1

Number 015www.curriculum-press.co.uk

Horror Films: Creating and Reflecting Fear

M tudiesSedia

Horror – Not a single genreThe most common way to consider genre is through the identificationof its most commonly used visual and aural characteristics. Thesecharacteristics, sometimes called iconographies or codes andconventions, are used by media audiences to identify the genre oftext being accessed. Once recognised, these iconographies ‘framethe audience’s expectation’ (Chandler) of the type of story the textwill tell and the way the story will be constructed. The horror genrecan be considered in this way and there are some iconographiesthat are often associated with horror films.

ActivityMake a list of the codes and conventions that you associatewith the horror genre. Would all these conventions appear inall horror texts or does your list contain conventions fromdifferent types (sub genre) of horror?

Within the general term ‘horror’ there exist many different sub-genres.Some horror films are dark and gothic and include iconographiessuch as large country houses and misty graveyards. Some horrorsare set in a familiar suburban location – perhaps a high school or asuburban town whilst other have an isolated rural location. Thedifferent sub genres of horror may appear on the surface to havelittle in common in their mise en scene.

The aim of this Factsheet is to provide an overview of the horrorgenre in terms of:• The problems in attempting to deal with horror as a single

genre• Audience pleasures created by the genre• The methods used to attempt to create fear• The importance of context in the analysing horror textsThe content of this factsheet is suitable for A2 Level studies ofthe genre.

http://www.dvdtimes.co.uk/images/others1.jpg

Three different mis en scene – all recognisable as codes of horror:the gothic mansion (The Others: 2001), a suburban house(Halloween: 1978) and an isolated rural location (The Descent: 2005).

Chandler says that texts are grouped by genre when they have anumber of ‘shared characteristics’. Given the variety ofcharacteristics that could identify a text as horror, this approach isnot wholly useful when attempting to define the genre. However,the one thing that all horrors share to a greater or lesser extent is theaudience reaction they are trying to generate. All horrors areconstructed in an attempt to scare the target audience.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/a/a2/Halloween2.jpg/180px-Halloween2.jpg

http://www.cinematical.com/media/2006/01/The_Descent.jpg

Activity: Being Scared: A pleasurable experience?What pleasures do you think the genre offer its audience?Why is being scared so pleasurable?

Uses and gratification theory offers some possible pleasuresthat might be experienced when watching horror films. Forexample,••••• Identification••••• Entertainment••••• Diversion••••• Escapism••••• Social Interaction

However, horror offers more than just these simple pleasures.The following does not offer all the potential pleasures offeredto audiences by horror – you may have had other equallyvalid experiences and ideas. It is worth considering howhorrors you are studying may provide some (or all) of thefollowing:

••••• Physical effects – adrenaline etc - the visceral••••• Empathy••••• Intrigue/mystery/suspense/problem solving (Enigma)••••• Catharsis/Vicarious experience••••• Perception of anti-mainstream activity / sub cultural

belonging••••• Exploration of taboo subjects••••• Voyeurism••••• Preparation for death••••• Playing out cultural/personal fears••••• Confirmation of dominant ideologies and values••••• Masochism (&/or sadism)••••• A sense of community / belonging••••• Communicating repressed desires••••• ‘Acting out’ – challenging enforced values and repressions

2

015. Horror Films: Creating and Reflecting Fear Media Studieswww.curriculum-press.co.uk

Horrors Create FearThere are many techniques used by horror films to attempt to scarethe audience. Some are relatively simple to identify such as the useof atmospheric music or sounds to create a feeling of unease oruncertainty. Jump cuts in editing, camera techniques like extremeclose-ups and low key lighting can create a similar impression. Allsub-genres of horror use a range of deliberate media languagechoices to promote the appropriate audience response for the text.It is a good idea to think carefully and note the way that texts youare analysing are using media language choices to attempt tofrighten the audience.

However, horror films have been around for a long time and whenwatching texts from other eras often we, as modern audiences, findthat horrors loose their impact. Clearly then, creating fear is morethan just a collection of eerie and creepy media language choices.In addition, audiences get bored. Whilst it is important for a genreto be recognisable from its use of iconographies, if these codes andconventions are overused, audiences may find the genre toopredictable and clichéd. One of the main challenges that film makershave to deal with is how to find a middle ground between arecognisable genre text and one that offers something new andunique to its audience.

An Example – VampiresThe vampire is a familiar monster inhorror films. Nosferatu (1922) (image 1)is an early example of a vampire and themonster has been made to look rat-like.

Image 1

ht tp : / / r adgeek .com/g t /2005/04 /21 /nosferatu.jpg

By the 1931, however (image 2), thevampire in Dracula is represented as asophisticated, aristocratic figure.

http://www.draculas.info/_img/gallery/bela_lugosi_as_dracula_75.jpg

Image 2

In the 1990s (image 3 and 4) bothvisual ideas of the vampire are usedin Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992). Ineach version of the vampire somesimilarities are shared, such as theelongated teeth (we need to know heis a vampire after all), but these imagesshow how the representation haschanged throughout the history ofthe genre.

Image 3

Image 4

Image 3 http:/www.the_lucards.blogger.com.br/dracula_gary_oldman.jpgImage 4 http://www.hobrad.com/oldman.jpg

More recently still in Underworld(2003) (image 5) the vampire isrepresented with some similarcharacteristics to the ones ofprevious eras, but there havebeen some significant changes.

Image 5

http://blogs.knoxnews.com/knx/brown/archives/UnderworldSMALL1.jpg

ActivityWhat are the most significant differences you can identifybetween the most modern representation of a vampire and theolder ones? Why do you think the modern representation isthe way it is?

Horrors tap into cultural fearsIn addition to the audience needing changes to genre codes tomaintain its interest, society changes. Different eras have differentideas and values and experience different problems, fears andconcerns. Successful horror films are ones that tap into specificcultural fears and exploit them to meet the needs of the genre.

The best way to create fear for the audience in a horror text is toplay on the fears that already exist. Tudor identifies this as he saysthat horrors provide a ‘monstrous threat’ and this threat is ‘basedon notions…from the producing society’. Horror films won’t meettheir primary objective of scaring the audience if they do not insome way represent the fears of the people watching them.

Different Monsters for Different FearsA useful way to identify the type of fears being identified by horrortexts is for analyse the monsters within the films.

Neale identified that horror texts have different types of monster.The monster is the source of the fear.

••••• The External Monster – anoutsider. The external monsterwill be one who comes from‘somewhere else’ and brings thethreat to a community.

Vampire films are good examplesof this as traditionally they comefrom Transylvania and wereshown terrorising a Britishcommunity.

They are outsiders as they arenot (and never can be) membersof the community and theyinvade a previously safe andpeaceful environment.

http://imagecache2.allposters.com/images/pic/54/039_13061~Chris topher-Lee-Posters.jpg

3

015. Horror Films: Creating and Reflecting Fear Media Studieswww.curriculum-press.co.uk

••••• The Man-made Monster – man’screation. The archetypal man-made monstercan be found in Frankenstein (1931).

A collection of body parts is put togetherand Dr Frankenstein brings the creature tolife. The creature then brings death anddanger to the community. Like the vampirehe could never be part of the community,the difference is, he is a creation of a memberof the community.

••••• The Internal Monster – man gone wrong.Here the monster is human.

The human may come from within thecommunity but they are thinking or behavingin a way that creates a threat from the inside.The archetype for this kind of monster isNorman Bates in Psycho (1960). He is a mildmannered ‘boy next door’ character on thesurface but the film reveals that he ismurderously insane. http://content.answers.com/main/content/wp/en/e/ed/

Normanbates.jpg

http://nalts.files.wordpress.com/2006/07/frankenstein.jpg

Some monsters have traits of more than one of Neale’s categories.Frankenstein’s monster for example is ‘man made’ but when he goesto the village he brings in violence and death as an ‘outsider’ to thecommunity. Norman Bates is an internal monster but the implicationis that his flawed psychology has been caused by bad mothering.

This way of looking at the monster in horror can be very useful. Inthe first half of the 20th Century the external monster dominated thegenre. Vampires, mummies and ghosts are outsiders who threatencommunities. There were early examples of the man-made monsterduring this period and this is often where horror and sci fi intersect.In these films, scientific advancements often backfired and createdmonsters from giant insects to deadly robots. This convention ofhorror became more dominant in the post-war period. It is oftenobserved that these monsters can be seen to represent specificcultural fears of the time. For example:

• The threat of invasion generated by global political uncertaintybetween the two wars (1918-1939) is reflected in the externalmonster

• The fear of the way science could be used in a destructive wayin the post war ‘atomic-age’ (post 1945) after the dropping ofnuclear weapons on Japan at the end of World War II reflectedin the man made monster

The idea of the internal monster dominates modern horror. The shiftaway from the external to the internal may allow us to identify someof the fears and preoccupations that dominate contemporarysociety:

• World War II demonstrated that mankind was capable ofhorrific acts, for example, the genocide of the Holocaust.Rather than fearing outsiders, this has caused the culture tofear other humans – even those within their own communities

• Since the 1950s, public understanding of psychology hasincreased, particularly what has been known as ‘abnormalpsychology’ – adding to the culture’s fear of other peoplewithin the community who could look ‘just like us’ but thinkand behave in dangerous ways

• Modern society has become less actively religious. ‘Evil’ istherefore often perceived as a possible human trait ratherthan something that comes from elsewhere

Scream (1996) – the monstrousboyfriend – apparently a good guybut in fact a psychologicallyderanged killer. He was shown to bea product of bad parenting and aculture which has access to toomuch media violencehttp://www.moviepropking.com/billy2.jpg

Saw III (2006) – a monstroushospital orderly dishing outgruesome punishment for peoplewho he perceives are morallylacking in an shallow, selfish worldhttp://www.worstpreviews.com/images/saw3.gif

Different Locations for Different FearsEarly horror often used distant locations for their settings. Typically,monster movies and Hammer Horror was based on the middleEuropean world of the fairy tale which distanced the audience evenfurther from the monster. The Victorian era was a common settingfor early horror too, whereas today, most horror tends to be setclose to home (with an American bias in Hollywood films) and inmundane environments such as high schools, suburban homesand university campuses. This reflects the close proximity of theinternal monster – many modern horror monsters are school friendsor people we could meet at any time. These familiar locations bringthe horror closer to the audience.

Some modern horror, especially since the late 1960s, uses acountryside location for its setting. A common plot deals with agroup of town dwellers who find themselves stranded in thecountryside. Here they can meet all manner of monsters• external monsters in the caves in The Descent (2005) or in the

woods in The Blair Witch Project (1999)• man made monsters in The Hills Have Eyes (1977/2006)• internal monsters in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974/2003)

The rural location is often used to symbolise a wild and dangerousplace where monsters can stay hidden. Modern horror often usesthis location to show what dangers exist outside the safety of thecivilised towns and cities where most of us live.

ConclusionWhatever the monster represents and wherever the monster islocated, ‘normality is threatened by the monster’ (Wood). Horrortexts can be seen as metaphors for things perceived as different oroutside the cultural norms. The monsters are ‘difference made flesh’according to Cohen and this difference can be ‘cultural, political,racial, economic [or] sexual’ (Cohen).

By analysing the types of monsters presented to us in horror textsand identifying what fears they represent we can identify thebehaviours and ideas that the producing culture perceived asdifferent, frightening or that represented the ‘abnormal’. Thisapproach is far more useful than a simple media languageidentification of horror conventions as it allows you to analyse thevalues and ideologies presented by the text and can give you aninsight into the context of production.

Acknowledgements: This Media Studies Factsheet was researched and written by Steph HendryCurriculum Press. Bank House, 105 King Street, Wellington, TF1 1NU. Media Factsheets may be copied freeof charge by teaching staff or students, provided that their school is a registered subscriber. No part of theseFactsheets may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any other form or by any othermeans, without the prior permission of the publisher. ISSN 1351-5136