Showing posts with label sexism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label sexism. Show all posts

Sunday, March 20, 2011

Not-So-Gratuitous Nudity

Copyright 2011 by Gary L. Pullman


Nudity is popular in horror movies, as it is in other films. Why? One might suppose the answer to this question to be, like the equality of human worth to Thomas Jefferson, self-evident. It is, too, of course--or, at least, one of the reasons for the frequent inclusion of nudity in films, horror and otherwise, is obvious: displays of female flesh (and, perhaps, to a lesser degree, of male bodies as well) is titillating.

Nudity is popular in film for other reasons, too, though. Its promised display, for example, is a means of creating and maintaining suspense. Moviegoers of both sexes are curious as to what an actress looks like beneath her clothes. Men and women want to catch a glimpse of a famous female’s breasts, pubes, and buttocks, to see all (or almost all) there is to see, to observe the “bare truth” or the “naked truth” concerning the performer’s true outer beauty. To lay bare the body is, we believe, to lay bare the secrets of the soul. By suggesting that, eventually, this, that, or the other actress is likely to shed her clothes keeps moviegoers on the edges of their seats. When, where, and under what conditions will the screen siren reveal her charms, in all their gorgeous glory, are questions that sustain suspense.

Besides the creation and maintenance of suspense, nudity also reminds moviegoers of female characters’ femininity. Even clothed, women typically show themselves to be women in several hard-to-miss ways: long, styled hair; cosmetics; frilly attire; shaved underarms and legs; and the wearing of clothing and accessories that are designated by tradition and the dictates of fashion as belonging exclusively to women. Primary sexual characteristics (breasts, wider hips than men may claim, fuller buttocks than men may boast, and female genitalia) are indications as well, of course, and, usually, these characteristics are more or less noticeable in most women. However, when milady is nude, the unmistakable presence of primary sexual characteristics makes the artifices by which women proclaim their sex and gender unnecessary. One need not advertise herself as female and feminine through hairstyles, cosmetics, and clothing when, quite obviously, her body’s nakedness reveals her to be so.

Horror movies have recently become less sexist, offering moviegoers male as well as female victims and female and well as male predators, but the genre, nevertheless, remains largely chauvinistic and, one might argue, misogynistic. Women remain, far more often than men, the victims rather than the victimizers. One reason, besides sexism, for this preference for female over male victims is the relative physical weakness of women as compared to men. Because women typically have less physical strength than men do, they appear to be easier victims than men do. They also appear more vulnerable than men do. Weakness and vulnerability make them more likely to be victims than to be victimizers, for predators stalk the sick, the lame, and the lazy, or, in milady’s case, the weaker of the two sexes. Femaleness and femininity mark characters as relatively helpless and, therefore, as potential, even likely, victims. The nudity of female characters, in horror films, reminds audiences of the women’s identities as prospective casualties or fatalities.

Nudity in horror movies creates and maintains suspense, reminds moviegoers of female characters’ femininity and relative weakness and helplessness, but nudity also often leads to sex, and sex often leads to death or dismemberment. There is something of an unwritten law in the horror genre that taking one’s clothes off, even when it is not an act that is intended as a prelude to sex, is punishable by death; when nudity leads to sex, there is a virtual guarantee that it will end in pain, suffering, and the nudist’s demise. Even in the ultra permissive society in which we live, in which teen sex is rampant, as is teen pregnancy, abortion, and the birth of children to children, premarital sex, like adultery or other forms of sex outside the confines of holy matrimony, is considered taboo (by screenwriters in the horror genre, at least, if no one else), and it will surely be punished severely, with loss of limb, if not life. Nudity, as a precursor to sex, also identifies (often female) characters as likely victims. (The characters are more often female than male because most people believe that women look better in the nude than men do and because women seem more helpless, because they are typically physically weaker than men seem to be.)

We do a pretty good job of hiding our animal natures, but, despite our art, our culture, and our complex social structures, our philosophy and religion, and our humanity, we remain very much mammals who eat, drink, fornicate, sleep, and otherwise exhibit the animal within. We are not simply ghosts; we are ghosts in machines, and the machines we inhabit are made not of iron and steel but of flesh and blood. We are driven by fleshly as well as by psychological and social needs. We have appetites for food, for sex, for dominance, and for blood. The fact that, concealed beneath our shirts, blouses, trousers, and skirts, we have breasts and vaginas or penises and testicles and buttocks indicates that we are not merely human beings; we are also animals who breed and devour and hunt and kill. Nudity is a reminder of our animal natures, and female nudity is a reminder of the seldom-displayed, but always present, nudity of the male of the species. In seeing a nude woman, we understand that men, too, have “private parts” that disclose their animal nature, just as the undraped form of the female of the species reveals her own animality. Nakedness is a reminder, too, of our reproductive capability, a capability that we share with the so-called lower animals. Moreover, our nakedness reminds us that we, as much as lions and tigers and bears, oh my!, are (or can be) red in tooth and claw, that we are also potentially predators and prey, that we are, each and all, Drs. Jekylls and Mr. Hydes.

Under our clothes, we are flesh and blood, not the steely selves our aggressive personas sometimes tend to make others suppose we are. We can look daggers at another soul. We can set our jaws. We can give another person the cold shoulder. We can shake our fists and stamp our feet. We can stand tall. In short, we can use our bodies to intimidate others, but doing so while naked might be much more difficult, if not impossible, to do, because our fleshly selves, minus the armor of our suits and dresses, gives the lie, as it were, to the armor of costume and the arsenal of body language cues by which we seek to impose our wills upon others. It is hard to take someone in his or her birthday suit very seriously, no matter how he or she might glower or glare. Nudity renders us vulnerable. In horror movies, vulnerability of any kind is seldom a good thing and is apt, sooner or later, to get one killed. A nude character is a vulnerable character, and a vulnerable character is likely to become--well, a dead duck.

Nudity, we observe, is not necessarily gratuitous. In horror movies, as in other types of film, nakedness can, and frequently does, serve thematic purposes. (Typically, it also identifies probable victims and may characterize them as sexually promiscuous and, therefore, morally weak of perverse.)

In forthcoming posts, I will take up this matter again, exploring, more specifically, the contribution to the horror genre that on-screen nudity makes on a more-or-less regular basis.

Until then, for goodness’ sake, keep both the lights and your clothes on!

Thursday, March 18, 2010

Quick Tip: Victimizing the Victim

Copyright 2010 by Gary L. Pullman


Victims are important to horror, but one would hardly know it, for, from authors, critics, and readers, they receive short shrift. Except for Carol J. Clover’s excellent discussion of the “final girl,” the survivor among a slasher film’s slew of the slain, who, as the last girl standing (Men, Women and Chain Saws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film), typically defeats the monster, little has been said of horror fiction’s victims of late. However, as the careers of many a fine young actress attests, victimization can lead to fame and fortune--off-screen, at least.

Clover describes the final girl as virginal and drug free, with a past that is shared in part with the killer, and as someone who may have a unisex name. Clover sees audience members as able to identify with female characters, regardless of their own sex and gender; the killer, in fact, is a male who has problems with his own sexuality and gender and uses weapons, especially knives, as a phallic substitute that psychologically enhanced his own problematic virility.

Clover detects a sexist and misogynistic element in the final girl. In a patriarchal society, it’s difficult, if not impossible she (Clover, not the final girl) argues for many to identify with a terrified male character. Therefore, a female character is victimized. In other words, women make more credible victims than men. Since, during the murders of others (and, possibly, the attempted murder of the final girl), these female characters are depicted in a state of undress and, sometimes, sexual intimacy, the slasher films take on a voyeuristic nature and suggest that neither beauty nor sexuality escape punishment in a cruel and sadistic world, despite the apparent anything-goes, free-love attitude of contemporary society.

Outside slasher films, victims are not limited to nubile young women, which casts some doubt, perhaps, upon Clover’s claims of sexism and misogyny concerning victims of horror in general. Dean Koontz and Stephen King, as usual, offer good examples of a variety of victims in their fiction. The commonality among their victims lies in their sympathetic nature and their vulnerability. While some of them are women (Rose Madder), others are physically or mentally handicapped (The Bad Place). Others are verbally, physically, psychologically, or sexually abused (It). Still others are children (Desperation). Especially in Koontz’s novels, victims are even sometimes animals (Watchers).

Their conditions (being psychologically dependent, physically weak, physically or mentally handicapped, young and naïve) make them vulnerable, and something about their personalities and, at times, their past experiences, makes them sympathetic. They may be pure of heart, precocious, developmentally disabled, autistic, victims of previous traumas, social outcasts, unlucky at love, afflicted with a terminal illness, or sufferers of adultery or some other sort of betrayal.

However, the victim must also have a reserve of pluck, of nerve, of courage, of which he or she may unaware. The stalker or killer or monster or whatever other form the antagonist may take will be the means by which the victim discovers his or her courage and defeats or banishes his or her foe (or, if he or she is vanquished, after all, puts up an incredible fight).

Therefore, if you want a victim with whom your readers can identify, make sure that he or she is vulnerable, sympathetic, and courageous. Then, win, lose, or draw in his or her contest with the adversary, your victim will attract and hold your reader’s or audience’s attention--and respect.

Sunday, January 6, 2008

Imagining the Monster, Part I

Copyright 2007 by Gary L. Pullman


Monsters represent that which is unnatural, that which is aberrant and abhorrent. As such, they may symbolize conditions, situations, ideas, or other realities that a society--or humanity as a whole--finds repulsive. Not only do monsters have souls, as it were--the realities that they symbolize--but they also have bodies--the physical forms that writers give them.

John Keats wrote, “Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard/ Are sweeter. . . .”

Many writers and critics agree that the same principle is true of monsters. That which we do not see is often much more terrifying than that which we do see. What we don’t see, we must imagine, and our imaginations are much abler to frighten us than things we see. We may defend ourselves from something visible or at least know which way to flee from it. It’s impossible to protect ourselves or to escape from something we cannot see. Moreover, we want to know our enemy. We believe, rightly or wrongly, that being able to confront our foe may help us to discover its weakness. It’s possible, for example, that the Cyclops had limited peripheral vision; therefore, he might be blindsided. If we can see the werewolf, we can shoot it with a silver bullet. Zombies may be frightening, unseen, but when, seen, we realize how slowly they shamble, and we have hope that we may defeat them. Not seeing that which threatens us makes it, in our minds, more frightening.

Alfred Hitchcock coined the term “bomb theory” to explain how suspense differs from shock or “surprise.” In an interview with Francois Truffaut, Hitchcock explained his view:

We are now having a very innocent little chat. Let's suppose that there is a bomb underneath this table between us. Nothing happens, and then all of a sudden, "Boom!" There is an explosion. The public is surprised, but prior to this surprise, it has seen an absolutely ordinary scene, of no special consequence. Now, let us take a suspense situation. The bomb is underneath the table and the public knows it, probably because they have seen the anarchist place it there. The public is aware the bomb is going to explode at one o'clock and there is a clock in the decor. The public can see that it is a quarter to one. In these conditions, the same innocuous conversation becomes fascinating because the public is participating in the scene [emphasis added]. The audience is longing to warn the characters on the screen: "You shouldn't be talking about such trivial matters. There is a bomb beneath you and it is about to explode!"In the first case we have given the public fifteen seconds of surprise at the moment of the explosion. In the second we have provided them with fifteen minutes of suspense.

The conclusion is that whenever possible the public must be informed. Except when the surprise is a twist, that is, when the unexpected ending is, in itself, the highlight of the story.

Something similar is true with respect to monsters. When we hear them, but don’t see them; when we hear of them, but don’t see them; when we view the carnage they leave behind them, but don’t see them, suspense builds. The monster becomes increasingly horrible. We build them up in our minds until they are horrible beyond words, horrible beyond depiction. That’s why, often, when we do see the monster, it’s usually disappointing. Remember when, toward the end of It, Stephen King finally lets his protagonists come face to face with the terrible shape shifter that has terrified them (and us) for hundreds of pages, and we learn that its true form resembles nothing more sinister than a gigantic spider? Talk about a letdown! The scene very nearly destroys the whole novel. We imagined nightmarish visions; we are given a spider. (The same is true of the monstrous Shelob, the gigantic spider in The Lord of the Rings.)

It’s better not to show, than to reveal, the monster at the heart of the story. Nevertheless, it’s usually shown at some point near the end of the story, in words in the novel and in images in the movie. Again, usually, it disappoints.

However, there are a few occasions during which the monster, even revealed, manages to terrify--and to delight. An example is the alien in Alien. Based upon paintings by H. R. Giger, who is himself a master of the macabre, the extraterrestrial antagonist that destroys Lt. Ripley’s crew is a truly terrifying specimen of the monstrous. It behooves us to ask ourselves why.

The answer is fairly straightforward. Giger’s monster terrifies because it is alien. It’s unlike anything we’ve encountered, but, at the same time, it suggests many things we do know, all of which are unsettling. It’s part insect, sort of, and part crustacean, kind of, and something mechanical, maybe, with a little worm, or dragon, thrown in, it seems. It may even be part machine. It’s also--dare we say it?--somewhat humanoid. It’s a synthesis of incongruous combinations that cross categories, which, if you’ve read the post on “The Horror of the Incongruous,” you’ll recognize as horrible in itself. It’s also horribly detailed. Giger shows us its every horrifying feature: sharp teeth, elongated dragon’s head, banded ribs, armor-like crustacean exoskeleton, a second mouth inside the primary mouth, an armor-penetrating tongue, fused phalanges, acidic blood and saliva. It’s a walking weapons platform, a total arsenal, and, lizard-like, it can run along walls or ceilings as easily as along floors, and it likes to ambush unsuspecting victims by attacking them from behind. Temperature extremes don’t bother it, and it can survive in a vacuum. Its exoskeletons fully contains its body heat, so it can’t be picked up by heat sensors. In short, this monster is an all-in-one package of terror that's virtually undefeatable. It's the monster-version of the Swiss army knife, the shape shifter given one polymorphous form.

The monster's life cycle is horrifying, too, as it represents a parody of human conception, pregnancy, and gestation. The species’ queen lays an egg that produces a parasitic facehugger. The facehugger attacks a victim, attaching itself to his or her face, and, introducing a tubular proboscis into the victim’s esophagus, implants an alien embryo within the recipient’s chest. Whether the host is male or female doesn’t matter; after accepting some of its host’s characteristic features--bipedalism, for example--the parasitic embryo emerges, ripping its way through its host’s abdomen in a parody of the birth process. The whole conception-pregnancy-gestation process makes women interchangeable with men as mothers, suggests that human reproduction is a parasitic process, and makes birth an act of violence. Understandably, feminists have detected a good deal of misogyny and sexism in the Alien monster. For this reason, as well as those of its alien appearance and abilities, the monster is both fascinating and truly monstrous.

What makes the Alien monster so monstrous? Let’s recap:


  • It’s alien from anything we’ve seen before.

  • It’s an incongruous synthesis of various creatures, unsettling in themselves.

  • It’s shown in great detail.

  • Its abilities, like its appearance, is an incongruous synthesis of various other creatures’ capabilities.

  • Its life cycle parodies human reproduction processes.
Giger’s monster suggests some basic principles that can be used to create other horrifying monsters, which we will take up “Imagining the Monster, Part II,” to be posted later.

Paranormal vs. Supernatural: What’s the Diff?

Copyright 2009 by Gary L. Pullman

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

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.


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