- The protagonist wins, overcoming both the objective threat and the subjective threat.
- The protagonist partially wins, overcoming the objective, but not the subjective, threat.
- The protagonist partially wins, being overcome by the objective, but overcoming the subjective, threat.
- The protagonist loses, being overcome by both the objective threat and the subjective threat.
- The protagonist overcomes the subjective threat, but the resolution regarding the objective threat remains unknown.
- The protagonist overcomes the objective threat, but the resolution regarding the subjective threat remains unknown.
- It remains unknown whether the protagonist overcomes either the objective or the subjective threat.
Tuesday, April 14, 2020
The Horror of Objective and Subjective Threats
Thursday, February 3, 2011
Ironic Settings
In my series concerning “How To Haunt a House” and my critical review of the movie The Descent, “A Descent into the Horrors of Extreme Feminism,” I discuss the symbolic significance of setting as a means of conveying themes. A house can represent its resident’s soul or personality, with various rooms corresponding to aspects of the person: the attic, his or her mind; the kitchen, his or her instincts and appetites; the living room, his or her persona; the basement, his or her unconscious; and so forth. In the movie The Descent, the underground cavern in which the female spelunkers are attacked by subterranean monsters, the cave, I argue, represents the womb, and the monsters represent the fetuses that liberated women have aborted in favor of childless independence from their traditional and, indeed, biological, roles as mothers and wives.
As Nicholas Ruddick points out in Ultimate Island: On the Nature of British Science Fiction, a symbol can involve a long history of philosophical development. The idea of the island as a symbol of insular individual identity followed, he says, the loss first of the geocentric worldview and then of anthropomorphic notions which left each man and woman an isolated subjectivity, or island, as it were, cut off from the mainland, which is representative of the rest of humanity:
The idea of an individual island has become associated with that of the individual psyche, though the metaphor of the insular Self. The decline first of geocentrism and then [of] anthropomorphism as a result of scientific discovery has led to the rise of individualism, the philosophical privileging of existence over essence. . . and [the idea of] a universe in which the human domain seems an insignificant speck--at best an island--in the oceanic immensity of the spatiotemporal macrocosm (56-57).Symbolism can be far richer than one imagines!
According to the teleological argument, which is also known as the argument from design, the existence of the universe, as a created artifact, implies the existence of a Creator. Natural theology suggests that we can learn of the nature of God, the Creator, from His creation, nature. This theology, unlike that which is based upon divine revelation that includes the doctrine of humanity’s (and the cosmos’) fall from grace, doesn’t explain (or, some might argue, explain away) the existence of evil, but accepts it as part and parcel of God’s creation and as, therefore, in some way, indicative of God’s own nature as well. As Herman Melville’s Queequeg declares, in Moby Dick, “de god wat made shark must be one dam Ingin.”
Whether one accepts the portrait (or, possibly, the caricature) of God that natural theology paints, one may apply its insight to the artifacts of human technology: whether microscopes or atomic bombs, the things that we create suggest something about us, their creators. Writers, especially of horror, do well to remember this lesson--and to apply it in their work by consciously and deliberately suggesting the symbolic nature of their central properties, or props, and settings by using them as thematic motifs.
As usual, contemporary writers can take a lesson in doing so from Edgar Allan Poe. The house of Usher (in “The Fall of the House of Usher”) is identifiable with its resident, protagonist Roderick Usher; the fall of the former is also the fall of the latter. Indeed, even physically, the house resembles its resident. According to Walter Evans, the windows of the house are Usher’s eyes, the sedges his mustache, and the white tree trunks his teeth (“‘The Fall of the House of Usher’ and Poe’s Theory of the Tale” in Studies in Short Fiction, 14.2).
Poe also uses the wine cellar in “The Cask of Amontillado” to great symbolic effect. Wine is the drink of camaraderie and friendship; indeed, in Christianity, wine is an element of communion, representing the sacrificial blood of Jesus Christ. In Poe’s story, the significance of wine, as represented by the titular cask of Amontillado, is subverted through irony. The libation of friendship becomes the means by which a mad and vengeful Montresor lures his victim Fortunato to his doom.
Appealing to Fortunate’s friendship as much as to his expertise in wine, Montresor succeeds in getting him to follow him through catacombs, where, after expressing concern for Fortunato’s health while plying him with wine (the catacombs are damp, Montresor says, and Fortunato is coughing), the villain walls up his victim alive, leaving him to die. Half a century later, Montresor, in recounting his tale, brags that he has never been caught.
Wine, which normally cements relationships, here helps to destroy a man who was once at least ostensibly a friend. In the story, the Amontillado, it may be argued, thus represents friendship itself, albeit, in this story, friendship more feigned, on the part of the protagonist, anyway, than real.
Poe’s masterful use of irony to undercut symbolic images and motifs enriches his narratives and, indeed, adds a subtle subtext to the story's overt horror. In learning from the masters, contemporary writers of horror can accomplish similar wonders in their own works of fiction.
Friday, February 1, 2008
The Guide to Supernatural Fiction: A Review (Part II)
In A Guide to Supernatural Literature, Everett F. Bleiler, of Kent State University, identifies six “statements” from which “countless stories can be generated”:
1. A man injures another man (and may be punished).He then analyzes each of these “statements,” relating each to his Guide’s “Index of Motives and Situations” (omitted here):
2. A man rebels against the heimarmene (and may be destroyed).
3. An outlaw power touches upon a man (and may be punished).
4. A good power touches upon a man (and may transform him).
5. A man is caught up and carried along by the heimarmene.
6. A man eases or repairs damage to the heimarmene, thereby helping other men.
a. A man commits murder--time gap--punishment by avenging ghost.
b. A man usurps power and oppresses--time passes--punishment by Fate.
c. A man is negligent to others--disturbances--possible resolution by outside party.
d. A man profanes a grave--is haunted by hostile dead--is punished.
e. A man injures another--is punished by avenging powers.
a. A man will not accept death--tries to buy life--is cheated.
b. A man will not accept death--appears after death--may be a nuisance.
c. A man will not accept powerlessness--uses arts--may be punished.
d. A man will not accept his identity--assumes another--is punished.
e. A man acts as a creator--creation gets out of hand. In science fiction, this is motif of the mad scientist.
f. A man affronts the gods--is punished.
g. A man will not accept the deaths of others--awakens them--usually loses.
h. A man will not accept temporary limitations--seeks to remove them--may succeed.
This encounter with the outlaw power has four commons situations, plus several others that are less common. The common situations involve fairies, temptations by the Devil, the hostile dead, and vampires. In each. . . there is a flaw or fault associated with the human that puts him in danger of the outlaw power. In abductions by fairies, the woman must yield sexually to the fairy, which yielding is usually accompanied by some sort of glamour. In temptation by the Devil, the human is usually motivated by greed or lust for power. With the hostile dead, the human is usually trespassing against warning, and is defying a ban. In the vampire story, the victim must give the vampire an initial invitation. As for the ending, the fairy abduction usually ends with the disappearance of the woman. If she returns at all, it is with horrible disfiguration. In the diabolic temptation the Devil almost always wins, and there is little that can be done about the hostile dead. Vampires, however, do permit an escape. Sentence 6 is usually applied, and the human is rescued by outside aid.
3. An outlaw power touches upon a man (and may destroy him).
a. A man meets power--a man’s flaw or gives power a hold over him--man is destroyed or threatened.
b. A man meets power--resists it--may win.
c. A man meets Death--diversions--Death wins.
4. A good power touches upon a man (and may transform him).
a. A man meets power--is victorious--receives gift.
b. A man meets power--is receptive to gnosis--is instructed.
c. A man meets power--has undergone tapas or equivalent--is elevated.
5. A man is caught up and carried along by the heimarmene.
a. Fate needs correction of crime--display--revelation.
b. Ignorance needs correction--death--surmounting of death.
c. Life pattern must be continued on basis or morality--death--path determined.
d. Fate needs correction--sensory limitations removed--adjustment.
e. Ignorance needs correction--man is apt--knowledge imparted.
a. Horrors--invocation of savior--allaying.
b. Disruption--invocation of savior--allaying.
c. Danger threatens--intervention--safety.
This encounter with the outlaw power has four commons situations, plus several others that are less common. The common situations involve fairies, temptations by the Devil, the hostile dead, and vampires. In each. . . there is a flaw or fault associated with the human that puts him in danger of the outlaw power. In abductions by fairies, the woman must yield sexually to the fairy, which yielding is usually accompanied by some sort of glamour. In temptation by the Devil, the human is usually motivated by greed or lust for power. With the hostile dead, the human is usually trespassing against warning, and is defying a ban. In the vampire story, the victim must give the vampire an initial invitation. As for the ending, the fairy abduction usually ends with the disappearance of the woman. If she returns at all, it is with horrible disfiguration. In the diabolic temptation the Devil almost always wins, and there is little that can be done about the hostile dead. Vampires, however, do permit an escape. Sentence 6 is usually applied, and the human is rescued by outside aid.
Bleiler next offers some tips as to how writers may extend or diversify these basic narrative situations. Among these expansion “techniques,” he lists:
. . . duplicating sentence material, interweaving sentences, adding the matter of life, generalizing, rendering more specific, treating figuratively, treating more literally, negating, turning scientific, allegorizing, combining characters, subdividing characters, using offset in various ways, fragmenting, temporally or
geographically. . . .
- Abduction, supernatural-by the dead, ghosts, demons, monsters.
- Adam and/or Eve.
- Afterdeath evolution--soul into form of life--necromorphs--reincarnation.
- Age changes--fountain of youth--rejuvenation.
An excerpt of an individual entry from the Guide illustrates the general approach to specific discussions and suggests the value and use of his tome: In discussing the film The Thief of Bagdad, Bleiler summarizes the plot: To win the hand of a caliph’s daughter, rivals compete to bring her the “most remarkable gift”: “Props then include a flying carpet, the fruit of life and death, an all-seeing idol’s eye, a cloak of invisibility, a magic rope, a magic casket of wishes.”
His summary allows the reader to see that the basic situation that Bleiler describes is has an important function: it establishes the reason, cause, or motive of the action that follows in the remainder of the story, namely the introduction of the various “props” and the ultimate wining of the contest for its prize, the hand of the caliph’s daughter.
Bleiler’s Guide uses some terminology that may not be familiar to the general reader, even of supernatural, or contranatural, literature:
- Heimarmene: A complex term that suggests one’s personal fate, or karma, but also the universal wheel of fortune, or cosmic destiny. It also suggests the dependency of the one’s character and individual destiny upon the interactions of cosmic forces and events, such as, for instance, the alignment of the stars. One must be in the right time and place, within the great wheel of fortune, to triumph. If, on the other hand, he or she is born, as Hamlet was, when “time is out of joint,” the individual may come to a bad end. Basically, one may think of heimarmene as the rule and operation of fate.
- Tapas: “Tapas” is a Hindu term that means religious austerity. Living the simple, plain life is considered a preparation for the understanding and acceptance of spiritual truths. In Catholicism, something of the spirit of tapas is seen in vows of silence and poverty and in the season of lent and its practices, which include fasting and penitence in preparation for Easter.
- Necromorph: Literally, this word means “death-form,” and may be applied to revenants, such as ghosts, vampires, and zombies as well as to corpses and skeletons.
Bleiler, Everett F. The Guide to Supernatural Fiction. Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 1983.
Note: Bleiler is also the author of The Checklist of Science Fiction and Supernatural Fiction. Glen Rock, NY: Firebell Books, 1978, 266 pages.
Paranormal vs. Supernatural: What’s the Diff?
Sometimes, in demonstrating how to brainstorm about an essay topic, selecting horror movies, I ask students to name the titles of as many such movies as spring to mind (seldom a difficult feat for them, as the genre remains quite popular among young adults). Then, I ask them to identify the monster, or threat--the antagonist, to use the proper terminology--that appears in each of the films they have named. Again, this is usually a quick and easy task. Finally, I ask them to group the films’ adversaries into one of three possible categories: natural, paranormal, or supernatural. This is where the fun begins.
It’s a simple enough matter, usually, to identify the threats which fall under the “natural” label, especially after I supply my students with the scientific definition of “nature”: everything that exists as either matter or energy (which are, of course, the same thing, in different forms--in other words, the universe itself. The supernatural is anything which falls outside, or is beyond, the universe: God, angels, demons, and the like, if they exist. Mad scientists, mutant cannibals (and just plain cannibals), serial killers, and such are examples of natural threats. So far, so simple.
What about borderline creatures, though? Are vampires, werewolves, and zombies, for example, natural or supernatural? And what about Freddy Krueger? In fact, what does the word “paranormal” mean, anyway? If the universe is nature and anything outside or beyond the universe is supernatural, where does the paranormal fit into the scheme of things?
According to the Online Etymology Dictionary, the word “paranormal,” formed of the prefix “para,” meaning alongside, and “normal,” meaning “conforming to common standards, usual,” was coined in 1920. The American Heritage Dictionary defines “paranormal” to mean “beyond the range of normal experience or scientific explanation.” In other words, the paranormal is not supernatural--it is not outside or beyond the universe; it is natural, but, at the present, at least, inexplicable, which is to say that science cannot yet explain its nature. The same dictionary offers, as examples of paranormal phenomena, telepathy and “a medium’s paranormal powers.”
Wikipedia offers a few other examples of such phenomena or of paranormal sciences, including the percentages of the American population which, according to a Gallup poll, believes in each phenomenon, shown here in parentheses: psychic or spiritual healing (54), extrasensory perception (ESP) (50), ghosts (42), demons (41), extraterrestrials (33), clairvoyance and prophecy (32), communication with the dead (28), astrology (28), witchcraft (26), reincarnation (25), and channeling (15); 36 percent believe in telepathy.
As can be seen from this list, which includes demons, ghosts, and witches along with psychics and extraterrestrials, there is a confusion as to which phenomena and which individuals belong to the paranormal and which belong to the supernatural categories. This confusion, I believe, results from the scientism of our age, which makes it fashionable for people who fancy themselves intelligent and educated to dismiss whatever cannot be explained scientifically or, if such phenomena cannot be entirely rejected, to classify them as as-yet inexplicable natural phenomena. That way, the existence of a supernatural realm need not be admitted or even entertained. Scientists tend to be materialists, believing that the real consists only of the twofold unity of matter and energy, not dualists who believe that there is both the material (matter and energy) and the spiritual, or supernatural. If so, everything that was once regarded as having been supernatural will be regarded (if it cannot be dismissed) as paranormal and, maybe, if and when it is explained by science, as natural. Indeed, Sigmund Freud sought to explain even God as but a natural--and in Freud’s opinion, an obsolete--phenomenon.
Meanwhile, among skeptics, there is an ongoing campaign to eliminate the paranormal by explaining them as products of ignorance, misunderstanding, or deceit. Ridicule is also a tactic that skeptics sometimes employ in this campaign. For example, The Skeptics’ Dictionary contends that the perception of some “events” as being of a paranormal nature may be attributed to “ignorance or magical thinking.” The dictionary is equally suspicious of each individual phenomenon or “paranormal science” as well. Concerning psychics’ alleged ability to discern future events, for example, The Skeptic’s Dictionary quotes Jay Leno (“How come you never see a headline like 'Psychic Wins Lottery'?”), following with a number of similar observations:
Psychics don't rely on psychics to warn them of impending disasters. Psychics don't predict their own deaths or diseases. They go to the dentist like the rest of us. They're as surprised and disturbed as the rest of us when they have to call a plumber or an electrician to fix some defect at home. Their planes are delayed without their being able to anticipate the delays. If they want to know something about Abraham Lincoln, they go to the library; they don't try to talk to Abe's spirit. In short, psychics live by the known laws of nature except when they are playing the psychic game with people.In An Encyclopedia of Claims, Frauds, and Hoaxes of the Occult and Supernatural, James Randi, a magician who exercises a skeptical attitude toward all things alleged to be paranormal or supernatural, takes issue with the notion of such phenomena as well, often employing the same arguments and rhetorical strategies as The Skeptic’s Dictionary.
In short, the difference between the paranormal and the supernatural lies in whether one is a materialist, believing in only the existence of matter and energy, or a dualist, believing in the existence of both matter and energy and spirit. If one maintains a belief in the reality of the spiritual, he or she will classify such entities as angels, demons, ghosts, gods, vampires, and other threats of a spiritual nature as supernatural, rather than paranormal, phenomena. He or she may also include witches (because, although they are human, they are empowered by the devil, who is himself a supernatural entity) and other natural threats that are energized, so to speak, by a power that transcends nature and is, as such, outside or beyond the universe. Otherwise, one is likely to reject the supernatural as a category altogether, identifying every inexplicable phenomenon as paranormal, whether it is dark matter or a teenage werewolf. Indeed, some scientists dedicate at least part of their time to debunking allegedly paranormal phenomena, explaining what natural conditions or processes may explain them, as the author of The Serpent and the Rainbow explains the creation of zombies by voodoo priests.
Based upon my recent reading of Tzvetan Todorov's The Fantastic: A Structural Approach to the Fantastic, I add the following addendum to this essay.
According to Todorov:
The fantastic. . . lasts only as long as a certain hesitation [in deciding] whether or not what they [the reader and the protagonist] perceive derives from "reality" as it exists in the common opinion. . . . If he [the reader] decides that the laws of reality remain intact and permit an explanation of the phenomena described, we can say that the work belongs to the another genre [than the fantastic]: the uncanny. If, on the contrary, he decides that new laws of nature must be entertained to account for the phenomena, we enter the genre of the marvelous (The Fantastic: A Structural Approach to a Literary Genre, 41).Todorov further differentiates these two categories by characterizing the uncanny as “the supernatural explained” and the marvelous as “the supernatural accepted” (41-42).
Interestingly, the prejudice against even the possibility of the supernatural’s existence which is implicit in the designation of natural versus paranormal phenomena, which excludes any consideration of the supernatural, suggests that there are no marvelous phenomena; instead, there can be only the uncanny. Consequently, for those who subscribe to this view, the fantastic itself no longer exists in this scheme, for the fantastic depends, as Todorov points out, upon the tension of indecision concerning to which category an incident belongs, the natural or the supernatural. The paranormal is understood, by those who posit it, in lieu of the supernatural, as the natural as yet unexplained.
And now, back to a fate worse than death: grading students’ papers.
My Cup of Blood
Anyway, this is what I happen to like in horror fiction:
Small-town settings in which I get to know the townspeople, both the good, the bad, and the ugly. For this reason alone, I’m a sucker for most of Stephen King’s novels. Most of them, from 'Salem's Lot to Under the Dome, are set in small towns that are peopled by the good, the bad, and the ugly. Part of the appeal here, granted, is the sense of community that such settings entail.
Isolated settings, such as caves, desert wastelands, islands, mountaintops, space, swamps, where characters are cut off from civilization and culture and must survive and thrive or die on their own, without assistance, by their wits and other personal resources. Many are the examples of such novels and screenplays, but Alien, The Shining, The Descent, Desperation, and The Island of Dr. Moreau, are some of the ones that come readily to mind.
Total institutions as settings. Camps, hospitals, military installations, nursing homes, prisons, resorts, spaceships, and other worlds unto themselves are examples of such settings, and Sleepaway Camp, Coma, The Green Mile, and Aliens are some of the novels or films that take place in such settings.
Anecdotal scenes--in other words, short scenes that showcase a character--usually, an unusual, even eccentric, character. Both Dean Koontz and the dynamic duo, Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child, excel at this, so I keep reading their series (although Koontz’s canine companions frequently--indeed, almost always--annoy, as does his relentless optimism).
Atmosphere, mood, and tone. Here, King is king, but so is Bentley Little. In the use of description to terrorize and horrify, both are masters of the craft.
Believable characters. Stephen King, Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child, and Dan Simmons are great at creating characters that stick to readers’ ribs.
Innovation. Bram Stoker demonstrates it, especially in his short story “Dracula’s Guest,” as does H. P. Lovecraft, Edgar Allan Poe, Shirley Jackson, and a host of other, mostly classical, horror novelists and short story writers. For an example, check out my post on Stoker’s story, which is a real stoker, to be sure. Stephen King shows innovation, too, in ‘Salem’s Lot, The Shining, It, and other novels. One might even argue that Dean Koontz’s something-for-everyone, cross-genre writing is innovative; he seems to have been one of the first, if not the first, to pen such tales.
Technique. Check out Frank Peretti’s use of maps and his allusions to the senses in Monster; my post on this very topic is worth a look, if I do say so myself, which, of course, I do. Opening chapters that accomplish a multitude of narrative purposes (not usually all at once, but successively) are attractive, too, and Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child are as good as anyone, and better than many, at this art.
A connective universe--a mythos, if you will, such as both H. P. Lovecraft and Stephen King, and, to a lesser extent, Dean Koontz, Bentley Little, and even Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child have created through the use of recurring settings, characters, themes, and other elements of fiction.
A lack of pretentiousness. Dean Koontz has it, as do Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child, Bentley Little, and (to some extent, although he has become condescending and self-indulgent of late, Stephen King); unfortunately, both Dan Simmons and Robert McCammon have become too self-important in their later works, Simmons almost to the point of becoming unreadable. Come on, people, you’re writing about monsters--you should be humble.
Longevity. Writers who have been around for a while usually get better, Stephen King, Dan Simmons, and Robert McCammon excepted.
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