Classic Horror Lovers discussion

I was reading Paula Cappa's blog the other day, on which she had an excellent discussion on Quiet Horror and it got me thinking about this.

I'd love to hear what members thing about it.

I have some thoughts and I'll share those after others have posted their thoughts. (not blackmailing you, but I don't want my thoughts to stifle anyone else's opinions). The fun thing about discussions is hearing with other people think!

Two excellent articles that track historical changes in the "horror" field are Paul Leggett's "Of Heroes and Devils: The Supernatural on Film" (Christianity Today, Nov. 18, 1977) and Lint Hatcher's "The X-Files and the Return of Metaphysical Horror" (Rutherford, Oct. 1995). Both of these focus on the dramatic medium (primarily films and TV), but their analysis is applicable to books, too.

What they document is a shift, during the later 20th century, away from a classical conception of horror as a situation that arises within a purposeful universe and can be understood in a metaphysical framework of good vs. evil, to a postmodernist view of horror as the basic condition of a meaningless universe in which no metaphysical meaning or standards exist (with, possibly, the beginnings of a swing of the pendulum in the 90s). That's a more fundamentally significant change than its outer symptoms, like the introduction of grisly violence and gore, sexual themes and coarse language for their own sake.

I'm not sure on the extent to which there has been such a conceptual shift as you describe, Werner, but I've always felt that the best horror (both modern and classic) has been written without (even an implicit) acceptance of a good vs. evil metaphysical framework.

Maybe what we have seen is not so much a shift from horror arising from that paradigm, but rather a shift towards writers consciously rejecting it.

Take Algernon Blackwood for instance. I don't think such horror as he wrote arose from a paradigm of good vs. evil but it's not necessarily incompatible with it either. But with much of Lovecraft's work, we start to see stories whose very premise is incompatible with such a notion.

Yes, I think there's definitely been a shift, on the part of "horror" (and other) writers towards a conscious rejection of the idea of good and evil and of metaphysical meaning. (That's a manifestation of the adoption of the same militant rejection by the power elites and cultural establishment of Western society in general during the same period; "horror" writing and scriptwriting is affected exactly the same way as every other area of human artistic and intellectual activity.) But I do think there was a substantial body of older classical horror writing that definitely does rest on the now-rejected assumptions, and that the shift in approach IS a substantive change in message and style, not just a conscious embrace of something that used to be merely subconscious and automatic. Poe, Stoker, Le Fanu, Shelley, Doyle, Henry James, M. R. James, Robert Hugh Benson and a host of other older writers all approach the universe as meaningful and good and evil as real metaphysical categories. (In some of these writers, though not all, the conflict of good and evil is cast in distinctly Christian terms.) The assumptions may be explicit, or they may be implicit in the author's own worldview, so that the work in question doesn't present a direct message in itself but simply isn't incompatible with the traditional view. You're correct about Lovecraft's assumptions (I haven't read all that much of Blackwood), and I'd say that he represents an early and influential example of the shift, though he's otherwise classical and traditional in style.

"All fiction should be true," as Mary E. Wilkins Freeman (who was herself a writer of quite a few classic ghost stories of the older type) once wrote. The difference of opinion over which approach produces the "best" horror is partly a dispute over which one best reflects ultimate truth about life and the universe --whether it's a meaningful place in which moral categories have an objective value and there are realities beyond the physical, or a meaningless accident on the part of insignificant bits of matter and energy whose activities have no purpose or worth. But it's also an aesthetic judgment; in Hacker's words, "After all, what's more entertaining: a universe in which life and death are absurd, or a universe in which life is precious and 'there are some things worse than death?'"

Is it right to describe a work of horror as being part of the good vs. evil paradigm simply because it is not inconsistent with it? Is it not possible that much of this work might also be at the same time not inconsistent with the paradigm of a meaningless universe?

As I mentioned already, Blackwood might well be an example a writer that wrote horror that might fit into either world view. It seems to me that much of what Poe and M.R. James wrote might also be neutral in this regard. For a more modern example, what about Aickman?

And when I said that I think the best horror is one that doesn't embrace the good vs. evil paradigm, I didn't mean to suggest that I think the best horror is that which actively rejects it. I think there is a large amount of great horror that is fairly neutral in regard to this question.

Simon, interesting point and IMO, a valid one; there's a considerable corpus of stories that don't explicitly line up either way, and so can be viewed as compatible by proponents of both basic worldviews. (From what I've read of Blackwood, I'd say there are stories of his that fit that bill.) I tend to read an author's own worldview (If I know anything about it) into his/her work, sometimes when it isn't explicitly stated. Also, I tend to see a story as fitting into a good and evil framework if there seems to be an implied judgement of some actions as morally wrong (rather than just amoral), or if the author seems to be depending, for the effect of the story, on the reader's making that assessment.

Much of Poe's work is easy to interpret neutrally, though it's significant that all of his horror (unlike Lovecraft's) is situational rather than existential. M. R. James famously said words to the effect that to write a proper ghost story, the ghost needs to be malevolent; I don't agree, but I would say that the idea of malevolence, to me, implies evil (just as benevolence implies good). As for Aickman, he's another writer I haven't read that much of, so I'd defer to your judgment for the most part there. Interestingly, though, I've always viewed "Passages from the Diary of a Young Girl," one of the two Aickman stories I've liked (or maybe the better word is "appreciated") as a chilling portrait of the seduction of a human being by evil --and it's chilling precisely because the reader sees the change as being towards evil.

As a non Christian (and that seems to be the moral standpoint in debate here, the Christian moral standpoint) I will readily admit that some classic American/European horror with a foot planted solidly in that mileau has somewhat confounded me in that regard. We are what we were brought up to believe. And while I was brought up in a very ethical and religious household, it was not a Christian one and there can be a slight cultural dissonance there with classic horror. But I do believe that is not a purely religious dissonance. Times have changed, even in Christian culture. What once was emphatically wrong, is not so much now. Religion is also culture and it must evolve or die with the rest of the world.

Is there a slight change in the idea of the meaning of right and wrong in horror now? Yes. But I don't think that is a bad thing. We Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus and yes atheists too are getting our fiction published and that isn't a bad thing. Not by a long shot. It's just a different thing.

What I think has changed the most in horror and to it's detriment... is gore. Instead of dynamic plots, we have cheap buckets of gore. Horror without plot is ultimately predictable and boring. Classic horror is rich with multi layered plotlines. And THAT is where I think things have changed in the horror genre, and for the worst.

Nomad, interesting thoughts; thanks for sharing! To clarify, at least in my comments, the moral standpoint I'm talking about isn't specifically Christian. Older (and some modern) horror fiction may interpret the conflict of good and evil in terms of a God vs. Satan struggle, and that's a plus from my perspective, while from some perspectives it wouldn't be. But I see the basic dichotomy of good (kindness, generosity, fairness --what C. S. Lewis called "the Tao") vs. evil (cruelty, selfishness, injustice) as a reality that normal humans intuit by means of conscience, and basically agree on across cultures and religions. Religion offers sanction to the demands of conscience, but it doesn't per se create them. And that reality is essentially unchanging; human understanding of the implications of the "Tao" might evolve over time (as, for instance, the Christian view of the ethics of slavery has evolved between the first century and the present), but that's a matter of developing a clearer grasp of the implications of an underlying absolute. What I'm talking about as a change in recent times is the denial that good and evil exist as legitimate realities, or the position that sadism and selfishness IS the "good" the species should strive for, and that altruism is a pathetic "evil" that should be relegated to the dustbin of history.

Great discussion and topic, with articulate and cogent arguments coming from both sides. I have to agree with Simon, though, that the best horror doesn't take a good versus evil stance, but does something more subtle, less black and white. Simon's example of Algernon Blackwood is a very good one, I feel. In perhaps Blackwood's best story, 'The Willows', the horror is of creatures (fourth dimensional beings perhaps) who are so beyond our comprehension, so beyond our concept of good and evil, that the two human characters feel it would be safest if they can simply go unnoticed. Lovecraft adopted this model, too, of a universe largely indifferent to us, but deadly if interfered with. I also think horror where it's linked to the subconscious is also really rewarding. 'The Turn of the Screw' and 'The Haunting of Hill House' are examples where the haunting is quite possibly done by the main protagonists. That sort of horror feeds off the idea that humans are the scariest things out there. As for how horror is changing, I guess it's been sexed up and made bloodier. And with all these digital advances and internet connections, it's harder for writers to place characters in the isolated, forgotten places that were the setting for much of Classic Horror. Characters now would be tweeting every few minutes!

The changes I have particularly despised in horror are the excessive use of drunken, promiscuous, foul-mouthed teenagers in these endless slasher films. You know they are going to get bumped off one by one by some crazed masked killer or similar. There are far too many of these shallow story lines being churned out now. I long for a return to the good old days of horror, like the kind of movies Hammer and Amicus used to make.

I think it has lost its dignity and relied too much on slasher and gore. The X Files could make opening a drawer scary. One of my favorite movies (that still scares me today) is The Creeping Flesh with Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee.

As to fiction, the older stuff just makes you think and is very creepy and sinister. They don't need to show you everything to make you look around.

The scariest of modern horror I've ever read were Ghost Story and The Ruins. And Lovecraft is even spookier!

Simon wrote: "Is it right to describe a work of horror as being part of the good vs. evil paradigm simply because it is not inconsistent with it? Is it not possible that much of this work might also be at the sa..."

This is a very interesting debate. Personally, I am an atheist, and I do not believe in good or evil as fundamental concepts, yet I consider M R James to be one of the greatest writers of all time. One thing that does bother me in a lot of classic horror is the tacked-on morals at the ends of some stories. Ultimately, the best horror revolves around the Unkown, that is, the feeling that the characters cannot understand the events of the story, and that it cannot be neatly reduced to a simple explanation. While James' ghosts may have been malevolent, ultimately they were beyond the characters' comprehension. In this reading of the stories, we cannot ascribe conventional motives to many of the ghosts; for example, we may question whether the ghost from "A Warning To The Curious" was avenging the theft from the burial mound, or if perhaps it would attack anyone, and was bound to the crown to keep it under control. Similar questions can be raised for most of his other stories, particularly "Whistle and I'll Come To You My Lad" and "The Treasure Of Abbot Thomas". And to the question of which worldview is more entertaining, I would go for the meaningless one. My philosophy fluctuates between Absurdism and outright Nihilism, and sometimes it can be much more amusing to read of characters in bizarre philosophical conumdrums than to see them facing down evil in a simplistic, clean setting (admitedly, I found "UBIK" and "The Metamorphosis" much more humorous than the writers probably intended).

As a horror author myself and an avid fan of horror movies, the most notable change I have noticed in regard to today's horror is that, especially with American horror movies, there has been far too much reliance on cardboard-character, sex-mad, nubile teenagers being menaced by slashers to generate scares. This superfluity of teen slasher films has been very bad for the horror movie genre, as it just keeps on repeating the same old tropes, in film after film. It is very sad that this trend has contributed to the decline of the real thrill of horror that we used to enjoy so much from the old Universal and Hammer films. Found footage is another annoying thing that has ruined horror. Well, we can blaim Blair Witch (God, that movie bored me senseless!) for precipitating this found footage practice, can't we?

I loved Cloverfield and not many folks liked it. That found footage scared me!