From: iroderic@alfred.carleton.ca (Ian Roderick)
Subject: Re: What is "Horror"
Organization: Carleton University
Distribution: usa
Date: Mon, 17 Aug 1992 00:36:44 GMT

In <1992Aug13.185654.11295@pellns.alleg.edu> frisinv@alleg.edu (Vincent Frisina) writes:

>In article <4688@blue.cis.pitt.edu.UUCP> laurelp+@pitt.edu (Laurel A  
>Povazan) writes:
>> I think Darin has a very good point. What _is_ horror, anyway? I think  
>it's a
>> question worthy of discussion. What do you guys think?
>> 
>> 				Laurel
>   Since i must stick my three cents in, the best definition of horror I  
>ever found is the destruction of beauty. For those of you who say it is  
>the revelation of somethiong beyond human perception, that fits in here as  
>well. The human beast considers ignorance of the truth beautiful. It hides  
>you from anything that may shake up your beliefs or you comfortable  
>lifestyle. There is of course the literal interpretation of this  
>definition in horror (i.e. slasher movies, bad splatterpunk (not all  
>splatterpunk is bad, though), overwritten rape scenes, overdone sexual  
>devientcy ala Clive Barker). 
>  If I may, Let the FlameS begin!!!
>---
>Vince

I am new to the news group so this will not be a flame.  I wrote a
fourth year honours essay on horror and I really regret not having
had access to this group.

To my mind, defining a genre is a near impossible task.  I like
Jacques Derrida's commnet that one cannot not mix genres (_Near_Dark_,
my favourite example, as well as the novels penned as Chelsea Quin
Yarbro which mix horror with historical romance).  Even so as a
spoiler by nature I am always willing to try to describe generic
leanings even if I could never hope to produce a totalizing
definition.

I think Mike Gallenstein was pretty accurate when he described horror
as "anything that disrupts our 'normal' lives."  This echoes Peter
Messant's (_Literature_of_the_Occult) comment on Peter Beagle's
_Lila_the_Werewolf_:

"You could have either werewolves or Pyrex nine-cup percolators in the
world, but not both, surely"

Horror foregrounds disruption and therefore refuses the logic of
dialectics.  It entails an intrusion and the intrusion is seemingly
antithetical to  the world we 'know'.  But more than this horror
celebrates simultaneity.  The normal everyday world is rendered
mundane by the 'appearance' of the sublime.  I have rarely read a work
I would call horror in which what became the intrusive threat was not
already present in the 'underside' of the narrative.  Both
possibilities of the horrific and of normalcy are played out against
one another.  The celebration of simultaneity is further enhanced by
the tendency to refuse narrative closure and thus suggests that our
"society of normalization" has only a limited victory.

I think it is no coincidence that horrific stories became popular
among the literate classes in Europe precisely at the same time as
Rationalism arose.  In horror, rationalism only maintains a
provisional ascendancy (Except in those wonderful dystopia themes).

You say your definition is inclusive of this, but if I read you
correctly you equate the Beautiful with ignorance.  If horror does
promise the possibility of a glimpse of the sublime, then (forgive my
entrenchment in classical western thought if it offends) it is the
Beautiful.  With Nietzsche, I would suggest that it is the normalized
world which seeks to reign over and limit what we may encounter in the
play of appearances which is vulgar.

                                                  Ian