Evolution, Psychology, and Horror, Part II

 Copyright 2021 by Gary L. Pullman

Source: Wikiepdia

Note: This post assumes that you have seen the movie Backcountry. If you have not, Wikipedia offers a fairly detailed, accurate summary of the film's plot.

 

As prompts for groups in my English 101 classes, after we had watched Backcountry (2014) and the class had been divided into groups, I would distribute these instructions:

 

Which personality traits (use nouns to identify them) are predicated or dependent upon others? Which are primary and which are secondary? In other words, can an immature person be responsible? Can a cowardly person defend someone else if doing so puts him or her in danger? In developing your thesis, you should consider these questions, so that your claim is not self-contradictory.

Fill in the three blanks with the TRAITS (use nouns to identify them) of Alex’s character that you see as related to his errors of judgment. (Make sure these errors lead to his death and to Jen’s endangerment.) Some of these errors may directly lead to consequences; others may indirectly do so. In your paragraphs, you should distinguish the former from the latter.

THESIS:  Alex’s ______________,   ______________, and ______________ lead him to make many errors of judgment that result in his death and Jen’s endangerment.

Based upon the thesis, write the body paragraph (1, 2, or 3) assigned to your group. The first sentence should be the paragraph’s topic sentence. Use simple present tense.

 

The blanks could be filled in with a variety of traits, but let's use this thesis for the purposes of this post:

 

THESIS:  Alex’s immaturity, self-interest, and impetuosity lead him to make many errors of judgment that result in his death and Jen’s endangerment.

 

If a trait is defined as an evolved adaptation, we must ask, how each of Alex's adaptations, or traits, promotes his survival and the chance that he will generate offspring through reproduction. Since he, in fact, does not survive and, therefore, cannot reproduce, the answer is apparent at once that his adaptations do not "work"; they do not enable him to survive. Quite the contrary, they are, essentially, the death of him—and nearly of Jen. Simple. Lacking the traits that do promote survival, he dies.

His girlfriend is the final girl, who survives their ordeal. Therefore, it is her traits, or adaptations, that we should examine.

In many ways, she is a foil, or opposite, to Alex. We could fill in the thesis's blanks with traits that are the opposite of Alex's own and produce a good summary of some of the adaptations that enable her to survive their ordeal:

 

THESIS:  Jen’s maturity, altruism, and caution lead her to make sound judgments that result in her survival.

 

Another way to approach our consideration is to identify the mistakes that each character makes during their visit to a provincial park in Canada.

 Source: allocine.fr

Let's start with Alex, who makes considerably more mistakes and more serious ones than Jen; as we list his errors, we will also characterize them as springing from poor judgment; an immature desire to impress Jen; inconsideration; deceitfulness; negligence; carelessness; an immature desire to focus Jen's attention on himself; or recklessness.

• He refuses the map of the camp that the ranger offers him: poor judgment; an immature desire to impress Jen. (Jen and Alex become lost and have no guidance out of the woods. His behavior could endanger their lives.)

• He leaves Jen's cell phone in the trunk of their vehicle: poor judgment; an immature desire to focus Jen's attention on himself; deceitfulness. (Without a phone, Alex and Jen have no way to call for help. His behavior could endanger their lives.)

• He neglects tending to his toe after dropping their canoe on it: poor judgment; an immature desire to impress Jen; recklessness. (He could have become incapacitated or died of an infection, so his neglect endangers himself and, possibly, Jen by making her more vulnerable.)

• He removes his clothes and leaps naked into a lake: poor judgment; recklessness. (He could injure himself on a rock in the lake and, without clothes to keep him warm, he could succumb to the cold, endangering his own life and potentially leaving Jen unprotected.)

• He leaves Jen alone to cut firewood: poor judgment. (By herself, she is vulnerable to animal attack or the assault of another camper; thus, he endangers her life.)

• He leaves his hatchet in the trunk of a tree: poor judgment. (He leaves a potential weapon behind, both depriving himself of its use and potentially arming a human predator; he thus endangers both Jen's life and his own.)

• He does not dismiss a stranger (Brad), whom, in Alex's absence, Jen invites to join Alex and her for dinner at their campsite: poor judgment. (The stranger, Brad, who happens upon Jen could be dangerous: he might have raped or killed Jen. His behavior could endanger their lives.)

• Even after learning that Brad is in the park, Alex again leaves Jen alone at their campsite, he leaves Jen alone again to retrieve the hatchet he's left embedded in a tree trunk: poor judgment. (By herself, she is vulnerable to animal attack or the assault of another camper; thus, he endangers her life.)

• He does not turn back when he sees bear prints: poor judgment; recklessness. (His inaction could endanger their lives.)

• He does not ell Jen that there is a bear in the area: poor judgment; deceitfulness. (Jen has bear spray and a traffic flare that they could use against the bear, but she is unaware of its presence. The bear could kill someone. His behavior endangers their lives.)

• He does not investigate noises that Jen hears during their first night in their tent: poor judgment. (His inaction could endanger their lives.)

• He sees a sapling's snapped-off branch, but ignores its significance: poor judgment; recklessness; deceitfulness. (His inaction could endanger their lives.)

• Even after seeing the carcass of a dead deer indicating the presence of a bear—and of a bear that is both starving (bears, otherwise, don't eat meat—and predatory)—Alex refuses to leave the park: poor judgment. (His decision could endanger their lives.)

• He continues to hike, deeper into the forest, even after he realizes he is lost: poor judgment; recklessness. (His action could endanger their lives.)

• He hastens up the trail ahead of Jen, leaving her vulnerable, as they ascend the mountainside: carelessness, inconsideration. (His inconsideration could endanger their lives.)

• Even after the bear visits their campsite, Alex refuses to leave the park: poor judgment; recklessness. (His refusal to leave the park endangers their lives.) 

• Alex leaves his axe outside the tent: carelessness. (He leaves a potential weapon behind, depriving himself of its use, which endangers their lives.)

  

  Source: showbizjunkies.com
   

Jen also makes several mistakes:

• She does not insist that Alex accept a park map from the ranger or accept one herself: poor judgment. (She and Alex could get lost. Her behavior could endanger their lives.)

• In Alex's absence, Jen invites Brad onto their campsite: poor judgment. (Since she does not know Brad, Jen could be endangering her and Alex's lives and could be putting herself in danger of being raped.)

• Jen does not insist that Alex make sure the “acorns” he says are falling on their tent really are acorns: poor judgment. (Her behavior could endanger their lives.)

• Jen does not insist that Alex take her home after she sees evidence of the nearby presence of a bear: poor judgment; recklessness: poor judgment; recklessness. (Her behavior could endanger their lives.)

• Jen returns to their campsite after the bear has killed Alex so she can retrieve the engagement ring he has shown her: poor judgment; recklessness. (Her behavior could endanger her life. lives.)

Source: anthonybehindthescenes.com

It seems that Jen's mistakes stem from her desire to support Alex and to prevent damage to his ego and self-esteem, from her needs to be friendly and to feel liked, and from her love of him.

Although she is a successful lawyer, while he plans to start a landscaping service, she often defers to his judgment and to his needs and desires, rather than pursuing or seeking to advance her own.

Rather than insisting that he accept the map of the park that the ranger offers him, Jen accepts his refusal, probably because she does not want to embarrass Alex by casting doubts on his knowledge of the park.

She invites Brad to join Alex and her because she is a friendly person.

Alex professes to be an expert on hiking and camping, especially at the park, which he implies he knows well. Jen probably refrains from insisting that Alex check out the unfamiliar sounds she hears while she and Alex are in their tent for the same reason that she does not insist that he take a map from the ranger: she does not want to embarrass Alex by casting doubts on his knowledge of the park.

It seems that, when it becomes clear they are, without doubt, lost, Jen does not insist that Alex take her home after she sees evidence of the nearby presence of a bear because she does she has feelings for him and may feel sorry for him. Likewise, after Alex's death, she returns to their campsite, despite the bear's presence, so that she can retrieve the engagement ring he has shown her, because she has feelings for Alex and wants a memento of his love for her.

Although Jen, like Alex, makes mistakes in judgment when she is with Alex, she is not a woodman and the couple's survival is not primarily her responsibility. In addition, she is not deceitful toward Alex, as he is to her.

When she is alone, after Alex's death, her decisions are wise, allowing her to survive the bear and the wilderness. The fact that she makes no mistakes when she is alone suggests that her romantic relationship with Alex clouded her judgment; without him, she makes clear, rational, wise decisions and takes prudent, effective action, which enables her to survive.

In adapting to his environment, Alex has developed traits which serve his emotional needs, but he lacks adaptations that pertain to practical, everyday matters, including traits related to analysis, evaluation, and survival. He is overconfident. He seeks to impress others, especially Jen. He wants to be the sole focus of Jen's attention. He is deceitful, often hiding the truth from Jen regarding their situation and the danger they face. He is careless at times and reckless. He is immature. He is irresponsible.

In a different environment, such as Jen's house or the city, such traits might not fail him, because his survival is protected by institutions (art and culture, commercial and industrial enterprises, economic systems, family, friends, government, hospitals, language, legal systems, mass media, military forces, penal systems, schools, scientific research laboratories, religion); organizations, such as charities, emergency responders, and fraternal societies; an infrastructure (energy, highways, railroads, rivers, warehouses).

Jen, on the other hand, although not without flaws of her own, is cautious, mature, responsible, and resourceful. She is a thinker; she analyzes, evaluates, and plans.
In the city, society has individuals' backs. In the wilderness, individuals need to be able to take care of themselves. Those who can, as Jen does, are likely to survive; those who cannot, as Alex does not, will probably die.

By putting to opposite characters side by side in an environment different that their typical surroundings, Backcountry tests the effectiveness of the respective characters' evolved adaptations. The unfamiliar surroundings, the remoteness of the park, the rugged terrain, the stranger Brad, and, of course, the bear all pose threats or potential threats; each tests the evolved adaptations, or the traits, and the behaviors of the couple. One perishes; the other survives. The reason for one's failure and the other's success is that Jen had evolved adaptations that are effective for survival in the wilderness, whereas Alex has not. Without the support of society, civilization, and culture, Alex cannot survive and dies; Jen can and lives. The park is an environment, an arena, a laboratory, that puts traits to the test. Jen passes, but Alex receives the Darwin Award.

Source:  alenatedinvancouver.blogspot,com

Next post: Evolution, Psychology, and Horror, Part II

Horror As Allegory

Copyright 2009 by Gary L. Pullman

Why do we need allegories? Why, instead of beating around the bush, don’t we just come right out with what we mean to say? Why don’t we just say it? One reason might be that allegories allow readers (and writers) to broach subjects that are not discussed openly in polite company. By suggesting that one thing (say, child abuse) is another (say, demonic oppression or possession), horror writers can bring up the issue in disguise, so to speak, making the matter palatable enough to consider without cognitive indigestion, so to speak, among men and women who, otherwise, might prefer not to entertain the topic at all.

In an interesting twist upon the Aristotelian notion of catharsis, Edward J. Ingebretsen, the author of Maps of Heaven, Maps of Hell: Religious Terror as Memory from the Puritans to Stephen King argues that the horror genre serves just such an allegorical function. In ‘Salem’s Lot, for example, Ingebretsen contends, the presence of the vampire Barlow supplies the scapegoat that both the townspeople and the reader need; they can blame the vampire for the wickedness that they themselves do, witness, or imagine--wickedness which is very wicked, indeed:

After about a hundred pages of King’s novel [‘Salem’s Lot], an alert reader asks, how do the predatory and brutal intimacies offered by Barlow the vampire differ from the brutalities exchanged between husband and wife (Bonnie and Reggie Sawyer); between boyfriend and girlfriend (Susan Norton and Floyd Tibbets); between mother and the child she beats (Sandy and Randy McDougal); or, finally, the brutalities implicitly exchanged between author and reader? There is little difference. People feed upon each other routinely for business (like Larry Crockett), and for perverse pleasures (like Dudley). The townspeople are vampiric in the most real of ways. . . consumption is intimacy, and power, rather than love, shapes human relations. . . .

Fantasy gives readers an excuse not to see what they will not face. For example, Reggie Sawyer’s vicious male-rape of Corey, the telephone installer he finds in dalliance with his wife--and then the subsequent brutalizing rape of his wife--is just
a diversion, after all. . . .

King’s readers. . . engage the text much the same way that the townspeople of 'Salem’s Lot engage each other--in vampiric, voyeuristic ways. . . . So long as Barlow could be identified as the vampire, the townspeople--and King’s readers--can consider themselves free of taint (182-184).

In Uses of Enchantment, Bruno Bettelheim makes a similar claim, from a psychoanalytical point of view.

Those who outlawed traditional folk fairy tales decided that if there were monsters in a story told to children, these must all be friendly--but they missed the monster a child knows best and is most concerned with: the monster he feels or fears himself to be, and which also sometimes persecutes him. By keeping this monster within the child unspoken of, hidden in his unconscious, adults prevent the child from spinning fantasies around it in the image of the fairy tales he knows. Without such fantasies, the child fails to get to know his monster better, nor is he given suggestions as to how he may gain mastery over it (120).

Writers are important, even in--or, perhaps, especially in--an age of looming illiteracy, because it is they who find the words and the images in which and by which to convey the meaning, in human terms, of the perceptions and events that the society of their day experiences. Whether interpreted from a pagan, a Christian, an evolutionary, a materialistic and empirical, an existential, or some other perspective, facts do not speak for themselves. They are mute spectacles, as it were, until the poet, or, in our time, more often, the novelist or the screenwriter, gives them voice. Writers do so by suggesting that “this” can be understood as a new example of “that” (whether “that” turns out to be the world view of the pagan, the Christian, the evolutionist, the materialistic empiricist, the existentialist, or the adherent of some new model of reality).

The curse (and, perhaps, the blessing) of the human species is that we are unintelligible in terms of ourselves, for we are both part of nature and, at the same time, partly transcendent to nature. To attempt to explain ourselves in terms of ourselves would be tautological, not to mention solipsistic. Attempting to explain ourselves in terms of ourselves would be, in effect, to explain ourselves away.

Language is metaphorical; so is thought. We cannot grasp the meaning of a “this” without a contrasting “that” or of a “that” without a contrasting “this.” Therefore, to make sense of our experience, and of ourselves, we need people who can discern relationships among things, who can recognize relationships between things and ourselves, and who can help us to see such relationships. In horror fiction, the relationships are between the Self and the Other, between the hero (or the monster) within and the monster (or the hero) without. Experience changes, but the process of allegorizing what we see, hear, smell, taste, touch, think, and feel remains the same, providing what unity we can wrest from the multiplicity of perceptions, sensations, thoughts, and feelings. Upon the basis of such a unity, we built--and forever rebuild--our world.

Mapping the Monstrous

Copyright 2009 by Gary L. Pullman

In Monster (2005), Frank Peretti includes a map of his novel’s setting, which he updates at the end of each chapter. His use of this device accomplishes several narrative purposes. It orients the reader as to what takes place, when, where, and to whom, even as characters’ actions and narrative events change. It thus reinforces the idea that something is happening, that actions and events are unfolding. The map also adds verisimilitude, or a sense of reality, to the story, for its narrative landscape is charted, just as a real-world stretch of territory might be. The map also implies that the action of the narrative is significant, because only important events are recorded on a map.

The publisher of Monster notes, in a word to the reader, that the novel’s “custom maps,” updated “at the end of each chapter,” are included “to help you keep track of all the action.” So much action occurs between the novel’s covers, the publisher’s statement suggests, that the reader will need a visual representation of the setting just “to keep track” of it all. However, the publisher also suggests that, “even with maps. . . you will still find it hard to guess where things are headed.” The map, in other words, may orient the reader, but it will certainly not inhibit the plot’s imaginative meanderings, and, the maps notwithstanding, one should expect the unexpected: “Just when you think you have things figured out, Peretti’s imagination takes you down an unexpected route. . . and you realize there are more layers to the story than you imagined.”

A map, as Wikipedia observes, “is a visual representation of an area” which emphasizes “relationships between elements” that share a common space. Of course, there are many types of maps--aeronautical charts, contour maps, political maps, nautical charts, road atlases, pictorial maps, and others--but each is a depiction of a region, often terrestrial. That is, they enclose a space, thereby framing it, as it were, and making it special.

Maps cannot show every feature of the territory to which they correspond, so the mapmaker must select those features that the map will include, meaning, of course, that others must be excluded. In including some, while excluding other, features of the environment, the cartographer creates an image of the true world, and, of course, the mapmaker could be honest and straightforward or devious and duplicitous in depicting the terrain, its features, and their relationships to one another. A map is only as reliable as its maker. In other words, a map, like a storyteller, can be, as it were, an unreliable narrator.

Maps are often (but not always) scaled, so that an inch of map surface represents a much larger, corresponding surface of the actual terrain that the map represents. The map in Monster is scaled such that one inch of map surface equals ten miles of terrestrial surface. (Unfortunately, Peretti does not always honor his map’s scale.)

As the story progresses, more and more features are added, such as would not appear on any ordinary map of the area in which the story takes place--the deep forests of Idaho--suggesting that the novel’s maps are, indeed, as the publisher describes them, “custom maps.” The features that most maps include--highways, a river, creeks, a lake, forests, dry creek beds, trails, a resort, a dangerous “rock face”--are all present and accounted for, forming the relatively stable background, so to speak, against which foreground objects are added, subtracted, and rearranged as the story’s action progresses (although some settlements, towns, and directions to cities that do not themselves appear upon the maps are occasionally added as well). The stable landscape features are the relatively permanent, the more-or-less fixed, the comparatively reliable.

The foreground features, which are mostly technological or manmade, change; they appear, vanish, or reappear in other locations. Against the relatively permanent backdrop of nature, human and technological activities, temporary and tentative, shift and move. Like the scale--and, indeed, the map itself, as a mere “visual representation” of reality--the human attempt to chart the previously unknown--the difference between background and foreground features seems to represent the difference between the fixed and the determinate and the fluid and the free, or between fate and the freedom of the human will, just as it also suggests the gap between the known and the unknown and the monstrous and the human.

The shifting of the symbols on the map suggests that it’s not easy--and it may not even be possible--to truly represent reality, for, despite the stability of the known and the understood and, indeed, of the given features of nature, so to speak, there are always changeable and changing features which represent human freedom and behavior, including the products of
both--technological artifacts.

It would be unfair to divulge the secrets of Peretti’s impressive novel by describing the changes that occur with regard to the foreground objects that his ever-changing “custom maps” depict, for they both offer clues as to the story’s action and the direction that the plot takes. However, for the sake of further elucidating our idea as to the narrative significance of the map in mapping the monstrous, we shall address a couple of these shifting features.

One is the campsite of a young couple, Ted and Melanie, which, represented by a symbol of an Indian teepee in silhouette, doesn’t make its debut on the map until the end of chapter six, at the end of Service Road 19, which makes its first appearance along with the campsite. Both the service road and the teepee remain on subsequent maps, but the label, “Ted & Melanie’s campsite” vanishes, never to be seen again (until the final map, that is, representing, perhaps eternity), signifying that the couple is gone and that their campsite is now merely an abandoned location, not even marked, or labeled, as such anymore (until, again, the last map).

Likewise, at the end of chapter eight, Sing’s mobile lab appears on the map, parked, as it were, alongside the north shoulder of Highway 9, near the settlement labeled “Three Rivers.” On the map at the end of chapter nine, however, the settlement of Three Rivers, represented by a cluster of buildings in silhouette, remains, as does the text that labels it, but Sing’s satellite-dish-equipped van, labeled “Sing’s Mobile Lab,” has been relocated to the east of Road 228, west of Lost Creek and north of Abney & Tall Pine Resort, reflecting the character’s drive south.

Other, more critical objects are also represented, both on previous and subsequent maps as well as this one, but, again, it would be unfair to identify or discuss many of them for fear of spoiling readers’ pleasure in discovering these clues for themselves.

What is clear, however, even without an exhaustive detailing of the symbols’ appearances, disappearances, reappearances, and relocations or removals, is that the use of these “custom maps” adds interest, on several levels, to a novel that is exciting throughout and thrilling at times. The maps seem to help the reader to pin things down, but, as the publisher rightly observes, Peretti, nevertheless, succeeds in surprising the reader, time after time.

A map is not a journey, but it can suggest, at least, the terrain and its features, both relatively permanent and comparatively dynamic, and it can, when it involves a monster, suggest that there may be a disconnect between appearances and reality, between the known and the unknown, between the certain and the dubious, between fact and fiction. The maps in Monster are part of its fictional universe, and they both satisfy and frustrate the reader’s search for meaning and certainty. There is more to life than meets the eye, these maps suggest, and more to be taken upon faith than can be ascertained by reason.