Joseph Grammer's Blog - Posts Tagged "revulsion"
Horror
I was never one for Nightmare on Elm Street, and stuff like Hostel only grossed me out. But sometimes, when the mood (moon?) is right, I can handle some spooky shit.
The Man from Nowhere seems like a horror movie to me, because it's really dark in subject matter and light use, and it portrays some seriously brutal violence, albeit in the guise of an action movie. The plot goes like this: A pawn shop owner reveals his past as a special forces agent when some organ harvesters kidnap his schoolgirl neighbor. Basically he kills everyone involved, and revenge, taken far enough, seems pretty close to horror in my book. If you don't mind spoilers, check out this as proof.
Likewise, the scene in Saving Private Ryan in which Private Fish is fighting for his life with a huge knife-wielding Nazi is, to me, incredibly horrifying. I always feel sick when I watch it, but for some reason I revisit it every once in a while. Why?
The world seems to break away during scenes like this, and life becomes deeply, irrevocably vulnerable, which I guess is the point of looking at unpleasant images: to feel that all the time I walk on a knife-edge, and could be killed at any second by a mis-swallowed shrimp, a Ford Focus, or a sneaky little blood disease. And I guess it makes me thankful I'm not the one being chased/mutilated/eaten alive.
Here's what Wikipedia has to say on the matter: "Horror is more related to being shocked or scared (being horrified), while terror is more related to being anxious or fearful. Horror has been defined as a combination of terror and revulsion." It says also terror precedes a negative event, while horror comes after one.
The prolific author Stephen King distinguishes among terror, horror, and revulsion. Terror is "the suspenseful moment in horror before the actual monster is revealed," while horror "is that moment at which one sees the creature/aberration that causes the terror or suspense." Revulsion is a type of gag-reflex gimmick. (All of this is stolen from Wikipedia.)
“I recognize terror as the finest emotion and so I will try to terrorize the reader. But if I find that I cannot terrify, I will try to horrify, and if I find that I cannot horrify, I'll go for the gross-out. I'm not proud.”
I'm not proud of something, too. When I was maybe three, I saw the movie Alien on TV. It's my second memory, ever (the first is standing on one of those moving walkways in a Florida airport and crying because my dad yelled at me when I asked for a toy, then my mom whispering, "Garland!" -- pretty typical childhood stuff, I love my 'rents, no need to get rowdy and call DYFS).
In Memory 2, I was in a motel, also in Florida, and I was left alone with the TV on. My dad had been the last one to leave, and I remember him turning the channel to something "kids might like." What he put on was Ridley Scott's Alien (1979).
I can't really express the feeling I had as a toddler first seeing a monster burst out of John Hurt's body. I remember freezing in place, seated on the flower-patterned bed, as slime and blood and other fluids sprayed about and a living fucking thing emerged from a human being. For probably a few years after I thought, if you ate the wrong kind of food, that could happen to me, too.
The feeling was so strong that, ten years later, I was watching TV with some close friends when a commercial for an Alien replay came on. I immediately turned away, and my buddy's Uncle Pete laughed, asking, "What's a matter Joe, are you afraid or something?" I blushed pink, mumbled, "No," but I still felt frightened inside, not to mention embarrassed as a bona fide wuss.
I still haven't watched the movie again (wuss), but if I break the scene down, I can tell that I did feel terror (what's going to happen next?) and revulsion (holy God, look at that hole in the British dude's chest). Does this combine into horror? Or is horror a separate business?
King says I would have felt horror upon first sight of the alien, and probably revulsion to the gore. Perhaps the terror in that instant should have been relieved, because the alien was visible, but I say with full confidence that my anxiety and suspense didn't diminish; if anything, it went up.
I have not read Danse Macabre, the book King talks about all this in, but from the quotes I can find, there's no reason to assume terror should vanish as horror starts up. They can coexist. Whether or not one is a prerequisite for the other, I'm not sure, but since my patience with these abstract nouns is starting to wane, I'll just friggin' move on. However, I will say revulsion is probably optional if it's not the point -- so thanks, Ridley, for freaking me out when you didn't have to.
Awkward flashbacks aside, there's the matter of tragedy and horror. One can have elements of the other, I'm sure. From Wikipedia again, tragedy is "a form of drama based on human suffering that invokes in its audience an accompanying catharsis or pleasure in the viewing." That reaction to the Alien scene was not pleasurable, I'll tell you that.
Can tragedy be horror? In Antigone, more or less everyone dies, and a nauseating air of darkness hangs around the play, but it seems different to me from the feeling of horror. Maybe if Sophocles had rubbed my face in the blood and guts more, I'd feel it?
By Wikipedia's logic, Antigone does not count as a horror story, because I'm neither terrified nor revolted. Mostly, I'm just saddened by the avoidable loss of so many people. Same goes for Hamlet, even if the emo prince wears black the whole time, and there's a ghost. Mr. King might say Shakespeare engages on the level of "terror," and in this he might be right: I feel anxiety about what will happen next, coupled with a premonition that shit will go drastically south for everyone involved. But I'd also say anxiety and terror are different. One is "extreme fear" and the other is "a feeling of nervousness or unease."
Does terror always precede horror? What tragedy-horrors do you know of? (The movie version of Stephen King's The Mist, maybe?) How do you feel about using revulsion (e.g., no more Saw movies please, although the first one was more horrifying than revolting, so I suppose that's cool)? Let me know. If you think I'm wrong about Antigone or Hamlet, let me know, too.
Also, in case you made it this far, here's this. Plus in case you were wondering, that Florida story has a nice ending, because I eventually got an Alien action figure -- I think it was the android. Technically it might have been a few years later, but whatever. Have a horror-free day! Unless, you know, you choose to watch some real freaky flix.
The Man from Nowhere seems like a horror movie to me, because it's really dark in subject matter and light use, and it portrays some seriously brutal violence, albeit in the guise of an action movie. The plot goes like this: A pawn shop owner reveals his past as a special forces agent when some organ harvesters kidnap his schoolgirl neighbor. Basically he kills everyone involved, and revenge, taken far enough, seems pretty close to horror in my book. If you don't mind spoilers, check out this as proof.
Likewise, the scene in Saving Private Ryan in which Private Fish is fighting for his life with a huge knife-wielding Nazi is, to me, incredibly horrifying. I always feel sick when I watch it, but for some reason I revisit it every once in a while. Why?
The world seems to break away during scenes like this, and life becomes deeply, irrevocably vulnerable, which I guess is the point of looking at unpleasant images: to feel that all the time I walk on a knife-edge, and could be killed at any second by a mis-swallowed shrimp, a Ford Focus, or a sneaky little blood disease. And I guess it makes me thankful I'm not the one being chased/mutilated/eaten alive.
Here's what Wikipedia has to say on the matter: "Horror is more related to being shocked or scared (being horrified), while terror is more related to being anxious or fearful. Horror has been defined as a combination of terror and revulsion." It says also terror precedes a negative event, while horror comes after one.
The prolific author Stephen King distinguishes among terror, horror, and revulsion. Terror is "the suspenseful moment in horror before the actual monster is revealed," while horror "is that moment at which one sees the creature/aberration that causes the terror or suspense." Revulsion is a type of gag-reflex gimmick. (All of this is stolen from Wikipedia.)
“I recognize terror as the finest emotion and so I will try to terrorize the reader. But if I find that I cannot terrify, I will try to horrify, and if I find that I cannot horrify, I'll go for the gross-out. I'm not proud.”
I'm not proud of something, too. When I was maybe three, I saw the movie Alien on TV. It's my second memory, ever (the first is standing on one of those moving walkways in a Florida airport and crying because my dad yelled at me when I asked for a toy, then my mom whispering, "Garland!" -- pretty typical childhood stuff, I love my 'rents, no need to get rowdy and call DYFS).
In Memory 2, I was in a motel, also in Florida, and I was left alone with the TV on. My dad had been the last one to leave, and I remember him turning the channel to something "kids might like." What he put on was Ridley Scott's Alien (1979).
I can't really express the feeling I had as a toddler first seeing a monster burst out of John Hurt's body. I remember freezing in place, seated on the flower-patterned bed, as slime and blood and other fluids sprayed about and a living fucking thing emerged from a human being. For probably a few years after I thought, if you ate the wrong kind of food, that could happen to me, too.
The feeling was so strong that, ten years later, I was watching TV with some close friends when a commercial for an Alien replay came on. I immediately turned away, and my buddy's Uncle Pete laughed, asking, "What's a matter Joe, are you afraid or something?" I blushed pink, mumbled, "No," but I still felt frightened inside, not to mention embarrassed as a bona fide wuss.
I still haven't watched the movie again (wuss), but if I break the scene down, I can tell that I did feel terror (what's going to happen next?) and revulsion (holy God, look at that hole in the British dude's chest). Does this combine into horror? Or is horror a separate business?
King says I would have felt horror upon first sight of the alien, and probably revulsion to the gore. Perhaps the terror in that instant should have been relieved, because the alien was visible, but I say with full confidence that my anxiety and suspense didn't diminish; if anything, it went up.
I have not read Danse Macabre, the book King talks about all this in, but from the quotes I can find, there's no reason to assume terror should vanish as horror starts up. They can coexist. Whether or not one is a prerequisite for the other, I'm not sure, but since my patience with these abstract nouns is starting to wane, I'll just friggin' move on. However, I will say revulsion is probably optional if it's not the point -- so thanks, Ridley, for freaking me out when you didn't have to.
Awkward flashbacks aside, there's the matter of tragedy and horror. One can have elements of the other, I'm sure. From Wikipedia again, tragedy is "a form of drama based on human suffering that invokes in its audience an accompanying catharsis or pleasure in the viewing." That reaction to the Alien scene was not pleasurable, I'll tell you that.
Can tragedy be horror? In Antigone, more or less everyone dies, and a nauseating air of darkness hangs around the play, but it seems different to me from the feeling of horror. Maybe if Sophocles had rubbed my face in the blood and guts more, I'd feel it?
By Wikipedia's logic, Antigone does not count as a horror story, because I'm neither terrified nor revolted. Mostly, I'm just saddened by the avoidable loss of so many people. Same goes for Hamlet, even if the emo prince wears black the whole time, and there's a ghost. Mr. King might say Shakespeare engages on the level of "terror," and in this he might be right: I feel anxiety about what will happen next, coupled with a premonition that shit will go drastically south for everyone involved. But I'd also say anxiety and terror are different. One is "extreme fear" and the other is "a feeling of nervousness or unease."
Does terror always precede horror? What tragedy-horrors do you know of? (The movie version of Stephen King's The Mist, maybe?) How do you feel about using revulsion (e.g., no more Saw movies please, although the first one was more horrifying than revolting, so I suppose that's cool)? Let me know. If you think I'm wrong about Antigone or Hamlet, let me know, too.
Also, in case you made it this far, here's this. Plus in case you were wondering, that Florida story has a nice ending, because I eventually got an Alien action figure -- I think it was the android. Technically it might have been a few years later, but whatever. Have a horror-free day! Unless, you know, you choose to watch some real freaky flix.
