AR; The History of Horror

The History of Horror

Why are stories that ‘aim to scare their audience’ so popular?

Horror is a film genre that has proved itself very popular and successful within the industry. It is a genre which aims to scare the audience and has been evolving into many sub genre's such as slasher or psychological since its creation in ‘Le Manoir du Diable’ (Melies, 1896). People love the thrill of feeling uneasy and exhilarated just like the effect of a roller coaster.

What insight can the study of horror monsters give?

• One of the reasons for its popularity is how it can relate to the audience. Monsters are often created with the characteristics derived from people’s most deep-seated fears and taboos. Horror films reflect that mankind has shown itself to have the potential to be monstrous. They can give an insight into the anxieties and concerns of society. Post WW2 monsters were first being used in films, horror still often uses monsters as a focus, often those that 'invade or infect' or reflect the ‘science gone wrong’ motif which expands across both horror and science-fiction.
• There was a development of monsters in 1960 starting with Psycho (Hitchcock, 1960) which is about a man whose family dynamics made him a monster through his ‘abnormal psychology’. Peeping Tom (Powell, 1960) was similarly about a dysfunctional family that created another monster. In both these films the monsters, on the surface, look like normal people but they brought horror close to home for the 1960’s audience. They also had more mundane settings than the distant, fantastical horror of the previous decades. The setting and form of the monster makes them seem more like us creating an unsettling realism, it makes the audience realise that anyone has he potential to be monstrous.
• In the 1970’s children were being used as the monster focus of horror films such as ‘The Exorcist' (Freidkin, 1972). This film got a lot of media attention and outrage as it depicted a possessed girl which is a daring, outrageous image to exhibit to people. There is an unease and uncertainty with using devils, demons and paigans as monsters especially when they are taking the form of something as innocent as a child. This film also identified the post-war changes in family life as this child is from a single-parent family. "The demon is only expelled with the help of two catholic priests the implication being that the modern world, with its fatherless families, reliance on science rather than religion allowed the demon in". Other films which use a child as the monster is the slasher film Halloween (Carpender, 1978) which shows a boy traumatised by rising sexual liberation so reacts with violent attacks against teenagers as they are seen as punishable for immoral behaviour.
• The Saw franchise is an example of a 'torture porn' film. It shows how the monster’s victims can become monsters themselves. These monsters are "selfish, nihilistic creations of the culture itself."

What did Nosferatu (1922), one of the earliest horror films use the vampire as a metaphor for?

Nosferatu is one of the earliest films created to scare the audience and it introduced the idea of monsters. It has majorly influenced the representations of vampires. The vampire is an ‘invader’; he comes from ‘elsewhere’ and brings pain to the local community. The method of a vampires attack involves penetrations and the exchange of bodily fluids. This can be seen as a sexual metaphor however the outcome of a vampire attack is death or infection, vampires could therefor be a metaphor to suggest that promiscuity is wrong. It was created in Germany shortly after WW1 when the country was economically and socially depleted whish is the reason for the vampire, Count Orlok looking rat-like and representing invasion and infection.
Many horror texts between the wars reflected the social changes in terms of power, authority and class that followed the political upheaval of WW1. Both Nosferatu and Dracula (Browning, 1931) featured a corrupt and abusive aristocratic class who are the sources of horror.



What are the different readings of horror based on social/cultural contexts of the decade?

Horror films can highlight the cultural horrors in the real world forcing people to face their problems such as the depths of human cruelty seen in the holocaust. For example in Frankenstein (Whale, 1931) were Dr Frankenstein takes on a God-like role in the act of creation, but he oversteps his social position and shows he needs to return to his predetermined aristocratic role to help protect the village from the horror he has unleashed. Another reading of this film is that it is a criticism of racial tensions that were present in American culture at the time. It portrays a mob lynching of an individual who cannot integrate into the dominant culture. The monster itself is not as monstrous as the abuse of scientific knowledge that creates him or the aristocrats’ abuse of power or the mindless, murderous mob.
By the end of the 1960’s there was a development in horror due to the changing attitudes of audiences. Night of the Living Dead (Romero, 1968) had a black male lead which was new to film. It was also showed vivid violence, this occurred because there was a demand for it in order to scare the audience. Psychological horrors had lost their scary effect as audiences where being familiarised with the harrowing images of the Vietnam War as well as the assassinations of President Kennedy in 1963, and later his brother Robert and Martin Luther King in 1968. It was because audiences were becoming so accustomed to seeing images of horrific real-life violence that films like The Last House on the Left (Craven 1972) and The Texas Chainsaw massacre (Hooper, 1974) where made with such graphic violence.
Film franchises replicated the same ideas over and over, and the genre grew tired and clichéd, becoming less economically viable. In the 1990’s horror engaged with this familiarity for both comic and horrific effect. Scream (Craven 1996) uses an ironic approach to the genre which made fun on the clichés for comical effect whilst still being scary, this is black comedy. The monster in the first Scream film is finally defeated by being hit with a television after a discussion of the effects of horror films on audiences. It used the conventions of the genre as a plot device.
Recent horrors include many remakes which can be updated with CGI effects and be made more polished and slicker however they appear more style over substance as they have no sense of cultural context. Hollywood remade some Asian horror films which touched on globalised concerns such as over-crowding (Dark Water: Salles, 2005) and the impact of technology (The Ring: Verbinski, 2002 and OneMissed Call Vallette, 2008).

Why according to Steph Hendry (journalist for Horror history article) is horror still relevant to audiences?

• Modern horror often takes traditional conventions like the mad scientist in The Human Centipede (Six, 2009)
• Horror ideas have been adapted into TV series' like The Walking Dead (AMC) and True Blood (HBO). They have been made into comedy series' also, like in Dead Set (C4) and Being Human (BBC3) or as soap opera and high-romance in The Vampire Diaries (CW) and The Twilight Saga. These reinventions prove horror still attracts audiences.
• "The genre has the ability to adapt to allow it to tap into each generation’s preoccupations and concerns and its metaphorical approach can be used to deal with ideas and issues that appeal to a range of audience groups."