What is a Horror Movie and What Does It Do

Prerequisite to any discussion on current trends in horror films is a definition of what constitutes a horror movie and what it ultimately achieves.  To help construct an at least rudimentary definition[1] of a horror movie, three observations will be made concerning 1) The Emotions of Horror, 2) The Object of Horror, and 3) The Monsters of Horror.

 Horror movies are primarily an emotional experience.  Indeed, horror movies are largely defined by the emotions they attempt to elicit from audiences: terror, dread, anxiety, agitation, unease, revulsion, or even nausea.[2]  Whatever the means, the goal is to draw audiences into a state of intense emotional distress.  This point calls for discernment between what Noel Carroll calls natural horror and art horror.[3]  Natural horror, refers to the emotional reaction of individuals to distressing news or circumstances in everyday or “real” life (e.g. the feeling of distress and outrage concerning the Manson Family murders).  Art horror, on the other hand, refers to the emotional reactions involved when reading or watching a fictional depiction of horrifying events.

The nuance, then, between natural horror and art horror refers to the vastly differing quality of the same types of emotions—such as fright.  Thus, an individual’s feelings of fright upon hearing news of a deranged serial killer on the loose in his area will be of a vastly different quality than the same person’s quality of fright while watching Michael Myers stalk Jamie Lee Curtis in Halloween.  This gives partial explanation for how some can enjoy the feelings of fright and dread experienced during a horror movie, and yet take no pleasure in true-life terror.[4]

If horror films work strenuously to elicit dread and terror in audiences, then what is the proper object of terror?  Death.  Not merely death though but what Stephen King calls the “bad death.”[5]  As Stephen King observes, horror movies often succeed by finding and breaking certain social taboos, and death remains the ultimate taboo.[6]  Most can agree that they fear death to some degree, but few would object to passing peacefully at home in bed.  On the other hand, no one eagerly desires to be eaten alive by a shark, stabbed to death in the shower, or driven mad by a demon.  Indeed, the most common fear connected with death is suffering and pain.  Thus, horror movies are predicated upon exploring the innumerable ways a person can experience an awful and exquisitely painful end: the bad death. [...]

Horror remains one of the most peculiar yet enduring film genres.  Yet why?  Commonsense speaks against horror’s success.  How could a mature, intelligent, moral—normal adult find pleasure in the horrific and often grotesque?  Few people intentionally punctuate their lives with gross or terrorizing elements.  As one author pointed out, few of us lift our trashcan lids with glee as we take in the fetid aromas of rot and decay.[1]  Nor do many of us enjoy placing ourselves in true, mortal danger, knowing we risk rape, maiming, or death.  Still millions of mature, intelligent, moral—normal adults willingly pay to see teenagers quartered with chainsaws, freakish monsters kill without mercy, and apocalyptic ends to humanity.  Why?

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In 1966 Time Magazine published this cover for all the world to see. The boldness of the lettering set against a black background remarkably parallels the intent of the author of those three little words, Friedrich Nietzsche. I want to explain what he meant by that infamous statement and, more importantly, explain how pluralism has proven him to be correct.

His statement is very easy to understand in broad strokes, so please don’t be turned back from this post because you think Nietzsche to be too smart or inscrutable for you to comprehend. I assure you, in this post, the most arduous task set before either you, as the reader, or myself, as the writer, will be for me to spell his name correctly (or at least consistently). Knowing this man and his philosophy will give you a deeper understanding of the world around you.

So let’s start by getting to know Nietzsche.

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Meaning has been lost in our culture today. This loss of meaning was brought forth by the loss of truth. Freidrich Neitszche is the father of nihilism, the philosophy which declares all things as meaningless. Many people today have difficulty finding meaning in their lives, and whether they know it or not, it is because they are slowly following down a dry and lonely path that leads to nihilism. The dominant perspective on truth in the western world today is one of relativism. By declaring truth relative, one essentially declares truth as nonexistent. This is how Nietszche understood the world, and he was dedicated enough to the pursuit of his philosophy to follow it wherever it led; in the end of his life, it led to insanity. He lost the will to live, because he knew that his life could hold no meaning. This should be a frightening example of where the erosion of truth can lead. Without truth there is no meaning, and without meaning there is no purpose.

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With the close of the 18^th Century, we began to see a new form of philosophy begin to shape.  Scientific questions were then a form of the current metaphysical branch of philosophy, known as natural philosophy, which sought answers through empirical knowledge (epistemology).  With the development of modern science and the birth of the scientific method, natural philosophy simply became an empirical and experimental activity, unlike the rest of philosophy.  The birth of the scientific method therefore separated metaphysics from natural philosophy, and metaphysics became a sole philosophical enquiry into the non-empirical and non-experimental questions of life and the nature of existence.  As the scientific method has evolved, it has become the popular belief that metaphysics and the scientific method can no longer co-exist together to be reliable.  Herbert Fiegl contended in the 1954 Journal of Philosophical Studies that there are “no philosophical postulates of science.”  He continues to say that the “scientific method can be explicated and justified without metaphysical presuppositions about the order or structure of nature.”[1]   

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