Paul Wells. The Horror Genre, from Beelzebub to Blair Witch. Wallflower, London, 2000.Introduction
"Like many people interested in the horror film, or indeed comedy, its allied genre, I view its analysis as something which should not strain too far after meaning for fear it might undermine the sensation created" (p.1)
"Thankfully the effects of horror or humour initially by-pass the inhibitions and intrusions of the intellect so the thrill can precede the theory" (p.1)
In the first section, Configuring the Monster, Paul Wells explores the key themes of the genre, the main issues and debates raised, and engage with approaches and theories that have been applied to horrors texts. The theoretical background is presented via the modernist context within which early horror texts evolved. Review of fundamental preoccupations, especially through psychoanalytical and gendered readings. Also includes case study that reviews indicative patterns of readings of horror films across different age groups (audience and reception studies). In the second section, Consensus and Constrain 1919-1960, and in the final section, Chaos and Collapse 1960-2000, he addresses the chronological evolution of the horror film, looking at how it reflected and commented upon particular historical periods. His analysis considers myth and gothic literature in early cinematic representations of horror. Post-war developments are reviewed in terms of revisiting this formulae. Contemporary gore and pathological states are considered through a discussion of auteurs reworking the genre field's of operation and its constant recycle.
Configuring the Monster
"The history of the horror film is essentially the history of anxiety in the twentieth century." (p.3)
"As the nineteenth century passed into the twentieth, this prevailing moral and ethical tension between the individual and the socio-political order was profoundly affected by some of the most significant shifts in social and cultural life. This effectively reconfigured the notion of evil in the horror text -soon to be a cinematic as well as a literary form - in a way that moved beyond the issues of fantasy and ideology and into the realms of material existence and overt challenge to established cultural value systems." (p.3)
* 19th century transformative discourses = political and economical theories, Karl Marx and The Communist Manifesto (1848). "Arguably the horror film embraces the leftist critique of this process, consistently invoking the 'monster' of the alienated and disadvantaged as the key protagonist against the bourgeois middle-class orthodoxies" (p.4)
"the genre has been used to explore modes of social 'revolution' in which naturalised ideas about bourgeois orthodoxies are transgressed, exposing how the 'working class' in Weimar's Germany, Depression-era America, Franco's Spain and so on have been oppressed and socially manipulated to maintain those advantaged by the late capitalism status quo." (p.4)
* 'Natural selection' as transformative discourse= Darwin's On the Origins of the Species (1859). Mankind artificially imposes itself upon the conditions of material existence, while nature changes the world slowly. Jekyll and Hyde, Birds would be films that address the 'revenge of nature'. Nature pitted against humankind's will to power.
* Friedrich Nietzsche's = " will to power" , humanity subject to degeneracy and spiritual crisis. He insists that humankind id nihilistic and Christian piety is the worst evil of all (as it does not come into contact with the reality of the world). Collapse of spiritual values echo in horror films.
* Sigmund Freud = emergence of psychoanalysis, structures of consciousness revealed at primal level. In the horror film this is usually linked to madness, dysfunctionality and psychosis, the monsters of the mind.
"Horror films have been analysed within a range of theoretical paradigms and discourses. The genre has been addressed in the light of its theological and moral perspectives, its sociological and cultural dimensions, its politics of representation, and its configuration as a set of texts particularly conducive to psychoanalytical approaches. Problematically, the horror genre has no clearly defined boundaries, and overlaps with aspects of science fiction and fantasy genres. Also, in recent years, many of its generic elements have been absorbed into the mainstream thriller. Arguably, there is no great benefit in attempting to disentangle these generic perspectives. It may be more constructive to proceed on the basis of addressing the distinctive elements of any on text within a particular historical moment.
It may be noted that the horror genre is predominantly concerned with death and the impacts and effects of the past, while science fiction is future-oriented, engaging with how human social existence could develop and dealing with humankind's predilection for self-destruction. While science fiction is potentially utopian (although often critically grounded), the horror genre is almost entirely dystopic, and often nihilistic in outlook". (p.7)
Devils and Doubles (sub-chapter) "Psychoanalyst Otto Rank wrote 'Der Doppelgänger' in 1914, suggesting that the double was essentially the way in which the soul or ego sought to preserve itself, ensuring against destruction by replicating itself. Bound up with a narcissistic self-love which is self-protecting and strongly predicated to the denial of death, this act of 'doubling' can work in reverse. Once the double is cleaved or threatened, it heightens the degree by which mortality and the signs of death are enhanced. It is of no surprise, therefore, to see the prominence of the motive in the horror text". (p.9)
On Ann Radcliffe opinion about Horror vs Terror = "Radcliffe's definition is enabling in the sense that texts maybe viewed in the light of 'terror' and its potential radicalism, or 'horror' and its creation of a seemingly reactionary position". (p.11)
Horror Films in Content (sub-chapter) "Arguably, if the horror text is to be culturally and historically pertinent, film-makers have to engage with an aesthetic space free from the moral and ethical obligations of the social paradigm in which they live - only then they can comment upon, and critique the conditions of, the material world. If the social concern about violence in the horror film is to be properly addressed, for example, it is crucial that such issues be treated responsibly, looking at violence as a reality and not the tilitatory experiences of the adventure spectacles which passes uncensored into cinemas every week. The horror text does this in a variety of ways, and this is why, as a genre, it remains subversive and challenging because it foregrounds, through the comparative safety of fiction, the very agendas humankind needs to address in 'fact'. While it remains contentious, and subject to considerable opposition, the horror film makes us confront our complex 'darker' agendas, and in this it serves an important function as progressive and sometimes radical genre, in the face of reactionary stances". (p.24)
"Although seemingly nihilistic in outlook, the horror film can continually remind an audience of the things that about which it should neither be complacent nor accepting". (p.35)
