An analysis of horror
films discloses the use of a number of specific types of scenic
elements that tend to recur frequently in such movies. Except for the
prologue and the epilogue, the order in which these scenic elements
occur may differ, and not all may be present in a film, although,
typically, many, if not all, appear. In addition, each scenic element
can be shown by itself or in combination with another (for example,
an abduction can stand alone or be followed by a rescue or a murder). (Those common to more than one of the films analyzed in this post are in bold font.)
In Halloween (1978),
these scenic elements occur in this order:
Prologue
(introduction)
Escape
(flight from antagonist or captivity)
Stalking
(hunting)
Investigation
(search for information by either amateur or professional sleuth[s])
Murder(s)
(unjustified killing[s])
Encounter
of protagonist and antagonist (first meeting of hero or heroine and
villain, usually without violence)
Initial
attack on protagonist (first attack upon the hero or heroine)
Escape
Sustained
attack on protagonist (sustained attack on hero or heroine, often by
antagonist)
Rescue
(deliverance from danger)
Epilogue
(conclusion following main action of plot)
In
Annabelle (2014),
these scenic elements occur in this order:
Prologue
Murder(s)
Investigation
Attack
Rescue
Intelligence
(provision or acquisition of information, often about the villain
[e. g., origin, past, relationships], through secondary sources,
such as television or radio news broadcasts, Internet browsing,
books, police reports)
Paranormal
or supernatural incidents: (events inexplicable by science or
reason)
Relocation
(displacement from one location to another)
Pursuit
Escape
Discovery
(finding of intelligence through own or others' actions)
Attack
Discovery
Attack
Warning
(advisory of imminent danger)
Attempted
abduction (carrying away by force)
Epilogue
In
The Exorcist, (1973),
these scenic elements occur in this order:
Prologue
Paranormal
or supernatural incidents
Investigation
(medical)
Investigation
(constabulary)
Encounter
of protagonist and antagonist
Intelligence
Paranormal
or supernatural incidents
Attack
Death
(loss of life due to natural causes)
Attack
Death
Rescue
Epilogue
In
Psycho (1960), these
scenic elements occur in this order:
Tryst
(private meeting between lovers)
Crime
other than murder (theft)
Escape
Investigation
Relocation
Concealment
of stolen property
Encounter
of protagonist and antagonist
Argument
(heated discussion between two or more characters)
Repeated
encounter of protagonist and antagonist
Decision
to make restitution (deciding to restore to the rightful owner
something that has been taken away, lost, or surrendered)
Murder
Disposal
of incriminating evidence
Intelligence
Investigation
Murder
Investigation
Discovery
Intelligence
Investigation
Distraction
(deliberate diversion of someone's attention from one incident or
action to another)
Attack
Concealment
of oneself or another
Discovery
Attack
Rescue
Intelligence
As
this partial analysis of the recurring types of scenic elements
common to horror films shows, such movies frequently use the same
ones, despite the dramatic details of their plots. A writer who is
interested in writing a horror novel or screenplay can use these same
scenic elements to construct a plot based on a structure that has
stood the test of time.
As bestselling author
James Patterson points out, thrillers, which span the whole spectrum
of genres, are characterized by “the intensity of emotions they
create, particularly those of apprehension and exhilaration, of
excitement and breathlessness, all designed to generate that
all-important thrill” (Thriller).
To generate thrills,
thriller authors pull out all the stops, employing isolated settings,
traps, disguises, cover-ups, red herrings, plot twists, unreliable
narrators, cliffhangers, situational irony, and dramatic irony. Many
thrillers also begin in media res,
in the middle of things, so there is little or no context to explain
mysterious events until, in due time, they are explained through
flashbacks, dialogue, exposition, or other means.
By taking an Aristotelian
approach to analyzing thrillers, we can develop a long list of
incidents common to thrillers. (By “Aristotelian approach,” I
mean studying how established writers of thrillers keep their readers
on the edges of their seats.) In doing so, we want to universalize
our incidents so that they can apply to any character in any
thriller, existing or yet to come. To do so, we dispense with names,
and we tend to repeat phrases. The idea is to isolate plot elements
(incidents) that can
occur in any thriller
and that can be used in several ways (e. g., as inciting moments,
turning points, moments of final suspense);
be used individually
or in groups, sequentially (as per the list) or otherwise;
be mixed and matched
in various combinations.
By way of example, I have
assembled a partial list of one that, ideally, would be long enough
to fill a book of many pages. I have listed the incidents as they
occur in the plots of the films from which they are taken (but,
remember, they can be assembled in any fashion, with any number of
them being used, and they can be used for several narrative
purposes). In addition, at the beginning of each incident, in bold
font, I have identified the category that each incident seems to fit,
by way of its function. This would be only the beginning of a list
that could (and should) be expanded to include many incidents from
movies or novels of the same category, or subgenre, of story. As my
subgenre, I have used examples of psychological thrillers: Alfred
Hitchcock’s Blackmail
(1929) and J. Lee Thompson’s Cape Fear
(1962).
From
Blackmail
Vulnerability:
A woman is left alone.
Poor
judgment; self-endangerment:
A woman accompanies a stranger to another location.
False
sense of security: A stranger puts (or tries
to put) a woman at ease.
Incriminating
evidence: Unknowingly, a woman provides
evidence that later incriminates (or could incriminate) her.
Attempted
sexual assault: A stranger attempts to rape a
woman.
Assistance
unavailable: A woman’s cries for help go
unanswered.
Self-defense:
A woman fights for her life.
Fatal
encounter: A woman kills her attacker.
Shock:
In a daze, a traumatized woman wanders the streets all night.
Discovery
of crime: A stranger’s body is found.
Initiation
of investigation: A detective is assigned to
a murder investigation.
Discovery
of incriminating evidence: A detective finds
incriminating evidence at a crime scene.
Recognition:
A detective recognizes a dead person.
Removal
of incriminating evidence: A detective
removes incriminating evidence from a crime scene.
Interrogation
of suspect: A detective interrogates a
suspect.
Sympathetic
character: A suspect is too distraught to
answer a detective’s questions.
Accommodation:
A detective speaks to a suspect in private.
Witness’s
observation: An eyewitness sees a woman
accompany a man to his quarters.
Recovery
of incriminating evidence: An eyewitness
recovers incriminating evidence from a crime scene.
Linking
of incriminating evidence to suspect: An
eyewitness links recovers incriminating evidence he has recovered
from a crime scene based on complementary or matching evidence in a
detective’s possession.
Blackmail:
An eyewitness blackmails a detective and a suspect.
Criminal
record: An eyewitness is revealed to have a
criminal record and is wanted for questioning concerning a criminal
investigation.
Back-up:
A detective sends for police officers.
Flight:
A suspect flees from police.
Accidental
death; removal of a threat: Fleeing from
police, a suspect falls to his death.
Acceptance
of resolution: Police assume that a suspect
who fell to his death while fleeing from police is the criminal they
sought.
Intention
to confess: A suspect goes to the police to
confess to having committed a crime.
Fortuitous
coincidence: A police inspector receives a
telephone call and instructs a detective to assist a woman who has
come to the station or precinct to confess to a crime.
Confession
with mitigating factor: A woman confesses to
having committed a crime but offers a just reason for having done so.
Apparent
escape: A detective and a suspect leave a
police station together.
Possibility
of prosecution: A police officer arrives at
the station or precinct with evidence in hand that could incriminate
a suspect.
(To
see the details of these plot incidents as Hitchcock uses them in
Blackmail, read a
summary
of the movie’s plot.)
From Cape
Fear
Release:
A convicted criminal is paroled.
Return:
A parolee tracks down the person he blames for his conviction.
Threat:
The parolee threatens the family of the person whom he blames for his
conviction.
Stalking:
The parolee stalks the family of the person whom he blames for his
conviction.
Terrorism:
The parolee kills the dog that belongs to the family of the person
whom he blames for his conviction.
Protection:
A man threatened by a parolee hires a private detective.
Crime:
A parolee rapes a woman.
Intimidation:
A rape victim refuses to testify against the man who raped her.
Intervention:
The person whom a parolee blames for his conviction hires three men
to beat the parolee to force him to leave town.
Failed
intervention: The parolee gets the better of
the three men hired to beat him.
Punishment
of victim: A parolee’s intended victim is
disbarred as a result of having hired three men to beat the parolee
so he would leave town.
Refuge:
A parolee’s intended victim takes his family to a houseboat to
protect them from a vengeful parolee.
Lying
in wait; protection: A local lawman and a
parolee’s intended victim lie in wait to arrest a parolee who plans
to attach the victim’s family.
Attrition:
A parolee kills a local lawman lying in wait to arrest him.
Escape:
A parolee eludes his intended victim.
Isolation:
A parolee isolates the family of his intended victim.
Strategic
attack (feint): A parolee attacks the wife of
his intended victim.
Rescue:
A parolee’s intended victim rescues his wife from the parole.
Attack:
A parolee attacks his intended victim’s daughter.
Rescue:
An intended victim rescues his daughter from a vengeful parolee.
Struggle:
An intended victim fights a vengeful parolee.
Neutralization:
An intended victim shoots a vengeful parolee, wounding and disabling
him.
Plea:
A vengeful parolee asks his intended victim to kill him.
Ironic
vengeance (poetic justice): A parolee’s
intended victim refrains from killing a vengeful parolee, preferring
that he be returned to prison for life instead.
Resolution:
A parolee’s intended victim and his family, accompanied by police,
return home.
(To
see the details of these plot incidents as Thompson uses them in Cape
Fear, read a summary
of the movie’s plot.)
Concluding
Thoughts
These
incidents could be even further generalized to attain true
universality. For example, “The parolee kills the dog that belongs
to the family of the person whom he blames for his conviction”
could be rewritten as “The parolee intimidates the family of the
person whom he blames for his conviction” or “The parolee
terrorizes the family of the person whom he blames for his
conviction.” The degree to which any incident is generalized
depends on your own purposes as a writer creating such a list. The
list, of course, can be either further generalized or made more
specific, as circumstances warrant. For this reason, it may be
desirable to keep a “master list” and make a copy of it to
generalize more or less, as circumstances warrant.
An
extensive list of thriller incidents allows you to pick and choose
which incident on the list might best be used for a specific purpose,
such as an inciting moment, a turning point, a moment of final
suspense, a flashback, a flash-forward, a cliffhanger, exposition,
etc. For example, almost any of the incidents on this list could
serve the function of the inciting moment, initiating the rest of the
story:
Of course, the story will
change accordingly, since the incidents of a plot must be connected
through an ongoing series of causes and effects. Furthermore, you
will develop the incidents in your own way, so they will not be the
same, in detail, as those of Hitchcock, Thompson, or any other
director or writer. As Heraclitus observed, long ago, it is
impossible to step into the same river twice; the water, the silt,
the fish, the current, the temperature are all different each time.
A
movie poster tagline poses various questions related to
WHO?
(personal identity, agent, or agency),
WHAT? (identity or identities,
nature or natures, or origin or origins of an object or objects or an
abstraction or abstractions),
WHEN? (time, endurance, or era),
WHERE?
(location),
HOW? (process, technique, or method);
WHY? (cause,
motive, purpose, function, or use), and
HOW MANY? or HOW MUCH?
(quantity of number or volume).
The
tagline for the 1988 movie Call Me is “Her
fantasies could be fatal.”
By
identifying the questions evoked by this tagline, which should be
considered in relation to the film's title, we can establish the
elements of the plot that create mystery, thus creating, maintaining,
and heightening suspense:
WHO is “she”? (personal identity)
WHAT are her “fantasies”? (fantasies)
WHY is she fantasizing? (motive)
HOW do her fantasies involve others? (process)
WHY do her fantasies involve others? (cause, motive,
purpose, function, or use)
WHO is the other or are the others whom she includes in
her fantasies?
WHY does she include this other or these others in her
fantasies?
WHY could her “fantasies be fatal”? (cause)
From
our investigation, we find that mysteries regarding who
the woman is, what
her fantasies are, why
she fantasizes, how
and why
her fantasies involve others, and why
her fantasies could be fatal fuel the suspense of the plot. Counting
our “whos” and “whats” and “whys” and “hows,” we see
that there is two “who” question, one “what” question, one
“how” question,” and four
“why” questions. Therefore, the plot's main source of suspense
will be related to questions of cause, motive, purpose, function, or
use (WHY?). Related to this primary source of will be the secondary
questions concerning the personal identities (WHO?); the nature or
natures, or origin or origins of an object or objects or an
abstraction or abstractions; and process[es], technique[s], or
method[s] regarding the way in which she includes another or others
in her fantasies (HOW?).
The tagline uses the nominative case of the third-person
personal pronoun to refer to the woman who fantasies, referring to the woman as “her.” This pronoun separates her from the viewer/reader, who
regards him- or herself as an “I” (if a subject) or a “me” (if
an object). The story is about her (and her fantasies); she is the
protagonist. Her callers are the story's antagonists. They may also
be her victims, since her “fantasies could be fatal.” Therefore,
she can be a predator, even a killer. Vicariously, as we read her
story (i. e., “call” her), we may become her victims as well.
WHY
we might call her (our motive) suggests information about us: WHO we
are and WHAT we want (and, therefore, WHAT we lack). “Call me” is
an invitation to listen to her fantasies, to participate in them,
vicariously, potentially as her victims. We have a motive for
desiring to do so. Perhaps we are lonely, feel unloved, are unhappy
either at being single or in our marriages. We lack something that we
believe, or hope, that we may obtain from this woman, from her
fantasies. According to the U. S. National Library of Medicine, “loneliness
can lead to various psychiatric disorders [such as] depression, alcohol abuse, child abuse, sleep problems, personality
disorders and Alzheimer’s disease. It also leads to various
physical disorders like diabetes, autoimmune disorders like
rheumatoid arthritis, lupus and cardiovascular diseases like coronary
heart disease, hypertension (HTN), obesity, physiological aging,
cancer, poor hearing and poor health. Left untended, loneliness can
have serious consequences for mental and physical health of people.”
As
the article explains, “Loneliness is caused not by being alone, but
by being without some definite needed relationship or set of
relationships.” This seems to be the lack, then, that those who
answer the woman's invitation to 'call” her experience. We have
learned much about the antagonists of the story, including their
possible physical as well as their mental health issues and their
causes. (The article also defines three types of loneliness that
could be of use to a writer writing about the situation reflected in
the Call Me
movie tagline: “situational loneliness,” “developmental
loneliness,” and “internal loneliness.”
The woman who fantasizes also wants something from us:
our ears, our attention, our indulgence of her fantasies. However,
she does not want us for long; we are disposable because she has,
potentially, many callers, many replacements for us. We are like
food, as it were, that sustains her, but nothing more. Therefore, we
are expendable. What counts is she and her fantasies, her needs and
desires.
Everything
seems to revolve around her and her desires and needs, which suggests
that she might be a narcissist, whose behavior, according to the Mayo
Clinic, is characterized by:
an exaggerated
sense of self-importance
a sense of
entitlement and require constant, excessive admiration
[the expectation of
being] recognized as superior even without achievements that warrant
it
exaggerate[d]
achievements and talents
[a preoccupation]
with fantasies about success, power, brilliance, beauty or the
perfect mate [Now, we have an idea of the types of fantasies she
might have!]
[the belief that]
they are superior and can only associate with equally special people
[the tendency to]
monopolize conversations and belittle or look down on people they
perceive as inferior
[the expectation of]
special favors and unquestioning compliance with their expectations
[taking] advantage of
others to get what they want
[having] an inability
or unwillingness to recognize the needs and feelings of others
[being] envious of
others and believe others envy them
[behaving] in an
arrogant or haughty manner, coming across as conceited, boastful and
pretentious
[insisting] on having the best of everything—for
instance, the best car or office
What
is she like? Someone who is unable to form long-lasting, meaningful
relationships? Someone unconcerned about the welfare, or even the
lives, of others? Someone who is willing to kill others without
remorse or concern? A sociopath, perhaps? A killer, certainly, and a
survivor, of sorts, a survivor at all costs. She is amoral, it
appears, and is not bound by the mores, customs, conventions, or laws
of society. She seems either unconcerned about them or believes that
she is above them, a force of nature or a law unto herself, perhaps.
In addition, she is likely to be narcissistic, feel
herself to privileged and entitled, possess a sense of superiority,
and be arrogant, manipulative, dominant, and authoritarian.
What sort of fantasies might she have? Those that
provide what she wants, but lacks, even if her fantasies provide them
only momentarily. Company? Intimacy? Relief from loneliness, boredom,
or emptiness? A sense of belonging, for a moment, at least, or a
sense of being in control? She will also probably fantasize “about
success, power, brilliance, beauty or the perfect mate.”
Presumably, those who do not properly reinforce her concept of
herself or are in any other way less than “the perfect mate”
would be murdered, since the fact that her fantasies “could be
fatal” suggests that sometimes they are; other times, they are not.
Why does she sometimes kill, sometimes spare, those who answer her
call? It seems that her decision would depend on whether or how well
her callers respond to her fantasies, to her? On how well her callers
fulfill her needs.
It
seems that she could be a narcissistic sociopathic serial killer,
possibly with sadistic sexual tendencies. As the Mayo Clinic website
points out, “Antisocial personality disorder, sometimes called
sociopathy,
is a mental disorder in which a person consistently shows no regard
for right and wrong and ignores the rights and feelings of others.”
In addition, such persons “tend to antagonize, manipulate or treat
others harshly or with callous indifference. They show no guilt or
remorse for their behavior.” People who suffer from antisocial
personality disorder also “often violate the law, becoming
criminals. They may lie, behave violently or impulsively, and have
problems with drug and alcohol use. Because of these characteristics,
people with this disorder typically can't fulfill responsibilities
related to family, work or school.” Operating one's own erotic
telephone service might be an ideal career choice for someone who
displays such symptoms
as the Mayo Clinic website lists for the antisocial personality
disorder:
Disregard for right
and wrong
Persistent lying or deceit to exploit others
Being callous, cynical and disrespectful of
others
Using charm or wit to manipulate others for
personal gain or personal pleasure
Arrogance, a sense of superiority and being
extremely opinionated
Recurring problems with the law, including
criminal behavior
Repeatedly violating the rights of others
through intimidation and dishonesty
Impulsiveness or failure to plan ahead
Hostility, significant irritability, agitation,
aggression or violence
Lack of empathy for others and lack of remorse
about harming others
Unnecessary risk-taking or dangerous behavior
with no regard for the safety of self or others
Poor or abusive relationships
Failure to consider the negative consequences of
behavior or learn from them
Being consistently irresponsible and repeatedly
failing to fulfill work or financial obligations
So,
is the woman who fantasizes a narcissistic sociopath who entertains
dangerous, potentially fatal fantasies about others who accept her
invitation to “call me”? Does she operate an erotic telephone
service for lonely people who lack “a relationship or set of
relationships”? Could she be a sadist and her callers masochists
whom she lures into a sadomasochistic telephonic relationship? Does
fantasizing sometimes cross the line between fantasy and reality,
resulting in the deaths of her callers? Is the woman who fantasizes a
femme fatale?
Our search for answers to the questions the tagline provokes and our
research into the implications of the tagline certainly seems to open
such possibilities.
Checking
a synopsis of the movie's actual plot shows that the screenwriters
chose a different plot than the one we might envision from the
movie's tagline, but that doesn't mean our ideas of the protagonist's
character, the antagonists' characters, and the protagonist operating
her own erotic telephone service while she searches for her “perfect
mate,” according to her own needs and desires as a narcissistic
sociopath with a well-defined list or criteria is “wrong.” It is
simply an alternative plot—and perhaps a better one, at that.
Here
are a few more horror movie taglines that you can try, each of which
is capable of suggesting personality traits, if not mental disorders,
for a protagonist and one or more antagonists and a plot based on
those personality traits. Using horror movie taglines as a means of
developing characters' personality traits goes a long way toward
generating plot ideas as well.
Dawn
of the Dead: When there's no more room in Hell, the dead will
walk the Earth.
Paranormal
Activity: What happens when you
sleep?
Saw:
Every piece has a puzzle.
Texas
Chainsaw Massacre: Who will
survive, and what will be left of them?
The
Grudge: It never forgives. It
never forgets.
Wolf
Creek: How can you be found when
no one knows you're missing?
According to Google, these are the most
popular Chillers and Thrillers
posts so far from 2021 and 2020. In case you missed them, click the
link to any you care to read.
According to evolutionary
psychologists, human behavior evolved through adaptations that had
survival, including reproductive, value. Although not without its
critics, who see the school as seriously flawed, evolutionary
psychology may offer some insights of value to readers and writers of
horror fiction.
Leda Cosmides and John Tooby. Source: news.uscb.edu
According to evolutionary
psychologists Leda
Cosmides and John Tooby, the discipline regards the brain as “a
computer designed by natural selection to extract information from
the environment” and this organ generates the behavior of
individuals based on its “cognitive programs,” adaptations that
“produced behavior” that “enabled [our ancestors] to survive
and reproduce.”
Einstein's brain. Source: thespec.com
Therefore, to understand
what makes people tick, these programs must be understood and
explained. As a result of natural selection, the brain consists of
“different special[-]purpose programs” rather than having “a .
. . general architecture.” Finally, the description of the “evolved
computational architecture of our brains 'allows a systematic
understanding of cultural and social phenomena.'”
Psychological Methods. Source: slideshare.net
The method
of evolutionary psychology is not entirely scientific. After
detecting “apparent design in the world” (e. g., in the brain),
they seek to produce a “scenario” that suggests the selective
processes that could account for “the production of the trait that
exhibits [this] apparent design” and then put their hypotheses to
the test of “standard psychological methods.” Thus, their
approach seems part thought experiment, part scientific method and
has been challenged on both counts.
Waist-hip ratio in women. Source: ergo-log.com
For example, men, shown
illustrations of potential female mates exhibiting “varying
waist[-]hip ratios,” preferred those depicting “women with
waist/hip ratios closer to .7,” because hips wider than waists
suggested that the women who possessed them would be likely to be
more “fertile” and, as such, better able to “contribute to the
survival and reproduction of the organism.”
"Would you survive?" Source: thequiz.com
One theme of horror
fiction is the survival of the threat posed by the villain or
monster. Both novels and movies often show their characters' use of a
variety of attempts at, or methods of, survival, most of which prove
futile. Often, in the slasher sub-genre, the sole survivor of the
group's encounter with the antagonist is the so-called final girl.
There's a reason they're called "slashers'? Source: whatculture.com
These films implicitly
invite audiences to compare the methods of survival—i. e., the
behavior—of the characters: who did what to survive, and which one,
ultimately, succeeded. Why did she succeed? Why did each of the other
characters fail? Not only do slasher (and, of course, other types of
horror fiction and drama) thus provide models for analyzing and
evaluating both failed and successful survival adaptations, but the
slasher also offers a list, as it were, of each.
Let's take a look at three
horror movies that focus on the characters' attempts to survive the
threat of an antagonist. The first, Backcountry
(2014),
involves a predatory animal; the second, Final
Girl (2015),
features a band of men who hunt a woman for sport; the third, The
Exorcist (1973),
presents a supernatural threat. The first involves a “woman vs.
nature” plot; the second, a “woman vs. men” plot; the third, a
“man vs. supernatural monster” plot. Each involves a final girl
as the survivor of her respective threat.
A device often used to
generate plots is to imagine a vocational role that, given a dark
twist, produces unusual, horrific goods or provides equally bizarre,
terrifying services. Stephen Kings; characters include writers
(“1408,” Bag of Bones, The Regulators, Misery);
painters(Duma
Key); politicians (Under
the Dome); a shop owner (Needful Things);
a former police officer (Black House)
and prison guards (The Green Mile);
journalists (The Colorado Kid),
government agents (Firestarter),
and military personnel (The
Tommyknockers),
among others, whose wares and services are anything but mundane—or
safe.
Other writers of horror
have used the same technique. Bentley Little, King's “poet laureate
of horror,” is a great example. His novels' protagonists include a
mailman (The Mailman),
store clerks (The Store); a homeowners association (The
Association); resort staff and
guests (The Resort);
an insurance agent (The
Policy), teachers (The
Academy, University);
and others.
In
part, such fiction—what we might designate as vocational
horror—works because it is associated, as it typically is in King's
works, with forces equipped with vast resources, investigative
abilities, access to the general public, political power, are backed
by the authority of the state, or are imbued with supernatural or
paranormal power (King) or perform essential services, operate in
remote locations, or, again, enjoy supernatural or paranormal power
(Little).
Another
reason that vocational fiction works is that it is based on a twist,
or a perversion, of the normal purposes of offering goods for sale or
a perversion of the normal functions of a service, as is almost
always the case in Little's satirical novels, synopses of a few of
which suggest the nature of his twists:
[The
Mailman:] “the strange new
mailman is up to something sinister, an idea bolstered as people in
town start receiving increasingly disturbing hate mail”
(Wikipedia).
[The Store:]
“customers are hounded by obnoxious sales people, and strange
products appear on the shelves. Before long . . . [is] taking over
the town!”
[The
Association:] “Members of the neighborhood's Homeowners'
Association, a meddling group that uses its authority to spy on
neighbors, eradicate pets and dismember anyone who fails to pay
association dues and fines” (Publishers Weekly).
[The
Resort:] “[At] the exclusive
Reata, an isolated resort in the Arizona desert, . . . . unnerving
encounters with strange employees, wild parties in empty rooms and
bizarre sex antics in the family restaurant prompt . . . key
characters . . . to think about leaving early. Yet the Reata's
magnetic pull essentially brainwashes all the guests into believing
that their odd experiences are normal” (Publishers
Weekly).
[The
Policy:] “Recently divorced
Hunt Jackson, his new wife, his co-workers and his best buddy from
high school . . . are continually harassed by a pesky insurance
salesman [who] tries to convince them to purchase bizarre policies
protecting them from the law, their bosses and even death, and if the
clients refuse, inexplicable consequences usually follow”
(Publishers Weekly).
[The
Academy:] “Students and
faculty who embrace [a school's new] charter get steadily darker and
more sadistic; teachers and students who oppose the charter find
strange things happening and people disappearing; and the school
seems to have taken on a life of its own” (Publishers
Weekly).
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’ Dictionarycontends 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.
Anyone who becomes an aficionado of anything tends, eventually, to develop criteria for elements or features of the person, place, or thing of whom or which he or she has become enamored. Horror fiction--admittedly not everyone’s cuppa blood--is no different (okay, maybe it’s a little different): it, too, appeals to different fans, each for reasons of his or her own. Of course, in general, book reviews, the flyleaves of novels, and movie trailers suggest what many, maybe even most, readers of a particular type of fiction enjoy, but, right here, right now, I’m talking more specifically--one might say, even more eccentrically. In other words, I’m talking what I happen to like, without assuming (assuming makes an “ass” of “u” and “me”) that you also like the same. It’s entirely possible that you will; on the other hand, it’s entirely likely that you won’t.
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.
A bit of erotica (okay, okay, sex--are you satisfied?), often of the unusual variety. Sex sells, and, yes, sex whets my reader’s appetite. Bentley Little is the go-to guy for this spicy ingredient, although Koontz has done a bit of seasoning with this spice, too, in such novels as Lightning and Demon Seed (and, some say, Hung).
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.
Pacing. Neither too fast nor too slow. Dean Koontz is good, maybe the best, here, of contemporary horror writers.
Posts
