Be Scared of Everything: Horror Essays by Peter Counter

I’m a little torn about horror. There’s something magical about the old Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff films, and I like the Hammer horror films that came later and were elevated by actors as credible as Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee. But I discovered all that after growing up on a series of empty-feeling 1980s slasher films I don’t want to revisit. I gave up on The Walking Dead after they killed the most civilized character near the end of the second season – I think zombie stories aren’t about the zombies but the values survivors mange to keep – and because generally if I want to be anxious these days I can look at headlines. I was impressed with The Fireman, a novel by Joe Hill, given its subtle message about choosing how compassionate you want to be and choosing how to live your life in difficult times. It’s particularly important considering the possibilities on the horizon. 





Reading Be Scared of Everything I expected a breezy, enjoyable examination of horror films but the book easily surpassed those expectations. I was pleasantly surprised to find a series of concise, accessible and articulate essays that look at much more that film. Peter Counter blends his personal experience and struggles with everything from sharks to video games and some of the more bizarre alleys of the Internet. There’s even astute literary analysis to be found here: “To Lovecraft, we’re all worthless, but some of us are more worthless than others.” In short, it’s a book that illustrates the way horror is relevant to daily life and springs from daily life, even if not everything manages to have a level of quality. 





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Live involves sitting “in the middle of a story” with a certain amount of accompanying anxiety, and horror movies reflect this: “Like life, horror begins with oblivion, is animated by human resistance to that terrible lifelessness, and finally urges us to accept death as inevitable.” Counter talks about our tendency to tell personal stories of the unknown and supernatural somewhat apologetically before going the book goes on to say “horror can liberate us from the shame of trying on different existential frameworks to see what fits. It can give us the tools to respect our experiences. Horror suggests there isn’t an objective metaphysics we can know as humans. It posits belief as decentralized, that all spooky stories, no matter how conflicting, are legitimate.” 





Counter takes a moment to touch on funerals, including the idea that what’s quietly interesting, even pleasant about them is the way they celebrate “something real, non-institutional, and fully inclusive.” He’s no stranger to loss and trauma, giving these essays all the more authority. His own personal struggles are detailed in a handful of essays where it’s relevant to the topic, including a piece called “The Shattered Teacup:”  “After trauma, safety looks like a cheap illusion, and people who feel safe appear naïve for not having also realized that catastrophe can visit at any moment.”





Film and TV also get their fair share of coverage, though again wherever a particular show can be woven together with a particular idea. X-Files gets an essay, along with a piece that touches on the “authority porn” of the assorted CSI and Law & Order shows. And here’s Counter on the assorted Hannibal Lecter appearances in film and TV: “Will Graham and Clarice Starling both want the same thing: they want to be normal. Hannibal Lecter’s gift to them is denying what they want on principle, saying that the source of their pain and confusion is that they’re right and the normative world is wrong.” 





I learned about The Cloud of Unknowing, a text by an anonymous fourteenth-century monk concerning our inability to comprehend God, and religious and secular horrors are examined in “Manufacturing Mephistopheles:” “Our insignificance as people is the nuclear core that holds all horror together, and that core is made manifest by independent non-human annihilators.” 





Orwell wrote model essays: articulate without being overdone or impenetrable, and thoughtfully engaged with each subject so that the topic becomes interesting to any reader, even those who weren’t particularly invested at the start. That’s the kind of worthy writing I found here, in a book that rewards attention assuming the reader isn’t dismissive of everything connected to the genre. I certainly hope we hear from Peter Counter again. 

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Published on October 09, 2020 19:17
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