Under the Skin: To Scare or Not to Scare.

'You back again? Okay, perhaps you’d better shift around a bit and get yourself comfortable, I’m in the mood to ramble even more than usual. This time around, I want to talk a little about fear, about some of the things that scare me. I want to mention a few of the things that inspire that sense of foreboding in me, that break me out into a cold sweat and have me fidgeting nervously as I glance around twice to check that everything is still okay, as well as one or two things that really don't. Ready? Here we go…

It can be said that horror is a lot like humour in many respects. In fact, I would go so far as to suggest that the two are quite close cousins. How often have you read or watched something only to find yourself in a position where you're not sure whether you want to laugh or scream? Ask yourself just how frequently you or someone you know has used laughter as a means of covering up the fact that they were actually scared shitless by something. Awareness of this almost autonomic response to fear can sometimes be put to effective use. A good example of the line being blurred between funny and scary is the Wes Craven movie, Scream, wherein a self-referential strain of humour is visible throughout, turning worn cliches on their heads to subvert and redefine a sub-genre that Craven himself helped to spearhead years previously. Yes, humour can easily go hand in hand with horror to good effect. However, there is a fine line that divides the two; when that humour becomes self-conscious, unfunny or, worse, unintentional, then that can create a problem. Eli Roth's movie, Hostel, has often been categorised as so-called torture porn. For the most part, the movie does consist of a number of set pieces which come across as nastiness for the sake of it (Roth has claimed that there is a satirical undertone, but, etc.). However, at times the violence was so over the top that in the end, I found it laughable and, as a result, wound up having a good old chuckle at the film in all the wrong places, probably looking like some sort of deranged sadist...from that admission alone, you're welcome to draw your own conclusion about me, I really don't give a shit. The gulf between Hostel and a movie like George A. Romero's Dawn of the Dead, which has a definite satirical bite to it, might as well be a mile wide. In my own opinion (and it is my opinion, so there), the exception to the torture porn label is the Saw franchise. Okay, the ongoing series eventually dissolved into a morass of gore, but the first film in the series was actually pretty damn good, as well as cleverly written, or perhaps at least so confusing as to appear cleverly written.

I suppose what I'm driving at is some attempt at explaining what doesn't scare me. There are any number of pop psychologists that will explain their ideas on the benefits of horror. The usual idea is that fictionalized horrors are a cathartic experience that either prepare us for the terrors of the real world, or else help us come to terms with them. I don't want to argue with this notion. In fact, I agree, being able to watch some wrongdoer being dismembered in a new and inventive way, or sit on the edge of my seat as Jamie Lee Curtis hides in the closet can indeed be a great release. However, the problem is usually one of repetition. 

There aren't many movies that scare me anymore. Some do, sure, but they are increasingly few and far between. The horror genre is so overflowing nowadays with franchise characters, carbon copies and remakes, that the fear has been diluted right out of most of them, a sort of homeopathic horror, if you will. The gore is still there, but most of it is cold, clinical and pretty much fear-free. I make no apologies for my belief that Michael Bay should be tied to a chair with his eyes forced open, a la A Clockwork Orange and made to watch his glossy-looking remakes ad nauseum until he pukes his own insides out - that would perhaps make a passable horror movie in itself, huh? So much of what passes for horror is entertaining, yes, thrilling, maybe. But scary? That's a little more debatable. Maybe I've become jaded or desensitized in my old age, but the sight of the young student girl's eyeball hanging by a stalk in Hostel, just made me laugh, I certainly didn't lose any sleep over it. I didn't even think about it that much after viewing, certainly not in the way I did after seeing Hitchcock's Psycho or Romero's Night of the Living Dead for the first time. 

So, what does scare me? What kind of things get under the skin of someone trying to eke out a living by trying to disturb other people? Before we go any further, here’s a disclaimer. Fear can be likened to humour inasmuch as it's a very subjective thing. Something that makes one person feel faint and clammy, with dread nestling in the pit of their stomach, might send another person collapsing to the floor in fits of laughter. As I've said already, Hostel had pretty much the latter effect on me, with the whole, "But it could happen in real life," argument coming across like so much desperate bullpoop. So I guess that's my get out clause right there. I'm going to mention things that scare me, they might not necessarily be the things that would scare you. That doesn't mean to say that either of us is being soft, capice? Good. Finally, the way I'm going to try and approach this, rather than pick out individual books, movies and so on, is to focus on actual things that scare or disturb me. From there, I'll try and make my excuses as to why they do so. With those points in mind, let's start things off with:

 

ONE: THE BODY.

 

Okay, I've suggested this one previously. Perhaps it sounds a wee bit vague, getting things off to a great start. I've discussed in a previous post, some of my thoughts on the body, specifically the human body, with regard to its role in horror. Our own physicality is a thing that is immediately recognisable to most people. It's something familiar, normal, something safe. So perhaps that's the main reason why such feelings of unease are caused when that familiarity is corrupted somehow. And believe me, from a horror standpoint, few things are more corruptible than the physical form. Disease, injury, mutation, manipulation by some outside force, all are fair game here. So much in the genre depends upon trauma to various body parts; splinters through eyeballs, severed ankle tendons, guts spilled out by clawing zombies, all are designed to disturb the reader or viewer on a primal level. And they all succeed on just such a level because they tap into a simple, basic fear, the acceptance that the body is such a soft thing, so open to violation. Beyond simple violence however, is the realm of so-called body horror, wherein the idea of simple bodily destruction is taken to extreme levels. John Carpenter's The Thing, Brian Yuzna's Society and most of David Cronenberg's earlier work, Shivers, Rabid and The Fly, to name a few, all make use of this aesthetic. The exploration of the idea that the familiar can so easily become something alien, something terrifying in its sudden unfamiliarity. In my previous post, I looked more specifically at body horror, as a particular interest of mine in terms of my writing. I hinted at the way in which people are easily repulsed by anything that sits outside of their own vision of the human ideal. My opinion on this hasn't changed, and you can always go back and check out the original post if you're interested.

 

Despite the level of desensitisation, thanks to TV shows such as Embarrassing Bodies, or the majority of TLC's scheduled programming, most folk are still grossed out by the sight of close-up surgery or body modification. A lot of people will claim that they aren't repulsed by fat people, of the sort of size that goes beyond merely overweight and into the realms of gross, morbid obesity. Yet those same sniffy types will still watch programmes about feeders and their oversized counterparts, and vicariously breathe sighs of relief that they aren't the ones confined to a bedridden prison of dimpled, mottled flesh, of social inactivity and open, weeping bedsores. It's okay to look at the freak because we're appalled and afraid of it, whilst also being relieved that it's someone other than ourselves. It is this sense of loathing - of self-loathing - upon which the best body horror plays. For that's exactly what the sub-genre depends upon; a morbid fear of our own physicality, and of the extent to which it can be deformed or corrupted.

 

TWO: LOSS OF CONTROL.

 

Have you ever been drunk and experienced the stage just before total abandon kicks in? You know, that knife-edge point, when you know that you're no longer sober, but you still have a full awareness of your actions...along with an equally full awareness that you can't quite hold yourself accountable for them. Pretty damn horrible, isn't it? It's not something I've experienced too many times, which is just as well, since it scares the hell out of me. That's the kind of feeling that I'm trying to describe; an awareness of what is happening, coupled with a complete inability to influence their outcome.

 

A lot of genre fiction derives the fear factor from this set-up. In fact, it can be said that a lot of general fiction in does so, with some character facing a situation that spirals beyond their control. It's just the case that, within the horror genre, the situation and sometimes the consequences of it, tend to be that much nastier. More often than not, the horror starts when said character is foolish enough to MESS WITH FORCES THEY DON'T UNDERSTAND. An example that springs to mind that most of you should be familiar with, is Stephen King's Pet Sematary. Right from the get-go, the reader is given the uneasy feeling that Louis Creed and his family are fixed into a slow, downward spiral of events over which they have no real control. Of course, these events are worsened once Louis starts to MESS WITH FORCES HE DOESN'T UNDERSTAND. Yep, like I said, that alone is something that's usually guaranteed to fling a huge dollop against the whirring fan blades.

 

Loss of control, or the inability to control a situation is always a scary thing, tapping into a childlike fear of being dependent upon some external being or force to save the day for us. Of course, children have to resign themselves to the fact that there's an adult nearby to come to the rescue. For an adult however, things aren't always as straightforward. Being in a situation over which you have no control can be a pants-wettingly scary thing, along with the fear, that comes hand in hand, of entrusting yourself, entrusting your safety, to some unknown quantity. It reduces us to that same childhood state, groping around in the dark for something to help us, something that all of the best horror writers can tap into, and to which many horror readers can relate. Because they know that childhood isn't really a time of wide-eyed wonder, made up of the best days of your life. It's a time of uncertainty, instability, and fear. All this talk of losing control allows us to segue into what is my final talking point for the time being...

 

THREE: THE DREADED INEVITABILITY THAT SOMETHING BAD IS ABOUT TO HAPPEN.

 

Let's get something straight: Knowing that something is about to happen does not make it okay. I for one am often of the belief that, even if the ending is known in advance, it's the journey to it that helps make the story. As an example, I'll refer back to Stephen King's Pet Sematary. Long before Louis Creed starts dabbling with those pesky - yep, you get the idea - FORCES HE DOESN'T UNDERSTAND, the reader is privy to Jud Crandall's stories of Micmac rituals and Wendigo myths. Further back again, to those early scenes with Victor Pascow, and we know that something is going to happen. And we sure as hell know that it ain't gonna be good. Sure enough, we can figure this much out (it's the reason most of us picked up the damn book in the first place!), but we have no idea just how bad things will get before the story is done. Likewise, George A Romero's original Night of the Living Dead pretty much hits the ground running, with no let up once it starts. Within the first five minutes, the guy we all thought was going to be the hero winds up with his head mashed against a gravestone. That gives us a pretty clear indication that we're about to have the rug pulled from under our feet...and things aren't going to be pretty.

 

For the most part, horror movies have evolved from those pre-1968, where the good guys always won in the end. Back in those days, people needed a hero, someone to root for, to make everything better in the last reel. The late sixties and onward gave rise to an almost new form of fear, as the horror movie became, more often than not, a means of exploring (and exploiting) our own latent paranoia. It's from this very fear of the unknown that stems the additional fear that, if we don't know what's going to happen, it's probably going to end badly. This idea was introduced in Don Siegel's Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956), before being driven home even more explicitly in Philip Kaufman's 1978 remake. Further examples include Kubrick's The Shining (1980), Carpenter's The Thing (1982) and Romero's The Crazies (1973). In fact, it's worth noting that the downer ending became such a staple of horror, perhaps that's why, with his 1979 sequel, Dawn of the Dead, Romero chose to buck the trend and allow his protagonists a glimmer of hope.

 

Nowadays, in this era of endless remakes and sequels, the inevitability of a downer ending has itself become - ahem - inevitable, as the indestructible monster is allowed out for one more scare. That's not to say the entertainment value diminishes, not all of the time, anyway. Even if we can guess the ending, it's the getting to it that makes it fun.

 

Anyway, I'm growing conscious of the fact that I'm probably starting to ramble a bit, probably even more than usual. I hope I've managed to put across an idea or two in a semi-literate way at least. I'm going to wrap things up now, I’ve got writing to be getting on with. Until next time, sleep tight...