1. Marija Dalbello Horror Rutgers School of Communication, Information, and Library Studies dalbello@scils.rutgers.edu http://www.scils.rutgers.edu/~dalbello Image credit: Victor GAD

2. Horror _______________________________________ paradoxes of the heart 1) How can anyone be frightened by what they know does not exist? 2) Why would anyone ever be interested in horror, since being horrified is so unpleasant? art horror vs. natural horror emotion caused by the characteristic structures, imagery, and figures in the genre vs. reality

3. Horror _______________________________________ pre-theoretical history of the horror genre: English gothic novel (Schauer-Roman, roman noir) historical gothic (imagined past without supernatural events) natural or explained gothic (introduces supernatural and explains it away) Radcliffe’s Mysteries of Udolpho (1794) supernatural gothic (supernatural events) equivocal gothic (supernatural origin of events in the text rendered ambiguous by means of psychologically disturbed characters) Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818) John Polidori’s The Vampyre (1819) Charles Robert Maturin’s Melmoth the Wanderer (1820) Edgar Allan Poe popularity of gothic: 1820-1870

4. Horror _______________________________________ Monsters (extraordinary characters in an ordinary world ) incomplete representatives of their class; abominations; monsters’ categorical incompleteness: disintegrating things, formless, rotting interstitial, indescribable, inconceivable, It / Them Revulsion (violation of schemes of cultural categorization; category mistakes are impure) What are monsters made of? fission fusion

5. Horror _______________________________________ Plot structure 1. Complex discovery plot onset discovery confirmation confrontation 2. Discovery plot onsetdiscovery confirmation 3. Over-reacher plot (forbidden knowledge) preparationexperimentboomerangconfrontation Suspense (relative probabilities at the heart of horror appeal) Fantastic hesitation (fantastic uncanny vs. fantastic marvelous)

6. Horror _______________________________________ What is horror about? Concerned with knowledge as theme: rendering the unknown known Cognitive threat as a major factor in the generation of art-horror Reaction to the culture of materialistic sophistication (post-Enlightenment) (Carroll, p. 162) instinctual attraction & capacity for awe religious feeling in our culture was demeaned by ‘materialistic sophistication’ intuition is denied by the culture of materialistic sophistication horror evokes cosmic fear coeval with religious feeling gratifications of being in an emotional state Numinous experience (mysterium tremendum fascinans et augustum) nonrational element as object of religious experience = numen

7. Horror _______________________________________ The politics of horror Is art-horror ideological? (xenophobic, progressive, misogynist, politically repressive) Horror as carnival (rituals of inversion)