On Horror

[rachelmanija]

When I was a child, the writer who spoke most to me was Anne McCaffrey, especially with her Menolly books. Those books told me what I most needed to hear, which was “The place you’re in really is terrible, but there is a better place for you, and you can escape to it.”

When it looked like I was going to die because I couldn’t convince anyone with the power to help me that I was really sick, the writer who spoke most to me was Stephen King. And what his books said was, “You’re not crazy. Things are exactly as bad as you think. I believe you.”

Someone asked a while back what people get out of reading horror. There’s a lot of answers, much like the answers to what people get out of reading comedy or fantasy or any genre. But one of the key themes of horror is that Cassandra was right. And that if you feel like Cassandra, then you are probably right, too.

In horror, the person who everyone initially ignores and dismisses, the person trying to get everyone to admit to the existence of the bad thing that everyone else is ignoring, the person who sees the missing stair, the monster in the closet, the pandemic in waiting… That person is always right.

Sometimes we want to hear that everything will be fine. But sometimes the only way anything can ever be fine is if we admit that everything isn’t fine right now. Horror tells us that everything isn’t fine, and we should start listening to the people who’ve been saying so all along. And if we are those people, it tells us what we most need to hear: “I believe you.”

Comments

[minoanmiss]

well said.

[pameladean]

I have always appreciated your remarks about horror, which is a closed book to me, but these really hit home. I'm glad you have and had Stephen King.

P.

Thank you for explaining.

[kathmandu]

I am not a horror person, and I have wondered why anyone would ever want that. I've seen at least one other essay describing different reasons, but your essay here is the first to give "Cassandra was right and you're not crazy" as a possibility.

[bemused_writer]

This is such an excellent point, and encapsulates a big part of why I love horror as well. Good horror reveals the awful things of the world, which in turn can help us see what we are experiencing ourselves. Everyone needs that sometimes. It's cathartic.

[grayswandir]

I assume you've read King's Danse Macabre? If not, it's a wonderful book, and King talks a lot about what horror fiction is and why people find it valuable. Also, specifically, the way horror fiction resonates with widespread but often subliminal cultural or social fears, and the way similar horror tropes are used in different ways by different generations in order to tap into the particular fears of the culture at that moment.

[rachelmanija]

Yes, it's great.

[cynthia1960]

The Menolly books are the best bits of Pern.

[pauraque]

Thank you for sharing this.

[yhlee]

So much this. Thank you.

[cyphomandra]

This is fantastic. And yes, sometimes all you need is someone to say, yes, this is a terrible thing, right now.

[gwynnega]

Yes, exactly.

[vass]

Not the same, but related:

"Fairy tales, then, are not responsible for producing in children fear, or any of the shapes of fear; fairy tales do not give the child the idea of the evil or the ugly; that is in the child already, because it is in the world already. Fairy tales do not give the child his first idea of bogey. What fairy tales give the child is his first clear idea of the possible defeat of bogey. The baby has known the dragon intimately ever since he had an imagination. What the fairy tale provides for him is a St. George to kill the dragon." -- G.K. Chesterton, 'The Red Angel'.

usually paraphased as:

"Fairy tales do not tell children the dragons exist. Children already know that dragons exist. Fairy tales tell children the dragons can be killed."

[rachelmanija]

Yes, this. Thanks for the quote. I knew the paraphrase, but not the original or that it came from G. K. Chesterton.

[illariy]

I so much appreciate this post.

You perfectly expressed part of why I love horror, especially why I kept watching horror films for years because I found they helped manage my nightmares after I had lost the ability to dream lucidly that I had as a child.

The other part, for me, is the same reason why I read and watch material, both non-fiction and fiction, on serial killers. It is to educate myself on what kind of person is out there in this world, what other people's fears are like and what can happen in this world if we ignore that little voice at the back of most of our brains that says, "that person that people seem to like? that maybe some of my friends praise? that I myself am weirdly attracted to? that is person is unsafe in some way and I should stay far, far away if I value my personal safety and sanity..."