Why Horror?

            A frequented question I am posed by friends and family is: “How can you watch this crap?”  It becomes an obstacle I endure, my love of horror films.  It almost seems like I NEED to be feeling disgusted or offended by the visions that appear on the screen, and if I am not, there must be something seriously wrong or disturbed about me.  In a response to a letter I wrote to Fangoria where I voiced my disgust for the rampant homophobia in Eli Roth’s Hostel, Eli Roth questioned my sanity for being disturbed by the homophobic slurs and not the grotesque mutilation of one of his female victims.

I guess the question becomes “Do I understand and accept the general characteristics of the genre of horror, and do I appreciate the mechanisms employed to propel the kind of story being told?”  The answer is yes.  My answer then becomes a crutch for which I lean on in my appreciation of horror films.  You accept that there are particular tropes in the genre, and in many ways you anticipate their incitation. 

So now that I have suspended my disbelief, or compliant in accepting what I’m being shown, why do I find horror to be as significant as I think it is?  In many ways the response can be sussed out in my review of Jennifer’s Body (and other subsequent reviews to follow):  horror becomes a surreal visual spectacle that, when properly handled, has the ability to metaphorically represent theoretical conceptions of inner sociological and psychological struggles.  In other words, horror maintains the ability to avidly represent conceptual subjects away from their reality-based paradigms into a visual spectacle of surreal imagery.  Dramatic films simply represent the reality that exists (or at least they tries to), whereas horror internalizes the reality and fantastically represents the inner tensions and struggles that come from it.  It can occasionally create a visual representation of the psychological and sociological struggles that do not easily cater to direct visualizations.

Take the vastly disturbing Jacob’s Ladder starring Tim Robbins and directed by Adrian Lyne.  How could one possibly represent the psychosomatic turmoil of lead character Jacob Singer after he endured such catastrophic and traumatizing events without literal representations of demonic energy, gritty urban textures, and violently disturbing hauntings?  Horror in this case becomes the visceral negotiation between reality and insanity.  It tackles the supposed stasis of reality and directs it to new avenues and new possibilities of explaining the inner rhetoric of social life: how do we relate to ourselves after such scarring events?  How are my internalizations of gender restrictions manifesting in my relations with others?  These are but a few examples of questions that are often asked in horror films, whether they are intended by the filmmaker(s) or not.

The beauty of horror is that it can also transcend itself.  This visual inscription of psychological and social struggles surpass its own means to produce detailed elements that purge the inner inarticulateness of how we are affected by social relations.  It’s unreal, because it represents something that is not visually representable, but that’s not to say it has no reality.  The conflict in disagreement between the effectiveness of horror films relies on the personal relation of the (re)viewer to the visual detailings that are depicted onscreen: “Well, I wasn’t in the Vietnam War, but I’m sure the aftershock is not as visceral and demonic as is represented in Jacob’s Ladder”;  or, “Female-Female relations are no where near as complicated as Diablo Cody thinks they are.”  Of course the sentiments are never expressed in quite such a manner, instead they’re masked behind: “the acting sucks and the movie was just a piece of shit!”  It seems that horror films are grossly misunderstood because of a (re)viewer’s inability to relate to a particular filmmaker’s decisions on how to visually represent something that is usually unrepresentable.

              Now, of course I am not this naïve to think that the ONLY reason a film is panned are because of the inability of critics and audiences to relate to the visual interpretations of the story.  Some films are inarticulate, sloppily executed and void of artistic merit.  However, others show some real insight to intangible emotions.  This is why reactions to films that criticize the realistic plausibility of the actions, or plotlines tend to miss the point.  Be it, there can be some real problems with how some horror films choose to tell a story, sometimes what is necessary to understand them is the ability to empathize with the entire production, taking in everything from the dialogue, to the atmosphere, production design, casting decisions, acting prowess and the subsequent audience-performer relationship that projects itself on screen.  Horror films require the viewer to do two seemingly impossible things: to delve into oneself and the recesses of the psychosocial mind, and to go beyond oneself into understanding and conceptualizing a way of representation that is true for some, but not for others.