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Horror: A Biography
There's more to horror than cheap thrills. Beginning with Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, tales of horror have consistently drawn a connection between transgressive sex and violent death. In this captivating history from the French Revolution to modern Hollywood, E. Michael Jones reveals the origins of horror in the lives of its creators.Tormented by her husband's spectacular debauchery, Mary Shelley created a powerful and unforgettable avenging monster. Rising in repudiation of the very way of life that produced it, Frankenstein's monster, Jones shows, became the model for all others.
Turning next to Bram Stoker's Dracula, Jones follows the progress of horror from the syphilitic underworld of Victorian England to Weimar Germany and the classic film Nosferatu. Bringing his account to the end of the twentieth century, he shows how the Western imagination has responded to the explosive force of the sexual revolution with horror of unprecedented intensity. In the Alien series and other contemporary films, the culture of abortion and pornography has spawned a new and terrifying breed of avenging monster.
Jones's provocative book
▪ Shows fans of Steven King, Anne Rice, and Wes Craven "what lies beneath."
▪ Explores the chaotic lives and haunted consciences of the men and women who created horror
▪ Reveals the connection between sex and horror
▪ Explains our need for horror -- and why we don't understand it
Turning next to Bram Stoker's Dracula, Jones follows the progress of horror from the syphilitic underworld of Victorian England to Weimar Germany and the classic film Nosferatu. Bringing his account to the end of the twentieth century, he shows how the Western imagination has responded to the explosive force of the sexual revolution with horror of unprecedented intensity. In the Alien series and other contemporary films, the culture of abortion and pornography has spawned a new and terrifying breed of avenging monster.
Jones's provocative book
▪ Shows fans of Steven King, Anne Rice, and Wes Craven "what lies beneath."
▪ Explores the chaotic lives and haunted consciences of the men and women who created horror
▪ Reveals the connection between sex and horror
▪ Explains our need for horror -- and why we don't understand it
312 pages, Paperback
First published June 30, 2000
22 people are currently reading
726 people want to read
About the author
E. Michael Jones
69 books360 followersCatholic writer, former professor at Saint Mary's College in Indiana and the current editor of Culture Wars magazine.
E. Micheal Jones is controversial for his criticism against judaism.
E. Micheal Jones is controversial for his criticism against judaism.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 48 reviews
March 29, 2015
In this philosophical examination of the modern horror genre, E Michael Jones argues that, from Frankenstein to Alien, the genre rests upon a three-way blend of lust, philosophy, and death.
I'll try to give a brief description of the book's main points. First, Jones argues that much of modern philosophy, especially Enlightenment thought, is an attempt to rationalise lust. Before lust can be acted upon, the moral order must be rendered somehow irrelevant. Philosophy is thus used to repress (Jones's term) the moral order. Sadeian materialism reduces bodies and what one does with them to a purely physical/technological act.
The relationship between sexual liberation and horror, in Jones's terms, goes like this: sexual liberation divorces the body and sex from the moral order. Similarly, horror divorces the body and violence from the moral order (in a more clearly perverse, and therefore horrifying way). In addition, you cannot divorce the body from the moral order for the purposes of sex, without opening the door (as Sade argued) to violence.
The reward for turning man into a machine has always been sexual, but it has always had horror as its immediate consequence. If man is simply the locus of local motions with no transcendent purpose, then he can do with his body what he wants. But if he can use other bodies in that fashion, then other bodies can also use him. And so the first thought which occurs following the transformation of man into a machine--ie, sexual liberation--is quickly followed by the second thought, namely, terror. If I can do that to them, the newly liberated human machine suddenly realises, then they can do that to me.
With this, Jones makes the case that the horror genre is the re-emergence of this repressed moral order. The mass popularity of horror is the symptom of a culture which has been violently traumatised by the wages of sin. The trauma must be somehow expressed, but the culture is not ready to repent of the lusts and bad philosophy that got it into its fix in the first place. So catharsis is sought in the highly ambivalent horror genre, in which the monster is both identified with and fought by its victims. In Frankenstein, Frankenstein's creation is both sympathetic and terrifying because it is both the result and the punishment of the maker's pride. In horror, monsters are intolerable and must be resisted because they represent something the culture is unwilling to acknowledge about the moral order. At the same time, the monsters are next to impossible to destroy, maybe even perversely desirable, because ignorance of inconvenient moral realities must never be faced: it is better to be preyed upon by something you do not understand, than to neuter the monster by understanding what you do not wish to admit that deep down, you really do understand.
This is complex, but I seem to understand what Jones is saying if I apply it to the Oedipus myth. In the backstory, Oedipus was exposed as a child. He then comes back and owing to no fault of their own (poor things) his parents suffer death and incest at his (equally innocent) hands. The horrible things that happen to Oedipus and his family are divorced from any moral order. There is no explanation for why the bad things happen; certainly not that infanticide is a ghastly crime worthy of punishment.
A similar thing does appear to be going on in, for example, Alien, which Jones explains as a war against motherhood and fertility. The chest-bursting alien was designed to look vaguely fetal, and the liberated feminist heroine makes it her mission to destroy the mother-aliens and their children whose fecundity is depicted as a monstrous threat to the safety of the entire universe.
So far so clear. I'm not so sure I buy Jones's use of psychological terminology ("repression", for instance). He made a lot of conclusions that I didn't see a logical progression to--but that may simply be because he is describing something that is fundamentally illogical: the guilty soul's response to the trauma inflicted by his own sins on those around him. That said, I'm fairly willing to call this book the most insightful thing I've ever read on the topic of horror fiction and film.
I'll try to give a brief description of the book's main points. First, Jones argues that much of modern philosophy, especially Enlightenment thought, is an attempt to rationalise lust. Before lust can be acted upon, the moral order must be rendered somehow irrelevant. Philosophy is thus used to repress (Jones's term) the moral order. Sadeian materialism reduces bodies and what one does with them to a purely physical/technological act.
The relationship between sexual liberation and horror, in Jones's terms, goes like this: sexual liberation divorces the body and sex from the moral order. Similarly, horror divorces the body and violence from the moral order (in a more clearly perverse, and therefore horrifying way). In addition, you cannot divorce the body from the moral order for the purposes of sex, without opening the door (as Sade argued) to violence.
The reward for turning man into a machine has always been sexual, but it has always had horror as its immediate consequence. If man is simply the locus of local motions with no transcendent purpose, then he can do with his body what he wants. But if he can use other bodies in that fashion, then other bodies can also use him. And so the first thought which occurs following the transformation of man into a machine--ie, sexual liberation--is quickly followed by the second thought, namely, terror. If I can do that to them, the newly liberated human machine suddenly realises, then they can do that to me.
With this, Jones makes the case that the horror genre is the re-emergence of this repressed moral order. The mass popularity of horror is the symptom of a culture which has been violently traumatised by the wages of sin. The trauma must be somehow expressed, but the culture is not ready to repent of the lusts and bad philosophy that got it into its fix in the first place. So catharsis is sought in the highly ambivalent horror genre, in which the monster is both identified with and fought by its victims. In Frankenstein, Frankenstein's creation is both sympathetic and terrifying because it is both the result and the punishment of the maker's pride. In horror, monsters are intolerable and must be resisted because they represent something the culture is unwilling to acknowledge about the moral order. At the same time, the monsters are next to impossible to destroy, maybe even perversely desirable, because ignorance of inconvenient moral realities must never be faced: it is better to be preyed upon by something you do not understand, than to neuter the monster by understanding what you do not wish to admit that deep down, you really do understand.
This is complex, but I seem to understand what Jones is saying if I apply it to the Oedipus myth. In the backstory, Oedipus was exposed as a child. He then comes back and owing to no fault of their own (poor things) his parents suffer death and incest at his (equally innocent) hands. The horrible things that happen to Oedipus and his family are divorced from any moral order. There is no explanation for why the bad things happen; certainly not that infanticide is a ghastly crime worthy of punishment.
A similar thing does appear to be going on in, for example, Alien, which Jones explains as a war against motherhood and fertility. The chest-bursting alien was designed to look vaguely fetal, and the liberated feminist heroine makes it her mission to destroy the mother-aliens and their children whose fecundity is depicted as a monstrous threat to the safety of the entire universe.
So far so clear. I'm not so sure I buy Jones's use of psychological terminology ("repression", for instance). He made a lot of conclusions that I didn't see a logical progression to--but that may simply be because he is describing something that is fundamentally illogical: the guilty soul's response to the trauma inflicted by his own sins on those around him. That said, I'm fairly willing to call this book the most insightful thing I've ever read on the topic of horror fiction and film.
March 20, 2021
This book is nothing less than a work of genius that is enjoyable from start to finish. Horror is explained as the manifestation of several things: the return of the repressed moral order in the form of a nameless monster because we don't understand the nature and consequences of said repression; the thing that is too terrible to talk about, yet too terrible not to talk about; the concealing of that which we know in our hearts but cannot admit; that sex disconnected from the moral order always leads to death; technology as substitute for morality; an indirect approach to subjects we are afraid to approach directly... Just brilliant analysis and insights throughout. Don't miss the wonderful explication of the Alien trilogy in the epilogue. Highly recommended!
December 26, 2011
Reviev: http://atrossbooks.com/2011/12/26/boo...
The rise of horror fiction in the Western world is a psychological expression of the angst and guilty conscience of Enlightenment man, who is pressed down by his conscience for the sexual revolution. That is the central thrust of Monsters From the Id, written by conservative Roman Catholic "culture warrior" E. Michael Jones, whose book has become rather popular among conservative Christians dealing with literature and cultural issues.
Unfortunately, the book is awful.
Now, don't get me wrong. The Enlightenment is a favorite whipping boy that richly deserves another elbow jammed in its ribs. But we ought not to go thrashing around without a focused reason, and it seems to me that Jones' fails (utterly) to provide a justification for the argument he makes. Part of this failure (the larger part) falls on a small group of basic assumptions that throw off his whole reading of history and his texts. He is focused almost entirely on Frankenstein and Dracula, and the history of the people who produced, or surrounded those who did produce, both works. Thus, the first hundred or so pages of the book is entirely focused on the history and background of Mary Shelly, including extensive excursus on Godwin, Byron, and others who made up Mary Shelley's social world.
There is nothing particularly wrong with investigating the background and history of the author to give broad thematic insights into the work. However, this is not what Jones' attempts to do. Rather, he looks for specific connections between events in Shelly's life which he then attempts to correlate with specific lines or moments in Frankenstein. Essentially, he is operating from the fatal assumption that literature is biography; that authors cram all kinds of specific references to their external lives into their work. This is one of the greatest literary fallacies of our era, and it usually falls flat. In this case it falls especially flat because Jones' can't even get his connections to make obvious sense within his text. He builds his argument by fronting each argument with a bunch of unsupported text, then mentions a moment in Shelley's life, quotes from a single line of Frankenstein, and then must conclude with more unsupported supposition just to get the two things to jive. You can watch the progress unfold. When he is summarizing the historical events there are a number of footnotes. Then he interpreted the text in a string of unsupported readings (which skate on pretty thin ice as they stand), at which time the footnotes drop away. He does this over and over. I frequently found his connections a stretch at best, and a complete eisegesis at worst. In short, he is so sure that sexual liberation was the cause of Shelley's nightmare and inspiration for Frankenstein that he can see almost nothing else - which reveals more about himself than Shelley.
It is the same with Bram Stoker and Dracula. He argues that the vampire is a metaphor for Victorian-era men who contract syphilis from brothel women, then return home to infect their virginal wives. Now, it is true that Stoker died of syphilis himself, but to claim this interpretation as the meaning of Dracula is a staggering claim, one that is, given what he can marshal in his support, very weak. The vampire concept had been around long before Stoker, long before any of the supposed "historical" Draculas' and has a much bigger, mythical meaning. It has also been demonstrated by a recent book that Stoker's central work in re-defining the vampire myth was to co-opt it for the Christian faith (Susannah Clements, The Vampire Defanged, ch. 1), to turn the vampire symbol into a picture of the Serpent who could only be defeated by faith and the cross - much as the transcriber of Beowulf turned a pagan myth into a Gentile version of the Old Testament, waiting and yearning for Christ to set them free from their endless cycles of violence. (I've written much more on Dracula and Beowulf in this context here.)
The real problem with Jones' reading of these two texts, beyond his obvious mistake of literature-as-biography, is that he falls into precisely the same trap he attacks the Enlightenment and his radical progressives (like Byron and Shelley) in the book for. By offering us a reading of fiction that reduces the stories to biography, Jones' shows us a truncated, reductionistic version of the stories which turns myth into history, fiction into reality. He is participating in the same Modernist yearning to get rid of the story and just get to the "essence" of the stories. Just as we have films like King Arthur and Becoming Jane which offer viewers the "real story" on how Arthur became king (stripped of its mythical qualities) or on how Jane Austen's own life impacted her stories, so Jones has proclaimed that Dracula is nothing more than a Victorian prig with a bad case of the VD, and Frankenstein's Monster nothing more than Mary Shelley's disturbed and guilty conscience come to wreak vengeance upon her for her sexual infidelities. For all of his criticism of Enlightenment Modernism, Jones stands firmly entrenched in their camp.
Correlatedwith this is Jones' argument that the horror genre has its origins in sexual sin. The monster, then, represents "strict justice," "an eye for an eye," or "the angel of Death," who comes to sinners and destroys them for their sins, according to Jones. While some ancillary evidence might match this idea (the fornicating couple always gets killed in the woods by the monster), this seems too simplistic an explanation which trends too far into the realm of Jungian psychology. It is not so obvious whether modern horror is a production of the Enlightenment radicalism at all; while as a genre, horror as distinguished from fantasy and paranormal fiction is new from the Enlightenment period, it is closely tied to the tragic romance. Romance was the original genre that included what we now call the "speculative fiction genres," like fantasy, science fiction, horror, and paranormal fiction. All these genres originally participated in one another very closely from ancient Greece up to the Reformation/Renaissance period, which makes pin-pointing the causes of the distinction between them difficult. What, after all, is the quantitative difference between Oedipus Rex and a film like Saw? There is brutal description of eye-gouging violence, fear, and catharsis in both. So it seems that modern horror is a subset of both tragedy and the classical romance - not Enlightenment radical progressivism and the guilt such people hold. Ancient mythology is full of creatures as evil and strange as any horror movie monster. The matter is sufficiently muddled that easy claims like Jones' mean almost nothing without more extensive research.
The lack of real argumentation in the stead of simply assuming his reading is correct results in the book being almost a full failure, suffusing practically every page. This alone could have prevented my enjoyment of the book, but because the mistake is so vast, with so many implications coming along with it, I am unsure of what (if anything) can be gleaned that will be potentially helpful for the Christian who is interested in learning about the origins of horror fiction, or its purposes. Christians understand so little already about how literature works that such a book could only lead them further astray.
The rise of horror fiction in the Western world is a psychological expression of the angst and guilty conscience of Enlightenment man, who is pressed down by his conscience for the sexual revolution. That is the central thrust of Monsters From the Id, written by conservative Roman Catholic "culture warrior" E. Michael Jones, whose book has become rather popular among conservative Christians dealing with literature and cultural issues.
Unfortunately, the book is awful.
Now, don't get me wrong. The Enlightenment is a favorite whipping boy that richly deserves another elbow jammed in its ribs. But we ought not to go thrashing around without a focused reason, and it seems to me that Jones' fails (utterly) to provide a justification for the argument he makes. Part of this failure (the larger part) falls on a small group of basic assumptions that throw off his whole reading of history and his texts. He is focused almost entirely on Frankenstein and Dracula, and the history of the people who produced, or surrounded those who did produce, both works. Thus, the first hundred or so pages of the book is entirely focused on the history and background of Mary Shelly, including extensive excursus on Godwin, Byron, and others who made up Mary Shelley's social world.
There is nothing particularly wrong with investigating the background and history of the author to give broad thematic insights into the work. However, this is not what Jones' attempts to do. Rather, he looks for specific connections between events in Shelly's life which he then attempts to correlate with specific lines or moments in Frankenstein. Essentially, he is operating from the fatal assumption that literature is biography; that authors cram all kinds of specific references to their external lives into their work. This is one of the greatest literary fallacies of our era, and it usually falls flat. In this case it falls especially flat because Jones' can't even get his connections to make obvious sense within his text. He builds his argument by fronting each argument with a bunch of unsupported text, then mentions a moment in Shelley's life, quotes from a single line of Frankenstein, and then must conclude with more unsupported supposition just to get the two things to jive. You can watch the progress unfold. When he is summarizing the historical events there are a number of footnotes. Then he interpreted the text in a string of unsupported readings (which skate on pretty thin ice as they stand), at which time the footnotes drop away. He does this over and over. I frequently found his connections a stretch at best, and a complete eisegesis at worst. In short, he is so sure that sexual liberation was the cause of Shelley's nightmare and inspiration for Frankenstein that he can see almost nothing else - which reveals more about himself than Shelley.
It is the same with Bram Stoker and Dracula. He argues that the vampire is a metaphor for Victorian-era men who contract syphilis from brothel women, then return home to infect their virginal wives. Now, it is true that Stoker died of syphilis himself, but to claim this interpretation as the meaning of Dracula is a staggering claim, one that is, given what he can marshal in his support, very weak. The vampire concept had been around long before Stoker, long before any of the supposed "historical" Draculas' and has a much bigger, mythical meaning. It has also been demonstrated by a recent book that Stoker's central work in re-defining the vampire myth was to co-opt it for the Christian faith (Susannah Clements, The Vampire Defanged, ch. 1), to turn the vampire symbol into a picture of the Serpent who could only be defeated by faith and the cross - much as the transcriber of Beowulf turned a pagan myth into a Gentile version of the Old Testament, waiting and yearning for Christ to set them free from their endless cycles of violence. (I've written much more on Dracula and Beowulf in this context here.)
The real problem with Jones' reading of these two texts, beyond his obvious mistake of literature-as-biography, is that he falls into precisely the same trap he attacks the Enlightenment and his radical progressives (like Byron and Shelley) in the book for. By offering us a reading of fiction that reduces the stories to biography, Jones' shows us a truncated, reductionistic version of the stories which turns myth into history, fiction into reality. He is participating in the same Modernist yearning to get rid of the story and just get to the "essence" of the stories. Just as we have films like King Arthur and Becoming Jane which offer viewers the "real story" on how Arthur became king (stripped of its mythical qualities) or on how Jane Austen's own life impacted her stories, so Jones has proclaimed that Dracula is nothing more than a Victorian prig with a bad case of the VD, and Frankenstein's Monster nothing more than Mary Shelley's disturbed and guilty conscience come to wreak vengeance upon her for her sexual infidelities. For all of his criticism of Enlightenment Modernism, Jones stands firmly entrenched in their camp.
Correlatedwith this is Jones' argument that the horror genre has its origins in sexual sin. The monster, then, represents "strict justice," "an eye for an eye," or "the angel of Death," who comes to sinners and destroys them for their sins, according to Jones. While some ancillary evidence might match this idea (the fornicating couple always gets killed in the woods by the monster), this seems too simplistic an explanation which trends too far into the realm of Jungian psychology. It is not so obvious whether modern horror is a production of the Enlightenment radicalism at all; while as a genre, horror as distinguished from fantasy and paranormal fiction is new from the Enlightenment period, it is closely tied to the tragic romance. Romance was the original genre that included what we now call the "speculative fiction genres," like fantasy, science fiction, horror, and paranormal fiction. All these genres originally participated in one another very closely from ancient Greece up to the Reformation/Renaissance period, which makes pin-pointing the causes of the distinction between them difficult. What, after all, is the quantitative difference between Oedipus Rex and a film like Saw? There is brutal description of eye-gouging violence, fear, and catharsis in both. So it seems that modern horror is a subset of both tragedy and the classical romance - not Enlightenment radical progressivism and the guilt such people hold. Ancient mythology is full of creatures as evil and strange as any horror movie monster. The matter is sufficiently muddled that easy claims like Jones' mean almost nothing without more extensive research.
The lack of real argumentation in the stead of simply assuming his reading is correct results in the book being almost a full failure, suffusing practically every page. This alone could have prevented my enjoyment of the book, but because the mistake is so vast, with so many implications coming along with it, I am unsure of what (if anything) can be gleaned that will be potentially helpful for the Christian who is interested in learning about the origins of horror fiction, or its purposes. Christians understand so little already about how literature works that such a book could only lead them further astray.
April 30, 2017
Id imagine this might be the first controversial book I've read. I have no doubt that this author is someone that is not thought of in a good light by most people whose company one might prefer to be in, and thought well of by people one might not want to be associated with. This book being conflicting even in rating it and my hesitation of giving it five stars, thinking by giving it just four it would give off a great appreciation while showing that I had my reservations. I am shadowed by these thoughts and where my search has taken me, and where it will take me. I have shed myself of friendships so that I can move more freely through the pool of human thought, and perhaps this will be read by someone who will think less of me for having read this with such enthusiasm, so be it. It has been a conscious search as of late to look for the foundations of contemporary human thought, how we got to where we are at idea-wise and why? I felt that the author for this book has a firm grip on at least one of those foundations, and is the reason I had a hard time putting the book down. Jones has much to say on a topic that I find fascinating and gave a convincing back drop to how it is that the horror genre came about. My rating goes very much to his credit for that and also the amount of thought that poured out of me while reading this. Insights that I've longed to have, but more importantly this book gives me much to research, and because of it opens a whole new door of history for me to explore. Specifically the idea of the Enlightenment and what it proposed, the French Revolution, Mary Shelly, the Marquis de Sade, and some horror films. The conclusions of our forebears become our premises I found to be a most exciting thought, and one that I've looked to have articulated. This book was simply revolutionary to my thoughts, and I am grateful for it.
Read
May 1, 2022Wow. Truly horrifying, fascinating, and provoking. For a good summary recommend Doug Wilson’s podcast where he interviews the author. Throwing off the moral law, especially via sexual “liberation” always leads to death. If you want any more proof that philosophies have consequences, or the Enlightenment was a bad deal look no further. I especially like the sections on Percy Shelley and Nazi Germany.
May 6, 2025
Wow was this good, as if I didn't need more reasons to see the enlightenment as the ideological equivalent of Chernobyl, and we've reaped the radioactive whirlwind.
My main critique of the book is that it suffers from example exhaustion, but perhaps that's the dark subject matter weighing me down after countless examples.
My main critique of the book is that it suffers from example exhaustion, but perhaps that's the dark subject matter weighing me down after countless examples.
August 20, 2009
I can't possibly summarize this book. You need to read it if you want to understand our culture's fixation on horror in film and fiction!
June 27, 2022
"Monsters From the Id" is an impressive work of scholarship--demonstrating the impact of the sexual revolution upon cultures and the way the resulting guilt is manifested through the horror genre. I listened to this, though this is one of those books that is probably best read, so as to be able to easily review and re-read portions of it.
This book was more than twenty years ago, but is able to help explain our contemporary culture in remarkably prophetic and illuminating ways. Highly, highly recommended!
This book was more than twenty years ago, but is able to help explain our contemporary culture in remarkably prophetic and illuminating ways. Highly, highly recommended!
May 7, 2022
You'll get an education in the French Revolution, the Enlightenment, the Romantics, fear and manipulation of the masses, and will come to understand how sexual "liberation" (sexuality divorced from the Biblical standard) inevitably leads to violence and death. I look forward to reading more from Jones.
June 5, 2024
Insightful. You can really tell you’re hearing from someone who understands his subject material. This book shows you the really ugly side of the enlightenment, the messy and grotesque lives behind all the lofty words. You also see just what a mess it has created downstream in contemporary pop culture.
March 20, 2024
I believe I can summarize my thoughts in list form rather than paragraph form.
- If “Rise and Triumph” is a 35,000 foot flyover of postmodern thought, “Monsters” is a carriage ride through one town of postmodern thought. This book is slower than paint drying.
- Jones desperately needs an editor. I do not care for his style at all. Even if I liked his style, he still desperately needs an editor.
- Jones has keen insights but explains them poorly. He assumes you know what he’s talking about without explaining it. This will likely make it inaccessible to uninformed readers.
- I have no desire to read Jones again.
- If “Rise and Triumph” is a 35,000 foot flyover of postmodern thought, “Monsters” is a carriage ride through one town of postmodern thought. This book is slower than paint drying.
- Jones desperately needs an editor. I do not care for his style at all. Even if I liked his style, he still desperately needs an editor.
- Jones has keen insights but explains them poorly. He assumes you know what he’s talking about without explaining it. This will likely make it inaccessible to uninformed readers.
- I have no desire to read Jones again.
November 2, 2022
Listened to this as an audiobook on the CanonPlus app. Lots of detail here, very solid thesis. Will never look at the horror genre the same. I generally avoid horror movies, and can't say I have ever seen a slasher movie. That the entire genre is a reaction to the Enlightenment rejection of traditional moral norms is fascinating. I was largely ignorant of the role of syphilis and other venereal diseases in history, and amazed to discover that the sexual revolution of the 1960s would hardly have been possible without the discovery penicillin. Based on current events during the second and third decade of the 21st century, I will predict that the horror genre will not be going away any time soon.
May 1, 2014
"Vampirism and disease are ultimately metaphors for lust, which is a perversion of sexuality into something not life-giving but life-draining." p. 97
Jones identifies a pattern from the book of James that he calls the sex-horror trajectory, the movement from desire to death by way of guilt, metaphorically portrayed as a monster. He then applies this to cultural expressions of horror from Frankenstein and Dracula to Alien and Cronenberg.
The enlightenment is Jones' chief monster, in which man seeks to replace God through physics and electricity, and then Darwin and biology. When God is unnecessary, so is His sexual morality. The Enlightenment sought to remake morality in order to free mankind, but remains unable to escape guilt, which keeps reappearing in the form of monsters from the id.
Marriage, fatherhood, monogamy, and heterosexuality must all be cleared away, and then the peace and light of man's newfound freedom will spread. Unfortunately, since God is real, and man is inescapably moral, the Enlightment vision ends up in terror.
Jones' work is important and convincing, but not without flaws. He demonstrates clear links to horror's foundational myths, but surrounds them with amateur psychology and unsubstantiated assertions concerning motives and mindsets. His central insight, however, is extremely valuable, and powerfully explains the driving force behind the monsters of popular culture.
Jones identifies a pattern from the book of James that he calls the sex-horror trajectory, the movement from desire to death by way of guilt, metaphorically portrayed as a monster. He then applies this to cultural expressions of horror from Frankenstein and Dracula to Alien and Cronenberg.
The enlightenment is Jones' chief monster, in which man seeks to replace God through physics and electricity, and then Darwin and biology. When God is unnecessary, so is His sexual morality. The Enlightenment sought to remake morality in order to free mankind, but remains unable to escape guilt, which keeps reappearing in the form of monsters from the id.
Marriage, fatherhood, monogamy, and heterosexuality must all be cleared away, and then the peace and light of man's newfound freedom will spread. Unfortunately, since God is real, and man is inescapably moral, the Enlightment vision ends up in terror.
Jones' work is important and convincing, but not without flaws. He demonstrates clear links to horror's foundational myths, but surrounds them with amateur psychology and unsubstantiated assertions concerning motives and mindsets. His central insight, however, is extremely valuable, and powerfully explains the driving force behind the monsters of popular culture.
April 19, 2022
This book is a fascinating study into the origins of horror in literature. I never realized how deeply connected the rise of the Enlightenment and the rise of horror is, and how those two things still impact our culture today. There is a terrible trajectory from sexual liberation to violence and death, which left many baffled how something intended to be so freeing went so terribly wrong. We see that today from how the sexual revolution culminated into the rise of STD's, the #MeToo movement, etc.; many people have been left suffering from what was intended to "liberate" them. Unable to say that there's anything wrong, people often turn to horror stories as a cathartic experience to deal with their guilt. That's why horror stories are often very moral, they reflect what happens in life if you violate the moral order. While this book deals with some very difficult topics, it is a really important and insightful look at the effects of the Enlightenment on us today.
January 22, 2025
Started off interesting and I agree with his initial argument. However this book fell flat for me for multiple reasons.
1. The writing is incredibly repetitive. Half the length would have sufficed to get his point across.
2. His actual analysis of individual works of fiction were lacking in support. They boiled down to finding connections between the writer’s personal life and moments in their story without any real supports, or in other places explaining the meaning of a story or scene through the lens of specific philosophical movements and ideas without supporting those explanations and connections. His explanation of the blood testing scene in The Thing was an especially egregious example.
3. I found several sections to be unnecessarily crass, especially the later chapters revolving around the rise of pornography. There was no need for some of the detailed (and repetitive) descriptions of the wicked things done in the dark.
1. The writing is incredibly repetitive. Half the length would have sufficed to get his point across.
2. His actual analysis of individual works of fiction were lacking in support. They boiled down to finding connections between the writer’s personal life and moments in their story without any real supports, or in other places explaining the meaning of a story or scene through the lens of specific philosophical movements and ideas without supporting those explanations and connections. His explanation of the blood testing scene in The Thing was an especially egregious example.
3. I found several sections to be unnecessarily crass, especially the later chapters revolving around the rise of pornography. There was no need for some of the detailed (and repetitive) descriptions of the wicked things done in the dark.
November 27, 2023
The premise is cool, this guy is a genius, but I liked hearing his thoughts more on a podcast versus the book.
November 30, 2022
Even as the subject matter often made my skin crawl and my stomach a bit queasy, this was a satisfying read: E Michael Jones is a very enjoyable writer to read, and I thought his thesis was pretty-well water-tight. Unsurprisingly, it is a bit sexually graphic in some places, but if you can endure that, there's a real treasure trove here.
E Michael Jones draws a fascinating series of connections between our post-Enlightenment guilty conscience about our sexual perversions, and the major horror novels and films have emerged at key points in the sexual revolution. The case for Frankenstein was particularly fascinating to me, in that the novel drew so heavily on the weird sexual-revolutionary drama of which Mary Shelley was a witness and participant.
Many other books and films are discussed in great detail (and frequently spoiled, if that kind of thing matters to you). Because I'd seen few of them if any, I may not be a good judge of how well Jones interprets the films. Still, this was a very strong prima facie case for how horror betrays our culture's guilty conscience, and was a needful reminder that lust gives birth to sin, and sin when it is fully-grown gives birth to death.
E Michael Jones draws a fascinating series of connections between our post-Enlightenment guilty conscience about our sexual perversions, and the major horror novels and films have emerged at key points in the sexual revolution. The case for Frankenstein was particularly fascinating to me, in that the novel drew so heavily on the weird sexual-revolutionary drama of which Mary Shelley was a witness and participant.
Many other books and films are discussed in great detail (and frequently spoiled, if that kind of thing matters to you). Because I'd seen few of them if any, I may not be a good judge of how well Jones interprets the films. Still, this was a very strong prima facie case for how horror betrays our culture's guilty conscience, and was a needful reminder that lust gives birth to sin, and sin when it is fully-grown gives birth to death.
March 18, 2024
This man loves the word "inchoate."
He focuses on Frankenstein and Dracula, except it's mostly about Frankenstein, except it's actually endless histories of Mary Wollstonecraft and Godwin and Mary Shelley and Percy Shelley and the French Revolution and syphilis and Kinsley and his research and pre-Nazi/mid-Nazi Germany and on and on. He barely talks about the books and he talks even less about the movies these monsters inspired. And he falls into the same trope that all literary and movie critics seem to fall into: cramming their chosen metaphor onto the movie and ignoring everything that would disprove or damage their metaphor.
For instance: apparently the blood test in The Thing is the same as Nazi blood purity because Kurt Russell's character is deciding who counts as a human which is bad. This ignores the fact that there is a literal alien shapeshifter that has been replacing actual humans by taking them over (which kills them, of course). Kurt Russell isn't deciding shit; there's real hostile non-humans amongst the group! Why are you ignoring what is actually happening in the movie!?
He talks the most about actual films in the prologue and towards the last four chapters. All the ones he talks about that I have seen or have a decent idea of the plot do the same thing he did with The Thing.
The history was interesting but not what I read the book for.
He focuses on Frankenstein and Dracula, except it's mostly about Frankenstein, except it's actually endless histories of Mary Wollstonecraft and Godwin and Mary Shelley and Percy Shelley and the French Revolution and syphilis and Kinsley and his research and pre-Nazi/mid-Nazi Germany and on and on. He barely talks about the books and he talks even less about the movies these monsters inspired. And he falls into the same trope that all literary and movie critics seem to fall into: cramming their chosen metaphor onto the movie and ignoring everything that would disprove or damage their metaphor.
For instance: apparently the blood test in The Thing is the same as Nazi blood purity because Kurt Russell's character is deciding who counts as a human which is bad. This ignores the fact that there is a literal alien shapeshifter that has been replacing actual humans by taking them over (which kills them, of course). Kurt Russell isn't deciding shit; there's real hostile non-humans amongst the group! Why are you ignoring what is actually happening in the movie!?
He talks the most about actual films in the prologue and towards the last four chapters. All the ones he talks about that I have seen or have a decent idea of the plot do the same thing he did with The Thing.
The history was interesting but not what I read the book for.
March 13, 2013
E. Michael Jones claims that the monster in horror flicks is us, as a nation, working through our guilt over our sexual sin. Made a lot of sense to me. I appreciate his concluding chapter in particular, which explains why modern critics of horror never get it right. His point, in a nutshell, is that those who come at the horror genre with a commitment to enlightenment/progressive beliefs about sexuality simply can't see that the entire genre is an attack on those very beliefs.
Some reviewers have criticized Jones for spending a lot of time on the lives of particular authors (Mary Shelley, etc), but I don't think that's a mistake. I think that background makes all the difference in the world.
My one criticism of Jones is that he repeats himself quite a lot.
Finally, I would also caution potential readers to show discernment regarding whether or not they read this book. Jones is not gratuitous or provocative in his descriptions, but there is some pretty evil stuff in this book. I don't think everyone should read it.
Some reviewers have criticized Jones for spending a lot of time on the lives of particular authors (Mary Shelley, etc), but I don't think that's a mistake. I think that background makes all the difference in the world.
My one criticism of Jones is that he repeats himself quite a lot.
Finally, I would also caution potential readers to show discernment regarding whether or not they read this book. Jones is not gratuitous or provocative in his descriptions, but there is some pretty evil stuff in this book. I don't think everyone should read it.
November 1, 2021
Great book with a lot of really important stuff to say about the Enlightenment and its downstream effects in our culture. A few missteps here and there based on the author's overriding commitment to Roman Catholicism, but otherwise an incredibly insightful book.
May 9, 2022
One of the most fascinating books I've ever read.
February 2, 2017
In Monsters from the Id, E. Michael Jones argues that the horror genre originated with Mary Shelly's Frankenstein as a reaction to the Enlightenment, and in particular, to the French Revolution and the sexual morality leading up to it. The revolutionaries began with high ideals (liberte, egalite, fraternite) but also embraced the sexual freedom that resulted from the rejection of Christianity. The revolution rather quickly devolved into the publicly sanctioned mass murder of the guillotine and the Reign of Terror. Shelly's mother had gone from London to Paris to experience the sexual part of the revolution though she had at best a mixed experience. Shelly herself lived a rather chaotic and ultimately unsatisfying life with her husband Percy Shelly, who was a deep devotee of Enlightenment thought and morals. Jones argues that Mary Shelly poured her guilt and unease into Frankenstein, making it a powerful indictment of the Enlightenment's adherence to loose morals and unfettered scientific exploration. For Jones, sexual liberation leads ultimately to violence and death.
Jones traces this trajectory from Dracula (where sexual promiscuity leads to the poisoning of one's blood by vampirism) to Weimar Republic Germany (where sexual decadence, among other factors, led to the rise of Hitler and his racial (i.e. blood) purity obsession) to 1930s-1950s Hollywood (to which many German film artists fled) and up to the modern day (with discussions of the Alien franchise as a cultural revolt against fertility, i.e. sexual responsibility). His argument is thorough and well-documented.
Unfortunately, his argument is also not convincing. He claims Frankenstein as the origin of horror, but what about the stories of the Golem or of Faust, which predate Shelly by centuries? Jones ties his theory of horror so closely to sexual liberation (which indeed is central to many horror tropes, themes, and stories) that the book reads more like searching for examples to validate his theory rather than discovering an insight that explains the history of horror. He delves too pruriently into his examples, often assuming details that can't be confirmed, for example what Mary Shelly thought about her husband or his first wife's suicide. His writing style is mostly scholarly but too often crosses a line into unnecessary details or speculative assumptions. The book winds up being unpersuasive.
While I agree that sexual liberation brings a host of problems, I hardly agree that it is the cause and the core inspiration for the horror genre. The book has a lot of interesting little bits here and there, but taken as a whole, it is unsatisfying.
Jones traces this trajectory from Dracula (where sexual promiscuity leads to the poisoning of one's blood by vampirism) to Weimar Republic Germany (where sexual decadence, among other factors, led to the rise of Hitler and his racial (i.e. blood) purity obsession) to 1930s-1950s Hollywood (to which many German film artists fled) and up to the modern day (with discussions of the Alien franchise as a cultural revolt against fertility, i.e. sexual responsibility). His argument is thorough and well-documented.
Unfortunately, his argument is also not convincing. He claims Frankenstein as the origin of horror, but what about the stories of the Golem or of Faust, which predate Shelly by centuries? Jones ties his theory of horror so closely to sexual liberation (which indeed is central to many horror tropes, themes, and stories) that the book reads more like searching for examples to validate his theory rather than discovering an insight that explains the history of horror. He delves too pruriently into his examples, often assuming details that can't be confirmed, for example what Mary Shelly thought about her husband or his first wife's suicide. His writing style is mostly scholarly but too often crosses a line into unnecessary details or speculative assumptions. The book winds up being unpersuasive.
While I agree that sexual liberation brings a host of problems, I hardly agree that it is the cause and the core inspiration for the horror genre. The book has a lot of interesting little bits here and there, but taken as a whole, it is unsatisfying.
June 26, 2024
I read this because I thought it would deal more with the literary aspects of horror stories and movies, but it was primarily a history of the sexual revolution starting with Mary Wollstonecraft and Percy B Shelley.
His historical information seemed questionable at times. Especially regarding the Nazis being gay and persecuting other gays to cover up their gayness.
His writing was very repetitive, frustratingly so. He badly needed an editor. He also has the final chapter on the Alien movie but hardly talks about it until Appendix B.
The literary interpretations he offered were varied in believability. He cites a lot of movie directors who certainly were hiding a deeper meaning in their movies. Hitchcock, Cronenberg, Ridley Scott and others. But I question whether horror is naturally a genre for fleshing out sexual depravity in culture. It seems more to be a medium for fleshing out the psychological struggles in the writer/director. This would keep a lot of what Jones has to say regarding the stories as well as explain better the changes within horror. It would tie the inspiration of horror closer to the id and less to a specific impulse of it.
I believe at the heart of horror is really a horror of the true God and a rebellion against him. This is why horror filmmakers enjoy gruesome and graphic deaths and overt sexuality in their stories. Both of which constitute attacks against the image of God. If horror is really just a means of displaying the inner heart of man, then we should not be surprised that what comes out is death and violent sexuality. He who hates God, loves death.
His historical information seemed questionable at times. Especially regarding the Nazis being gay and persecuting other gays to cover up their gayness.
His writing was very repetitive, frustratingly so. He badly needed an editor. He also has the final chapter on the Alien movie but hardly talks about it until Appendix B.
The literary interpretations he offered were varied in believability. He cites a lot of movie directors who certainly were hiding a deeper meaning in their movies. Hitchcock, Cronenberg, Ridley Scott and others. But I question whether horror is naturally a genre for fleshing out sexual depravity in culture. It seems more to be a medium for fleshing out the psychological struggles in the writer/director. This would keep a lot of what Jones has to say regarding the stories as well as explain better the changes within horror. It would tie the inspiration of horror closer to the id and less to a specific impulse of it.
I believe at the heart of horror is really a horror of the true God and a rebellion against him. This is why horror filmmakers enjoy gruesome and graphic deaths and overt sexuality in their stories. Both of which constitute attacks against the image of God. If horror is really just a means of displaying the inner heart of man, then we should not be surprised that what comes out is death and violent sexuality. He who hates God, loves death.
October 21, 2024
I read this book last year. I really really enjoyed it! The analysis of horror and pornography was well very well done! I loved the discussion on Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein! I enjoyed that book as a look at the nature of man but this helped shed more light on the possible reasons she wrote her classic and set the horror genre on the tract it used to be on. On the subject of Dracula I really enjoyed to comparison of sexual sin being life draining instead of life giving. It was a very accurate comparison.
I give it three stars because I did skip some of the chapters later on in the books as I thought it far too in depth on pornographic film. I felt it unnecessary to talk about one particular pornographic film in the detail that it did. I believe the title of the film and the discussion of the lead actress’ life is enough to get the jest. Even in scripture the details of certain sins were not delved into.
While I have not watched any horror films nor will I ever. I see the sexual nature in the trailers and other people’s reviews of them. In fact that seems to be a selling point. Paganism, horror, and pornography are just a like not only because of their obvious ways but also because of how it ropes people in. It promises entertainment, pleasure, any number of things. This book was a great explanation of that.
Overall, with a filter and warning to skip the last chapters I would highly recommend. It will be required reading/listening (with filters) for my children when they are mature enough. Probably listening as a family in order to inspire conversation on the topic more.
I give it three stars because I did skip some of the chapters later on in the books as I thought it far too in depth on pornographic film. I felt it unnecessary to talk about one particular pornographic film in the detail that it did. I believe the title of the film and the discussion of the lead actress’ life is enough to get the jest. Even in scripture the details of certain sins were not delved into.
While I have not watched any horror films nor will I ever. I see the sexual nature in the trailers and other people’s reviews of them. In fact that seems to be a selling point. Paganism, horror, and pornography are just a like not only because of their obvious ways but also because of how it ropes people in. It promises entertainment, pleasure, any number of things. This book was a great explanation of that.
Overall, with a filter and warning to skip the last chapters I would highly recommend. It will be required reading/listening (with filters) for my children when they are mature enough. Probably listening as a family in order to inspire conversation on the topic more.
April 6, 2023
The book talks about the movie Forbidden Planet and it's score which I happen to really like. It notes how some things from the movie saw versions of it in later series and films such as the United Planets later becoming the United Federation of Planets in Star Trek.
The author feels that the movie is the greatest science fiction film ever made and notes it is somewhat based on Shakespeare's play The Tempest.
Unfortunately the way the book is written bothers me with such phrases as 'It's hotter than a whore's crotch' and 'another cumshot.'
The author comments about how the weapons looked, what the effect of the Krell machine was on Morbius and the idea of maybe doing a remake of the episode as a Star Trek episode. The book also includes cast listing and various notes.
The author feels that the movie is the greatest science fiction film ever made and notes it is somewhat based on Shakespeare's play The Tempest.
Unfortunately the way the book is written bothers me with such phrases as 'It's hotter than a whore's crotch' and 'another cumshot.'
The author comments about how the weapons looked, what the effect of the Krell machine was on Morbius and the idea of maybe doing a remake of the episode as a Star Trek episode. The book also includes cast listing and various notes.
November 26, 2023
A powerful and sweeping historical argument for Jones' thesis that the genre of horror is a psychological outgrowth of the repression of moral sensibilities occurring since the shift away from Judaeo-Christian values after the Enlightenment. Jones begins with Mary and Percy Bysshe Shelley's philosophical and ideological grounding in the tenets of the French Revolution. "Frankenstein" is Mary's symbolic expression of her painful disillusionment regarding the efficacy of that materialist moral foundation and is the beginning of the genre of horror which has grown to become the quintessential psychological expression of the painful results of Enlightenment mores and values. An original and evocative book which also encompasses the vampire tradition. Extensively backed up with historical notes, examples from film and fiction, and a creative yet supremely logical thesis.
May 17, 2022
Wow, what a ride. Jones takes the reader on a journey through the history of the horror genre and shows how it is a reaction against the societal degeneration that begins to accelerated in the wake of the Enlightenment. Some of the theses of the book sound like a real stretch until Jones starts digging into the historical contexts, philosophies, and writings of the authors and filmmakers being discusses. It really does all add up. Would have given five stars if not for Jones' inaccurate assessment of the Reformation.
April 11, 2024
3.5 stars. Jones demonstrates well the roots of horror fiction in the sexual perversion of Enlightenment philosophy and its destructive outcomes, and offers a useful framework for interpreting the message of horror fiction. He focuses on the implications and influence of sexual sin, but the hermeneutical framework he builds can be applied to other examples of sin bearing out its fruit in other horror movies.
December 30, 2021
I listened on audio. I decided to listen to this book after hearing the author interviewed in a podcast. I listened to Frankenstein last summer and enjoyed it way more than I thought I would. I was hooked by the author’s thesis and I have a new level of respect for the horror genre. In closing…Thank God for penicillin.
May 23, 2022
Excellent. It has a very Rosenstock-Huessy vibe, in that does not merely present the facts of history and then comment on them - as most books do in this genre (for better or worse) - but digs deep into the psychology and morality of the people that make the history… horror is such a brilliant vehicle for examining this phenomena… and as a fan of horror - at least to a degree - I was hooked.
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