An interlude: Horror vs. Terror

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 Contributed by Guest Blogger of the Week, Patrick Shearer.

 

“Although horror and terror commonly are employed synonymously, the dictionary unmistakably links the former term with that of revulsion experienced upon witnessing something ugly, disgusting, shocking, etc.  Terror carries no such connotation.  Its meaning is cleaner, more profound, deriving as it does from the Latin terrere, to frighten.”
    -- Afterword, Marvin Kaye. Masterpieces of Terror and the Supernatural (1)

Well, as I always say: “When in doubt, whip some Latin out.”  That turns every point made into a slam dunk, right?  (For me, it just gets my hackles up.)

But I think he’s got it backwards on which is more profound.  Not that Marvin Kaye cares what I think.  Who am I, anyway?  “Assholes & opinions”, am I right? 

H.P. Lovecraft wisely stepped around the whole horror/terror kerfuffle and called his stories “Weird”, but he still wrote an entire essay on the subject. (2)  The problem being that Lovecraft defines the terms one way, and Marvin Kaye defines them exactly the opposite (but at least he admits as much), and thus the debate has gone since 1764 or so.  (It’s probably been going on longer, but I think I’m pretty safe with the publication of The Castle of Otranto.) 

I’m siding with Lovecraft on this one because it jibes with my experience (“what the thinker thinks, the prover proves” as a wise man once said) and because there’s been a lot of discussion about terror ever since we declared war on it almost a decade ago.

Ultimately, it’s more constructive to think of these things on a scale of horror on one end, terror on the other.  They’re inextricably linked, but such stories tend to be further toward one end of the scale or the other (and because fear is such a personal thing, rarely would two people’s scales be the same, even for the same story.)

BECAUSE Kaye goes back to the Latin root to show that terror means very simply “to frighten”, I can’t help but equate it with what happens when the tension is building and building, and then a cat jumps out of the dark, and everybody in the theatre screams.  Kaye cites such an easy scare as being Horror (which I've taken the liberty of changing in the below quotes.]   We react to such things because our central nervous system is programmed to do just that. 

Horror is a much more complex reaction. 

I should be clear, though: as a practitioner I see nothing at all wrong with making an audience jump.  It should be a part of your toolbox, and you should use it when opportunity presents itself.  It’s just that it gets boring if that’s all you’re trying to achieve, over and over again, time after time.  Or as Kaye says:

 “I’m not suggesting that horror should be divorced from terror and exiled from the kingdom of night. That would be both foolish and impractical. When you romp through graveyards or play Peeping Tom to a sociopath, you must expect to feel the impact in the pit of your stomach at the same time those icy glissandos xylophone their way along your spine.” 
 -- Afteword, ibid

Maybe Marvin and I can work it out, after all.

“Even at its crudest, most melodramatic level, [horror] has the ability to stir up the secret dreads embedded in our individual and collective imaginations.  By recognizing our worst nightmares, we are capable of exorcising them, at least temporarily.  When a great artist turns to the genre, he or she elevates the exorcism process to the level of catharsis: that working-out of pity commingled with terror that the Greeks experienced at the close of the Sophoclean trilogy -- a massive cultural/spiritual purging that permitted the participants to leave the sacred theatre uplifted and better equipped to deal with the everyday fears of life itself.  Thus it is, in its most noble incarnation, a vital component of the art of tragedy.”
 -- Afterword, ibid

Sound familiar?
 

“It therefore follows that great works of [horror] depend largely for their power upon characterization.  By their very nature, the related genres of fantasy, the supernatural, mystery, science fiction and suspense -- all of them capable of producing tales of [horror] tend to stress concept, i.e., the plot gimmick, the vampire, the animated flayed hand, the sadist with the eternal smile on his face.  Because concept is so striking, too many writers and film directors become enamored of the device to the detriment of character...

 [snip]

Character is more important than plot every time.  Without it, a writer might just as well hide in a closet and yell “Boo!” at passersby.  That, in essence, is what most modern [terror] literature and cinema amounts to.  But when the reader begins to believe in and care about a fictional protagonist, he or she becomes susceptible to those calculated manipulations that a masterful fabulist must devise in order to invoke a sense of wonder and horror (the two often go hand in hand)."
 -- Afterword, ibid.

And here’s where I think we can begin to talk about horror onstage, and bring in all of the terrific comments from last week.  Because theatre, let’s face it, does “character” very well.  As well, if not better, than any other medium.

So thus far, what do you think?  Do you entirely disagree with these horror/terror definitions?  (usually people do)

Was the ending of Agamemnon the Psycho of Greek Tragedy? 

Is there even a connection between Horror and Tragedy, and is it any different than the connection between Horror and Comedy?  (I think similar arguments can be made about the horror/terror dichotomy as can be argued between styles of comedy.  A cheap scare gets almost the same reaction as a cheap laugh). 


(1)  Many years ago I picked up this collection of short stories, and I’ve been grateful for it ever since.  Sometimes these totems just tumble into your life, and you don’t recognize their significance until much much later.  I can’t even rightly remember whether I picked it up off the sale rack at my local bookstore, or whether I got it as part of the start-up batch of ten or so books they used to give you for signing up as a member of the Fantasy and Science Fiction Book Club (think Columbia House, only for nerds.)  Not only is it the best anthology of scary stories I’ve ever seen, it also has an “afterword” to die for.  
   
(2)  If these posts are of any interest to you, and you haven’t already read Lovecraft’s “Supernatural Horror in Literature”, then you really should do yourself a favor and do so.  It can be found online (http://gaslight.mtroyal.ca/superhor.htm)  

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I’m afraid in so many ways

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Contributed by Guest Blogger of the Week, Patrick Shearer.

 I want to thank Nat Cassidy for his terrific posts on the topic of theatrical horror.  I'd certainly planned to write about other things (well, truth be told, I wasn't quite sure WHAT I was going to write about this week.  I was just gonna wing it until a topic of interest popped up,) but the serendipity of having such a terrific opening sortie on a subject so near and dear to my heart cannot go un-remarked upon.  It was funny to read Nat's "Monsters and Murderers" post because it was like he was describing my childhood in the suburbs of Los Angeles (even down to having Stephen King in one hand, and Shakespeare in the other).  I know for a fact that we weren’t the only ones, Nat.  So if our dear readers are done with the horror thing, feel free to move along until next week.  We won't be (too) offended. 

I should start by telling you, I’m afraid.  

I’m afraid in so many ways, and always have been.  There were nights growing up when I’d sit on the beach, in the dark, when the sky and the ocean melted into a single mass, into one enormity, and the sheer weight of it terrified me.  And then I’d grasp the immensity of the earth itself by comparison and I’d start to shiver, and then the immensity of space would blow my mind, shorting out my semantic circuit entirely, and I’d just be a tiny quivering mass of tiny jelly on a tiny little beach somewhere in Southern California.  

And that feeling excited me.  

It wasn’t just big philosophical concepts that scared me, either.  (It’s just easier to share that one, cause it makes me seem smart or something, instead of like a coward.)  I was afraid of BOB.  You know, BOB from Twins Peaks?  Scared the holy crap out of me as a young teen, and I still can’t believe they broadcast the final episode of the series on non-cable television.  Those last thirty minutes, man.  Those last thirty minutes.  

I used to have nightmares ALL.  THE.  TIME.  They were awesome.  They were ridiculously coherent.  And they were terrifying because they were real.  I had a dream about a decade ago that looked exactly like that scene in Inception where the ground and the buildings tilt up into the sky?  Except I actually heard the sky (the motherfucking SKY, people) rip open, and when I looked up I could see the street on which I was walking, and could see myself looking back at me, through that enormous tear in the fabric of reality, and I thought with calm, complete certainty: “This is it.  This is the end of everything.  The laws of physics have become no more than suggestions.  And I have to/get to see it.”  

That was right before I woke up sweating, and shaking.  

I’m REALLY afraid of getting into a situation like that guy in 127 Hours where that boulder trapped his arm and he had to cut his arm off with a pocket knife.  (I’m also afraid to go and see that movie because I might throw up or pass out, like all those other people who saw it.)  Can you imagine?  Knowing that you’re going to die unless you do something SERIOUSLY drastic?  And then thinking, “Well, I do have my Swiss Army knife, and it’s got a saw blade on it.  But after I cut through the flesh, and the fat (which, anyone who’s ever eaten a gristly steak will know is not easy to cut through, especially one-handed), AND the muscle -- if I can remain conscious and not drop my knife down this chasm -- will it still be sharp enough to cut through the entire bone?   But then, I have to go through the muscle, and the fat, and the flesh on the other side all over again.  Or I could just sit here and die.”

I probably won’t be seeing that movie.  

But chances are, I’ll be watching Texas Chainsaw Massacre.  Again.  In the fairly near future.  

It honestly doesn’t surprise me that people sometimes look at me funny when they see my work, or when I tell them what I’m reading or what I’m watching.  I made a short film last year for a friend’s Halloween short film festival.  He told us to push the envelope, so I tried.  To me, my little film was about a romantic couple, and the intensity of their attraction and their passion for each other overspilling the limits of human expression, and how terrifying it is to feel like that.  Of never being able to entirely express yourself, or to feel entirely satisfied.  And of two people trying desperately to reach satisfaction.  

Some people got stuck on her cutting him open and crawling inside of him.  Hey, that’s okay, too.  I’ll go for the gross out.  I’m not proud.*

It wasn’t real, and it’s pretty obviously not real, but I hope it touches on something deep, something visceral and expresses that thing in a way that words couldn’t quite achieve.

When I was young, it was in attempting to face all these debilitating fears that I watched horror movies, and read Stephen King, and Peter Straub, and Ramsey Campbell, and Clive Barker, and Shirley Jackson, and Chelsea Quinn Yarbro, and Anne Rice, and H.P. Lovecraft.  I never liked roller coasters, but I loved Fright Night.  And that led to The Exorcist, and on and on.  Adults thought it was weird, and looked at me funny, and gave me the third degree, and I was eventually cornered into finding an explanation for why I liked these things.  It happened late, but I’m told that’s better than never.  

I was one of those sad sacks that actually caught The Blair Witch Project early, before the hype, before anyone even knew anything about it.  I knew from the first frame that this wasn’t ACTUALLY found footage, but it didn’t matter.  During those last 10 minutes or so, my friend and I (at the tender age of 21, far too old to be acting like this) had our arms wrapped tightly around one another, literally shaking in the oppressive dark of the theater. Neither of us slept that night.  We were both mildly tramautized.  H.P. Lovecraft would have called people like us “of a sensitive nature” and the prime audience for weird tales.  

But that night, driving to a coffee shop because neither of us could face being alone, the shadows had never been darker or more impenetrable, and the street lights had never been brighter to my eyes.  

And that’s why I’m attracted to these dark subjects.  Because after you’ve spent some time down there in the dark basement of human imagination, when you come back out you tend to appreciate the light a little more.  The happier stuff -- which I just find to be cloying under different circumstances -- becomes tolerable, and even welcome.  It makes me feel glad to be alive.  It’s the most tried and true way for me personally, in this day and age, to experience what I believe to be actual catharsis.  

And despite everything else, the experience of fear is still as sharp as it ever was in most of our population (for good or for ill.)  

I’m a big fan of genre, but I think this kind of horror is beyond genre, as Nat and some of our commenters have noted.  I think it gets to the essence of who we are as a species.  As the great bard Terrence McKenna has said, “We have one foot in angelhood and one foot in the identity of a carnivorous ape, and the tension between these two on a global scale is excruciating.”  Horror is about staring into the face of the carnivorous ape and accept that it's you, and I’m so grateful to be able to do that in front of a live audience.

There’s something very important about being locked in a dark room with the human ape.  


Tomorrow, we can talk about the dangers of making the ape dance...


*10 points if you recognize that quote.  

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What is Horror?

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Contributed by Guest Blogger of the Week, Nat Cassidy.

Holy crap, there’s a veritable Thanksgiving cornucopia of delectable thoughtfood in the comments section of that previous post. Thanks, gang! If any new readers are just checking this blog out for the first time, go read ‘em now—you won’t be disappointed.

What I had originally planned on doing with this follow-up post was respond comment-by-comment, but there were so many excellent ones, frankly I think that’d take too long and the week is already over! Suffice it to say, the common denominator of what everyone had to say seems to strike straight at the heart of the matter: just what is horror, anyway?

Does it include so-called thrillers, like Alexis champions, such as the works of suspense playwright Frederick Knott (Wait Until Dark, Dial M for Murder)? What about, as playwright James Comtois brings up, the horrifyingly existential works of Beckett? Or the insane lovestory Bug by Tracy Letts? Jeff Wills brings up The Pillowman, and Martin McDonaugh’s other works could easily fit in there, as well. And DL touches on classics like Woman in Black and Dracula. Are all these works “horror?”*

I say, wholeheartedly, yes! I’d even raise it to “hell, yes” if I’m feeling salty. And to those plays, I’d add myriad others. I, like reader gleep-glop, dream of a world in which genre no longer matters, partially because my genre is so often maligned, but especially because, as far as I’m concerned, every story worth its salt has some element of horror in it. You name the most mundane, contained, plainspoken story and I guarantee you can find at least one thing within it wherein a character is literally terrified of something happening. And if the author’s goal is to in any way make his/her audience feel that fear? You got yourself some horror.

So, then, what do we mean when we talk about horror? Is it a genre, a mood, an effect, a tactic? In the end, it’s all of these things. It’s an essential element to being alive—perhaps the essential element. Being afraid is what keeps us paying attention. It’s what kept us around long enough to reproduce back when our biological experiment was in its initial stages, and it’s what, to this day, prepares us for our own inevitabilities and keeps us sane enough to keep going. And, as Andrew Bellware comments, all drama is about conflict.

Granted, when we talk of horror in genre-terms, it’s implied that there is a little bit of abstraction going on, that the conflict is being made manifest by some usually external agent, but if it’s written well and honestly, the only difference between a “regular” story and a “horror” story is whether or not an audience is willing to take that leap of disbelief and buy into the emotional reality of something other, something abstracted, something unheimlich existing. And, when the lights go down and we’re in the dark, whether it be in the theatre or in our own bedrooms in the middle of the night, that leap of belief should be easy to make.

And, so, I’ll close this post with a question: what’s the scariest thing you’ve ever seen on stage, and why? Was it a “boo!” moment, or something slower and more lasting? Let us know what it was and how it affected you.

Here’s mine—and keep in mind, I’ve seen oodles of horror plays and horror movies, and have read more horror literature than is probably recommended by the American Psychiatric Association, and thus I have a pretty high shock threshold . . . but what I’m about to describe fucked me up good and proper.

Here goes.

Exit the King.

I was lucky enough to score some tickets for the opening night of Geoffrey Rush’s performance in the recent Broadway production of this play. I’m a big fan of Rush (the actor, not the band) and Ionesco is one of my favorite playwrights, so needless to say, I jumped at the opportunity. For those that didn’t get a chance to see it, it was an absolutely spectacular production, and Rush’s performance might be the single greatest performance I’ve ever seen (and I saw the Ninja Turtles’ Coming Out of Their Shells live show in the early 1990).

So, what made it so horrifying? Especially to someone so inured to monsters and violence and shock tactics? Despite Exit the King being an absurdist comedy with a generous application of slapstick, Ionesco is literally wallowing in every human being’s fear of death, and while watching his royal cipher slowly come to terms with letting his body go, there were literally times when I wanted to scream at the performers onstage, “Stop! I get it! I don’t want to play anymore!” So real was that sense that one day, too, I’d have to make those mental accommodations. The crushing reality of mortality was made manifest in ways that were every bit as effective (if not more so) than any Freddy or Jason or post-Cat in the Hat Michael Meyers. And there I was in a room with hundreds of strangers, some of them mind-boggling rich celebrities, some of them poor as dirt like me, and all of us were essentially being told for two hours straight, “You’re going to end.” The crisis was so real that it almost had weight to it. It was terrifying. And it was enjoyable as hell.

And if that ain’t the beauty of horror, I don’t know what is.

*Let it be said, I’m grossly paraphrasing these comments—they all had wonderfully deep things to say, so read ‘em and comment back—keep the conversation going!

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Monsters and Murderers

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Contributed by Guest Blogger of the Week, Nat Cassidy.

This Sunday, I found myself, as I often do, thinking about horrific things. This time around, it was, “How should I get this old man in the park to stab his already-dead best friend with a tree branch?”

I’m working on a new playscript, you see, and I was sitting on my couch, Rob Zombie’s lamentable Halloween remake playing unnoticed in the background, trying to think of an effectively theatrical, but still psychologically honest, method of solving my problem. This thought was interrupted by another: “I should spend some time this afternoon getting off-book for Dance of Death.” Dance of Death is a Strindberg play written around 1900 in which a caustic married couple psychologically tortures a visiting relative, quite possibly because they are, as the text implies, psychic vampires feeding off of misery.

Now, I ain’t saying I’m a Strindberg here, but there is a connection. The theatrical landscape is littered with the macabre. Since time immemorial, the stage has hosted ghosts, murder, insanity, torture, vampires, demons . . . it’s all pretty deliciously dramatic fare.

So, let’s talk horror, eh?

I know, this seems like a more appropriate conversation to have had a couple of weeks ago, towards the end of October (that one time of year we’re actively encouraged to turn up the heat underneath that covered pot of nastiness we keep on the backburner of our consciousness), but hey, with so many of us staring at that looming, awkward family gathering towards the end of this week, now seems as good a time as any to talk about what scares us, doesn’t it?

And, frankly, it’s always a good time for me. I’m a bit of a horror junkie, to put it mildly, and anyone who’s read any of my scripts can probably attest to that. Growing up, if there was a book in my hand (which there always was), it was an incredibly safe bet to guess that it was authored by either Stephen King or William Shakespeare. I read both authors equally voraciously, although for some reason, when adults saw what I was reading, I would get an approving nod or a condescending sniff, depending. Ghost drives young man to brink of madness and causes him to incite the deaths of everyone around him? Enriching and edifying classic. Ghost drives middle-aged man to brink of madness and causes him to chase his family around a deserted hotel with a Roque mallet? Pop trash at worst, a morbid phase at best.

When you call something “horror,” it seems, you’re just dismissing it as genre—that dreadful diminishing epithet reserved for the things that apparently must squirm underfoot of critical esteem—it’s not high art. If something expresses a desire to disturb, especially with any sort of supernatural or supernormal catalyst, even if it’s asking probing questions about the human condition, it has to take two steps back in the Respectability Roll-Call.

However, theatre seems to be, at least somewhat, an exception to this bias. As I already mentioned, there’s a longstanding tradition of ostensibly horrific works in the theatre. And, even though the term “horror” is still kept at a distance, these days, thanks especially to the independent theatre community, there is no shortage of legitimate theatrical works that explore the realities of monsters and murderers and darkness.

This excites me to no end. As much as I love a good horror novel or movie, nothing strikes harder and cuts deeper than a good play.

So, for this first post, here’s a question for you: what do you think the role horror plays, should play, and is to play in the theatre? After all, it’s one of the—if not the the—most bankable genres of movies and literature (and now TV, what with Walking Dead and True Blood). Can commercial theatre be rejuvenated by embracing a darker, more objectively monstrous side? Or, on the other hand, given the ubiquity of productions by playwrights ranging from Aeschelus, Shakespeare, and Webster, to Pinter, McDonaugh, and McPherson, is that maybe what’s helping keep theatre alive?

I’ve got loads of theories and could talk about ‘em ad nauseum (theatre is ritual and thus more in touch with the primordial; humans are psychologically pretty scary and plays are inherently probing), but I wanna hear yours. Then maybe we can delve into more specifics as the week goes on.

Because who says we need to limit our journalistic love of horror to just a few weeks in October? And because Lord knows it’ll get us all in the right mindset for dealing with our loved ones come Turkey Day.

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