Reply to Jefferson Calico blog post "Can Horror Serve as Lament?"

In the blogger folder "I Watched and I Wondered" 3/25/24

https://beingviking.blogspot.com/2024/03/can-horror-serve-as-lament.html 

Dear Jefferson,

 

RE: Defining "Horror," per your recent blog.

 

Horace Walpole, in his introduction to his fantastical novel The Castle of Otranto (1764) gave us the word "Gothic" to define what would become the "horror" genre. He named his new style of novel after the architectural style of the titular castle. The fantastical element is based on folk and fairy tales of young women in danger from beastly husbands. This info is described in detail in Anne Williams' Art of Darkness (1995), the text I used to teach my gothic lit courses, and a text that defined scary literature (whatever you call it) in terms of feminism – the crafty innocent, usually a young woman, surviving her predicament through use of her own wits. The whole "final girl" concept is an outgrowth of this feminist gothicism, in my humble (arrogant?) opinion.

 

Ann Radcliff, in the years after Otranto, became very successful in the writing of Gothic novels, and most of hers held little or no supernatural elements, just young innocent females trying to escape from "monstrous" marriages in spooky circumstances.  She developed a fairly famous distinction between "Terror" and "horror," explained in a posthumous essay "On the Supernatural in Poetry" (1826). "Terror" is the feeling of suspense that leads up to a horrific event , whereas "horror" is the more visceral feeling of revulsion experienced at the moment of the event and afterward. She wrote novels of "Terror." 

 

Enh. I've always preferred the suspenseful to the blood-splattered immediacy of horror, and I often think of my favorite "horror" novels as those which might be called "Suspense" novels Perhaps Radcliffe followers would call them "Terror," but I think of them as "Horror."  To me, the best "horror" is the edge-of-your-seat page-turner such as "The Turn of the Screw" or The Haunting of Hill House – or Poe stories such as "The Fall of the House of Usher," which don't show their horror until the final page.

 

Julia Kristeva, in The Power of Horror, defines the chief quality of Radliffe's horror using the term "abjection." She defines "abjection" as that feeling of revulsion that results in a change in the body, such as nausea, screams, tears, elevated heart rate, fainting, or even something as simple as the reaction of turning away from the movie screen. "Abjection," I think, is the chief component of what you are calling "horror" in your essay – at least that's my interpretation. But then, I  tend to interpret  this whole "scary" family of genres in terms of Williams and Kristeva. My interpretation of them leads to (or perhaps derives from) the reconsideration of Roland Barthes' pop-art and Susan Sontag's "Against Interpretation" which claims that artistry is valid when defined as moment-to-moment visceral reactions Art is just a valid in this philosophy as it is when forced into interpretation models such as structuralism (art is defined by its structure).

 

But even in this pop-art philosophy, the moment-to-moment enjoyment, to me, comes from each instant of suspense as it leads us to "what is going to happen next?!?" This is one reason I do not mind ambiguous endings, such as that of "The Turn of the Screw." Each moment is appreciated as an artistry on its own terms. We are propelled toward the end. But the fact that we do not know exactly what has happened leads to an even more enjoyable experience as we ponder over the possibilities, and therefore keep the suspense alive. Because there is a death at the end of the book (or is there?), the whole narrative of the governess becomes a lament. The ghosts (the former servants who have died before the story begins) are not lamented. They are feared. ..because they are trying to overtake the children. They do not succeed, largely because of the cunningness and bravery of the governess. But does she "win"?

 

Nick

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In a casual reply to my response to him,Dr. Calico wondered if my response is elitist. Am I putting"Horror" into a sub-category that is aesthetically "less" than the suspense that prefer?

In reflection, I think I am probably being elitist. But my elitism has rough edges.

In much of my content, I reference the work of Susan Sontag. She wrote about the notion of "Camp" or "Campiness" as having its own legitimacy in the aesthetic world. She also wrote of her own brand of what would one day be called "postmodernism" (though she never called it that) as an attack of the elitism of Modernism, a counter to the Modernist insistence on "Greatness" in art, chiefly through defining art as "Structure."

The trouble with her position, and it is a position I admire, is that it ends up as an elitist position itself. To single out any type of messaging that proclaims itself artistic is to create hierarchies proclaiming that one thing is "better" than another. This is the conundrum of Sontag.

The conundrum fits my remarks also. I must admit that my comments set up a hierarchy of genres, for I am naturally inclined to dislike viseral "horror" in relation to a steady psychological suspense, something I much prefer. The abjection of horror, the rough, nauseating uncomfortability of it, I find grotesque. That loathsomeness and horribleness, though I do not prefer it as a "Scare," is, I must admit, an emotional impact that makes it as equal an artistry as any other.

Still, I would much prefer a hundredth reread of "The Turn of the Screw" to trudging through any Zombie Apocalypse novel. That's me.