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defining the integral elements of the horror genre
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Horror jangles my nerves. Other books don't. That's how I define horror for myself.
I agree with the definition of horror as an emotion and being subjective to the reader. I find cockroaches extremely horrifying. Some people find babies horrifying. I like babies. LOL.
Tressa wrote: "George, I can't always put into words why a certain horror book struck me in a profound way while I only enjoyed another horror book. I enjoyed some of Ed Lee's books, but they have never struck ..."
As much as I WANT to type something sarcastic and smarmy about Ed Lee's books not striking a chord with you, I do understand. Believe it or not, it isn't so much the graphic and lewd nature of his stories that really attract me to his work, its the way he tells a story and his writing style. Truthfully, I'm not one of those horror fans that gravitates toward anything hardcore...
I think all these posts are excellent...so I guess it's pretty safe to say that horror and what makes good horror is subjective and it is very difficult to divide the definition between horror the emotion and horror the sort of Hollywood conception (for lack of a better description). Great discussion!!
I hate those commercials where they show the abused animals in cages...with that sad music...god, it tears me up inside. Personally, the politically motivated animals rights groups are just that. I'd rather help/volunteer/donate to such fine local groups and/or charities. Besides, I like meat and like my leather bomber jacket....
Chris, I totally hate those commercials. I'm in animal health and you think I wouldn't be so affected, but they are painful to watch and make me want to cry. The best thing that people can do to help homeless dogs and cats is to spay and neuter their pets and encourage everyone they know to do the same. (off my soapbox).
Indeed. And NOT let them wander around outside, just asking to catch a deadly disease or get flattened by a car.
George wrote: "I think all these posts are excellent...so I guess it's pretty safe to say that horror and what makes good horror is subjective and it is very difficult to divide the definition between horror the ..."Exactly, George...and everyone has their own tastes in horror, their own preferences. It's all good!
Because horror is so subjective, and many of you know already, I don't like the term Horror, but prefer to define the genre as Dark Fiction instead. Because most of what is seen as horror can be classified as Dark Fiction, but not all would be classified as horror per the individual.
Chris wrote: "Indeed. And NOT let them wander around outside, just asking to catch a deadly disease or get flattened by a car. "That is another great one. I really dislike the idea of outside cats. Average life span: 3 years.
Jerrod wrote: "Because horror is so subjective, and many of you know already, I don't like the term Horror, but prefer to define the genre as Dark Fiction instead. Because most of what is seen as horror can be c..."--I like the Dark Fiction category. It gives more room for different genres within it than horror.
Danielle "The Book Huntress" wrote: "--I like the Dark Fiction category. It gives more room for different genres within it than horror. "I like it also because it doesn't scare people away from the genre. They seem to pass a hurtle when the hear Dark Fiction instead of Horror. When I started using the term Dark Fiction, all of a sudden two or three friends were interested in what I was reading. Silly I know, but I think bad horror movies did a real number on defining the term Horror, for better or worse.
Excellent point Jerrod...I think that a great deal of the damage done to this genre has come not from bad horror writers per say...but rather bad screenwriters and directors...great point!
George wrote: "Excellent point Jerrod...I think that a great deal of the damage done to this genre has come not from bad horror writers per say...but rather bad screenwriters and directors...great point!"In my experience, when the term Horror is used, people don't think great writers, they think blood soaked celluloid, most not being impressed by the effort.
My wife was such a reader, swap terms, read a few books, now she understands why Horror might not be the best term to use when describing the fiction we all love so much.
I agree...it is unfortunate that many non-horror fans have come to view this is all the genre has to offer...the sad consequence of this is that some really great stuff like ghost story doesn't get the general acclaim it deserves
As much as I WANT to type something sarcastic and smarmy about Ed Lee's books not striking a chord with youThank you for this early Christmas present.
The term horror does remind people of crappy slasher films with little plot or the terrible '80s horror books. Dark fiction is a good term for it.
I can't bear those caged animal ads either. I really hate the one with the toothless, clawless, beaten down bear that's used in fights now that he can't rip someone's head open.
I hate when I'm bombarded with depressing images. Our library used to put up a gallery of Holocaust photos during Holocaust Remembrance month. I had to walk down this hall often and always saw that famous picture of the Nazi soldier about to shoot in the back the stumbling mother clutching her toddler. Seeing all these horrible images every day was like working in some library in a Stephen King short story. It put me in a dark funk and I wasn't my usual pleasant self to patrons. ;-)
This argument has come up before and while I respect everyone's opinion, I wholeheartedly disagree. Personally, I love the genre label, horror. It IS what it is, in all its varied styles (hardcore, traditional, etc etc). But that's just me. Dark fiction, dark fantasy....blah. Gimme some HORROR!!!! ;)
I complained to the powers that be that there was no horror section in there best books of 2009 poll. They have romance for God's sake but no horror. I haven't heard anything back.
I think call it horror is perfectly fine or dark fantasy...though dark fantasy might be fairly nebulous...horror and fantasy genres share many common elements anyway...having to comabat a giant spider is pretty frightening...regardless of whether you're a hobbit or a human...then again, when you think of genre erosion or confusion, perhaps adding a new label may only further cloud the matter...I'm not certain...I guess real horror fans will always know what horror is no matter what it's called.
I hope it's not bad taste to return to a thread that's more than 2 years old.I've been thinking more about the topic of this thread lately. In fact, I have been reading much of horror analysis.
I haven't seen anything that gives a nice neat definition of horror. The closest thing to a consensus is that horror's primary purpose is to induce fear. However, as George points out, this seems to be an inadequate definition, as it leaves the genre open-ended. Are Holocaust testimonies horror?
The supernatural element as the agent of fear may seem to solve this problem, but it really doesn't. It seems to me to be an arbitrary cut-off--what is the reason for this to be defining aspect? Especially if some find non-supernatural forces (whether humans, animals, or earthquakes) more scary than vampires and ghosts (which can be more laughable than truly scary).
Frankenstein and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde do not utilize the supernatural, yet are considered cornerstones of horror literature. Are they really science fiction? Even in Dracula, Van Helsing (in the original novel) implies that the events they are witnessing may be explainable by science one day.
I do not have an answer to all this, but a few points that bear considering:
1) I don't go by authorial intent. (The author meant this to be scary. OK, how do you know that?) Or by reader reaction. (People's sense of what's scary is always fickle and you will never get a consensus on this for very long.) I need a more formal definition that is about the text--but of course acknowledging that texts don't exist in a vacuum.
2. Defining a genre doesn't mean coming up with a list of "rules" that a book, movie, story, etc needs to meet. It doesn't mean being rigid. A definition can be elastic while still being useful.
3. Stephen King and Roger Solomon give two very different pictures of what horror does. In Danse Macabre, King says that horror disturbs our sense of order and plays upon our fears, but then restores that order, helping us to cope with and understand those fears. Solomon, in Mazes of the Serpent, says that horror is an absolute subversion of order and hope.
For Solomon, horror embodies metaphysical meaningless, emptiness, a kind of radical threat to everything we value. I kind of like Solomon's take--I think it gets closer to the heart of what horror strives to do. Dante's Divine Comedy, while having its horrific moments in the Inferno, ultimately takes us to Heaven, so would not qualify as horror. Under King's auspices, the Comedy could be considered horror.
Still, there is something to what King says. As previous posts in this thread attest to, horror can have both happy and unhappy endings. Defining horror should consider the piece as a whole, not just its ending.
To conclude, perhaps horror is a manifestation of metaphysical dread--that the world is a cruel, violent, scary place, and any notion of safety and comfort is only temporary. Even if the monster or killer is vanquished, a sequel always looms, does it not?
Hey, Andrew. How are you? Long time no see.I think deep down human beings just love to be tickled with fear. I get a little high whenever something scares me. Makes me feel alive and happy that it's happening to someone else and not me.
Been very busy. I'd like to poke around here more, but I doubt I'll have the chance.It's a given that people love to be scared--at least, as you say, vicariously. The question is what distinguishes certain kinds of scares from others. My girlfriend, as a child, found The Wizard of Oz frightening, and watched it perversely for that reason. But I wouldn't call TWoO horror.
Maybe horror can't be defined. I find alternate universes like Oz and Wonderland extremely frightening and very uncomfortable. I feel like hyperventilating whenever I watch or read about them. As long as I get tickled, what do I care and why should I try to define what scares me?Are you still writing your wonderful poetry? Remember, if you ever publish a book, let me know.
Without horror, no Horror Aficionados.Because for readers and writers not to do so would mean that the marketers alone define our tastes, and I'm not prepared to allow that.
Then again, I have an overly analytic mind. Sometimes I just need to shut up and enjoy. Still....
*Blushing* Thanks for remembering my poetry, and the kind words. I've been trying to get back into creative work--I did have 2 pieces recently published in Taproot Literary Review that won 1st and 3rd place in their annual poetry contest ("Derailed" and "Whalers," respectively). It's supposed to be available on Amazon soon.
Bring on the horror, it just doesn't have to be defined. An analytic mind is a terrible thing to waste. I must introduce you to HA Shawn one day. :-D
I could never forget poetry that good. If you remember, let me know when it's available at Amazon. I'd like to read it.
I agree with you Tressa. My horror doesn't need to be defined or categorized. I like what I like. I do prefer gothic type tales but I certainly don't mind a little gore either. What I do not like is gore for its own sake. Though I haven't tried any, I do believe that torture porn type books are not for me.
But you see, terms like "torture porn" are the reason why I think some examination of labels is important. Adam Lowenstein, a film professor at the University of Pittsburgh, argues in a Critical Quarterly article very convincingly that torture porn is a fallacious epithet that assumes a negative value judgment. While I'm not a fan of Hostel, and referred to it as torture porn myself, his analysis brought out things I never would have noticed or known, such as the socio-political undertones of the movie ("Mission accomplished!" one of the jerky male characters says to the other), and the allusions to very early (pre-1910) cinema and its fascination with execution (as in "Electrocuting an Elephant"--an actually filmed electrocution of an elephant who had killed its trainers). It made me rethink my view of the movie and give it a second watch (though I haven't done so yet).Still, whenever someone looks askance at me when I tell them I like horror, I'm tempted to qualify it: "But of course, I'm not into that torture porn crap. Only tasteful stuff like Cat People or Edgar Allan Poe." Then I sneak off to watch Jason X: Jason in Space or read Poppy Z. Brite.
The resistance to defining labels as we freely use them is curious in and of itself. Now I suppose I'll have to analyze that!
Lady Danielle "The Book Huntress" wrote: " . . . The best thing that people can do to h..."Lady Danielle, I completely agree. Not allowing dogs and cats to breed is the best single way to help with the pet overpopulation problems. Re-reading, this sounds grossly oversimplified ☺ Duh; too many dogs? Stop letting them make babies! lol
I'm in rescue, and love it. What *I* get out of it so far exceeds what I put into it . . . See my Rescue Org at http://www.saintkarmasdogrescue.org/. Especially see our "In Memory" page. We're also on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/groups/saint...
Atmosphere and dread are key to a good horror story. I don't think you need the gore just to make it horror. Just look at the works of EA Poe or Lovercraft... just teeming with fear and mystery.
What I personally like about horror is the way that it mingles the natural with the supernatural or grotesque. Of course, you can set a horror story in a fantasy world, and many writers have successfully done so. But for me, it is the mingling of the mundane and the comforting with the threatening and monstrous which creates that wonderful creepy frisson and brings me back to the horror genre again and again. A little gore can help things along too, if used judiciously.
Greg wrote: "Atmosphere and dread are key to a good horror story. I don't think you need the gore just to make it horror. Just look at the works of EA Poe or Lovercraft... just teeming with fear and mystery."
I strongly agree with this statement. Without the proper atmosphere, you completely lose the horror. That is why "paranormal romance" is not horror.
Ultimately, the horror writers that are remembered are the ones who can write atmosphere, while the ones that cannot fade into obscurity. Furthermore, I do not equate atmosphere with subtlety, because a writer can be atmospheric without being subtle (Clive Barker) or subtle without being atmospheric (so many of the "Literary Horror" writers that would turn up in those old "Year's Best Fantasy And Horror" books in the 90s [although those had plenty of good stories in them as well, and were responsible for introducing me to Ramsey Campbell and Thomas Ligotti back when my main genre was fantasy {not heroic fantasy though, mostly Neil Gaiman and Charles De Lint}], I do not find stories of people trying to recover from guilt to be remotely frightening).
I strongly agree with this statement. Without the proper atmosphere, you completely lose the horror. That is why "paranormal romance" is not horror.
Ultimately, the horror writers that are remembered are the ones who can write atmosphere, while the ones that cannot fade into obscurity. Furthermore, I do not equate atmosphere with subtlety, because a writer can be atmospheric without being subtle (Clive Barker) or subtle without being atmospheric (so many of the "Literary Horror" writers that would turn up in those old "Year's Best Fantasy And Horror" books in the 90s [although those had plenty of good stories in them as well, and were responsible for introducing me to Ramsey Campbell and Thomas Ligotti back when my main genre was fantasy {not heroic fantasy though, mostly Neil Gaiman and Charles De Lint}], I do not find stories of people trying to recover from guilt to be remotely frightening).
The discussion clearly highlights the difficulty of putting fences around genres. Yet it's hard to get by without labels. I tend to agree with Greg and Thefriendfromdimensionx. If one can distill anything from the broad horror category, atmosphere and dread are key. A story like The Wizard of Oz or a paranormal romance can have horror elements (like a scary witch), but those elements don't constitute the underpinning of the entire story. This is a great topic, even though the conversation started 9 years ago!
I had never tried to define the horror genre. All the good rules always have exceptions. Horror should make you dreadful, the cause for it should be out of control for you, the unknown (person, animal, thing) must make you uncomfortable, fearing for the life (or well being). But this definition is so broad. I am not sure that anyone would come with a no flawed definition for the genre.
The rockabilly werewolf from Mars wrote: "I think that the reason I read horror is because I like monsters..."Monsters rock. Vampires, werewolves, ghouls, laboratory creations, robots, aliens, cryptids, kaiju, Lovecraftian creepy-crawlers, you name it, I love them all! While I acknowledge HORROR as being an emotion: fear of the Unknown, I don't think you can beat a story with a good monster.
Hi Perry, that begs the question of what makes an 'effective,' monster?Care to have a shot at it?
Graeme wrote: "Hi Perry, that begs the question of what makes an 'effective,' monster?Care to have a shot at it?"
Glad to, Graeme.
As an amateur teratologist, I would say the most important factor in defining a monster is its "otherness". It can't be a normal thing and be a monster. If it is the same as us, then it's kind of ho-hum.
One of my all time favorite monsters are the Crinoids from HP Lovecraft's "At the Mountains of Madness". They are aliens that came to Earth a billion years ago, but these are not little green men. They in no way resemble human beings--they actually have quin-lateral symmetry. But their complex and unique structure works and are they are believable. In the same story we see the shoggoths--utterly different from the Crinoids and even more frightening.
One of the most classic monsters is the vampire. At first glance, they don't seem scary; they look just like us. But in my vampire stories, I emphasize just how different they are. That's why I have them recoil at the sight of a crucifix and stop their ears when someone prays. I even show that they do not have the same emotions as when they were alive.
Monsters work best when they are different from us--whether that difference is visible or not.
(Corrected)
What if the monster is the protagonist? Does there need to be elements we can relate to?
Graeme wrote: "What if the monster is the protagonist? Does there need to be elements we can relate to?"Of course. Even if the monster is inhuman and inarticulate like Godzilla, we need to feel empathy for him.
But that goes the same for antagonists. When we read Frankenstein, we sympathize with the Creature, even though he kills like six people. In Dracula, the Count is closer to pure evil, but in his scene with his brides, we see something of the internal struggles within his world, thus making him human and making his motivations understandable. But just because Stoker made him accessible, he never watered down his villain. Dracula remained evil.
Horror Aficionados
Books mentioned in this topic
Frankenstein (other topics)Dracula (other topics)
Collapse (other topics)
The Mist (other topics)
The Girl Next Door (other topics)
And I kind of skimmed some of this thread, so if someone already said this, please disregard.