literary criticism | Musings of the Monster Librarian

Why Horror Seduces by Mathias Clasen

Oxford University Press, 2017

ISBN-13: 978-0190666514

Available: Hardcover, paperback, Kindle edition

I first came across Mathias Clasen’s article “Can’t Sleep: Clowns Will Eat Me: Telling Scary Stories on Academia.edu several years ago, and right then I thought “Here’s some original thinking– this is someone to watch” (I also liked that he wrote about literature– a lot of horror scholarship focuses on only movies). I was excited to discover that Clasen has now published a book that sums up much of his research, and takes it further. Clasen sees enjoyment of horror fiction as an evolutionary adaptation. Rather than using one of the traditional approaches of literary criticism, Clasen pursues a different one, the biocultural approach, which integrates evolutionary biology, neuroscience, psychology, and social sciences with literary study. He argues that to answer questions about why people seek out horror fiction and entertainment, researchers must have a “scientific understanding of how the mind works”, and therefore that an understanding of evolutionary history is necessary for an understanding of horror, which frames how a specific work is situated in a cultural context.

The first part of the book introduces the horror genre and academic approaches that have been and are used to analyze horror fiction in the past; then Clasen explains his own framework, and how he has applied his knowledge of evolutionary biology, neuroscience, and social sciences to explain why people react to fiction and engage with stories. He narrows in from engagement with stories and fiction in general to a more specific focus on horror. Summed up, he believes that people seek out horror fiction because it’s engaging and because human beings are both naturally fearful and relatively vulnerable to the dangers of the world– so horror is a safe way to experience what we fear without putting ourselves in physical danger.

In the second section, Clasen provides a brief overview of 20th century American horror fiction and then engages in analysis of specific works, noting how each is rooted in cultural anxieties and fears from its time, but that looking at it from an evolutionary perspective can reveal why these works continue to resonate with today’s readers and audiences. His readings of these works ( the films Jaws, Night of the Living Dead, Halloween, and the Blair Witch Project; and the books Jaws, Rosemary’s Baby, I Am Legend, and The Shining)are examples of the kinds of analysis possible using his suggested biocultural approach, and they’re also really interesting to read. Learning about The Blair Witch Project’s transmedia success was pretty cool, but discovering that the directors actually left the actors in the woods for several days to get authentic reactions was disturbing. However, as interesting as I found these, I felt that it probably wasn’t necessary to have as many close readings as he did. Eight was more than enough.

The third section of the book contains Clasen’s theories on the future of horror. I find it interesting that, while he expects technology to make horror more and more immersive, and haunted house experiences to get scarier and scarier, that he thinks these experiences will appeal to mainly niche audiences, as the majority of horror lovers want to experience it vicariously, with distance between themselves and the horrific event. Horror fiction and cinema will continue to be the most popular forms of media for most people.

Finally, Clasen calls for further research on horror, including a variety of research approaches that can stand up to scientific scrutiny and that cross disciplines, such as mining big data, case studies, observational studies, biofeedback and neuroimaging studies, experimental lab studies, and so on. I can’t imagine what it must be like to have a brain as crowded with ideas as his must be!

This is an academic book, and sometimes those can be dry, but that is not the case here. Clasen is clearly passionate and knowledgeable about his topic and his approach. I’ve done research on reading engagement in the past, and there is definitely neuroscience involved in the process of learning to read independently. I feel like this biocultural approach to examining horror fiction and why people engage with it, is on the right track, and I encourage anyone who is interested in the topic to try this out (right now it’s relatively reasonably priced on Kindle) or at least to seek out his papers on Academia.edu. Recommended.

H.P. Lovecraft was a racist.

It’s not an argument we are going to have here. He was a racist, and it’s clear as it can be from his writing that he was racist, misogynistic, and anti-Semitic.

I often hear apologists say “He wasn’t any worse than anyone else at the time.” That’s a terrible argument. Other people being racists at the same time doesn’t excuse Lovecraft– it just shows that an appalling number of people were racist.

I’ve actually seen someone compare him to Abraham Lincoln (I’m totally willing to say that Lincoln was not an angel, and he certainly held racist beliefs. But that’s one of the most bizarre comparisons I’ve ever come across). Lincoln’s racism isn’t an excuse for anyone else’s racist beliefs, either.

Also, can we please get past the idea that people who object to Lovecraft’s racism are destroying literature? Or that any literature belongs to any one person? Lovecraftian fiction is more popular than it’s ever been, and his racism isn’t stopping a lot of people from reading and enjoying it, or even writing it. And authors and publishers who address the problematic nature of Lovecraft’s work are producing some amazing work. Victor Lavalle’s The Ballad of Black Tom, a response to The Horror at Red Hook, received rave reviews. Silvia Moreno-Garcia at Innsmouth Free Press, published and co-edited She Walks in Shadows, an award-winning anthology of Lovecraftian fiction.

I’m not a fan of Lovecraft at all, but I don’t think Lovecraft’s work should be banned, or shoved under the table. Just because he wrote about shadowy creatures doesn’t mean he and his work should be hidden. He existed, and regardless of what you, or I, or anyone else, think of him, he made tremendous contributions to horror literature, and his mythos, at least, has solidly embedded itself in mainstream culture. As individuals, we can each decide whether his problematic attitudes toward race, women, and Jews are enough to keep us from reading his work or even loving it. But they shouldn’t be forced on anyone.

But this back-and-forth on “is Lovecraft a racist” is taking the focus away from some really brilliant writers who have already recognized that he is problematic, and are facing that head-on. Let’s see how far-reaching the diversity and creativity of today’s writers of Lovecraftian fiction can take us as we acknowledge his racist past.