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The Poetics of Horror: More than Meets the Eye

1971; University of Texas Press; Volume: 10; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.2307/1225234

1527-2087

D.L. White,

Gothic Literature and Media Analysis

The concepts commonly associated with and used to describe the film may not be enough to explain or how films produce it. This is not just to say that films are more than the sum of their parts-that can be said of any good film and most bad ones-but that what makes a good film, no matter what its genre, is something which cannot be entirely accounted for by its parts or elements; it is something within the identities of the pieces from which the film is constructed and within the nature of the ways in which they are combined. Since films are usually considered B-movies and are seldom the product of prestige studios, it is particularly easy to think of them as entertainments, as examples of a certain director's, producer's, or actor's skills, or as souvenirs from film history. As a result their analysis is apt to be unusually superficial and specious, and limited almost exclusively to a summation of their plot or a listing of their credits. The possibility that a film may be, or may have to be, a work of art, although one of the stock reflections of film criticism, tends to go unexplained and undeveloped. The linking of and art, in fact, goes back to Greek tragedy. The word horror itself is found in Aristotle's Poetics: and pity may be aroused by means; but they may also result from the inner structure of a piece ... even without the aid of the eye, he who hears the tale told will thrill with and melt to pity at what takes place. Shots of Gothic manors lit by lightning, of shadows glimpsed under doors, or of a hand gliding along a banister are examples of the spectacular means of horror; they are the kinds of devices that have been used so often that they have come to define the genre of the film. Free of the broader context of the films of which they are a part or of our memory of similar images in other films, however, such shots may not necessarily produce fear and dread; what is essential to may be something else. Films such as Bava's Nightmare Castle and Kenton's House of Frankenstein that are nothing more than a stringing together of every cliche from dark castles and mad scientists to the return of the dead to terrorize the