I think I’ve made it quite clear that I’m not very interested in being scared. According to one Glenn M. Benest, “We like to be scared
because it helps us face and overcome our most primal fears from childhood.”1 Well, maybe you want to overcome your primal fears, but I’m pretty comfortable with ignoring them and pretending they don’t
exist. Not everyone shares my – perfectly rational – view, though.
Horror as a genre seems to exist for
no other reason than to scare us. Gina Wisker states that “we enjoy the chill with which [Horror] disturbs our sense of comfort and equally enjoy the way it then finally […] returns us to that comfort, secure.”2 That’s debatable. A lot of Horror stories do end up with a resolution, but not
all. “The Abduction Door” by Christopher Golden ends with the main character
saving his daughter, yes, but the true horror begins – now he must steal
thirteen children.3 “The
Salter Collection” ends with a “primordial forest [brought] back into
existence.”4 There’s no resolution or return to comfort. If anything, readers are left more
disturbed than ever, which does fit the last step of Poe’s formula for fear, “the premature burial of [the reader's] reason.”5 Whether a Horror story ends with comfort or more disturbance, the best part of
them, to me, will always be the ending.
Because it’s over.
Horror has sustained and continued to
grow in popularity in the modern day. This is because people are coming up with
more and more creative ways of scaring people, as well as using modern
elements. Some examples of modernizing Horror are The Ring,6 which heavily incorporates televisions and Cell,7 where mobile phones infect those who use them. A more recent one is social media being used as a medium for Horror in Unfriended.8 I still remember being on a group Skype call with my friends, and one of them
suggested we watch the trailer together using the screen sharing service. She
gave me nightmares and I stayed away from Skype for a good few months. The use
of this modern medium to scare people proves that “horror fiction grows out of
and reflects on the anxieties surrounding personal fears and communal
uncertainties.”9
Social media is widely used and can make or break a person. It has
brought people to fame – Justin Bieber (seems appropriate to mention him in a Horror blog) launched into stardom through YouTube.10 Social media also caused
Kevin Hart to step down from hosting the Oscars.11 No wonder the Momo challenge12 left parents everywhere in the world anxious about the well-being of their children,
and brought a collective sigh of relief when proved to be a hoax. We still can’t
make sense of social media and how it should be appropriately used, especially
by children. No wonder Unfriended
garnered so much hype leading to its release.
(Would normally insert a picture of Momo here, but she freaks me out, so
enjoy this picture of a cat)
Joseph Grixti sums up the Horror genre: it is “perhaps best understood
as a language which is an expression […] of an undesirable or unsatisfactorily
patched-up state of society.”13 Whether you consume Horror because you need to
purge your sadistic impulses, or because you just like being scared, I think it’s
safe to say that this genre has layers. It’s not just about being scared while
in a safe environment. It’s not just catharsis for our most animal, base
instincts. And it’s not just an exploration of the current fears and uncertainties
we have as a society. It’s all of that, and more.
1 Glenn M. Benest, “Writing Horror”, in Now Write! Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror: Speculative Genre Exercises from Today’s Best Writers and Teachers, ed. Laurie Lamson (New York: Jeremy P. Tarcher/Penguin, 2014), 15.↩ 2 Gina Wisker, Horror Fiction: An Introduction (London: Continuum, 2005), 25.↩ 3 Christopher Golden, “The Abduction Door”, in New Fears, ed. Mark Morris (London: Titan Books, 2017), Kindle edition.↩ 4 Brian Lillie, “The Salter Collection”, in New Fears, ed. Mark Morris (London: Titan Books, 2017), Kindle edition.↩ 5 David R. Saliba, A Psychology of Fear (Washington D.C: University Press of America, 1980), 17.↩ 6 The Ring, directed by Gore Verbinski, DreamWorks Pictures, 2002, Feature Film.↩ 7 Stephen King, Cell (New York City: Scribner, 2006).↩ 8 Unfriended, directed by Leo Gabriadze, Universal Pictures, 2015, Feature Film.↩ 9 Joseph Grixti, Terrors of Uncertainty: The Cultural Contexts of Horror Fiction (London: Routledge, 1989), 149.↩ 10 Desiree Adib, “Pop Star Justin Bieber Is on the Brink of Superstardom”, ABC News, 14 November 2009, accessed 17 March 2019 https://abcnews.go.com/GMA/Weekend/teen-pop-star-justin-bieber-discovered-youtube/story?id=9068403↩ 11 “Oscars 2019: Kevin Hart quits as host amid tweets row”, BBC News, 7 December 2018, accessed 17 March 2019 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-46479017↩ 12 “Momo challenge: 'Freaky game' described as hoax”, BBC News, 28 February 2019, accessed 17 March 2019 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-47359623↩ 13 Grixti, Terrors of Uncertainty, 147.↩
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