeks control, over both the external world and the people who inhabit it. We may never know if malicious plotting or mere accident began the shift, but somewhere along the line, these folktales became weapons. Rather than merely teaching their people how to please the gods, shamans warned of the divine wrath that would be invoked if worshipers failed to observe the proper rites, or obey the fullness of the law.

Boggarts and pixies were gradually replaced by demons and devils; Hell was transformed from the abode of ill forces to a dungeon where sinners could be tormented forever. Two of the world's major religions now teach of a place of eternal torment, and it is one of these religions--or rather, a certain offshoot of it--that I wish to treat in this article.

It's difficult to find much in common between the teachings of Jesus and those of the American Christian fundamentalist movement. They seem to prefer the rageful, jealous God of the Old Testament, though they've dressed him in the vestments and nomenclature of the more palatable Nazarene. I spent much of my life in northwest Texas, and experienced many adherents to this dogma firsthand; central to their beliefs is the threat of Hell, surrounded by the deadly tendrils of sin, demonic possession, and a hopelessly decaying world.

I recently watched two documentaries pertaining to various aspects of fundamentalist churches: Hell House and Jesus Camp. I'm not attempting to review the films here, so much as analyze certain cultural aspects of the religious movement they depict. Nevertheless, some spoilers may be present from here onward.

Hell House helped draw nationwide attention to its titular phenomenon; the Christian answer to haunted houses, "Hell Houses" are promoted by a multitude of conservative churches each Halloween. Rather like a religious ten-in-one, they feature Grand Guignol vignettes of young people committing various sins, such as premarital sex, abortion, occult practices, and suicide. The tour climaxes with a literal brimstone Inferno, where the wayward souls are tormented and mocked by a cast of demons who rather resemble The Crow. Visitors are led from this cruel scene into a final room, where pastors assure them that this gruesome fate is absolutely real--but it can be avoided through the salvation Jesus offers.

Without making a moral judgment on Hell Houses, I can safely say that their makers purposefully exploit base human fears--torture, abandonment, death--to get their point across. The pastors of the churches openly and proudly state as much.

In Jesus Camp, the threats are a bit more subtle. In one scene, Pastor Becky, matriarch of the church in that film, displays a few object lessons with which she teaches her young charges. Among these are a sticky hand that adheres to a toy brain (representing the insidious nature of sinful imagery) and a sickle with which she strikes a toy heart (the symbolism of these props is not explained). In her sermons, Becky exhorts a group of pre-pubescent disciples to be on their guard for sin in their lives, to watch for the traps of the flesh, and resist the devil. "This old world," she states repeatedly, is decaying; sinking into Hell.

Among followers of these teachings, Hell is a literal place, filled with actual flames. This earth is a fearful and demon-haunted world, rife with temptations by which the minions of the Devil seek to capture the hearts of children and adults alike. In this religion, no one seeks to appease these demons; only to resist and avoid them in any way possible. Though the fundamentalist Christians claim to believe Jesus has already won the day, it is difficult, based on their actual behavior, to avoid the conclusion that they fear that--in this world at least--the Devil is holding all the aces. Practitioners of these beliefs are telling their children--and anyone who will listen--these nightmarishly violent stories. I know; I grew up around them. These children grow up believing in ideas similar to the tribal fears of old.

I'm not trying to make a political point here; others have made it plenty of times, and the side I stand on should be abundantly obvious by now. I'm demonstrating that visceral emotions--fear, awe, wonder, and all the rest--can be tools or weapons. In good hands, they can be used to inspire reflection on deep truths, or to entertain, or to allow us to challenge our limits. They can also be used to control or overpower the frightened, and to make threats. These feelings are unbelievably potent, and a skilled writer can tap into them easily.

One final, somewhat tangential thought: when you compose weird fiction, what are you aiming to accomplish?

Whither the Gimmicks?

Nothing can prepare you for the shocking article ahead. Grown men, when they learned its secret, fled from this website, covering their eyes. Women and children, then, are advised not to read it at all.

For those of you who wish to heed this warning, I offer you the following coward's link, by which you may depart:

COWARD'S LINK.

If you haven't guessed by now, this article is about showmanship. It concerns the lost art of hooking the audience, offering them a tantalizing hint of what is to come if they enter the sideshow tent--or the theater. Once upon a time, campaigns for horror films challenged our manhood, threatened our sanity, and appeared genuinely concerned for our mental health.

The humbug is an old tool: at its root, it is hype, in the form of boasts, blusters, or threats about the entertainment in question. Not necessarily a negative term, it's simply an all-inclusive descriptor for any sort of hook-sell: the threat that within this theater lies madness, or behind this curtain sits a specimen that has driven even the sideshow's owner to weeping.

If we tried, we might date the idea of humbugs back (at least) to decadent Roman gladiator shows, which were promoted as more violent and outrageous than the last spectacle. In a society drenched in excess, the pitch for a show takes the form of a threat: that each new show would be the most violent ever staged. And human curiosity would overcome any such barriers with aplomb.

Of course, the real godfather of the hook-sell is P. T. Barnum. The man saw no problem with the idea of "talking up" attractions, so long as the public got, in some sense, what they paid for. He'd bill a seven-foot man as ten feet tall, and an 80-year-old woman as over twice her age. He'd describe shocking freaks of nature which turned out to be pickled fetuses. And in the shadows of his sideshows lurked the same challenge: dare you enter? Dare you look? Are you enough of a man to peek behind this curtain? Yes? Well, that'll be another dime.

If Barnum was the patriarch of the humbug, William Castle was its champion. The man cranked out schlocky horror movies by the boatload, then transformed them into experiences. Viewers of Macabre were offered a $1,000 life insurance policy against death by fright. In Homicidal, a "fright break" offered cowards the opportunity to flee the theater before horrific scenes. Castle would hire "nurses" and ambulances to wait outside the cinemas; he would interview badly-shaken viewers as they stumbled from their seats.

His films were rarely as frightening as he made them out to be, but he seemed to know it, and he often introduced them himself, through tongue-in-cheek monologues. The film, after all, wasn't the point--the point was the dare; the challenge. And it worked.

Hitchcock himself urged audiences to please not give away the "shocking ending" to Psycho, and Castle made an almost identical plea in the advertising for Homicidal the following year. Throughout the 1970s and 80s, filmmakers did their best to copy Castle's techniques, which were themselves an expansion on the old sideshow methods popularized by Barnum. Movies such as Corpse Eaters employed gimmicks warning of nausea-inducing scenes. And the 1987 movie Creepozoids bore the immortal tagline: "Your flesh will crawl right off your bones!"

Then there are the modern examples: The Sixth Sense, most notoriously, spurred M. Night Shyamalan to stardom by branding him as an auteur of the twist ending--a trait that was soon to be his downfall. More recently, The Human Stain touted its surprise ending in proud Castle style. But neither of these films maintained the sensationalist spirit of that older advertising, and their secrets, to say the least, were far from truly shocking.

Are audiences too jaded to respond to this type of advertising? The cheeky manner in which such motifs are treated in Grindhouse would seem to suggest as much. Why, then, do these gimmicks and humbugs continue to fascinate us? Why do sideshow "talkers" (showmen) continue to use a patter so similar to the humbugs of old? Why do I myself experience an overwhelming urge to seek out spoilers for movies that profess shocking endings, even if their plots and themes are obviously blasé?

Curiosity, I'd say. These days, even such a simple gimmick as 3-D glasses is a rare treat. Long gone, it seems, are the days of dangling skeletons, vibrating seats, and fright-insurance policies. We might not be frightened by such displays, but then, neither were the kids in the 1960s, really. I'd certainly enjoy the hell out of them, though.

Willows Preservation

Here's the scenario:

• The June issue of The Willows is launching in just over a week.
• We still need to sell 10 copies of the May issue to meet our sales goal.
• That is not a lot of copies.
  

In fact, it's only $35 worth of copies. I know a lot of you have been working hard to spread the word about The Willows, and for that I offer my humblest thanks. Many of you have even bought subscriptions; it's an honor that you trust us to provide you with a year of worthwhile weird tales. The July and September issues are already filling up, and I'm extremely excited about both. Subscribers, you're going to get your money's worth.

I want to raise pay rates, and I'd like to be able to pay all contributors by the end of 2007. I'd like to print the magazine's cover in glossy color. I'd like to make offers to more well-known writers, and get their tales in The Willows. I'd like to start running some sweepstakes and giveaways and other promotions. And I realize I'm sounding a bit like a politician here, but those things will only come to pass if we meet our sales goals each month.

And if we can meet our goals, I promise to reward you with an article I've been developing. It's about something missing in horror these days, and it involves a certain circus showman, a sub-genre of horror cinema, and a notorious 1950s film promoter. Have I captured your attention yet?

So please, tell your friends. Tell your family. Give the gift of a subscription. Spread the message of classic-style Victorian weird fiction the world over!

It's Time to Talk About Torture Porn, Part II

I read something today that put a bit of a different spin on the idea of graphical violence in movies. It's a review of the Saw series by Vern, a critic whose pithy words on the entire film establishment usually bring me to tears of laughter. He says this in his review, and demonstrates for the uninitiated his...er...unique form of prose. I thought of editing it down, but it really speaks for itself so well.

Let me describe two different types of people to you. First there is the guy you know who is proud of how completely fuckin twisted he is, he likes to read books about serial killers and satanic cults, he knows trivia about Charles Manson, he has the daily rotten as his homepage, he can tell you which volume of FACES OF DEATH had the monkey brains on it and he likes to try to shock people by talking about shit like that. Basically, he's just a show off. Then on the other hand you got a guy like a David Cronenberg or a Clive Barker, guys who think of crazy fucked up shit that first guy could never come up with, and they're not even trying to. The first guy makes a movie where somebody gets pulled apart by hooks, like he saw in a Clive Barker movie, and he makes it even more graphic and laughs because ha ha that oughta get a reaction out of 'em. Cronenberg on the other hand is a quiet guy, but he makes movies where people fuck each other's leg wounds and grow teeth in their assholes and grow working VHS vaginas in their chests and shoot teeth out of guns. And then he doesn't laugh, because he's serious about it. Because that's just the kind of movies that come out of his brain.

As soon as a critic compliments Cronenberg and Barker, he's one step closer to winning me over. I'd say the worst thing one can say about Barker is that his ambition often exceeds his resources, and Cronenberg's "horror" movies are such genre-benders that I hesitate to even use that term.

Vern makes a point that I'd never considered: a great deal of the negative press surrounding this torture-porn style seems to rise from the critical opinion--which is, by now, an established party line--that such films as Hostel are the big-budget equivalent of pulling wings off a fly and giggling as it dies.

But is Saw really that much more violent than, say, Suspiria or House by the Cemetery? Or is the distinction in the way the violence is treated? I'd venture that, more than anything, the problem is with lack of likable three-dimensional characters, but then, what are we to make of the profusion of Argento films where we barely learn the protagonists' names?

Vern, in my experience, isn't really a defender or detractor of the torture-porn films, whatever those may be. The point he's making about the Saw franchise, it would seem, is that filmmakers who set out merely to shock, to make a buck, will rarely create work that is anything other than derivative. Hellraiser isn't just about violence; it's about sex, and jealously, and family, and vengeance: much of the gamut of raw human emotion. Saw is mostly about the fear of death, and what it can drive people to do. Not a pointless topic, per se, but not a particularly stimulating one either, especially in that context.

This past weekend, I had the opportunity to see Poltergeist on the big screen at a 25th anniversary film festival. I was completely drawn in to the story of an average suburban family and their malicious house-guests, and when the scares came, I nearly leaped out of my seat. I laughed all the way through Saw, and stumbled out of the theater in stitches.

Thus, I'm inclined to agree with Vern: what ruins many modern slasher films (but, as I'll address in a moment, perhaps not what defines them) is not the violence itself, or the degree of grittiness, but the lack of genuineness on the part of the writer and director. It's easy to top the gore of previous films; all it takes is a better practical effects team. What's harder is to maintain that attachment between audiences and protagonists.

But here's the tough part: what defines torture porn, above all, seems to be an audience's (or audience member's) reaction to it, and that makes it all-but impossible to pin down! Hostel could be considered porn because it lacks deep characters and focuses on set pieces. Then again, by that measuring stick, DOA could be "fighting porn" and The Fast and the Furious could be "car porn."

And yet, someone is actually getting off on the violence these movies. Who? When I saw Hostel in the theater, much of the younger set was chattering with excitement, not about the escape at the end, but about the torture scenes. The final girl (or guy) is getting no love. The social implications of this--if there are any to be measured yet--are outside the scope of this article.

Ah, but I forgot: Eli Roth was allegedly making a satire, a send-up of modern Americans' exploitation of poor European nations. Unfortunately for me, Roth's thesis never occurred to me until he brought it up after the film's release. Perhaps I'm just ignorant; maybe my knowledge of international politics and horror tropes just wasn't up to the challenge of receiving his well-concealed message of goodwill towards Ukrainians, and none of my friends caught it either. Or perhaps Eli Roth just makes movies about what teenagers want to see--boobs and gore--and then invents contexts for them afterwards. Or perhaps I'm missing the point entirely. I don't know the man, after all.

Honestly, it's hard to blame directors like Roth and James Wan; if teens will fill seats just to watch characters be ripped apart, why bother fleshing those characters out? I'd even hazard that those teens are more comfortable watching flat, stupid victims be imprisoned and tortured than they would be watching a family like their own cowering in terror of the forces in their house. It's more comfortable that way. As Vern puts it:

They aren't willing to fully establish the desperation, they just want to jump straight to the limb hacking.

Maybe that's what defines these films as torture porn after all: the director's eagerness--and thus the audience's willingness--to get straight to the violence, and focus on it. And based on the screenings of such films that I've attended, I'd say these directors have their target audiences pegged quite well.

At any rate, that should allow us to classify Hostel and Saw as something rather different from horror. Disgust and repulsion, while they are elements of Cronenberg's and Barker's work, do not real horror make. When it comes to absolute fright, give me Murnau or early Browning any day. Eighty years later, they can still give me nightmares for a month.

Choose Your Own Adventure...Please!

I came across an interview with Neil Gaiman this morning; he's discussing his upcoming film Stardust. Based on the trailer, I'm a bit unsure about the film's ability to translate the book's material properly, and Gaiman seems to be offering little more than the requisite words of support for it.

But that's not why I bring this up. Gaiman, as usual, has something to say about the genre in which he's working. Stardust is not really a fantasy novel; it's a fairytale, and that was precisely Gaiman's intent when he wrote it:

[I]t’s always been something where you look at Lord of the Rings and it changed everything everybody did in fantasy ever after and what fascinated me was that period, back before 1930, where every now and then people would write fantasy… they’d write fairy stories. They’d write magical stories and those magical stories that they’d write would be… they’d be just like regular novels. It’s not like there was a fantasy shelf for the stuff to go on. They’d just write the novel, which would happen to be sort of a fairytale.

He is, of course, talking about the fantastique and its Anglo-American cousins. And he's absolutely right. I know that the breaking down of genre barriers is one of my hobbyhorses, but can you blame me? Those barriers have kept the work of Gaiman and Barker on the "science fiction and fantasy" shelves, apart from the "real novels."

These divisions have put the idea into writers' heads that if they write sci-fi, it must be about robots, technical slang, and warp drives; and if they write fantasy, it must be about The Chosen One and his sidekicks traveling through landscapes resembling New Zealand, learning about their unique schools of magic, battling creatures with lots of apostrophes in their names.

Those boundaries, as I've said before, have been created because we as humans like to classify the world around us into distinct sectors. No harm in that, necessarily; I myself like to analyze the evolution of genres, and learn the causes of each permutation within their histories. The problem arises when a writer sets out to compose "a hard sci-fi story" or "a body-horror story." When he or she starts with that premise, the threats of pastiche and overused tropes rear their heads.

Gaiman and I both dream of a world where there are no shelves labeled "fantasy" and "science fiction," where writers strive not to fit onto those shelves, but to tell their own stories. For which genre did Beade strive when he transcribed "Beowulf" from Anglo-Germanic legends? In what genre did shamans whisper their fireside stories? Such tales were not relegated to the back shelves, because they were recognized as what they were: an alternate means of explaining the world; truths that are as meaningful in their own way as literal historical accounts.

Please, for you own sake, do not set out to write fantasy, or horror, or sci-fi--or mystery or chick-lit, for that matter. Write your own story, and worry about classifying it later. If it includes fairies or starships, that's great. If it could be told just as well (or better) on a southern plantation, set it there. Or find some middle ground, and let the critics' chips fall where they may.

Smashing Writer's Block

In lieu of a lengthy meditation on the nature of genre, today I'll offer a few simple tips from my own experience. Some of these are repeated from other sources, while others are my own. They work for me and my particular style, and I hope they'll provide you some aid in time of need.

So, without further ado, I present my tips for breaking through writer's block.

1. Ask yourself why, exactly, you're not writing today.
This is a simple question that often reveals a telling answer. Are you not writing because you have no ideas, or just no idea how to present them? Once I caught myself procrastinating because I was afraid to commit a large block of time; I told myself to write just a single sentence, and I ended up writing five pages. Other times I've realized it was because I felt unattached to the characters, more interested in other stories, or just inferior to other authors. As soon as you can diagnose the problem, you can start thinking of a remedy.

2. If it's in your head, write it.
There are two aspects to this tip. First, write down your ideas, your imagery, your snappy lines; if you like the sound of it, write it down, even if you have no idea where it will fit into your body of work. Monster ideas, plot ideas, themes for essays; they all go into my little notebook, and I always have a place to turn for new material. It also keeps me writing.

That brings us to the second aspect. Try to vary your writing. If I'm not in a fiction mood, I'll usually write an article for Literacity. If I don't feel coherent enough for that, I'll write a lengthy email to one of my correspondents. A short script suits my mood on certain days. Just keep yourself writing, not to some daily word minimum, but to a steady standard of productivity. Every single day, you should have some sort of output to look back on.

3. Don't force the story anywhere.
This can play out in various ways. The general idea is to stop over-plotting. Some writers like to work from an outline; I don't. Either way, you'll get the pump primed by just letting go. You don't have to be working on your primary project; just write something. Don't push the characters or the plot; let them unfold before you. The key is to visualize writing like reading: you don't know what will happen to the characters, so let them take you where they want to go.

So write something...anything at all. Right now. Ah, you want a bit of a push? Write about a man who is deathly afraid of chocolate chip cookies. He has kept this concealed from his friends all his life, but this afternoon, the woman for whom he harbors a secret love has decided to bake him a fresh batch. She's walking up his driveway right now. I'm serious: open Word, and write it right this moment. I'll wait.



Now, how did that feel? I'd like to see what you discovered, if you'd be willing to email it to me. It probably wasn't Faulkner, but would I be right if I guessed that it felt quite fun to watch the story unfold before you, without a care about where it would end up? Remember when writing felt like that every time? That, dear reader, is the feeling you must learn to summon at will. When you can do that, all that remains is to throw a harness over the feeling and put it to work for you.

Most of my more specific techniques depend on those above. For me, the process is similar to physical fitness: even when you're not actively working out (i.e., writing a novel), it pays to stretch, stay limber, and walk as much as possible. The brain, like any other organ, will fall out of shape if it's not constantly put to use.

I must end this article with a quick shameless plug: my short story "Cormac's Mirror" will appear in the anthology "Bound for Evil," from Dead Letter Press. No ordering information is available yet, but the book will be hardcover, and will be released this fall. Exciting!

Science Fantastique

When reading the comments on my previous article, I was struck by a thought, and a memory. The memory first: I was perhaps fifteen, reading a novel set in the Star Wars universe (yes, I was that sort of teen, but I do believe my literary tastes, at least, have matured a bit since then).

In the book, a mysterious alien race was invading the civilized planets, and a suitable space opera ensued. The aspect of the setting that struck me, however, was that these creatures and their habits, described repeatedly as "strange" and "alien," were not in any particular aspect more strange than the myriad other aliens, starships, plates, and customs practiced by the protagonists. They were aliens in a universe full of aliens. As I tried to force myself to finish what was rapidly becoming a dull read, my mind wandered to the tales of Lovecraft and Machen, with which I was already becoming well acquainted.

And I realized something for the first time: I did not like science fiction. Oh, I read plenty of it over the subsequent years, and enjoyed some borderline works (I'll get to those presently). Same thing with high fantasy; I'd make my way through the classics, but often found myself nonplussed.

The reason was simple, and it forms the thought I mentioned at the beginning: I am bored in worlds where the wondrous, the magical, and the esoteric are mundane. When aliens are just townspeople, when wizards and dark lords are political figures, when space travel and time travel are the equivalent of freeways, I might as well be reading a newspaper as a novel! The irruptions of the wondrous and uncanny that I so adore are already commonplace events in such worlds. No one's jaw drops when a spell is cast or a starship descends (except, perhaps, in the first chapter). There is no ordinary world for the magic to irrupt into--or rather, the extraordinary world is ordinary.

Now, this is (of course) a matter of personal taste, and as with all examples, exceptions exist. And these form the meat of this article, because the greatest sci-fi I have ever read is, to my mind, actually fantastique fiction in disguise. As a brief refresher, fantastique is--or will here be--defined through two elements: the irruption of the fantastic into a mundane world, and the sensations of childlike awe and wonder that this irruption should produce in both the protagonist and the reader. The diverse manners in which the irruption may be presented are covered in more detail in the article below.

The first example of such a story is Greg Bear's Blood Music. The plot begins with an ordinary enough near-future scenario: a scientist has created intelligent cells, which then form tissues and organs that behave essentially like organic nanotechnology. Unsurprisingly, they begin to take over the panicked world, and they cannot be stopped. Furthermore, the cells speak to certain individuals, hinting that they have an ulterior purpose in mind.

I wish I could offer an in-depth analysis of the novel's climax and resolution, but you really ought to read it for yourself. I'll say only that the wonder and enchantment evoked by the story's final revelation were the equal of any climax in myth or fairytale, and actually brought me to tears. I don't believe any other book has achieved such a reaction in me. Despite this novel's scientific tone, it's ultimately a story of Paradise, and the ways we dream of getting there.

Olaf Stapledon's Star Maker provides my second example. Admittedly, Stapledon scarcely finds the mundane world worthy of mention:

One night when I had tasted bitterness I went on to the hill. Dark heather checked my feet. Below marched the suburban street lamps. Windows, their curtains drawn, were shut eyes, inwardly watching the lives of dreams. Beyond the sea’s level darkness a lighthouse pulsed. Overhead obscurity……I sat down on the heather. Overhead obscurity was now in full retreat. In its rear the freed population of the sky sprang out of hiding, star by star.

From there, the narrator is whisked away to space, where he witnesses everything from the societies of extraterrestrial cultures to the language of intelligent stars, over the course of several billion (compressed) years. If it sounds like an opium dream, that's because it reads like one, but Stapledon's genius lies in the clarity with which he presents his ideas. The result is a bit like Orwell on a galactic scale, but that description doesn't do justice to the wondrousness of the vision.

It doesn't really even do this book justice to call it sci-fi at all. Though it's superficially about aliens, starships, and galactic travel, it has been described as a prose poem, an essay on the nature of God and the universe, or just a whirlpool of profound ideas about subjects as diverse as politics, astrophysics, and theology. In short, it is an audacious work of astounding genius.

It qualifies as fantastique, and as one of my all-time favorite books, for several reasons. The general plot is, as far as I can tell, a grown-up tale of travels through fairyland. The narrator leaves his body, converses with mythological beings (extraterrestrials) and nature (in the form of stars and galaxies), ultimately learning the secrets behind the curtain, as it were. and everything is presented with a sense of breathless awe that carries the reader on its crest. The narrator describes new creatures and vistas with genuine reverence and amazement. One closes the book feeling inspired and challenged--and perhaps a bit overwhelmed by Stapledon's ideas.

We can see that the best books often challenge genre boundaries themselves. It's also interesting to examine your own favorites outside of your preferred genre(s), and note the elements in those works that make them to attractive to you. You may find the key to developing your own style. After all, that's why many of us became writers: to write books we'd love to read, but which don't exist yet.

Irruptions of the Unusual

One way in which horror can be distinguished from fantasy or the fantastique is by the way the story treats its catharsis or catharses (particularly the climactic paragraph, if it's a short story). Horror tales are defined by the emotion they produce:

#1: an overwhelming and painful feeling caused by something frightfully shocking, terrifying, or revolting; a shuddering fear

#4: a strong aversion; abhorrence: to have a horror of emotional outbursts.

--Random House Unabridged Dictionary

I tend to lean toward the "strong aversion" or "repulsion" side, as that's what McKee emphasizes--that is, as opposed to terror, which is more of a shocking fright. At any rate, we've established that in the horror story (or novel or film), the climactic ecstasy will primarily evoke (or attempt to evoke) a sensation of overwhelming repulsion: Yog-Sothoth will cross the threshold; the Crimson King will reveal his true form; Roger Corman's rubber monster will waddle out of its cave.

Compare that to the fantastique, or to Blackwood, where the primary goal is to evoke a sense of awe, or of childlike wonder. My favorite example of this is Blackwood's "The Other Wing," a short story that was the inspiration for the novel I'm trying to finish. In Blackwood's novel The Centaur, the protagonist's journey climaxes when he glimpses a herd of centaurs. Not really horrific, though the novel is sometimes classed among horror fiction. Blackwood's aim here, I believe (based on his body of work), was to provoke feelings of wonderment and awe. He wants us to return to childhood, or at least perceive it vividly, through a bittersweet lens.

Other examples: the end of the movie Hook, where the original Darling children, now grown old and decrepit, receive the gifts they lost in Neverland so many decades ago. Indeed, Spielberg seems to grasp this motif quite well; Close Encounters of the Third Kind and E.T. are also rife with Blackwood-ian sentiment, which is often lambasted as being cloying. And of course, Pan's Labyrinth, though ultimately tragic, is bursting with wide-eyed wonder, as is much of Del Toro's work.

What of cases where the magic of youth becomes the horror of adulthood? No better example exists than my beloved "The White People" by Machen. The innocence of childhood play is perceived as truly abhorrent through the eyes of adults. The story may even mirror the church's perception of paganism as strange and threatening, though I'm not convinced that Machen himself was trying to take the reader there. And with what fright do we see Rackham's illustrations of Wonderland through adult eyes? Are we perceiving horrors that innocent eyes are too uneducated to see, or do children see more truly than we do?

The final permutation I'll discuss here is the irruption of the horrific, perceived as beatific by the viewer. My friend Orrin mentions Barker's early work, especially "In the Hills, the Cities" as exemplary of this motif:

And if it killed them, this monster, then at least they would have glimpsed a miracle, known this terrible majesty for a brief moment. It seemed a fair exchange.

I can think of no better example than Barker's "The Hellbound Heart," the story on which Hellraiser was based. In that novella, the horrific is perceived as desirable--erotic, in fact. Summoning demons becomes the ultimate sexual pleasure, and death is just another road to orgasm.

In all these cases, it is easy to see, the nature of the catharsis is based entirely on its portrayal. Without the framing device of the debating gentlemen, "The White People" would lack any real horror whatsoever, at least to my mind. Without Carroll's delightful writing, Rackham's illustrations portray a demented opium trip.

The horrific and the beatific, evidently, are two sides of the same coin. Perhaps that's why I enjoy reading and writing both equally.

Horror Tree 2.0

This is a work in progress; an early draft of an improved, more detailed Tree. I've received a great deal of feedback from every side of the debate, and I've done my best to refine and provide specific examples. Once again, I humbly welcome any input, especially suggestions for examples of each sub-type.

Note that, with the exception of Class #3, these are all described from the perspective of he protagonist. Also note that some examples overlap; sometimes my examples aren't even horror films per se. As I've said, there are never hard-and-fast rules for classifying stories. I use male pronouns, but obviously all of these could apply equally to female characters. Specific film/book references are linked [thus] after each example.

Failure of Body "I'm changing/being invaded in an unnatural way"

1. The Mutator (he can't control his transformations) [1] [2] [3]
2. The Possessed ("it" invaded him and/or took control) [1] [2] [3]
3. The Lost Soul (his spirit is just another vulnerable body) [1] [2] [3]

Failure of Mind "Can I trust myself?"

1. The Madman (are the visions real? will he hurt those he loves?) [1] [2]
2. The Decaying Genius (he can no longer understand what he's created) [1]
3. The Possessor of "The Book" (his knowledge unravels his sanity) [1] [2]

Failure of Environment "[noun]s should not [verb] "

1. The Animated Inanimate (flowers should not sing) [1] [2]
2. The Risen Dead (life and death should stay separate) [1]
3. The Animal Human (humans and beasts should not blend) [1]

Failure of Status "No one trusts, respects, or values me"

1. The Paranoid (he's put it all together, but no one listens) [1] [2] [3]
2. The Witness (no one believes his description of what he saw)
3. The Scapegoat (he must be sacrificed, literally or figuratively) [1]

Well, that's where things stand for now. I feel like I'm getting somewhere with this idea, at least to the point that it can aid me in refining my own writing.

By the way, I welcome any suggestions on subjects to tackle for future articles. Until I receive any, I'm thinking I'll write something about Blackwood-ian ecstasies of the fantastic, and how they differ from cathartic horror moments.

It's Time to Talk About Torture Porn

Can I discuss this topic without delving into an analysis of snuff? I suppose we shall see.

My musing began with an article on Ain't It Cool News, a site on which I withhold general comment. The article in question was an interview with Eli Roth, the infamous director of Cabin Fever, Hostel, and Hostel II--and a sort of modern P. T. Barnum. As Roth talked with the interviewer, I was struck not so much by what he said, but by the implications of certain statements he made. Here's an example:

[T]here are soldiers in Iraq that write me and tell me that HOSTEL is one of the most popular movies in the military...when they're on the battlefield...you can't react emotionally...And these guys are going out every day seeing this horrible stuff, and they're not allowed to be scared...And when they watch HOSTEL...it's okay to be terrified...It's socially acceptable, and they let those feelings out.

What does it say about American society that our men have to watch movies about torture in order to be permitted to show fear? I might add that these restrictions occur primarily when men are in the company of other men. Many men--not all, but many--will confess their fears to their wives or steady girlfriends.

I can't pretend to have any real understanding of what it's like to be a soldier overseas. But this sounds like more than just a healthy catharsis, if you ask me.

His reaction to the term "torture porn" is also intriguing:

[I]t immediately discredits the film. You know, when you watch pornography, you watch it, you get off, and that's it. I think it's more reflective of the critic than the film. It shows a lack of understanding and ability to understand and appreciate a horror film as something more than just a horror film. The gore blinds them to any intelligence that goes into making the film. And I think that the term "torture porn" genuinely says more about the critic's limited understanding of what horror movies can do than about the film itself.

What can I say about this? Well, my initial reaction is that this is another version of Smith and/or Shyamalan's infamous "it's not for you, critics!" argument. I'm not sure what he means by "a limited understanding of what horror movies can do." What in particular is Hostel doing that Irreversible and the Last House on the Left didn't? Ebert gave those two movies a solid three and three-and-a-half stars, respectively.

Here's my guess: torture isn't the problem. Lack of character is. When the protagonists are subordinated to the event, the torture, that's when it ceases to be a drama and becomes pornographic. Hellraiser contains an abundance of torture, but it's seen in flashes, in glimpses, in half-mad flights across the screen. We don't linger on shots of gaping, dripping wounds, zooming in for the express purpose of creating "horror" out of shock.

I've heard the argument that the horror and porn genres are cousins, just as sex and violence often are. I'm inclined to agree: both genres are meant to invoke one particular feeling, and often place plot and characters as secondary to achieving that goal. But it isn't always that way, and in the greatest horror films, character and plot come first. My problem with Hostel (and yes, I have seen it) has nothing to do with its subject matter; it's with the film's deliberate focus on the wounds, the penetration, the dripping and spurting. If that's not porn, I don't know what is.

Look; I finished without discussing snuff at all! Maybe some other time.

In Which The Internet Reads My Blog

First off, a thousand thanks to Pharyngula for linking to my Tree of Horror article. I'm a long-time fan of PZ's writing, and it's an honor to hear his thoughts.

Second, Andrew Dickson has begun a little point/counterpoint with my threefold tree theory, and has made me realize that its first iteration was even more incomplete than I thought. My first reaction was to let the monocle fall from my eye and smash a vase against the wall. Once I had recovered, I assembled some thoughts of my own.

Here are Dickson's four classifications (as opposed to my three):

1. Failure of action (Activity)
   violation (slasher films, torture)
   
2. Failure of the mind (Fixed Ideas)
   decadence (morbid desires and obsessions; Phantom of the Opera)
   
3. Failure of the environment (Situation)
   corruption (haunted houses, zombie movies)
   
4. Failure of psychology (Manipulations)
   madness (psychological horror; think Poe and Lovecraft)
   

He makes the excellent point that horror, as a genre, is more about failure than mere loss of control (which could be an element in almost any genre). However, I'm not sure how he's distinguishing between "Failure of Mind" and "Failure of Psychology." Isn't "The Cask of Amontillado" or "The Black Cat" all about class-1 morbid desires?

Another of his statements is also telling:

"I would have been with him all the way if he hadn't stopped at three [primary classifications]."

And there I half-agree with him. Until he reconciles what I see as a significant overlap between his classes 1 and 4, I'm sticking with my three. However, his point--as I understand it--was that I express my classifications through a muddle of ideas that aren't specific to horror. On that score he has a valid point. Let me try to clarify some specifics.

- "Death by unnatural means" might be better expressed as "death by supernormal, supernatural, or uncanny means."

- "Mutation of one's body" could be a science fiction idea, but I was referring more to Cronenberg-esque stories. Remember, this is undesireable mutation.

- "Resurrection of the dead" and "animation of the inanimate" could likewise be fantasy ideas, which is why I linked to Machen's "The White People" by way of contrary explanation. In that story, the narrator explains how uncanny changes in reality (i.e., a singing rose garden) are, in a non-fantasy world, perceived as horrific by ordinary people.

- As his statements about my "loss of control of place in society" goes, I can't argue; those elements are indeed present in the non-horror genres of bias drama and thriller. They work as horror when expressed in horrific terms, or combined with a supernormal antagonist.

I'm also reluctant to accept certain slasher films as true horror, though I'm sure to take some flak for that. I'd classify many of them, at least the ones without definite supernatural elements, as thrillers. Yet some slashers, such as Candyman, are undeniably horror, while some of the Giallo films of Argento and Fulci actually fall well into the realm of Grand Guignol!

All right, so I'll return soon with an improved version of my classification, hopefully with more specifics and consistency.

Bad Author! Bad!

Part One of this little excursion is just below. Funny how blogs work: one must read upward to see the writing in its proper chronological sequence.

And now, as promised, I offer some of the worst tales I've ever received, classified under their type. Hopefully they'll inspire you to greater heights of literary genius, because as we all know, every village needs a scapegoat (or three). I'll refer to both the stories and their authors anonymously, although they would've been happy to display their dreck before all the world under their real names. You could say I'm doing them a greater service than they did themselves. Off we go.

1) The "Passive Protagonist" in "I Was a Teenage Death-Cult Victim"
We've all done it at times: we conceive a vision so brilliant that we can't contain ourselves. We write vivid descriptions of epic vistas and wild rites. All this is observed by the protagonist, who seems to do nothing but get kidnapped, watch in horror as the murderous sacrifice takes place, cower before the eldritch beasts, and finally die or descend into madness. Now, most of us realize, after reading the first draft, that this might as well be a second-person narrative, telling the reader what he or she is seeing, and how he or she feels about it. Besides, no one can get behind a protagonist who's incapable of modifying his surroundings!

One author had no qualms whatsoever: he wrote a tale of a hapless social worker who watched his lover with starry eyes while she murdered numerous townsfolk. At last he deduced that she was in a human-sacrifice cult. The payoff? She killed him. Or assimilated him. Or something. Not even a proper grand guignol climax to reward the reader's patience.

The Antidote: Let him get himself out of a jam for once! Is your narrative so linear that the protagonist can't change the course of the plot? And won't that make his eventual death all the more shocking?

2) The "And Then This Happened; And Then This Happened" Story
Why can so few amateur writers grasp the idea that every event; every line of dialogue; every gesture must be relevant to the main point(s) of the tale? Inexplicable "spooky" events may occur with aplomb, but that does not make your story scary, or even suspenseful. Unless you are Buñuel, this just looks like extraordinary ineptitude at storytelling.

One writer sent in a tale in which the narrator's father was carving a haunted clock. The clock chimed. It made strange noises. Something leaped out of it. His father died. This was all far more ludicrous than I can hope to convey.

The Antidote: Make an effort to understand the story's structure. If an event (or character or line) seems to have no direct bearing, cut it. Suspense happens when we know (or think we know) where we're headed, and dread arriving there.

3) "OK, We Get It, He's a Ghost," or, "Insulting the Reader's Intelligence"
These tales are sometimes related to category #1. Guess what, silly writer: if a pale, skeletal old man in a black trenchcoat wanders around a graveyard, appearing to know everything about a certain criminal buried there, we readers will understand that he's the ghost of that criminal, and we will do this ten pages before your "twist ending." I loathe that phrase anyway: "twist ending." Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, it means that one of the main characters will turn out to be a ghost, the monster, the killer, etc.

Our exemplar here is the story of a gravedigger who encountered...as a matter of fact, I just described the exact plot of the story in the paragraph above. That was easy enough.

The Antidote: When building toward a climax, it's essential that crumbs or knowledge be dropped for the reader, so they don't feel cheated. I understand that. But the best climaxes arise naturally from the tensions between the characters. Is your "twist ending" really necessary, or even desirable?

And Now, a Miscellany

- Dense Lovecraftian prose. Stop it. I'm serious. Even he could barely make it look good, and that was eighty years ago. Imitating Poe or even Hawthorne can make you look elegant; writing "viscid protuberances of undulating charnel pallor" makes you look silly.

- Telling the reader that such-and-such character or place is "unsettling" or "scary-looking." Good God; is it that hard to tell us why?

- Dropping revelations out of nowhere. This is the opposite extreme from example #3 above. Merciful Heavens; the kindly old man was a child murderer! I would never have guessed it! Because you never once did so much as imply it.

- Poor/nonexistent research. I don't care if your story is 500 words; if it's set in colonial-era Pittsburgh, you owe it to the work to research the period and place.

- Pentagrams. They're called "pentacles," they're pointed upwards, and Satanists do not use them; Wiccans do...to block evil forces, not summon them. See point above.

- Tentacled reptilian monsters. I don't find Cthulhu scary anymore, though he can be great fun for pulp-style adventures. The scariest monsters live in the uncanny valley, or in the human mind.

- Arbitrary rules. Set up the rules of your universe, however outre, and stick to them. Internal consistency is a must, especially in the Fantastique.

- Trenchcoats on bad guys. Congratulations; you like anime. See that picture to the left there? That's what we're all going to see in our mind's eye. Try coming up with an original costume.

The Tree of Horror

I've been neglecting this blog; I really have. And when I have posted, it's to plug something I'm working on, or printing, or developing with people you, the reader, have never met. That's rude of me, and it's inconsiderate toward those who have enjoyed the articles I've written.

However, I return bearing gifts. As you can see further down the page, I've been editing a magazine of horror fiction, and I've also been writing a great many short stories (several of which are, or soon will be, in print). My most time-consuming project has been the novel I've nearly finished. The point is, I've learned a few things about writing through all these ventures, mostly by getting tired of doing them improperly, and seeing other authors fail in similar ways.

So I plan to gear this site more toward tips and ideas for writers, which was actually the original point, back in the shadowy mists of summer 2006. All right; enough of this discourse. On to the article.

The Article
or, How to Make It Seem As If You Understand the Horror Genre

Robert McKee divides the horror genre into about six sub-types: the monster rampage, the descent into madness, etc. Beneath these are the sub-sub-types: the monster who can't be killed, the monster who no one believes is real, etc. The system is hardly internally consistent, because no system of literary classification can be.

Nevertheless, I look at horror as a tree. The "roots" of our subconscious memory soak up the myriad predicaments of life: loss of a job, a broken leg, the end of a relationship. The trunk is, to put it simply, loss of control: our failed attempts to reconcile these frustrations and doubts into a reasonable approximation of an ordered universe. Then they branch out into various terrors, and though we still classify them by type, they all boil down to one theme: loss of control. Like great Yggdrasil, this three has three primary branches:

1. loss of control of self
   death by unnatural means, mutation of one's body
   
2. loss of control of environment
   resurrection of the dead, animation of the inanimate
3. loss of control of place in society
   visions that no one will believe, rejection by family group
   

As you can see "loss of control" often means "loss of understanding." And indeed, the two concepts are, for all practical purposes, the same to our minds. But now I see that I wrote three whole paragraphs about what was supposed to be a briefly introduced concept! I could fill a whole article with elucidations on my tree, but I must head toward this article's thesis. I highly recommend that you read the first few pages of Machen's The White People for an exploration of the nature of horror.

The fact is, you (or I) cannot conceive of a concept that has never been treated before. It is inconceivable that in 4,000 years of recorded human history, no other author has conceived a similar thought. What you can do is turn these concepts on their head, play with them, rearrange them, and this create a story that will be refreshing to the reader.

Of course, the best way to avoid this is simply to read...a lot. The more you've read, the less likely you are to walk in other writers' footsteps, and the more likely you are to leave footprints of your own. I can see this will be impossible without some examples, and this article's length is already growing to prodigious proportions.

So I leave you with this promise: next time, a list of the worst plots ever submitted to me. And from there, a lesson on avoiding them, toying with them, and making it look as if you've broken free from the shackles of influence altogether.

But maybe it's best if you just remember this: hilariously awful plots!