The In-Depth Meaning and Definition of Horror Genre

With frightful films about vampires, werewolves, and zombies earning so much attention in this last number of decades and new cinematic bloodbaths releasing regularly, the culture appetite for horror raises a question, why do people enjoy the feeling of being terrified? Watching horror is more of looking forward for something to intimidate us. It is to make you apprehend the uneasy experience that is portrayed in films today and to also make us put ourselves in these situations. Many people watch horror to be frightened. There is a reason why people have a choice on what type of horror they choose since they know what intrinsically affects them. People usually attend horror films because they love the effect that a normal day to day life does not have.

They want the ending of a film to have a just effect on the bad guy. Even though they choose to watch scary scenes, it is also part of the experience of being frightened. Anything that is not familiar strikes a fear into us since we wonder what are the capabilities of a monster we engage with making us have an uncanny feeling. Noell Carroll, an American philosopher of art, author of “The Philosophy of Horror”, mentions and compares the two categories, art horror versus natural horror. According to Carroll, horror is not supposed to scare us but rather to get an uncanny feeling from it. He suggests that horror, as a whole, is not viewed by terrifying monsters, since as terrifying as they can be, they appear scary in a few films but unrealistic in the next. He explains the different kinds of horror and how it relates to creatures and monsters. Throughout this chapter, he describes different kinds of monsters in this book and shows examples that describe each monster, but did not fully elaborate on the explanation of these meanings. Reading this chapter compared to when it was written elucidates the bad timing of some people when seen how easy it is to make horror films and that there are the same plots and expected outcomes.

The two types of horrors mentioned were natural horror and art horror and are described one more than the other. Natural horror is realistic occurrences we find horrific like something that happens in real life or something that happens without notice or warning. Some examples of natural horror are murders, earthquakes and wars that occurred around the world. Carroll uses the example of how the Nazis killed the Jews and put them in concentration camps as a natural horror. He does not go deeply explain enough details about natural horror, rather he wrote a lot of information about art horror. Art horror causes threat and disgust. It is intended to be a combination of fear and revulsion. One of the examples he mostly focuses on is about Dracula. Carroll talks about how Dracula is like a disgusted character and how people are scared of him. Since he mentions the two categories of horror, he should explain both sides commonly so the audience have a better understanding to distinguish the two.

After reading more into what these types of monsters mean, it then gives you a better understanding on what Carroll is trying to relate to the audience. He informs us about the five types of monsters, fusion, fission, magnification, massification, and horrific metonymy. Starting with fusion, which is probably the simplest example that applies to the monsters he mentions. It is described as anything that can combine into another for example a doppelganger or a werewolf. Dracula, being a vampire, has a part of fusion since he is supposed to be dead yet he lives at the same time as another species. He is technically but not ultimately living, therefore stuck in between alive and death. He is also described as a fusion monster since he is part vampire and part human, which explains his preference of blood drinking nocturnally.

The fission category of monsters is the opposite of fusion, in that it involves the separating of two beings. It is a split personality disorder which is described as “the humans and the wolves are spatially continuous, occupying the same body, but the identity changes or alternates over time” (46). Carroll mentions different types of monsters that would be considered fission, which is a doppelganger alter-ego, and werewolves. (Carrol 40)

Magnification is defined within itself, being the enlargement of monsters who might otherwise be small and less threatening. Carroll describes this as a popular event because in magnification it would normally be a small creature that is exposed to something making it grow to a larger monster. This can relate to the castle of Dracula, which appears as high as a mountain from some points. Massification was not talked as much as the others. It is the large quantity of monsters which was normally bugs.

Horrific metonymy is the placing of disgusting or tainted objects around a monster making it appear more terrifying and despicable. Vampires live in tombs, enclosed by all kinds like bats, rats, and wolves. It is also having the characteristics of a vampire like a mouth full of blood and how Dracula depicts the castle with shadows moving on their own.

Dracula, or any vampire, blurs the line between all five of these types of monsters. However, the lack of explanation of massification, it is that where vampires are included of multiplying. Every vampire has the ability to transform a human into their own thereby multiplying themselves. A vampire’s existence is proof of massification. Many would argue of Dracula being classified as a fusion or fission monster. He could be classified as either since he is changing forms and being a normal human at times. As you read further in these chapters, you will realize how Dracula could be classified as other types of monsters at different occasions. There are many instances when we see that Dracula can usually take only one form. He has many forms like a werewolf, a bat, and human but he is never two or more of these creatures at the same time. Also, Dracula can only terrorize people at night and whereas during the day he is in his coffin which is an example of temporal fission and divides different types of monsters in different times.

While agreeing that Dracula’s thirst for blood and preference to carry on in a nocturnal manner is a great illustration of “observing ordinarily disjoint or conflicting categories in an integral, spatio-temporally unified individual.” as Carroll defines fusion (pg. 44). Carroll’s definition of temporal fission is the reason for his dissenting opinion, as for the definition says “Temporal fission can be distinguished from fusion in that the categories combined in the figure of the fantastic being are not temporally simultaneous; rather, they are split or broken or distributed over time.” (pg 46) Carroll talks about an important factor to his definition of horror and how “the theme of visceral revulsion” (19) is applied. Incredibly, the monsters that many people view in art horror are not only disgusted, but terrified and afraid of how it can be applied to each individual.

Carroll distinguished between the two categories to teach the audience how to identify a sense of optimism while reading into a deeper meaning of horror in this genre. But does explains things on his opinion that may not intersect with others considering the timeline of Carroll’s authored book and today. Film and productions of all kinds are deeply affected at this time of the century because of the access one has through widespread internet by showing how easily “scary” characters are depicted in different series and the like. This questions the joyful presence of horror and if people are still interested when the plot or ending so easily figured out.