The bogeyman

Over at the First Things blog, David Goldman did a provocative article on the following phenomenon:

The horror-film genre is multiplying like one of its own monsters, showing six-fold growth over the past decade—turning what used to be a Hollywood curiosity into a mainstream product. Not only the volume of films but their cruelty has increased, with explicit torture now a screen staple.

http://www.firstthings.com/article/2009/10/be-afraidmdashbe-very-afraid

He offers the following explanations:

But there is a pattern to the highs and lows of the horror genre that may reflect something specific about Hollywood’s feeding of the mood of the United States—something about America’s encounter with truly horrible events, from the Second World War through Vietnam and down to the attacks of September 11, 2001 and the lingering conflict in Iraq. Terror loiters in dark corners just off the public square.

Among all the film genres, horror began as the most alien to America. The iconic examples of the genre in the 1930s required European actors and exotic locales—vampires from central Europe, for example, and zombies from Haiti. The films were noteworthy precisely because they were so unlike the cinematic mainstream: In 1931, the year that Frankenstein and Dracula first appeared, the worldwide film industry managed to make and release 1054 features, of which only seven could be called supernatural thrillers. After retreading the same material for twenty years, Hollywood finally put a stake through the genre’s heart. By 1948, the few horror films being made were the likes of Abbott and Costello encountering Dracula, the Wolfman, and Frankenstein’s monster. Laughing at monsters was emblematically American—and remained so, as when Mel Brooks and Gene Wilder did it, perhaps best of all, in 1974 with Young Frankenstein.

In other words, Hollywood gave us a small run of exotic-origin horror films in the 1930s, all drawn from European fiction: Dracula, Frankenstein, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, The Picture of Dorian Gray. After the Second World War, however, these nightmares of tormented Europeans were mostly naturalized as sight gags for American adolescents.

And that was how it was supposed to be. The monsters had a different meaning in their Old World provenance. As Heinrich Heine once observed, the witches and kobolds and poltergeister of German folktales are remnants of the old Teutonic nature-religion that went underground with the advent of Christianity. The pagan sees nature as arbitrary and cruel, and the monsters that breed in the pagan imagination personify this cruelty. Removed from their pagan roots and transplanted to America, they became comic rather than uncanny. America was the land of new beginnings and happy endings. The monsters didn’t belong.

Making fun of foreign monsters fit the national mood after the war—a war, after all, in which Americans had encountered for the first time a neopagan foe that wielded horror as an instrument of policy. The existence of horror is, generally, a weakness of Christian civilization, for such civilization stands, finally, as the rejection of the horrors that paganism always accepts and often embraces. How can a good God permit terrible things to happen?

What motivated so many Americans to subject themselves to such torment? Perhaps the explanation is that horror had returned as a subject in American life with Vietnam. U.S. troops were engaged with an enemy that made civilian populations the primary theater of battle, fighting a different and terrible sort of war. The images of civilians burnt by napalm transformed my generation. Until our adolescence—I was already twelve when John F. Kennedy was killed—America’s civic religion was taken for granted.

There are any number of possible explanations for this phenomenon. What the bare facts show, however, is that moviegoers are now evincing a susceptibility to horror. People watch something in the theater because it resonates with something outside the theater. To see the cinematic representation of horrible things may be frightening, but the viewer knows that it is safe. And the sense of safety we derive from watching make-believe things helps us tolerate the prospect of real things.

Random acts of terror against civilians seem a new and nearly incomprehensible instrument of war to most Americans. That is why they have such military value: The theater of horror has a devastating effect on our morale. The same is true for suicide attacks, which continue on a scale that has no historical precedent. The enemy’s contempt for his own life is, in a sense, even more disturbing than his disregard for ours. Nor should we underestimate the cultural impact of the torture debate. Not only has America considered regularizing an abhorrent practice, but our armed forces have become entangled in countries where torture is a routine and daily matter. Americans do not need to imagine what might be going on in Afghanistan. They can see videos on YouTube of young Muslim women being tortured for minor infractions.

Starting on September 11, 2001, Americans were exposed to an enemy that uses horror as a weapon, as did the Nazis—who never succeeded in perpetrating violence on American soil. In its attempt to engage the countries whence the terrorists issued, America has exposed its young people to cultures in which acts of horror (suicide bombing, torture, and mutilation) have become routine.

I find this analysis fairly unconvincing:

1.WWII and the Cold War all had their share of horrific images. There’s nothing special about the Vietnam War or 9/11 which sets it apart in that regard.

2.While the Sixties had many horrific televised events, many who lived during the Sixties, including the younger generation of Hollywood directions, look back on the Sixties with nostalgic affection.

I’d chalk up the phenomenon to different factors:

1.The Hays Code (no relation) became a dead letter in the Sixties. In the absence of self-censorship by the film industry, movies became increasingly explicit in various ways. The horror genre represents a subset of that general trend.

2.To the degree that the horror genre is lucrative, Hollywood will naturally churn out sequels and knockoffs of horrific blockbusters. If it finds a successful formula, it will up the ante.

3.To the extent that the general culture becomes more secularized, there’s a reversion to pagan depravity and occultism.

Mind you, we have to be careful about extrapolating from Hollywood fare to the general culture. Hollywood fare is, in the first instance, a reflection of a cultural elite (Hollywood directors, producers, screenwriters).

But to the degree that there’s a popular appetite for this material, it is a barometer of the national mood.

4.To some extent the horror genre may be tapping into the subliminal insecurity of the viewer, although that depends on whether the viewer identifies with the victim or the psychopath.

5.I think that, to some degree, horror films mirror a nagging, gnawing anxiety about unknown, untamable dangers which may strike at any moment. And I don’t mean natural disasters or freak accidents.

I think they betray a guilty conscience. That many of us are living on the edge. Living on borrowed time. That we may lose the bet. That like the furies of Greek mythology, something is out there, waiting to collect on our outstanding moral debts.

The “bogeyman” mirrors the suppressed fear that while we seem to get away with many things, our comeuppance is lurking just around the corner, biding its time to strike when we least expect it. A relentless, merciless, implacable avenger.

It may have a human guise, but behind the mask is something inhuman, subhuman, and superhuman all in one.