Carroll - Plotting Horror

There's a LOT of material in chapter 3 of Carroll's text. At times, I thought that his taxonomy of horror narratives was fairly respectable and well-thought. At others, I felt that he was stretching some of his criteria to make most horror films fit the bill. Either way, his work is impressive because he breaks down most narratives into forms of Complex Discovery or Overreaching, each of which tie into our relationships with the unknown (whether it be knowledge that is forbidden or our lack of knowledge in certain events). Carroll thinks that themes of discovery, knowledge, the burden of proof and the hypotheses to the best explanation play into our cognitive pleasure in these films. As I see it, he's arguing that audiences take pleasure in how the characters reconcile the nature of the unknown or the fantastic through the processes of reason and logic. Interesting.

All told, I only had a few complaints here and there. I don't think we can form an exhaustive taxonomy of horror films, to which Carroll admits to. He also argues that the audience internalizes the events of a narrative, taking into account the reasonable alternatives that can be expected in erotetic format. This is fine, but I would argue that an audience only does this in so far as it cares about what is happening on screen. If a film is boring, no one is going to internalize the events in the narrative as easily as Carroll thinks. Again, it's a small grievance though.

I liked his treatment of the fantastic and the subsequent analysis of Cat People. There is a bit of a bone I have to pick though. Carroll argues that the supernatural explanation in the film becomes solidified once we see Irena attack the psychiatrist. "The audience does get a brief glimpse of the panther after Irena has killed the psychiatrist; and by the end of the film, the case for the supernatural interpretation is secure" (p. 153). Now, I'm not certain whether Carroll is arguing that the supernatural explanation is obviously and unquestionably the right inference, or just that the supernatural case is at least objectively plausible. I believe he's simply arguing that the case for the supernatural can be made as strongly as that of the natural, but at first glance, I seemed to interpret him as saying that the supernatural was unquestionably the best explanation. If this is what he intends, then clearly he's wrong. One of the hallmarks of the film is how Irena keeps returning the zoo and the panther in the cage. The psychiatrist notes at one point that many imbalanced people wish to do evil or cause a type of harm. Irena could've been letting the panther out of the cage for the entirety of the film without us or the characters knowing. Again though, I think Carroll recognizes this, perhaps I'm just tripped up on his wording.

His analysis of narrative and suspense is interesting because the formulas apply to many films. Aliens is definitely a case of onset, confirmation and confrontation in large part because the creatures were already discovered in Ridley Scott's original. I was thinking that the classic Tremors is a clear cut case of onset, discovery, confirmation and confrontation. We see the initial results of the graboid (the giant worms) attacks in the beginning; subsequently they're discovered by the two protagonists, Val and Earl. Later, they have to prove to the townsfolk that these are real creatures, which of course culminates in the confrontation in the desert where they kill the last of them with grenades and a well positioned cliff side.

I just watched The Fly recently and again, this could be an example of the overreacher plot. Jeff Goldblum's character isolates forbidden knowledge in the form of teleportation, conducts an experiment (which goes really awry), and then has the confrontation with Gina Davis at the end.

In thinking about these films and Carroll's formula, I think I'd like to analyze a few films using his methods to see how they play out. In effect, I'll treat Carroll's distinctions like Sinnerbrink's in regard to how films accomplish philosophy: investigate a horror film, apply the criteria, and see what happens. So, I'll be considering the monsters, the narrative, audience interaction and other key elements. I'm also interested in resolving the paradox of horror myself: why are we so attracted to horror films? As a lifelong fan of horror, I've often asked myself that question multiple times. I've had family ask me why I watch these strange things, and every time I try to explain it, I come up empty handed.

I'm going off on a huge tangent here, but I've always thought that some horror films and their monsters take on a superhero type status. My favorite is Jason from Friday the 13th. With a billion sequels under its belt, the franchise clearly stepped out of the element of pure horror to pure cheese: by Friday part 6 and 7, most fans (including myself) were rooting for Jason. The epitome of this attitude is the 2003 release of Freddy Vs. Jason in which each titular monster battled it out for domination. These guys become less like horror icons and more like superman - we wait to see what situation Jason is going to get himself into next. And he ALWAYS comes back, just like superman always triumphs. There's a weird play of reliability and fascination going on here, like these slasher villains will always deliver (and seeing how campy Freddy became in the late 80's and 90's, it's no surprise that fans begin to treat these characters less like monsters and more like heroes...perhaps anti heroes). So, perhaps part of the paradox is that fans get caught in this wave of "superhero fetishism." Yep, that's what I'd call it. 

Carroll - Chapter 2, Relating to Fictions

What is particularly interesting in the second chapter of Carroll's book is his take on the "paradox of fiction." Indeed, it's something that has troubled me long in my thinking about fiction and how we enjoy it. How is it that I can relate to something emotionally that I know is fake?

I think Carroll's knockdown of illusion and pretend theory is pretty strong. Illusion is just ridiculous - if it were the case, then I would definitely try to flee from the horrifying monsters I believed I was encountering. Pretend theory is just too demanding - and we can't control the art-horror response, I absolutely agree with Carroll here.

His idea of thought theory is very clean and worked out; the separation of belief from emotion is particularly strong. I think this is kind of common sense. There are plenty of thoughts that can cause an emotional response, many of which I could attest to personally. I remember a math test in college that I was about to receive my score on. I had no belief content whatsoever for it - I didn't know whether it was true or false that I had performed well. Yet I can remember sweating and fearing for the result. Carroll's example of the thought experiment where we are told stories without any truth component is key here because it demonstrates that we can be affected by something even though it's fictional. As he says, upon learning of the stories, we might inquire whether they were true or false, yet still admit being emotionally affected by them. Fabrication does not entail a dissipation of emotion, but perhaps a switch - in the case of learning that we've been lied to, from genuine emotional to anger.

Carroll's stuff on linguistics is also interesting. Horrific monsters (or objects) come to represent a certain sense, rather than an explicit referent with truth content. The name Dracula conjures up all the propositions, details, descriptions and attributes that Stoker intended. And we can entertain these thoughts because, according to Carroll's notion of character identification, we share similar culture and appraisal of the monster. That seems to be pretty powerful. In his eyes, character identification involves an assimilation of the totality of the situation in which the characters are present. As I see it, it's a matter of the audience being omniscient while the protagonist is clearly embedded within the context of the story. Emotions, as Carroll argues, won't parallel because we're dealing with two different methods of viewing. It seems that he's asserting that what will overlap and display symmetry is our evaluation of the monster in question. When a promiscuous camp counselor is beset by Jason Voorhees, it's not that I share that character's emotion. Rather, I identify with the appraisal of Jason; he's a threatening dude with a machete that's quite capable of killing someone. The character realizes this as well but responds to the object in question, while Carroll seems to think that my response would involve sympathy towards the character and a general understanding of the situation overall. He sneaks a sort of altruism in there in that we can concerned with other characters, but naturally so to deflate any objections where true fear must consist in a concern for our own wellbeing. I think he's right to do this because we can clearly be concerned for characters who have no impact on our own egoistic intentions.

Carroll's methods work across film, literature and other mediums. I think he's crafted a fairly powerful cognitive-affective theory. But is he right to disregard belief? Aaaron Smutts argues that our beliefs play a large role in our emotions towards horror. Basically, it's harder to prove that things don't exist than to say that they do. We have no way of proving that vampires exist - but that's precisely what makes the belief hard to disregard. Smutts thinks these beliefs get trapped and etched into us from childhood, and it's the job of the skeptical characters in horror films to enact a "belief-revival process" that obliterates the audience's doubt towards the monster. Perhaps belief does play a role here, but I think that we can give Carroll the benefit of the doubt because he's merely asserting that belief is not always tied together to emotion. It could be, but it need not be, especially in the case of horror.

I'm thinking that an interesting first paper would be a sort of "inventory" of an art-horrific monster using Carroll's terms and methods........more coming on this....

Carrol's Account of Horror and the Enlightenment

Reading through the first chapter of Carrol's book, I was particularly intrigued by his idea that the Enlightenment provided a conception of nature that the horror genre could thrive in and rebel against. His account of the mechanistic view of the universe echoes with that of some feminist scholars, especially Carolyn Merchant and her view of the "death of nature." Essentially, the enlightenment was in a time in which nature was seen as subordinate to mankind's powers of reason. Through science, we could understand the workings of nature much like we could analyze the parts of a clock. Thus, a rational, logical worldview is promulgated. Horror would definitely have been much more threatening in an atmosphere like this. The average Joe who buys into the ideas made popular by enlightenment thinkers would confront the objects of art horror in extreme and tense ways. Carrol is definitely on to something here, I think. The violation of nature by horror is made possible by its ontology and cosmological contents. This seems to make sense with Carroll's earlier suggestion that horrific monsters are horrible in virtue of their violating the ontologies of the filmed worlds they inhabit. So, a troll in the Lord of the Rings isn't seen as art-horrific because it's a part of the world naturally. That seems to be the crucial distinction.

Of course, I have to ask, is it possible for something to be more terrifying in virtue of its being a natural part of the world? For example, take Annie Wilkes in the novel (and film) Misery. She's a normal human who just happens to be crazy. She doesn't violate any norms of ontology or nature. She doesn't seem to contradict any cultural categories, nor is she a product of fusion, fission, massification or magnification. She's just a regular person who happens to be very threatening. One may argue that her qualities are stretched to the point of the supernatural to make her more like a monster. I would tend to argue that her natural qualities are what make her terrifying. That is, because she is a part of the world that we know and are comfortable with, (and because she represents a violation that is all too possible in that world, a violation that takes place on real terms in real spatio-temporal limits) we find her horrifying. Lots of horror aficionados talk about this type of horror - the darkness inside of us. John Carpenter believed that horror could be digested into two types: it was either "out there" in the world or inside of us. Perhaps that horror can be a part of us is more terrifying than something that violates nature ontologically or categorically.

Despite this, I find Carroll's criteria for the identification of art horror objects fairly interesting.