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The Philosophy of Horror

2012; Penn State University Press; Volume: 1; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.5325/preternature.1.2.0374

2161-2196

Joshua Vasquez,

Contemporary Literature and Criticism

With a title that pays homage to philosopher and theorist Noel Carroll's landmark 1990 study of horror in the arts, The Philosophy of Horror is another in a long line of scholarly anthologies designed to explore and explain the continuing appeal of the horror genre. At the heart of this collection's diverse selection of essays, unified by an explicitly philosophical approach to textual commentary and interpretation, is the notion that horror thrives by way of a versatile bricolage. Hybridity, variation, and adaptability are manifestations of not only the genre's ability to remain aesthetically fluid, responsive to generalized patterns of aesthetic change, and the demands of shifting audience expectations, but are equally representative of its continuing cultural relevance as a site for the mirroring of ever-changing social and political tensions. As editor Thomas Fahy writes in his introduction, horror, having become increasingly “expansive and diversified” over time, benefits from a notable capacity to incorporate seemingly conflicting approaches and tones into its substantial dimensions; the genre effortlessly slides between such seemingly stylistic polarities as the highbrow and the lowbrow, the comic and the terrifying, the sublimely profound and the ironically kitschy (4). Yet at the same time, such transformations still take place within a recognizable range of broadly similar themes and narrative patterns, an endless repetition of structures and motifs that Fahy explicitly references as another of horror's central appeals. “Just as audiences crave the fear [the genre] elicits, they also take pleasure in its predictability,” Fahy writes, citing the sheer fun of it all as at least as equally important to horror's longevity as its mutability (12).This critical assumption of the genre's propensity for both familiar sameness and imaginative heterogeneity situates Fahy's anthology well within the bounds of a particular form of scholarly approach to horror. As with many standard, contemporary anthologies dedicated to examining cinematic genres, the book seeks to assemble a range of informed, genre-enthusiast voices and then provides a forum in which they might work to persuade and suggest. As he writes in his introduction, Fahy and his collaborators embrace their subject's multiplicity of “rich, strange, compelling, and disturbing elements” without insisting on any one defining theoretical model, pointing to the continuing prevalence of the genre as proof that such work calls to be done (4). The authors of Philosophy want to continue an “ongoing discussion about the popular need for and interest in horror,” a marketable fascination clear to anyone familiar with the sheer number of horror-related materials that fill screens large and small during the Halloween season (4).Citing the “popularity” of horror is a strategy of many attempts to wrestle with the genre, both continually legitimizing the study of often marginalized or even denigrated texts (proof that horror still revels in a certain mainstream disreputability) and evidencing an active fascination with, at times even a somewhat troubled but necessary acknowledgement of, horror's continual audience appeal. Unlike such classic works as Carroll's treatise or Men, Women, and Chainsaws (1993), Carol Clover's elegantly argued reassessment of the slasher film, still hallowed and frequently cited, Philosophy of Horror lacks the sustained, shaping vision traditionally expected of an individually authored text. Yet, as with many collections, one of Philosophy's strengths is this very plurality of critical opinion, representative of a desire to demonstrate the impossibility of containing or “summing up” what horror “means.” In this sense, the book would seem to be tacitly acknowledging the importance of “the spectator,” with all of “its” presumed variation in response to, and use of, the genre. Yet the collection stops short of completely adopting a reception or fan studies stance; the majority of the essays actively pursue reading strategies based on a privileging of authorial (or “autuerial”) intent. Where this plurality of meaning is ultimately found in Philosophy is the diverse range of texts and philosophical approaches adopted by the various authors.Appropriately, then, the assembled essays consider an array of textual objects ranging over a wide period, from Shelley's Frankenstein to Universal Studios' 1930s horror cycle, from Alfred Hitchcock's seminal horror films of the 1960s to the recent trend in torture–horror as seen in the Saw franchise, from Stephen King's novel The Shining and Stanley Kubrick's film adaptation to reality television's love affair with ghost hunting. Balancing “classic” texts with those forgotten, overlooked, or just outright dismissed, Philosophy primarily limits itself to a consideration of films—the essay on “horror” television being a noticeable exception—and the odd bit of literature, marrying them to the selected theorizing of a range of philosophers. Hume, Freud, Deleuze, Hobbes, Adorno, Irigaray, Kant, and Derrida are among the thinkers cited, although individual essays incorporate these theorists to noticeably different extents, with some authors relying on a chosen theoretician to provide their own arguments with a substantial speculative undergirding while others appear to merely reference some abstract notion almost in passing. The fact that the volume called on contributors to reference philosophy in the analysis of some horror text is quite clear from even a casual glance through the essays, yet it is in the closer reading that the success of individual articles becomes more apparent.Philosophy opens with two pieces offering more general discussions of the operation of horror as both a cognitive category and an experientially provoked emotional reaction. For Philip Nickel, the “value” of horror lies in its constant reminder that there are no certainties and that the idea of a commonsense-based “everyday” reality is precisely an illusion, while Philip Tallon sees horror providing at once a critique of Enlightenment optimism as well as a challenge to postmodern relativism, with its suggestion of a dearth of recognizably shared moral values. So the book opens with nods to Carroll's attempt to theorize a horror “master plan” centered on a presumed universal affect. Such an all-inclusive approach would no doubt disturb some who might cite the Deleuzian presence of “a myriad of fugitive impulses,” as does contributor Robert Gross writing on James Purdy's novel Narrow Rooms, when considering the interaction between any spectator and work of art (200).Yet there is nonetheless something compelling about the volume's willingness to start off by suggesting the lingering relevance of general theory. There is an aspect to horror that by its very muddling of any sense of clear demarcations between perception and emotion, between intellect and gut response, by its ability to get so far under the collective skin, that somewhat legitimizes any effort to account for such shared responses. Most people know what it is to be frightened, to be disturbed, and even accepting the necessary complications that arise when dipping into the specifics of cultural spectatorship, horror's ability to unnerve has something of the universal about it.Taken as a whole, the rest of the twelve essays, highly individualized accounts of the specific functioning of isolated texts, are quite illuminating, given the particulars of their focus and accounting for the degree to which the use of applied philosophy feels successful. Besides the two opening theoretical salvos, several essays are of particular note. Jeremy Morris provides a useful defense of the recent spate of critically disregarded torture–horror films, objects that he maintains remain important for the questions they raise regarding moral reactions to acts of torture, a still-relevant subject given the landscape of a post–9/11 America. Morris's piece can also be read as yet another defense of the extremes of horror, arguing that perhaps it is in those most challenging moments that the genre truly reveals the messy underbelly of a culture's unconscious.Jessica O'Hara's thoughtful read on the popularity of horror-themed reality television continues this exploration of an America haunted by recent historical tragedy. O'Hara argues that this trauma has led to a need to reestablish the primacy of the “domestic,” as witnessed in home improvement series such as While You Were Out, but also a desire to work through the terrorist threat to a “safe,” suburban domesticity, leading to a parallel but darker exploration of the inability to control one's home sphere—hence the fear of invisible spectral invasion. John Lutz's spirited comparison of the novel and film forms of The Shining intriguingly revisits both as a site for class and race conflict. But it is Paul Cantor's reexamination of a much-neglected work, Edger Ulmer's 1934 Universal Studios production The Black Cat, that deserves special attention. This film, overshadowed by its better-known colleagues Dracula and Frankenstein, has remained in relative obscurity, which is a shame given its stylistic elegance and density of textual significance. Cantor does a wonderful job picking apart the various threads of meaning running through Ulmer's meditation on the political and personal dimensions of the traumas of warfare, developing an early 1930s snapshot of the cultural relationship between a Europe haunted by one world war and preparing to enter another, and an America at that time left largely untouched by such “global” conflict.These standouts are such that they make up for the perhaps slightly weaker entries in the book—weaker if only because they tread very familiar ground by rehashing already well-worn arguments and coming to familiar conclusions. In this sense, though, even essays that may seem slightly clichéd mark the book as a useful introductory text for the genre novice. There may be nothing in Philosophy of Horror that really challenges conventional thinking in terms of genre theory and the specifics of horror scholarship, but what one does get is a solid collection with a range of objects and an appreciation for the sheer temporal reach of a genre that refuses to play it safe and shows little sign of dying off.