Horror films

Horror Films:All Formula and Social CommentaryPaige mayhew

Motion pictures, like any works of art, are the products of the human beings who make them. In turn these artists are products of the world around them. The ideas, hopes, and fears of a society become a part of a film either overly or on a subliminal level. While entertaining, films communicate ideas by reflecting existing ideologies or by creating their own unique vision of reality. Each genre has is own revelations about the world around us. War films can offer a commentary on man’s inhumanity to man. Westerns, while often maintaining racial stereotypes, can capture the heroic cycle common to all epic myths. Social dramas point out the ills of society in an attempt to correct them, while science fiction films glorify science and technology. Horror films, however, capture all of these aspects as they deal with humanity’s collective unconscious by offering a communal catharsis. While the formula of the horror film deals with archetypes, the specific content of the films changes to reflect the time in which the film was made.

Horror as a genre has roots in western culture’s earliest myths. The horror films of the twentieth century have beginnings in the ancient stories of Gilgamesh and Humbaba, Perseus and Medusa, Beowolf and Grendel, and many others. According to Jungian psychology these works, and works like them, are archetypal, symbolic, and phenomena of a shared unconscious. Horror then can be seen as a mythic presentation of universal fears, or a representation of

society’s most feared bogeymen. Stephen King asserts in the Danse Macabre that when horror films are at their best they can often “serve as an extraordinarily accurate barometer of those things which trouble the night-thoughts of a whole society.” By writing horror films the filmmaker is attempting to deal with society’s fears on a subconscious level. Audiences may only perceive a film about a vampire, werewolf, or bug-eyed monster; but they are actually seeing symbolic representations of the greater fears of death, disease, disillusionment,

Medusa

and destruction. King also says of horror films, “I believe the artistic value the horror film most frequently offers is its ability to form a liaison between our fantasy fears and our real fears.” Our fears as a society, as well as fear on a more personal level, can be safely dealt with in the context of the comforting horror formula.

It is the simple formula of salvation that attracts the viewer to the horror film. Although the content of the horror film has changed with time, its framework has remained virtually the same. The film introduces a “Monster” which threatens normal society. This is followed by some form of “the Monster and the Girl,” the girl will either be morally corrupt and a victim or a “good girl” and a survivor, reinforcing the dominant societal norm of appropriate sexual behavior. Respectable members of society find a solution that returns

normality, which maintains predominate cultural standards of the heterosexual monogamous couple, family, and the societal institutions that support and defend them. It is the return to normality that really draws the viewer in. Horror films present problems in black and white, so a solution can be easily found during the course of the film. Symbolically fears are neatly solved in the relatively safe environment of the movie theater. Problems that remain in society at large, which do not have simple answers, can be dealt with in a less complicated way.

It is the “Monster” figure that changes over the decades; his form may change but he still reflects society’s dominant fears of the time. Through the films of a particular time period we can see how a society treated the period, experienced it, and symbolized it. In the history of film many horror films came from Europe or used classic European monsters as their subjects. To the viewers of the turn of the century film maintained the world of illusion that magic had previously held. The early filmgoer was amazed and often afraid of the images dancing before him. A Frenchman named George Melies, a magician by trade, utilized early silent films to showcase his talent. He is considered to be the founder of stop-motion photograph and other

Nosferatu (1922)

special effects that are still used today. Melies is responsible for what is probably the first horror film. The Apparition (1900) is a simple film of a ghost mysteriously appearing and disappearing. This film and other early horror films were very basic, but they brought ancient folk tales and literature to the screen. They seemed to provide evidence that these

mysterious and terrifying creatures really existed. From Germany came a film which changed the look of American cinematography, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920). The surrealist movement inspired by this and other German films affected many genres including horror and film noir, another type of film that deals with the dark side of people’s

emotions. American made

films of the 1930’s relied heavily on the foreign born monsters of Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, and Egyptian tales of mummies’ curses. Universal classics such as Dracula (1931), Frankenstein (1931), and The Mummy (1932) and the numerous sequels dominated the genre for over a decade. Interestingly enough these characters would again rear their heads in times of trouble. According to critic Robin Wood the foreignness of horror in the 1930’s can be interpreted in two ways: simply as a means of disavowal (as in it can’t happen here in America) and more unconsciously, as a means of locating horror as a “country of the mind,” as more of a psychological state. Other American films made during this decade continued the tradition of the circus sideshow attractions of strange and deformed characters. Tod Browning’s Freaks (1932) showcases a variety of midgets, living torsos, and Siamese twins in film MGM refused to show.

Horror films of the 1940’s continued to be focused on European monsters. The dominate figure of this decade was the Wolf Man. The wolf has long been a symbol of warfare and came to represent the distance between the human and the soldier in an individual. The Wolf Man (1941) is set in a present day England that knows nothing of the war, but has its share of roving gypsies. The main character, while of English extraction, speaks with a distinctly American accent. Lawrence Talbot’s struggle with his animalistic side seemed to parallel America’s involvement with World War II.

The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari

The Wolf Man was released in the year of America’s direct involvement in the conflict and its final sequel, The House of Dracula (1945), came out just in time for Hiroshima. Werewolves would return in a post-Watergate America as figures of the dual identity of political betrayal, the evil lurking behind a friendly facade.

Horror films of the homegrown variety really began to appear in the 1950’s. Although America emerged from World War II victorious, around the globe former allies became threatening. In the early days of the Cold War “fellow travelers” could be living right next door, and with Joseph McCarthy adding fuel the flame, Communists were going to found. Individuals were forced to conform to the norms of white, heterosexual, male society least they be suspected of being a communist. Once labeled an individual could expect to lose his job, his friends, his home, maybe even his family. Individual heroism was only beneficial if it reinforced the social good. This atmosphere of forced conformity lead many individuals to feel alienated. In films of the period, people who did not sacrifice individual desires for general social need were fated to die, commit suicide, be outcast or simply go mad.

One of the most telling films of the 1950’s is Don Siegel’s Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956). The film is not specifically about conformity or communism; it is about giant seed pods that attempt to take over people’s identities. Indirectly, however, it makes a statement about the collective paranoia of a community forced to place individuals in categories of “us” and “them”, while looking at the issue of conformity inherent in Post War America. The film opens as Dr. Miles Bennell, an apparently insane man, tells the story of his small town of Santa Mira to a policeman and doctor. In a flashback we are shown Miles’ story of giant seed pods as they take over the identities of the local townspeople. It is a town where people feel that their family and friends aren’t really themselves. Miles’ girlfriend Becky attempts to dismiss the delusion, but even she has to finally admit that her uncle is a changed man. She finds him strangely emotionless. Fears are confirmed when Miles finds a semi-human body on Jack’s billiard table. The body begins to take on Jack’s features and the pace of the film quickens. Miles then finds an entire greenhouse full of seed pods which contain half-formed bodies.

As the pods assume the characters’ identities, they take away any power of free thought, turning the individual into a calm, peaceful, collective thinker. In times of war it is easy to distinguish between

good and evil. Following World War II it became more difficult to identify the enemy, so America endeavored to create a team-like atmosphere where everyone dressed alike, spoke alike, and lived alike. Those who chose to be different were obviously the enemy. Invasion of the Body Snatchers brings out the loss of identity that this type of oppressive conformity can lead to by showing the world what emotionless, non-thinking entities humans become as a part of a purely conformist community. The film also makes the point that maybe we had lost something distinctly American – the power of the rugged individual.