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Book Review: Why Horror Seduces by Mathias Clasen

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.

 

 

Posted on May 16, 2018 by , Reply

Help a Reader Out: Are Myths Fiction or Nonfiction?

Interestingly, this question popped up in keyword searches a number of times, so I’m going to briefly address it.

“Are myths fiction or nonfiction?”

The answer probably depends on who you ask and why. I imagine that if you ask an atheist, you’ll get the answer “fiction”. But in the wonderful world of the Dewey Decimal System, books (and other media) on mythology are in the 200s, the category for philosophy and religion. So for straight mythology or books about mythology, it’s considered nonfiction. Poetry (like Homer’s Odyssey will generally end up in the 800s, with other books of poetry. Yes, poetry is considered nonfiction.

Novels and stories inspired by mythology usually end up getting pulled from the 800s and end up shelved with fiction, though. So if you’re asking because you want to know where Rick Riordan’s books fall on the shelf, you’ll find those in fiction. And if you are asking about a graphic novel, it kind of depends on the library. Some libraries will shelve all graphic novels under 741.5, the number for that format, and some pull the graphic novels into a separate section and shelve them by either subject (my daughter’s elementary) or author (my son’s middle school).

So the answer is that, especially in the library, it’s complicated. And sometimes it is kind of hard to figure out. If you’ve encountered Percy Jackson’s Greek Gods”, it probably falls in nonfiction, even though it is written in the annoying contemporary voice of a fictional character(that’s just my personal opinion, my kids love it) and “updated” versions of many myths. But the novels will end up shelved in fiction. Ultimately, though, the myths of a culture are stories of their gods, and their religion, and as long as people believe in gods, mythology is nonfiction.

It occurs to me that, given that this site focuses on horror fiction, someone reading this might think “Well, what about the Cthulu mythos? That’s a mythology, right? Why isn’t Lovecraft in the 200s?” As it was originally the invention of one person recognized as a writer of fiction, and how that person felt about religion is publicly known, I don’t see why it would be anywhere except in fiction. If you do know a person who worships the Elder Gods, please encourage them to seek help.

Posted on October 19, 2017 by , Reply

Musings: What Money Can’t Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets by Michael J. Sandel

What Money Can’t Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets by Michael J. Sandel

Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2013 (reprint)

ISBN-13: 978-0374533656

Available: Hardcover, paperback, Kindle edition, Audible

 

I’m straying from horror fiction here, but What Money Can’t Buy goes into some really gruesome and horrifying topics, the kind that made my skin crawl, and certainly not what I expected in a book about market-based economics (I know, the topic of economics is already gruesome and horrifying to some people), and I really wanted to share my reaction with you. In the book, Michael Sandel poses a question to the reader that he never really answers: are there some things that should never be for sale? A lot of economists would answer “no”. Selling or trading out of self-interest, according to them, is the most efficient way for people who want things to get them. Seems logical, right? The devil is in the details.

Maybe you shrug your shoulders at the idea of lobbyists paying people to stand in line for them and hold places at Congressional hearings, preventing ordinary citizens from getting in (unethical and unfair, but not actually gruesome), but what about selling babies to the highest bidder? If it means people who can pay for it get what they want in the most efficient way possible, many economists would be okay with that, even if it seems creepy or unethical. Sandel presents two kinds of arguments that can be used to counter this. The first is fairness– it’s not fair for some people to be able to pay to have access to Congress at the expense of others– and the second is corruption– it degrades democracy to limit access to those who can pay. Even if, on an individual level, we are okay with this, is it moral and healthy for us as a society to sell access to Congress, or children to the highest bidder? (I am certain neither democracy nor children should be for sale, but you probably guessed that).

Here’s the part that I found viscerally gruesome and horrifying, though. Once everything is for sale, life and death become commodities, too. Did you know employers like Wal-Mart take out life insurance policies on their employees that have huge payouts to the company when the person dies? That person’s family may not collect anything, while the company gets hundreds of thousands of dollars. Apparently there are a lot of companies that do this. Has yours invested in a payout for them on your life? Because that’s creepy and seems really unfair, as well.   Did you know about viatical insurance? That’s where a terminally ill person with maybe a year left to live sells the value of their life insurance policy at a discount to an investor so they can pay for medical care. If the ill person dies, the investor collects the life insurance policy. If the person doesn’t die within a year, the investor loses the money. While most people don’t make this investment with the specific goal of profiting off death, the investor has to hope the ill person dies.  How awful is that? Hoping someone will die so you can cash in on it? When AIDS drugs to extend patients’ lifespan became available, some particularly unpleasant investors actually harassed the ill person– and it’s the investors who described the longer life spans as “horror stories”.  A state legislator actually voted against programs to help AIDS victims and then invested in viatical insurance for AIDS patients. That is not human nature at its best.

I should not be surprised at the existence of death pools–  a game where players make bets on what celebrities will die in a particular year. 2016 must have been a bonanza for them. There’s not actually a huge amount of money in play– it’s just really, really morbid. It’s even been the topic of a movie, with celebrities getting mysteriously knocked off. If there isn’t a horror novel out there that has used this yet, it’s just waiting to happen.

For me, THE most disturbing thing, though, was discovering that there was a proposed market in terrorism futures, suggested by our own Department of Defense on the theory that if the traders were backing their trades with their own money, they would use the abilities and research skills they used to trade futures in other markets to successfully predict assassinations and terrorist attacks. Congress, thankfully, shot this idea down. But this is the question Sandel poses us: does the end justify the means? If terminally ill patients can get the treatment they need, does it matter that an investor profits off their eventual death? If we can predict and prevent a terrorist attack, does it matter that it leaves a dark mark on the investors’ morals? Economists would say the moral issues are irrelevant, but are they really if they corrupt us? It’s not something that ends up affecting just one indivdual, but the way we all experience the meaning of life and death. I am really distressed at the idea of life and death being treated as commodities, although it probably happens in smaller ways every day.

Sandel covers other issues as well. Also included in the chapter on markets in death, he described bundled life insurance policies sold to banks being packaged into tradable securities that would generate income as the holders of the policies died, and could be sold to pension funds– pretty grim stuff. Other areas he mentions include paying to jump the line in a number of contexts, from Congressional hearings and national parks campsites to airports and amusement parks; providing incentives in areas as varied as paying kids for grades, carbon offsets, and selling the right to immigrate; naming rights and commercialization in contexts including nature trails, sports stadiums, jails, and schools; and the way markets can degrade or demean human relationships, volunteerism, and civic pride. My sense is that Sandel is counting on us to recognize that, while the efficiency of markets is beneficial in some contexts, the “better angels of our nature” cannot be bought. Yet. If we don’t examine the way commericalization and trade are affecting our society, though, those markets in life and death, and in so much else, will become more and more troubling, and we will see a great deal more of unfairness and corruption infecting our world. This is excellent, if disturbing, food for thought, as we navigate through today’s political, financial, and civic structures and issues.


Posted on March 1, 2017 by , Reply
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