Abstract

This critique argues that none of Noël Carroll’s and Berys Gaut’s theory of horror presents a comprehensive understanding of the question of “Why Horror?” What is at issue here is not whether there is a paradox of horror or not. What is at issue here is that there is never a universal and comprehensive theory of any human emotions, no matter how trivial that emotion may be. There is no any comprehensive theory of horror as there is no any comprehensive theory of human laughter, sadness or anger. Such avaricious attempt to construct a comprehensive theory is necessarily taking the risk of glossing the necessary ambiguity of human beings and their emotions. There is hardly any theory of the genre of horror, as such theory is inevitably a necessary blend of ambiguities and contradictories.

The Necessary Ambiguity of Horror

It is remarkably true that works of horror are immensely popular: in fields of fine arts, literary creation and popular culture. The motif of Frankenstein’s monster, just to give one example, became so popular ever since its publication in the nineteenth century. And the motif of the horror of Frankenstein’s monster and the avarice of human beings inspired artists and painters and even movie directors to create works after the image of the man-made monster. Audience, child and adult, feels the thrill and excitement in the image of the monster and the idea of the dead coming alive in the form of man-made monster. Inside the movie theaters, the motif of man-made monster and the greed and avarice that leads finally to catastrophe are always among the most loved themes on the box office. On cartoon networks, kids feel the same pleasure mixed up with an implicit sense of horror that the Frankenstein’s monster coming alive from death joins the row of chasing for fun with other cartoon characters created by Disney and Looney Tunes. Audience from all ages, genders, races and social classes seem to feel the same mixed up feeling of excitement and thrill in horror movies (or stories or TV series).

However, it is also true that reasons that a sense of horror is evoked in the mind of the viewers are as controversial and various as it could be. There is indeed a personal choice and taste in viewing horror movies or reading horror stories: some for pure enjoyment while some seeks a taste of forbidden pleasure. The same movie that scares the audience on your right hand side may lures the audience on your left hand side in the theatre. The same bloody scene of a horrible murder may scares some audience so that they dare not open their eyes while others may give a smirking laugh to the cliché scene of horror movies. Likewise, movie goers in the same horror movie may come for various reasons: some for the pleasure of being scared, some for releasing the pressure in their lives, some for the thrills that may linger for days after viewing, while some may come for a nearly sick enjoyment of watching victims being tortured and killed in the movies.

The reasons for people to enjoy viewing horror movies are so various, and to some extent, so controversial and contradictory that to conduct a comprehensive exploration and analysis into the psyche that why people feel and enjoy horror seems an impossible task.

Noël Carroll, in her abridged article “Why Horror?,” draws on theories of some eighteenth-century philosophers, such as David Hume, Edmund Burke and John and Anna Laetitia Aikin, argues that the feelings of horror may not be enjoyable to the viewers but are “the price to be paid” for the pleasure of horror. Carroll argues that the great deal of the horror genre is narrative and the monster is a “functional ingredient” (278) in the type of narratives. These stories of horror revolve around “proving, disclosing, discovering, and confirming the existence of something that is impossible” (278). Therefore the process of reading horror stories (or viewing horror movies) is equated to the process of “protracted series of discoveries” (278-79) where readers (or viewers) are driven and sustained explicitly by a sense of curiosity. The essence of Carroll’s arguments relies on his assumption that horror stories trigger the audience’s “desire to know” (181) the unknowable and the sense of disgust raised and intensified during processes of discovery, proof, and confirmation are “the price to be paid” (283) for the pleasure achieved at the moment of the disclosure of the unknown mysteries.

However, Berys Gaut disagrees with Noël Carroll’s argument. Gaut proposes his theory of paradox in analyzing the horror genre. Gaut claims that, for horror readers and viewers, “fear and disgust are intrinsically unpleasant emotions” (295). The sense of disgust as the price to pay in Carroll’s argument becomes the source of pure enjoyment in Gaut’s analysis: “we can enjoy fear and disgust” (295, italic original). As long as there is nothing paradoxical about the viewers’ enjoyment of negative emotions, there is nothing paradoxical about the enjoyment of horror fictions and movies.

In this argument, the sense of disgust is not at stake in the issue, for Gaut offers the simplest, the most explicit, and the most straightforward answer to the question of “Why horror”: “sometimes people enjoy being scared” (299). The sense of disgust as ling as any other forms of negative emotions are something enjoyable to the horror viewers. As people are willing to pay for the enjoyment of negative emotions, such as roller-coasters and horror movies, as people enjoy the negative evaluative thoughts, there is no such concern as paradoxical horror; there is nothing paradoxical about horror.

Both Carroll’s and Gaut’s papers attempt to give a comprehensive explanation to the reason of why people love horror while being scared. However, they are both far too ambitious and avaricious to give one explanation to the complexity of human emotions. There would never be solely one easy answer to any dimension of human emotions, no matter how trivial it is, as there is never one easy answer for why human beings cry or get angry. Either Carroll or Gaut, of course, makes contributions to our understandings of horror; however, none of their solutions is satisfactory and complete to our understanding of this problem.

Berys Gaut’s reading suggests that the masochist mechanism in human beings is not only a universal response regardless of gender, culture, and class, but also an indispensable tendency among all human beings. As Guats announces, there is no paradox of horror as people enjoy both positive and negative feelings. However, the claim itself is paradoxical: since there are classifications of negative and positive feelings, such distinction implies a priority and differentiation; since there is awareness of priority and differentiation, it is self-evident that there are favor and disfavor of any form of human emotion. And since there are favor and disfavor in people’s choice, the inclination to admit that when people enjoy something that are classified as unfavorable, whether they truly like it or not, becomes contradictory in itself. To claim that people like both negative and positive feelings is to admit that there is a priority in the classification. And since such classification permeates, it is hard to transfer the negative feeling of disgust into something people really like. In short, people can never love something negative: as long as people are aware of the negativity in the thing, as long as there is admittance that something is negative, there is no true feeling of favor at the first place. This is the paradox of masochist mechanism: as long as people are aware of the harm and pain that goes with pleasure, they can never ignore the negative feelings and mingle both the negative and positive feelings into a whole. As long as there is an awareness of differentiation and priority, there can be no sole enjoyment: because the existence of the negativity has always been notified and confirmed.

Another problem of both Noël Carroll’s and Berys Gaut’s argument lies in their ambitious attempt to cover all human feelings of and reactions to horror. No of their theories succeeds to explain different reactions may occur to people of different education, gender, race, social class, or ideologies. Although both of their arguments provide some truth to the analysis of horror, it is evidently flawed in their glossing over the multiple differences in human beings.

Carroll may make his mistake in his first step of his avaricious endeavor: he claims to “develop a theory of horror” (Philosophy 12) as the purpose of his book, The Philosophy of Horror or Paradoxes of the Heart, the source of the abridged article of “Why Horror” in our discussion. Even though Carroll gives definition of the horror in his discussion as “art-horror,” it is not enough for setting a clear and well-defined platform to tackle with such an enormous topic. Even to limit the notion of horror and science fiction in his discussion as “absolutely discrete genres” (Philosophy 13) is never justifiable for his own defense. Horror as a genre, as Carroll himself confesses as his aim of analysis, is still way too broad and complicated issue to tackle with in one book. In his attempt, Carroll provides his theory of “mirroring-effect” (as he regards that the emotive responses of the audience run parallel to the emotions of characters) (Philosophy 18) and his theory of horror working “in the service of the status quo” (as he confirms that the horror genre produces negative imagery of those political/social entities that threaten the established social order so that the feeling of horror is produced in the interest of the established order) (Philosophy 196). However, both of these two theories fail to explain the different reaction triggered by the same work of the horror genre.

This comprehensive theory glosses over the distinction of individuals in terms of gender, class, and race, just to name a few. None of Carroll’s and Gaut’s theory fails to explain why sometimes men do not scream and women do, why some men feel scared and admit they are scared while some do not feel scared or do not admit that they are sacred. Their theories do not explain why the working class may have their favor in their choice of horror movies different from the white-collars. Nor do these theories notify that people of different race and cultural background may have different sources of horror and taboo, and that a Japan-produced film may cause different kind of horror upon viewers in Taiwan and America. Likewise, none of their theories tells us why the same movie that scared people thirty years ago may turn out to be a laughing stock if the movie is reviewed by modern audience.

Therefore, the biggest flaw in Carroll’s and Gaut’s attempt in conducting a comprehensive theory of horror is itself the biggest paradox. What is at issue here is not whether there is a paradox of horror or not. What is at issue here is that there is never a universal and comprehensive theory of any human emotions, no matter how trivial that emotion may be. There is no theory of horror as such avaricious theory is taking the risk of glossing the necessary ambiguity of human beings and their emotions, as none of Carroll and Gaut admits that they may ignore differences in terms of gender, class, or race. Such avaricious attempt to construct a comprehensive theory is necessarily taking the risk of glossing the necessary ambiguity of human beings and their emotions. There is hardly any theory of the genre of horror, as such theory is inevitably a necessary blend of ambiguities and contradictories.

References

Carroll, Noël. The Philosophy of Horror or Paradoxes of the Heart. New York and London: Routledge, 1990.

----. “Why Horror?” as collected in

Gaut, Berys. “The Paradox of Horror.” as collected in Tim Lane’s compliment of discussion, pp. 295-308.