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In the aftermath of 9/11, horror writers went
through an existential crisis. “How can we continue writing horror fiction,”
they asked, “when the world is filled with real-life horrors that are so much worse?”
Was it even moral to write horror fiction in the face of terrible tragedies?
Were we mocking them? Worse, were we somehow contributing to them?
After
the recent mass shooting at Uvalde elementary school in Texas – in which an
eighteen-year-old gunman took the lives of nineteen children and two adults and
injured seventeen others – writers of dark fiction are doubtless asking
themselves the same questions that they did when the towers fell. I know I am.
If
you feel you need to step away from writing the dark stuff for a while, I get
it. If you feel you need to take a longer break, maybe even a permanent one, I
get that too. But even in a world which contains such true darkness in it, I
think horror fiction, film, TV, and games still play an important role, maybe
even a vital one.
I
wrote about the importance of horror fiction to humanity in the first chapter
of Writing in the Dark, which I’ve posted below.
WHY HORROR MATTERS
Originally published
in Writing in the Dark, 2020
Years ago, a
student asked me why I write horror. “You seem like such a pleasant person,”
she said.
I
looked into her eyes and smiled a slightly wicked smile.
“Writing
horror is what keeps me pleasant.”
We all have a dark
side that whispers to us, a side that we struggle against and ultimately need
to make peace with if we don’t want it to destroy us. In many ways, that’s
probably the most primal story of humanity. Horror fiction gives us a safe way
to explore and – hopefully – come to terms with our dark side.
Horror stories
allow us to confront our deepest fears through the buffer of fiction. Wrestling
with the darkest questions of human existence – why is there violence, pain,
cruelty, and death? – can be emotionally overwhelming. These questions can be
too intense to deal with directly. Like an eclipse, the only way to safely view
these aspects of life is indirectly. Horror allows us to do this. Horror can
serve as a buffer in another way. It can distract us from the horrors of the
real world, all of which are far more terrifying than any story about a ghost
or vampire. Horror writers are like dark clowns that caper in front of our
readers, making grotesque faces in the hope that the audience won’t look over
our shoulder and see the true darkness of existence behind us.
Not that most
readers think that deeply when they pick up (or download) a horror book.
They’re looking to be entertained, and probably even more so with film and
television horror. They want to enter a dark dream and experience the
delightful frisson that comes from feeling they’re in mortal danger, when in
reality they’re perfectly safe. It’s the same for people who enjoy a trip
through a carnival spookhouse. It’s a fun experience that gets the blood
pumping, that jolts people out of their everyday existence and – if only for a
short time – makes them feel alive. And if this was all horror did, it would
still be important. Who doesn’t want to feel really alive? But even when
it entertains, horror can do so much more, be so much more.
Horror is as much,
if not more so, about an individual character’s experience than it’s about
whatever dark force confronts them. There’s an old saying that an adventure is
someone else having a hell of a tough time a thousand miles away. Any type of
fiction can teach us more about ourselves and our fellow humans by showing us
how particular characters deal with conflict – both external and internal. But
horror turns up the conflict all the way to eleven. How do characters deal with
the unknown, the impossible, the nightmarish? How do they deal with being
exposed to – or tempted by – evil, whether demonic, mundane, or symbolic? What
would we do in those situations? Would we be smarter, braver, more resistant to
corruption? Would we be smart enough not to go into the dark basement, to
resist opening the Necronomicon, to not invite the vampire into our
house? Could we hold onto our sanity in the face of the awful things we
encounter – or become? Psychologists suggest that reading and watching
horror allow people to develop stronger survival skills. We engage in fictional
scenarios to explore what we would do in dangerous situations. How many of you
have spent time arguing with friends about the best way to survive a zombie
apocalypse or how you’d react during a home invasion by a Michael Meyers-like
serial killer?
All fiction can
make people more empathetic by simply dropping us into a character’s life and
allowing us to experience how he or she tries to deal with problems. But horror
fiction allows us to follow characters pushed to the absolute limits of human
experience and beyond. The more pain – of all sorts – a character experiences
in a story, the greater our empathy for that character.
Horror also allows
for deep catharsis. The ending of the movie Jaws
is a perfect example. After an
entire film dealing with an implacable inhuman force, Sheriff Brody – clinging
to the mast of the sinking Orca and literally in the shark’s environment –
manages to kill the beast at the last moment. And the resultant explosion is a huge catharsis. When characters not only survive but triumph against dark
forces, we feel relief. We also feel that if characters in a story can do it,
maybe we can too in real life. But good horror isn’t predictable, isn’t safe. Maybe the heroes succeed in banishing the evil, maybe they don’t.
Maybe they’re defeated by it, changed by it, become part of it. Or maybe they
only believe they’ve won, but it’s a temporary victory at best because the evil
returns in the sequel. (I contend this, aside from being a marketing tactic,
reflects how we deal with darkness in our own lives. We can never banish it
entirely. The best we can manage is a holding action or temporary respite until
it returns, and it will keep returning until it finally claims us. How’s that
for a cheery thought?) Uncertain outcomes like these keep readers and viewers
on their toes mentally and force them to deal with the more complex and mixed
emotions uncertain endings bring.
Horror also offers another kind of catharsis. We get the chance to
experience what it’s like to be the monster, to not be constrained by morality or even our humanity.
We can stalk, torture, maim, kill, despoil souls, destroy worlds, all without
ever committing an actual act of violence in the real world. We can get in
touch with our dark side, explore it, map it, acknowledge it . . . and once we
do, it ceases to have power over us. Or at least, its power is lessened. We’re
no longer afraid of thinking “bad” thoughts or imagining “bad” things. It’s
like The Purge, only without all the blood, death, and screaming.
Horror can be deeply existential, too. How can we mere mortals hope to
defeat all the things that make up Darkness with a capital D: death, disease,
violence, temptation, degradation, insanity? What does it mean to be human in a
world where the dead can return to life and seek to drain your blood or devour
your flesh? What does it mean when otherworldly forces – infinitely more
powerful than we are – seek to destroy or dominate us? What does it mean to be
human when the monster is inside us, growing stronger every moment? The vast
majority of audience members don’t think this consciously about the horror they
consume as entertainment, but subconsciously? I believe they do engage with the
existential questions horror raises on that level, just below the surface of
everyday normal thought.
Horror can provide comfort for the weird ones among us. (And I count
myself as a member of this tribe.) With horror’s focus on monstrous distortion
– on Otherness – those of us who for one reason or another don’t fit into
society’s paradigm of normal can find a place to belong. My wife once told me,
“You talk about monsters as if they’re your best friends.” That’s because in
many ways they are.
A lot of you reading this might be thinking that literature of any sort
has the potential to do all the things I’ve discussed so far – and you’re
right. This proves my ultimate point. Horror is literature, and it’s just as important and vital as any other type for
the health and growth of humans and their culture.
This sounds cool and all, you might be thinking, but I like to read
and write horror because it’s fun.
There’s nothing wrong with fun. If we didn’t have fun from time to
time, imagine how miserable our lives would be. But I believe even popular
fiction meant primarily for entertainment can fulfill a higher purpose, too. We
all know that entertainment can provide an escape from our everyday lives, but
it wasn’t until my senior year in high school that I truly understood what this
meant.
There was a small bookstore in the town next to ours. (This was back in
the pre-Amazon past, when such places still existed.) My dad and I were
browsing the bookshelves, and I was happily surprised to see a new novel by
Piers Anthony in his Xanth series called Centaur
Aisle. I’d loved the first three books in the series and
had no idea there was going to be a fourth. Dad and I went up to the register,
and when he saw the book I was holding, he asked, “Do you mind if I read it
first?” I was shocked. In my family, whoever bought a book was always the first one
to read it. No exceptions.
My mother – who suffered from a number of health problems – was
scheduled for surgery the next day. The procedure wasn’t a very serious one (or
so my parents claimed), but I understood then that my father was worried, and
he wanted something to distract him in the hospital during my mother’s surgery
and recovery. I said yes, of course. And I realized then that popular fiction
of all kinds – fiction written to be fun – has a profound power. It can provide comfort to someone who’s
scared. It can take someone’s mind off their worries, help them get through
some of the hardest times in their life.
Not only do horror writers work in a genre with a long and rich history, the stories we create perform numerous important functions for people as individuals and for civilization as a whole. So if anyone ever asks you why you’re wasting your time writing horror instead of “real” fiction, tell them, “Horror is as real as it gets, baby.” Then for good measure hiss and bare your fangs, then get back to work.
