Ask your standard Joe on the street what horror is sometime. I'm
willing to bet that A: He or she gives examples rather than a
definition, and B: Most of those examples are movies, and they
include things like Dracula, Friday the Thirteenth, and Halloween, if
they're my age. If they're not, well, hopefully it's American Horror
Story or even Paranormal Activity. Just please not Twilight, because
it really isn't horror.
Now I need to veer a bit to one side here. Hold on to the rail,
please. While I'm distrustful of those who say one genre or another
has a 'purpose' or function,' I do think that some types of fiction
(printed or filmed) have effects on people. One effect that horror
can have, depending on how your head is wired, is to help you deal
with the 'real' things that you're afraid of. You watch Roddy
McDowall triumph over a murderous, psychotic ghost, then you don't
think having to ask your grouchy boss for some vacation time is as
bad as you thought it could be. A girl survives (mostly) an
encounter with a crazed family who kill all her friends with
meathooks and chainsaws, so you can survive doing your taxes. A
young doctor finds his true love and saves her from the vampirous
reincarnation of her distant ancestor, so I can get over the
disappointment of rejection and send more of my work out. We can
tell all those motivational gurus that they're full of it, but those
poor fools whose only sin was to take a wrong turn? Heck, that was
us just last week.
Now here's my question, how far off the path of reality do we need to
go? With the success of the Saw and Hostel series of movies, I'd be
hard pressed to say that those films don't offer their audiences
something. But I wonder if it's the same as the ones with a
supernatural element. I know that there's nothing overtly
supernatural in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, so maybe my second
example isn't the best, but the sheer craziness of the Leatherface
family keeps it from being torture porn. Even one of my favorite
directors, Takashi Miike, filmed 'Audition,' and had a cameo in one
of the Hostel movies (brief tangent, I saw Audition, and it creeped
me out like nothing else since when I saw Night of the Living Dead,
at about age ten).
Does it make the horror easier to deal with, if it's about something
unreal? I'm not going to address people's beliefs on ghosts, etc
here, because for this discussion it isn't rellevant. Do we come
away better armored for having watched The Exorcist, or The Last
House on the Left?
What, you think I know? I'm asking the question. What's your
answer?
Sadly, the bit in the second paragraph about rejection is true to
life. Amazon shot down Roja based on the pitch alone, and Gray
Matter Press declined on Dirty. Oh well.
I'm still writing.
