The Philosophy of Horror

by Noël Carroll

Noel Carroll, film scholar and philosopher, offers the first serious look at the aesthetics of horror. In this book he discusses the nature and narrative structures of the genre, dealing with horror as a "transmedia" phenomenon. A fan and serious student of the horror genre, Carroll brings to bear his comprehensive knowledge of obscure and forgotten works, as well as of the horror masterpieces. Working from a philosophical perspective, he tries to account for how people can find pleasure in having their wits scared out of them. What, after all, are those "paradoxes of the heart" that make us want to be horrified?

Genres: Horror, Nonfiction, Philosophy, Film, Art, Literary Criticism, Theory

272 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1990

About the author

Noël Carroll (born 1947) is an American philosopher considered to be one of the leading figures in contemporary philosophy of art. Although Carroll is best known for his work in the philosophy of film, he has also published journalism, works on philosophy of art generally, theory of media, and also philosophy of history.

As of 2012, he is a distinguished professor of philosophy at the CUNY Graduate Center. He holds PhDs in both cinema studies and philosophy. As a journalist, earlier in his career he published a number of articles in the Chicago Reader, Artforum, In These Times, Dance Magazine, Soho Weekly News and The Village Voice. He is also the author of five documentaries.

Perhaps his most popular and influential book is The Philosophy of Horror, or Paradoxes of the Heart (1990), an examination of the aesthetics of horror fiction (in novels, stories, radio and film). As noted in the book's introduction, Carroll wrote Paradoxes of the Heart in part to convince his parents that his lifelong fascination with horror fiction was not a waste of time. Another important book by Carroll is Mystifying Movies (1988), a critique of the ideas of psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan, Marxist philosopher Louis Althusser and the semiotics of Roland Barthes, which has been credited with inspiring a shift away from what Carroll describes as the "Psycho-Semiotic Marxism" that had dominated film studies and film theory in American universities since the 1970s.

Reviews

[Christy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Although this is a useful approach to the horror genre, addressing significant questions - what is horror? why do we have such strong emotional responses to things we know to be false? why would we want to have such responses? - and proposing interesting responses to these questions, the book could be cut by at least half if the author removed all repetitions of his points. That is to say, Carroll's arguments could be made just as clearly, thoroughly, and convincingly in less than half the time and space. To conclude, I wish Carroll's editor had been ruthless in ordering Carroll to eliminate the repetitions and rephrasings and revisitings; I'm glad I read it, but it shouldn't have taken so long.

[Ethan · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a thorough, academic treatment of the major philosophical issues surrounding the horror genre. It focuses on two "paradoxes of the heart": the paradox of fiction (why are people scared of things they know don't exist?) and the paradox of horror (why does anyone like horror at all, since being scared is usually a bad thing?).

Carroll's academic style is probably going to appeal mostly to academic philosophers, who will find it intellectually thorough, as opposed to general readers, who might find it pedantic and long-winded. Your mileage may vary. As an academic philosopher myself I appreciate Carroll's style, but as a horror fan I was excited to read a serious academic treatment of a genre that's often unfairly maligned as anti-intellectual or even immoral. In fact, this book has become something of a classic in the still small area of philosophy of horror, so it's a useful touchstone for further research. I will add that even for an academic monograph, Carroll can be a bit repetitive.

Carroll refers to a wide variety of examples throughout, from well-known authors like Shelley, Lovecraft, Stephen King, Clive Barker, and Shirley Jackson to lesser known authors like Colin Wilson, from popular blockbuster films to obscure art house offerings. I added a lot to my to-read and to-watch lists.

The first chapter attempts a definition of horror as a genre, a genre that is aimed at giving rise to the emotion of "art-horror" as Carroll calls it. He also spends some time characterizing the concept of a monster, which he takes to be central to most horror. The third chapter is an elaborate taxonomy of horror plot structures, which includes a large number of examples to make Carroll's case.

The most interesting chapters to me were two and four: those that deal with the paradox of fiction and the paradox of horror respectively. Concerning the paradox of fiction, Carroll argues against several competing theories (such as the theory that horror actually gives rise to pseudo-fear) in favor of his own idea that the emotion of art-horror is a genuine emotion but it is produced by the idea of a monster (or other object of horror). I like this idea (ha.), since it explains why some horror fans such as myself find horror fiction scarier than horror movies: my imagination goes places scarier than any film can capture.

Chapter four touches on what I think of as the most intriguing philosophical questions about horror: Why do fans of the genre like to be scared? Why does anyone like this stuff in the first place? Carroll considers and rejects a few other theories such as Lovecraft's theory of supernatural horror as a quasi-religious experience or various psychoanalytic explanations. His own theory is subtle and more complex than I can adequately reproduce here, but the basic idea is that, due to the category-blending, reality-transcending nature of monsters and other horror tropes as well as the investigation and discovery structures of many horror plots, horror excites the imagination and curiosity of its audience, an experience that is heightened by the emotion of art-horror. Carroll ends with an interesting discussion of horror and ideology (that is, is horror fundamentally politically and socially conservative as some have argued?)

I greatly admire Carroll's book, but, as with any philosophy book, I'm not entirely sure I agree with everything. In particular, his treatment of monsters doesn't seem to capture horror stories where we're supposed to identify with the monster in some ways, as in everything from Mary Shelley's Frankenstein to Guillermo Del Toro's The Shape of Water. His resolution of the paradox of horror seems to fit a lot of other genres like science fiction and fantasy, minus of course the necessary ingredient of the emotion of horror. To the extent that I agree with Carroll about horror, I also agree that he explains a lot about why science fiction, fantasy, and horror are my favorite genres: it's all about exercising the imagination and confronting the unknown for me. It seems that Carroll might have leaned more on the role of art-horror in chapter four. Or maybe it just shows that demarcating strict borders between genres is difficult, if not impossible (case in point: Stephen King's Dark Tower series, which is equal parts horror, fantasy, science fiction, Western, and random weirdness). For me, Carroll's book raises further questions: Is it possible to define horror or to solve the paradoxes of fiction and horror in ways that fully capture every aspect of the genre? Is there a single framework that explains everything about the genre? Would it be a useful discovery if the answers to the previous questions were "no"?

Whether one agrees with Carroll's conclusions or not, that he so seriously and so thoroughly engages with the deep philosophical issues surrounding horror as a genre makes it well worth the effort. I recommend it not just to academic philosophers but to anyone with the patience and curiosity to follow Carroll's own discovery plot to its end.

(See my blog review: http://examinedworlds.blogspot.com/20...)

[mindfroth · Rating 2 out of 5]

This has some interesting insights, and compiles some interesting questions from the field, but overall it is a bad book, with a thesis not worthy of explication, and many premises too which the author labors to defend in needless, tedious, hairsplitting fashion. The amount of repetition and self-referential metacommentary is exasperating. The amount of space he squanders talking about how he doesn't have space to go into further detail is mind blowing.

At least the author acknowledges what the reader is likely to be thinking all along:

"It is my impression that the curiosity/fascination resolution that I have offered to the paradox of horror—despite its reliance on somewhat technical notions like categorical violations, and co-existentialism—is pretty obvious. It is certainly not as jazzy as many reductivist psychoanalytic theories. In fact, it may strike many as not being theoretical at all, but as nothing but a long-winded exercise in common sense."

Beware the wonkishness that is analytic philosophy.

[Steve Wiggins · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sometimes the title of a book can be daunting. I had been meaning to sit down and read Noël Carroll’s The Philosophy of Horror for some time, despite the fear of philosophizing a favorite topic. As I mention in my blog post about it ( Sects and Violence in the Ancient World) it is clear that Carroll is a fan of the genre. As soon as you start reading—and the first 20 pages or so are riveting—that becomes clear. The book, as it was meant to do, quickly becomes a bit technical. Despite this, there are many points where the insights are truly stunning.

For those who wonder about others who read or watch horror, I should point out that Carroll takes the subtitle, or Paradoxes of the Heart seriously. He asks why anyone would want to expose her or himself to material that is disturbing like this. While his answers aren’t easily summarized—the arguments are intricately built—he suggests curiosity overcomes disgust and horror gets that balance right. This is one of the paradoxes the book addresses. Horror fans are not, by and large, misanthropic. They are simply drawn by a genre that isn’t far from science fiction, but is more often shunned.

The other added bonus, for those who read academic material, is that Carroll tries to narrow down what makes people afraid, and suggests that this might help those who are trying to write horror. His suggestions are quite good and I found myself reading this part with notebook in hand. This paradoxical book, it seems to me, reflects the high point of Routledge’s publishing under the able direction of William Germano. Challenging, yet relevant, quirky and erudite, this book is well worth brushing off your philosophical chops to get to what is a very human fascination. Carroll even names a new emotion art-horror, which might help to explain why we do this to ourselves.

[Izabela Noga · Rating 4 out of 5]

[4.5] Bardzo mi się podobała i nawet zainspirowała😜

[Klaudia_p · Rating 5 out of 5]

Nie wierzę, że to piszę ale gdyby nie magisterka, to chyba bym na tę książkę nie trafiła. A to byłaby niepowetowana strata. Dla miłośników gatunku (albo czytelników takich jak ja - od przypadku do przypadku - też polecam) pozycja obowiązkowa!

[Hosein · Rating 2 out of 5]

این نیست که کتاب بد باشه، صرفا من بخش بزرگی از فلسفه و منطقی که میگفت رو نمیتونم قبول کنم. یا داره بدیهیات رو میگه، یا اینقدر آکادمیک به وحشت نگاه کرده که تبدیل به صفر و یک شده.
همچنان قراره دنبال کتاب بهتری برای این موضوع بگردم.

[Isa · Rating 2 out of 5]

Dr. Carroll made several excellent points but unfortunately followed each of them with circa 50 pages of repetition and, sometimes, even contradiction.
This truly needed a good editor, this book should have been around 100 pages, if that.

[KaruzelaNaKoparce]

Jakiś ten wywód strasznie naciągany

[Frederick Heimbach]

No rating because I could not finish it before its library due date.

Compared to the other academic writings I've picked up lately, the writing is clear and jargon-free. Still, for some reason--a misguided pursuit of rigor, perhaps?--each point is belabored beyond my patience. I did feel I learned some things, however, which is more than I can say about Fred Botting's writings, or Freud's essay on the uncanny (i.e., to the man with an Oedipal theory, every problem looks like a penis).

Four chapters are intended to define horror, explain our emotional reaction to it ("art horror"), describe typical horror plots, and try to understand the "paradox of horror" (that is, why would anyone want to be scared by a story?). The first chapter spends a lot of time developing the idea that a monster causes horror when it is both threatening and impure. This is convincing. I would have included a description of twin instincts which are pre-rational: revulsion over rotting things and the uncanny valley response to corpses. These are important survival instincts and cause pre-rational reactions (because who has time to be rational when life is on the line?) and they go a long way to explain why we are horrified at fictional horror.

The second chapter considers ways to deal with 3 contradictory premises:

1. We are genuinely moved by fictions
2. We know that that which is portrayed in fictions in not actual
3. We are only genuinely moved by what we believe is actual

The illusion theory denies #1; the pretense theory denies #2. Too much time was spent refuting these implausible theories. The clear answer (imho) is to deny #3. A more illuminating direction, I think, would lie in expanding our understanding of the brain's hard-wired reactions of sympathy while watching other people perform actions, or the role storytelling and play have in learning.

I enjoyed the 3rd chapter a lot, but it was there I ran out of time. Perhaps my provisional rating would have risen from 3 stars to 4 if I had finished.

[Mar · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great book.

[Beholderess · Rating 2 out of 5]

The subject of the book is interesting to me, however, the author's style is difficult to read. It does feel like a scientific monograph that does not have any reader in mind sometimes.

Also, the author is keen to push his own understanding of what counts as "horror", to define it as something that a) features monsters b) those monsters are repulsive, which leaves quite a lot of fiction typically understood as "horror" unaccounted for. He does notice that, and delegates such fiction to "thriller" or "doom" category, but I still think that it should have been seen as an integral part of horror, as it elicits pretty much the same reaction in people, usually placed on the same place in stores, and people seek it out for the same reasons.
Yet the whole thesis of the author hinges on defining horror as featuring "repulsive monsters", which allows him to use Purity and Danger-inspired framework for analysis.

[Nick Girvin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow, here I was expecting a breakdown of what makes horror, horror, and instead I got so much more. Granted, there is some of that, as Noël Carroll breaks “The Philosophy Of Horror” into four parts, and two of them deal in this realm. Part 1 covers what defines horror, and part 3 deals in plot-building. Honestly, I feel as though the latter should have been second, because part 2 and 4 together make more sense together as they deal in the psychology behind horror, which I didn’t anticipate.

In detailing the concept of horror, Carroll boils it down to needing a monster or subject that disgusts or repulses us, in the sense that it doesn’t fit in with what’s conceived as possible, and that it also has an element of impurity, not necessarily in a demonic sense but a biological sense: I.E. half man, half wolf, and that its lack of existence always prevails. Even a simple plot like Jaws, around a shark, very real creatures, is pointed out to have abilities and thinking / tracking aspects that are so unrealistic. He even goes as far to argue that Psycho is NOT horror, which leads to a discussion around suspense and mystery vs. horror. With that, he concludes that horror as a form of entertainment didn’t emerge until the 18th century, as before the enlightenment, scientific explanations that we now have did not yet exist, thus the idea of writing entertainment around a demon, vampire, or some other mythical thing that felt like a true threat at the time wouldn’t be conceived of. We now have scientific explanations for ghostly occurrences, sicknesses, and strange forces of nature. This is important because it leads us into the first of the two psychological angles: why are we afraid of what we logically know doesn’t exist?

This has to be my favorite part, and it first gives several theories that formerly tried to explain it but then says why they’re insufficient. Carroll’s explanation is simpler than you think; it’s the idea of that sparks an emotional response which is nothing unordinary in human psyche. A parallel is drawn to sexual excitement, as one can simply imagine a specific scenario of someone they find attractive and their body react to it despite it not existing. The author dives deep here giving example after example of why it isn’t “pretending” to be scared, as that takes away the true emotion, yet it also isn’t “believing temporarily,” as if one truly believed what they consumed in the narrative was happening, they would take action to avoid it. Thus, the conclusion around the idea of something while being shielded from the actuality of it, as it’s fiction, is what sparks the emotional reaction to what’s in front of them. It dives deeper too into the characters and how we may sympathize with them, but I’m already saying too much for a simple summary.

The back half then goes into plot, boiling it down to onset of the monster, to discovery, to confirmation, to confrontation, and gives all sorts of examples that use part or all of this structure, while also adding several exceptions such as an overreaching character like a necromancer or mad scientist. This then leads us back to the psychology of why we seek out media that conjures an emotional response that would otherwise be avoided. The simple version is that it’s the fascination with the idea of something unthinkable and unimaginable in our world that piques curiosity, which is then satisfied by seeing either how the characters in the narrative deal with the monster, how the monster comes about, and how/if a return to normalcy is reached. But this too dives deeper into other examples, even having a whole section strictly around ideology and status quo. For example, it shows how Lovecraft was able to project racism through certain works, how films around alien invaders reflected anti-communist movements of the ‘50s, and finally explained the huge boom the ‘70s and ‘80s saw in the genre, related to the sheer unknown in entering the last stages of American Empire. This caught me off guard more than anything, but boy was it a welcoming and compelling surprise.

All in all “The Philosophy Of Horror” was an extremely wordy work that covered a LOT of questions around the genre, far more than I’m willing to include here, and all I can say is that if you’re a deep fan of the genre yourself, this is absolutely worth a read. It’s even more fascinating that it came out in 1990, I’d have to wonder what the author would say with the following 35 years of horror media.

[Jillian Allen · Rating 2 out of 5]

Though masterfully organized and researched, this is a deeply flawed book that is also very outdated. I appreciate its scope, but I disagree with many of its conclusions, particularly around how to define horror and why people are drawn to it. I don’t think Carroll makes a convincing argument on either account, and moreover, I don’t think it’s possible to identify one resounding reason people are drawn to horror. Horror is not so easily categorized, so I think Carrol’s premise was inherently misguided.

Also, the constant, grating repetition of things that were just said eclipsed my tolerance levels and patience. I’m used to theorists doing this (and in many cases, it is necessary for comprehension and organizational purposes), but Carroll took it to a whole new level. This book probably could have been cut in half & still been coherent. I found myself getting increasingly frustrated with how much time he was taking to make the same point five times over.

[Ellen Collins]

This book is repetitive. That is to say, the text often makes the exact same point in quick succession. Thus, we might understand this book to state the same idea again and again.

You could point to a lot of examples but I present the following sentences, all from 184-186, all expressing a very specific idea, as evidence. The past 180 pages have been about why people volunteer themselves for the unpleasant experience of horror consumption, how we are specifically disgusted/repulsed by horror creatures, and how many horror narratives revolve around characters 'discovering' monsters - aka none of these ideas are individually new nor hard to grasp at this point!

"Therefore, the disgust that such beings evince might be seen as part of the price to be paid for the pleasure of their disclosure. That is.... disgust, so to say, is itself more or less mandated by the kind of curiosity that the horror narrative puts into place. The horror narrative could not deliver a successful, affirmative answer to its presiding question unless the disclosure of the monster indeed elicted disgust...If what is of primary importance about horrific creatures is that their very impossibility vis a vis our conceptual categories is what makes them function so compellingly in dramas of discovery and confirmation, then their disclosure, insofar as they are categorial violations, will be attached to some sense of disturbance, distress, and disgust. Consequently, the role of the horrific creature in such narratives.... will simultaneously mandate some probable revulsion. That is, in order to reward our interest in the disclosure of the putatively impossible beings of the plot, said beings ought to be disturbing, distressing, and repulsive... if narrative disclosure about impossible beings is to be satisfied through disclosure, that process must require some element of probable disgust since such impossible beings are, ex hypothesi, disturbing, distressful, and repulsive. One way of making the point is to say that the monsters in such tales of disclosure have to be disturbing, distressful, and repulsive, if the process of their discovery is to be rewarding in a pleasurable way... It is not that we crave disgust, but that disgust is a predictable concomitant of disclosing the unknown, whose disclosure is a desire the narrative instills in the audience and then goes on to gladden. Nor will that desire be satisfied unless the monster defies our conception of nature with demands that it probably engender some measure of repulsion... art-horror is the price we are willing to pay for the revelation of that which is impossible and unknown, of that which violates our conceptual schema. The impossible being does disgust, but that disgust is part of an overall narrative address which is not only pleasurable, but whose potential pleasure depends on the confirmation of the existence of the monster as a being that violates, defies, or problematizes standing cultural confirmations. Thus, we are attracted to... horror fictions of this sort despite the fact that they provoke disgust, because that disgust is required for the pleasure involved in engaging our curiosity in the unknown and drawing it into the processes of revelation"

MY GUY! WE GET IT! WE GOT IT TWO PAGES AGO!!

[Lobo]

Mocno meh. Budowanie ogólnej teorii odbioru horroru jest karkołomnym zajęciem, a proponowane tutaj wyjaśnienia są z konieczności niewystarczające, z czego autor częściowo zdaje sobie sprawę.

[Marina Vidal · Rating 3 out of 5]

3,5/5

La verdad es que el libro es súper interesante, la teoría que propone el autor, y todas las otras que discute, son curiosas y me parece acertada a varios niveles. Por desgracia me falta una mirada más amplia al terror y no solo al derivado de la creación de Monstruos. También hay que recalcar que es un ensayo de hace unos años, y ha llovido mucho en el género desde entonces, pero este tipo de acercamientos más "intelectuales" me parecen bastante chulos de leer.

[Eric Jay Sonnenschein · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Philosophy of Horror is a virtuoso treatise of philosophy on the horror genre. It is intensely and rigorously argued and witty at times,as well. It is also full of pertinent insights on this popular entertainment and the psychological mechanism that makes so many people receptive to it. It is also quite a good book to read if you enjoy the philosophical spirit and thought process. Carroll brings much erudition to bear on his topic, including Hume, Freud, Jung, and an encyclopedic knowledge of horror in all of its forms. If you like brain teasers and plan to travel this would be a great book to take with you and dip into for pages at a time before you become immersed. It will challenge you and then absorb you.

[Jay · Rating 3 out of 5]

Read for my Genre Studies: Horror, Fantasy and Sci-fi class.

Pretty repetitive and drawn out for the most part, but did have some interesting concepts of why horror movies scare us. Particularly interesting was the discussion of impurity and how revolting images such as blood, spit, rotting flesh, and others as well as an obvious threat to be what makes movies particularly a product of what Carroll calls 'art-horror'.

[Victor Popa · Rating 5 out of 5]

Un chapitre 2 excellent qui propose une solution intelligente au paradoxe de la fiction : sortir enfin de la théorie cognitiviste stricte de l'émotion.
L'écriture de Carroll est très claire et montre une vrai érudition en la matière et une passion sans limites. Je recommande très chaleureusement le livre à tout passionné d'esthétique.

[Kevin Lucia · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent, excellent, excellent. May need to take a month, just to absorb what I just read. Very comprehensive, insightful, and illuminating.

[Alina · Rating 2 out of 5]

I came to this book not interested in horror as a genre of art, but rather in Carroll’s views on the relationship between engagement with art and emotion. From this angle, I was miffed. Carroll comes off as the sort of philosopher who so cherishes his intuitions that he doesn’t seriously engage in competing views. This is frustrating and makes for bad philosophy. For example, the foundation of his account of horror as a genre is that artworks of this genre aim to produce a certain emotion in its audience which he calls “art-horror.” To secure this foundation, Carroll argues that we can have emotions towards fictional characters and events.

There is a border debate over whether such emotions are possible (cf., Kendall Walton, Dick Moran, Stacie Friend.) There’s good reason to think that such emotions are impossible; emotions have evolved to track significant happenings in one’s environment, in light of one’s interests and needs. We are afraid when something that could endanger us is sensed in the environment. Jerrold Levinson gives an alternative argument for this position: in order to have an emotion towards something, that thing needs to possess certain value-laden properties that trigger that emotion. Given that any fictional character doesn’t exist, and we know that this is the case, there is nothing there that could possess such properties, and so we can’t have an emotion. Emotion is not like thought and imagination, which are mental attitudes that can be directed towards that which doesn’t exist. Emotion is more like action and perception, which can be directed towards only that which does exist.

Much more could be said about this debate. I won’t do that in this little write-up on this website. But let me sketch out the sort of meager, careless ways Carroll responds to these reasons to think that we can’t have emotion towards fictional characters. He thinks that if this emotion is “make-believe” (as Walton says it is), this implies that it’s volitional; emotional responses to fictions aren’t. But in no way does the make-believe status of apparent emotional responses to fiction imply this! Or, Carroll responds to objections with quick sentences like “it does not seem to square with the phenomenology of [make-believe emotion].” Phenomenological description is notoriously shaky. This is not a line of argument. Or, Carroll responds by saying that we don’t seem to play any game of make-believe when we engage with fiction (contra Walton.) But Walton does not define playing games of make believe upon any experiential or phenomenological criterion! Carroll’s is not a response to Walton.

Most egregiously, perhaps, Carroll slides from the fact that something can cause an affective response in us to that we can have emotion towards that thing. Imagining a master can cause our heart to pound and hands to sweat. This doesn’t mean that we are afraid of this imagined monster! An analogy: an advertisement for a cake can cause you to salivate. This doesn’t mean that you want to eat the piece of paper on which a cake is depicted. If you end up becoming afraid of something, when imagining a monster triggers this affect, this must be that you think of something in real life which the monster reminds you of, just as how a depiction of a cake can remind you of cake out there in the real world which could be eaten. (I’m not providing argument for my position here on this venue—I’m working on that for my research—but I hope this analogy might at least provide such motivation.) Susan Feagin in her article “Monsters, Disgust and Fascination” (Philosophical Studies, 1992) provides a good articulation of this concern about Carroll’s work.

Other thinkers who believe that we can have emotion towards fictional characters have more nuanced views than Carroll’s. Stacie Friend and Eva Dadlez have positions that, while I think are wrong, are at least thought-provoking. For potential readers interested in whether we can have emotion towards fictional characters I recommend the work of Kendall Walton, Jerrold Levinson, and Colin Radford.

Moreover the other major part of Carroll's book wasn't helpful. He addresses the question of why we can be attracted to horror in artwork, even though feeling horrified is unpleasant. His answer is bad because he assumes we are actually horrified in responding to art, in the same way by which we can be horrified in real life; this sets him off on the wrong footing. A book I love that explains what's so special about the apparent emotions that fictions can evoke in us is Holland's The Dynamics of Literary Response. It takes a psychoanalytic approach to this matter, as Carroll vaguely does, but is more insightful.

[Aljoša Harlamov · Rating 3 out of 5]

Nekoliko sem razdeljen glede te knjige. Po eni strani odlično razdela podžanr grozljivke, ki ji pri O.B.O.D. pravimo "beštijka", v kombinaciji z "norim znanstvenikom", jo analizira in odlično (skoraj strukturalistično) razloži njeno pripovedno strukturo (siže). Dobro analizira tudi motiv pošasti kot nečesa liminalnega, ne le groznega, ampak tudi odvratnega, ter suspenz v grozljivki, ki se odigrava med dvema moralnima možnostma izida. Zelo dobrodošel je tudi kritični premislek o psihoanalitičnih teorijah groze kot potlačenju psihoseksualnih želja, o teorijah grozljivke (umetnosti) kot emancipatorne ali regresivne (ker naj bi tako kot kriminalka branila ustaljeni družbeni red) same na sebi. In čeprav dobro razloži tudi, v čem je privlačnost (pod)žanra grozljivke, je pri tem obenem preveč in premalo specifičen. Preveč, ker zagotovo pokrije, kot omenjeno, le podžanr grozljivke s pošastjo in ignorira vse druge možnosti; premalo pa zato, ker užitek v pripovedi, v razkrivanju neznanega, po mojem mnenju ni dovolj določujoč za grozljivko (niti za ta podžanr grozljivke). Ob tem je treba dodati, da bi bila lahko knjiga vsaj za tretjino krajša. Knjiga je napisana pedagoško, kar je čisto v redu, vseeno pa so nekateri argumenti razviti prepočasi (s pojasnjevanjem očitnega) in s preveč ponavljanja; tu in tam pa v dokazovanju zmot drugih teorij zagreši kakšnega slamnatega moža ali pa njihove teorije vsaj predaleč ekstrapolira ter od njih zahteva, da pojasnijo vse posamezne pojave znotraj žanra - kriterij, ki ga je nemogoče zadovoljiti, predvsem pa tega ne pričakuje od svojih izvajanj. Skratka, odlična knjiga za žanr beštijke, in če vas zanima to, lahko preberete samo poglavje "Plotting Horror".

[Hattie B · Rating 4 out of 5]

While I don't entirely agree with Carroll's definition of horror or his metrics of what a horror film has to have in order to qualify as a horror film, I loved the questions this book raised about the genre, its functions and its ability to reflect our societal anxieties back at us. I would be interested to learn what Carroll makes of the horror films that have been the most popular over the last 10 years or so- or even if he thinks something like Get Out qualifies as a horror film. I don't know that the presence of a supernatural monster in a film as the sole qualifier for its inclusion in the genre would stand up in the current cycle of horror fiction, but I would be really interested to hear Carroll's thoughts on the genre in the era of 'elevated horror'- a term which can absolutely get in the sea.

[JJ Powell · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book had a LOT of interesting things to say, and it’s been really helpful in my process of thinking through the appeal of the horror genre. That being said, I’m going to agree with all of the other reviews and say that he repeats himself a lot more than is necessary; he could probably edit this down to about 50 pages less and still have all of the same information. He also defines the genre a little more narrowly than I think is helpful, although I suppose that doesn’t negate his views on the horror that does fit his criteria.

I think this is a super helpful book, and considering how often I see it quoted, I think this is definitely essential for anybody interested in the academic study of horror. But I’m excited to see where else all of this research can go.

[Lucas · Rating 3 out of 5]

A bit of a rough read but with some real gems in it. It sets out on a fool's errand to categorically define a genre and as a thesis I think it fails. But as a discourse it had some valuable insight. It finds itself in need of a ruthless editor -there's a lot of fat to be cut. The author often states a concept clearly only to then proceed to muddy the waters with unnecessary jargon and over-exposition of accessible concepts. This feels like a PhD dissertation that was never revisited prior to publication. Clearly a lot work went into it but it would have benefited by leaving some on the cutting room floor.

[Pate Duncan · Rating 3 out of 5]

When you hate psychoanalytic theory so much that you circumvent around in your mind palace to come to the conclusion that people use horror media because they like the plot and that the scares are just a price to pay… imagine being so incapable of accepting the simple truth that people sometimes like gross things. Incomplete as any kind of general unified theory on horror as a genre, lacking medium specificity to look into formal elements rather than simple narrative ones, but a fine way to outline monster horror as a subgenre of horror altogether.

[Nox · Rating 3 out of 5]

A good book but I feel that the definitions and the set up tries to cage horror as an entity as too tight fitting, there are many examples that contradict the premise and rules that are set up.

It's a good book and Noel Carroll did a good job, but I feel that the genre has expanded since the writing of this book.

Personally I found it dry and a little too academic, there's many instances of things that could be said directly that take up paragraphs of winding words.

[Samuel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Even if I only agree with about half of what’s written here, this is a comprehensive and diligently executed analysis of the horror genre that is ambitious in its originality. Enjoyable to read, though I will say that the cultural references used by Carroll, though apt and many, are often slightly dated (partially forgivable due to its release date) in a way that makes some arguments less convincing and some passages less interesting.

[Saphi · Rating 3 out of 5]

Is this book useful? Yes

Is this book good? Yes

Does it fully approach the idea of horror? No

For what it talks about, it's useful in studying the concept of horror and creating classics perhaps, but I read a book around the same time in March 2023 (a guy had to read to reach his personal goal before getting Goodread), and I think it did a much better job at exploring the idea of horror. It's still very much worth it of course, but not what I would recommend in exploring the subject.