Marija Dalbello Reading Interests of Adults Horror

1. Image credit: Victor GAD Marija Dalbello Reading Interests of Adults Horror Rutgers School of Communication and Informationdalbello@rutgers.edu

2. Overview • _______________________________________ • Introduction • What is Horror? • Genre characteristics and appeal • “The Formula” and narrative models • History and types • Conclusion

3. What is horror • Definition _______________________________________ • Horror is not a genre, like the mystery or science fiction or the western. It is not a kind of fiction, meant to be confined to the ghetto of a special shelf in libraries or bookstores. Horror is an emotion. • Horror Writers Association at: http://www.horror.org

4. What is horror? • _______________________________________ • Suspension of disbelief and unique emotional experience • Post Enlightenment literary phenomenon • Horror is about knowledge as theme • Horror is about cosmic fear • Monsters are incidental • The politics of horror

5. What is Horror • Suspension of disbelief _______________________________________ • “Paradoxes of the heart” • How can anyone be frightened by what they know does not exist? • Why would anyone ever be interested in horror, since being horrified is so unpleasant? • Why are people attracted to unpleasant emotions? • Art horror - Natural horror • Emotion caused by the characteristic structures, imagery, and figures in the genre (art) • Emotion caused by reality (natural) • Speculative fiction genre • Partial explanations

6. What is Horror • Post Enlightenment phenomenon_______________________________________ • Reaction to the culture of post Enlightenment secular rationality (Carroll, p. 162) • The effects of the Englightenment: • Religious feeling in our culture was demeaned by “materialistic sophistication” • Intuition is denied by the culture of materialistic sophistication • Instinctual attraction and capacity for awe • Horror evokes cosmic fear • Coeval with religious feeling • Experiencing the numinous in the form of horror

7. What is Horror • Knowledge as a theme _______________________________________ • Concerned with knowledge as theme - rendering the unknown known • Violation of schemes of cultural categorization (category mistakes are impure, dangerous, abominable) • Cognitive threat as a major factor in the generation of art-horror: how can you resolve contradictions (rationality) • Non-rational element as object of religious experience (“numen”) • Numinous experience (“mysterium tremendum fascinans et augustum”) at the core of being human

8. What is Horror • Monsters _______________________________________ • Monsters - extraordinary characters in an ordinary world • Incomplete representatives of their class - abominations • Monsters’ categorical incompleteness: disintegrating things, formless, rotting • Interstitial, indescribable, inconceivable, “It,” “Them” • Revulsion and disgust • In violation of schemes of cultural categorization • Category mistakes are impure • What are monsters made of? • Fission (spatial or temporal) - incompleteness • Fusion - categories fused • Monstrosities often take mass form

9. What is Horror • Horror as Carnival _______________________________________ • Popular culture phenomenon • Rituals of inversion for mass society (resolves contradictions) • Normal - abnormal - normal as allegory of reinstatement • BUT, is abnormal always expelled? And, what does that mean when reinstatement does not work? • Art-horror is ideological • Xenophobic, progressive, misogynist, politically repressive? • Or, just pointing to the existing contradictions in the world. • Does horror present a cynical disposition at its core? • Is horror radical?

10. Genre characteristics and appeal • What readers like _______________________________________ • Interest in physical and emotional violence • The thrill and visceral experience caused by fear • Emotion of feeling art-horror • Gratification of being in an emotional state • Suspense integral to narrative structures in horror • Programmed blanks propel narrative • Relative probabilities and dual function narratives create • Use of weak models, keeping the evidence indecisive

11. Genre characteristics and appeal - the formula • Plot structure _______________________________________ • Complex discovery plot • onset discovery confirmation confrontation • Discovery plot • onset discovery confirmation • Over-reacher plot (forbidden knowledge) • preparation experiment boomerang confrontation

12. Genre characteristics and appeal • The Formula • _______________________________________ • 14 possible horror plot formulas (Carroll, p. 116) • Modification of the order of exposition:flashbacks, flashforwards, iteratives, nestings • Suspense - relative probabilities at the heart of horror appeal • Fantastic hesitation • Fantastic uncanny versus fantastic marvelous • Creating fantastic: use of weak models, keeping evidence as indecisive as possible

13. Historical development and types _______________________________________ • Precursors and foundational works • English gothic novel, Schauer-Roman, roman noir • Horace Walpole, The Castle of Otranto (1764) • Popularity of gothic: 1820-1870 • Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818) • John Polidori’s The Vampyre (1819) • Charles Robert Maturin’s Melmoth the Wanderer (1820) • Edgar Allan Poe’s macabre • Modern horror • Robert Louis Stevenson, Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886) • Oscar Wilde, Picture of Dorian Gray (1890) • Bram Stoker, Dracula (1897) • H.P. Lovecroft, Cthulhu Mythos series (1920s) • 20th century transmedia phenomenon, current concerns • Current trends • 1980s: Splatterpunk • Stephen King type fiction • 1990s: “horror goes underground” • Revitalized as literary fiction in many types of horror

14. Types of Horror • _______________________________________ • Formal typology (Carroll, p. 4) • Historical gothic - imagined past without supernatural events • Natural or explained gothic - introduces supernatural and explains it away: Radcliffe’s Mysteries of Udolpho (1794) • Supernatural gothic - supernatural events • Equivocal gothic - supernatural origin of events in the text rendered ambiguous by means of disturbed characters • Subgenres • Ghost literature, alien invasion, tales of vampires, werewolves, zombies, demonic possession, etc. (more in Genreflecting guides)

15. Types of Horror • _______________________________________ • Thematic categorization approach • Apocalypse • Cosmic horror • Dark fantasy • Demonic possession-invasion • Ghost stories • Haunted houses • Monsters • Psychological horror - serial killer • Splatterpunk • Vampires • Witchcraft • Zombies • Current trends at HWA site: http://www.horror.org/newsreleases.htm

16. Conclusion • _______________________________________ • Horror is about limits of knowing in a post Enlightenment world • Genre of speculative fiction shares interest in possibilities • Secular, materialistic and cynical at its core • Horror is transmedia phenomenon