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Classic horror theory

Mathias Clasen: Recreational fear, evolved fear systems

Clasen: Recreational fear, evolved fear systems

Imaginative culture: Using human imagination to simulate fearful situations. Unreal situations, but real fear.

Recreational fear: Simulated fear under the guise of safety. Unreal situations, real fear

The evolved fear system: “Exploiting an ancient and evolved set of biological defense mechanisms”. Human cognition and evolution from our ancestors, who constantly had to look over their shoulders for dangers. We have kept this system.

Example: Clasen's recreational fear

Stephen King's 3 horror agents

King: 3 horror agents

1. Terror - doesn't show monster, activates imagination

2. Horror - shows monster, leaves less to imagination

3. "Gross out" - spells out in details

King's "terror": Hereditary (2018)

Main idea: An ancient cult terrorizes a family through a supernatural presence - no "monster" is ever seen

Example: Terror

King's "horror":

IT (1986) (2017)

Pennywise the Clown

Example: Horror

King's "gross out":

The Shining (1977)

Example: "Gross out"

...he pulled the shower curtain back.

The woman in the tub had been dead for a long time. She was bloated and purple, her gas-filled belly rising out of the cold, ice-rimmed water like some fleshy island. Her eyes were fixed on Danny's, glassy and huge, like marbles. She was grinning, her purple lips pulled back in a grimace. Her breasts lolled. Her pubic hair floated. Her hands were frozen on the knurled porcelain sides of the tub like crab claws.

Danny shrieked. But the sound never escaped his lips; turning inward and inward, it fell down in his darkness like a stone in a well. He took a single blundering step backward, bearing his heels clack on the white hexagonal tiles, and at the same moment his urine broke, spilling effortlessly out of him.

The woman was sitting up...

Robin Wood: Freudian approach

Wood: Freudian approach

Horror as media of the "other"

Repressed societal norms

"Monster" represents repressed threats in the subconscious ('"id")

"id" usually controlled by the "superego" (rational thinking, normative thinking)

The mediator "ego"

Horror as social criticism of norms

Wood's Freudian approach: Get out (2017)

Example: Wood's Freudian approach

Main idea: A young African-American visits his white girlfriend's parents for the weekend, where his simmering uneasiness about their reception of him eventually reaches a boiling point.

"Monster"/"id": Racism (?) as embodied by the white characters

(00:00-04:00)

Tzvedan Todorov: Fantastic (supernatural) literature

Todorov: Fantastic literature

1. The marvelous (folk tales, myths, fairytales)

Reader and character(s) accept the supernatural universe - no doubt that events are NOT real

2. The fantastic

Reader and character(s) hesitate to accept the supernatural universe, look for rational explanations

3. The uncanny

Reader and character(s) cannot accept the supernatural universe, rational explanations can ultimately be found

Todorov's "hesitation" as a marker for horror

Todorov's "hesitation"

"Hesitation" = fantastic (supernatural) elements in a piece of horror media needs to create a period of uncertainty or ambiguity to be effective

Horror stories typically with a breach of some natural law or convention in everyday life

The receiver (reader, viewer) as well as protagonist questions reality

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