response

Why horror?

N O Ë L C A R R O L L

There is a theoretical question about horror which, although not unique to horror,

nevertheless is not one that readily arises with respect to other popular genres, such as

mystery, romance, comedy, the thriller, adventure stories, and the western. The question is:

why would anyone be interested in the genre to begin with? Why does the genre persist? I have

written a lot about the internal elements of the genre; but many readers may feel that in doing

that their attention has been deflected away from the central issue concerning horror—viz.,

how can we explain its very existence, for why would anyone want to be horrified, or even

art-horrified?

This question, moreover, becomes especially pressing if my analysis of the nature of horror

is accepted. For we have seen that a key element in the emotion of art-horror is repulsion or

disgust. But—and this is the question of “Why horror?” in its primary form—if horror

necessarily has something repulsive about it, how can audiences be attracted to it? Indeed,

even if horror only caused fear, we might feel justified in demanding an explanation of what

could motivate people to seek out the genre. But where fear is compounded with repulsion,

the ante is, in a manner of speaking, raised.

In the ordinary course of affairs, people shun what disgusts them. Being repulsed by

something that one finds to be loathsome and impure is an unpleasant experience. We do

not, for example, attempt to add some pleasure to a boring afternoon by opening the lid of

a steamy trash can in order to savor its unwholesome stew of broken bits of meat, moldering

fruits and vegetables, and noxious, unrecognizable clumps, riven thoroughly by all manner

of crawling things. And, ordinarily, checking out hospital waste bags is not our idea of a good

time. But, on the other hand, many people—so many, in fact, that we must concede that they

are normal, at least in the statistical sense—do seek out horror fictions for the purpose of

deriving pleasure from sights and descriptions that customarily repulse them.

In short, there appears to be something paradoxical about the horror genre. It obviously

attracts consumers; but it seems to do so by means of the expressly repulsive. Furthermore,

the horror genre gives every evidence of being pleasurable to its audience, but it does so by

means of trafficking in the very sorts of things that cause disquiet, distress, and displeasure.

So different ways of clarifying the question “Why horror?” are to ask: “Why are horror audiences

attracted by what, typically (in everyday life), should (and would) repell them?,” or “How can

horror audiences find pleasure in what by nature is distressful and unpleasant?”

2

In what follows, I will attempt to find a comprehensive or general answer to the question

of what attracts audiences to the horror genre. That is, I shall try to frame a set of hypthoses

that will supply a plausible explanation of the attracting power of horror in its many

manifestations across the different centuries and decades, and across the different subgenres

and media in which horror is practiced. However, in this regard it is important to emphasize

that, though a general account of horror may be advanced, this does not preclude the

possibility that it can be supplemented by additional accounts of why a particular horror

novel or film, a particular horror subgenre, or a particular cycle within the history of

horror also has some special levers of attraction over and above those that are generic to the

mode of horror. That is, an explanation of basic pleasures or attractions of the horror mode

is compatible with additional explanations of why, for example, Rosemary’s Baby exercises its own

particular fascination; of how werewolf stories, while sharing the allures of ghost stories and

other horrific tales, have allures of their own; and of why horror cycles, like the Hollywood

movie cycle of the thirties, gain attractive power by thematically developing concerns of

especial appropriateness for the period in which they were made.

A general theory of horror will say something about the probable roots of attraction and

pleasure throughout the genus of horror, but this does not deny that various of the species

and specimens of the genre will have further sources of attraction and pleasure that will

require, correspondingly, added explanations. In most cases, such (added) explanations

will be developed by critics of the genre. However, I would like to address one particular case

here which is especially relevant to readers of this book. In concluding, I will attempt an

account of why at present horror is so compelling, that is, an account of why the horror cycle

within which we find ourselves exerts such a commanding impression on its continuing, avid

audiences: that is to say on us (or at least many of us).

[. . .]

I think it is fair to say that in our culture, horror thrives above all as a narrative form. Thus, in

order to account for the interest we take in and the pleasure we take from horror, we may

hypothesize that, in the main, the locus of our gratification is not the monster as such but

the whole narrative structure in which the presentation of the monster is staged. This, of

course, is not to say that the monster is in any way irrelevant to the genre, nor that the interest

and pleasure in the genre could be satisfied through and/or substituted by any old narrative.

For, as I have argued earlier, the monster is a functional ingredient in the type of narratives

found in horror stories, and not all narratives function exactly like horror narratives.

As we saw in my analysis of horror narratives, these stories, with great frequency, revolve

around proving, disclosing, discovering, and confirming the existence of something that is

impossible, something that defies standing conceptual schemes. It is part of such stories—

contrary to our everyday beliefs about the nature of things—that such monsters exist. And

as a result, audiences’ expectations revolve around whether this existence will be confirmed

in the story.

Often this is achieved, as Hume says of narrative “secrets” in general, by putting off the

conclusive information that the monster exists for quite a while. Sometimes this information

may be deferred till the very end of the fiction. And even where this information is given to

the audience right off the bat, it is still generally the case that the human characters in the

tale must undergo a process of discovering that the monster exists, which, in turn, may lead

to a further process of confirming that discovery in an ensuing scene or series of scenes. That

34 NOËL CARROLL

is, the question of whether or not the monster exists may be transformed into the question

of whether and when the human characters in the tale will establish the existence of the

monster. Horror stories are often protracted series of discoveries: first the reader learns

of the monster’s existence, then some characters do, then some more characters do, and

so on; the drama of iterated disclosure—albeit to different parties—underwrites much

horror fiction.1

Even in overreacher plots, there is a question of whether the monsters exist—i.e., of

whether they can be summoned, in the case of demons, or of whether they can be created by

mad scientists and necromancers. Furthermore, even after the existence of the monster is

disclosed, the audience continues to crave further information about its nature, its identity,

its origin, its purposes, and its astounding powers and properties, including, ultimately, those

of its weaknesses that may enable humanity to do it in.

Thus, to a large extent, the horror story is driven explicitly by curiosity. It engages its

audience by being involved in processes of disclosure, discovery, proof, explanation,

hypothesis, and confirmation. Doubt, skepticism, and the fear that belief in the existence of

the monster is a form of insanity are predictable foils to the revelation (to the audience or to

the characters or both) of the existence of the monster.

Horror stories, in a significant number of cases, are dramas of proving the existence of the

monster and disclosing (most often gradually) the origin, identity, purposes and powers of

the monster. Monsters, as well, are obviously a perfect vehicle for engendering this kind

of curiosity and for supporting the drama of proof, because monsters are (physically, though

generally not logically) impossible beings. They arouse interest and attention through being

putatively inexplicable or highly unusual vis-à-vis our standing cultural categories, thereby

instilling a desire to learn and to know about them. And since they are also outside of

(justifiably) prevailing definitions of what is, they understandably prompt a need for proof

(or the fiction of a proof) in the face of skepticism. Monsters are, then, natural subjects

for curiosity, and they straightforwardly warrant the ratiocinative energies the plot lavishes

upon them.

All narratives might be thought to involve the desire to know—the desire to know at least

the outcome of the interaction of the forces made salient in the plot. However, the horror

fiction is a special variation on this general narrative motivation, because it has at the center

of it something which is given as in principle unknowable—something which, ex hypothesi, cannot,

given the structure of our conceptual scheme, exist and that cannot have the properties it

has. This is why, so often, the real drama in a horror story resides in establishing the existence

of the monster and in disclosing its horrific properties. Once this is established, the

monster, generally, has to be confronted, and the narrative is driven by the question of

whether the creature can be destroyed. However, even at this point, the drama of ratiocin-

ation can continue as further discoveries—accompanied by arguments, explanations, and

hypotheses—reveal features of the monster that will facilitate or impede the destruction of

the creature. [. . .]

What is revealed and disclosed, of course, are monsters and their properties. These are

appropriate objects of discovery and revelation, just because they are unknown—not only in

the sense that the murderer in a detective fiction is unknown, but also because they are

outside the bounds of knowledge, i.e., outside our standing conceptual schemes. This, as well,

accounts for why their revelation and the disclosure of their properties is so often bound up

in processes of proof, hypothesis, argument, explanation (including sci-fi flights of fancy and

WHY HORROR? 35

magical lore about mythological realms, potions, and incantations), and confirmation. That

is, because horror fictions are predicated on the revelation of unknown and unknowable—

unbelievable and incredible—impossible beings, they often take the form of narratives of

discovery and proof. For things unknown in the way of monsters obviously are natural subjects

for proof.

Applied to the paradox of horror, these observations suggest that the pleasure derived

from the horror fiction and the source of our interest in it resides, first and foremost, in

the processes of discovery, proof, and confirmation that horror fictions often employ. The

disclosure of the existence of the horrific being and of its properties is the central source of

pleasure in the genre; once that process of revelation is consummated, we remain inquisitive

about whether such a creature can be successfully confronted, and that narrative question

sees us through to the end of the story. Here, the pleasure involved is, broadly speaking,

cognitive. Hobbes, interestingly, thought of curiosity as an appetite of the mind; with the

horror fiction, that appetite is whetted by the prospect of knowing the putatively unknowable,

and then satisfied through a continuous process of revelation, enhanced by imitations of

(admittedly simplistic) proofs, hypotheses, counterfeits of causal reasoning, and explanations

whose details and movement intrigue the mind in ways analogous to genuine ones.2

Moreover, it should be clear that these particular cognitive pleasures, insofar as they are

set in motion by the relevant kind of unknowable beings, are especially well served by horrific

monsters. Thus, there is a special functional relationship between the beings that mark off

the horror genre and the pleasure and interest that many horror fictions sustain. That interest

and that pleasure derive from the disclosure of unknown and impossible beings, just the

sorts of things that seem to call for proof, discovery, and confirmation. Therefore, the disgust

that such beings evince might be seen as part of the price to be paid for the pleasure of their

disclosure. That is, the narrative expectation that the horror genre puts in place is that the

being whose existence is in question be something that defies standing cultural categories;

thus, disgust, so to say, is itself more or less mandated by the kind of curiosity that the horror

narrative puts in place. The horror narrative could not deliver a successful, affirmative answer

to its presiding question unless the disclosure of the monster indeed elicited disgust, or was

of the sort that was a highly probable object of disgust.

That is, there is a strong relation of consilience between the objects of art-horror, on the

one hand, and the revelatory plotting on the other. The kinds of plots and the subjects of

horrific revelation are not merely compatible, but fit together or agree in a way that is highly

appropriate. That the audience is naturally inquisitive about that which is unknown meshes

with plotting that is concerned to render the unknown known by processes of discovery,

explanation, proof, hypothesis, confirmation, and so on.

Of course, what it means to say that the horrific being is “unknown” here is that it is not

accommodated by standing conceptual schemes. Moreover, if Mary Douglas’s account of

impurity is correct, things that violate our conceptual scheme, by (for example) being

interstitial, are things that we are prone to find disturbing. Thus, that horrific beings are

predictably objects of loathing and revulsion is a function of the ways they violate our

classificatory scheme.

If what is of primary importance about horrific creatures is that their very impossibility vis-

à-vis our conceptual categories is what makes them function so compellingly in dramas of

discovery and confirmation, then their disclosure, insofar as they are categorical violations,

will be attached to some sense of disturbance, distress, and disgust. Consequently, the role

36 NOËL CARROLL

of the horrific creature in such narratives—where their disclosure captures our interest and

delivers pleasure—will simultaneously mandate some probable revulsion. That is, in order

to reward our interest by the disclosure of the putatively impossible beings of the plot, said

beings ought to be disturbing, distressing, and repulsive in the way that theorists like Douglas

predict phenomena that ill fit cultural classifications will be.

So, as a first approximation of resolving the paradox of horror, we may conjecture that we

are attracted to the majority of horror fictions because of the way that the plots of discovery

and the dramas of proof pique our curiosity, and abet our interest, ideally satisfying them in

a way that is pleasurable.3 But if narrative curiosity about impossible beings is to be satisfied

through disclosure, that process must require some element of probable disgust since such

impossible beings are, ex hypothesi, disturbing, distressful, and repulsive.

One way of making the point is to say that the monsters in such tales of disclosure have

to be disturbing, distressful, and repulsive, if the process of their discovery is to be rewarding

in a pleasurable way. Another way to get at this is to say that the primary pleasure that

narratives of disclosure afford—i.e., the interest we take in them, and the source of their

attraction—resides in the processes of discovery, the play of proof, and the dramas of

ratiocination that comprise them. It is not that we crave disgust, but that disgust is a

predictable concomitant of disclosing the unknown, whose disclosure is a desire the narrative

instills in the audience and then goes on to gladden. Nor will that desire be satisfied unless

the monster defies our conception of nature which demands that it probably engender some

measure of repulsion.

In this interpretation of horror narratives, the majority of which would appear to exploit

the cognitive attractions of the drama of disclosure, experiencing the emotion of art-horror

is not our absolutely primary aim in consuming horror fictions, even though it is a determining

feature for identifying membership in the genre. Rather, art-horror is the price we are willing

to pay for the revelation of that which is impossible and unknown, of that which violates our

conceptual schema. The impossible being does disgust; but that disgust is part of an overall

narrative address which is not only pleasurable, but whose potential pleasure depends

on the confirmation of the existence of the monster as a being that violates, defies, or

problematizes standing cultural classifications. Thus, we are attracted to, and many of us

seek out, horror fictions of this sort despite the fact that they provoke disgust, because that

disgust is required for the pleasure involved in engaging our curiosity in the unknown and

drawing it into the processes of revelation, ratiocination, etc.

One objection to this line of conjecture is to point out that many of the kinds of plot

structures found in horror fiction can be found in other genres. The play of discovery and

confirmation, supported by ratiocination, can be found in detective thrillers. And the plots

of the disaster movies of the first half of the seventies often also look like horror plots; but

instead of ghouls and vampires calling for discovery and confirmation, potential earthquakes,

avalanches, floods, and simmering electrical systems are the culprits.

Of course, with detective stories and disaster films, the evil that is disclosed is not

impossible nor, in principle, unknown. This not only means that these narratives do not

characteristically cause disgust, but that there is a qualitative difference in the kind of curiosity

they invite and reward. My point here is not that one kind of curiosity is higher or lower than

another kind; but only that there can be different kinds of curiosity engaged by plot structures

that at a certain level of abstract description look formally equivalent, in terms of their major

movements. However, it is one thing to be curious about the unknown but natural, and

WHY HORROR? 37

another thing to be curious about the impossible. And it is the latter form of curiosity in

which horror fictions typically traffic.

Two other, I think, deeper objections to the preceding hypotheses about the paradox of

horror are:

1) So far the conjecture only deals with horror narratives, indeed, only with horror

narratives of a certain sort—namely those involving such elements as discovery, confirmation,

disclosure, revelation, explanation, hypothesis, ratiocination, etc. But there are instances of

the horror genre, e.g., paintings, that need not involve narrative; and there are, according to

my review of characteristic horror plots, horror narratives that don’t involve these elements.

There may be, for example, pure onset or pure confrontation plots. Moreover, earlier

hypotheses about the paradox of horror were rejected because they were not sufficiently

comprehensive. But since there are instances of horror that are not narrative and since there

may be horror narratives that do not deploy the elements of disclosure so far identified as

the central source of attraction to horror, this conjecture must be rejected as failing its own

standards of generality.

2) This conjecture seems to make the experience of being horrified too remote from the

experience of the genre. The revulsion we feel at the horrific being is too detached from

the source of attraction we find in the genre. This is peculiar, since it is the emotion of art-

horror that differentiates the genre. Indeed, it is very often the expectation that a given fiction

is defined by this emotion that leads us to select it over candidates from other genres. So one

seems justified in supposing that what makes the genre special must have some intimate

connection with what draws audiences to seek it out especially. But the account, thus far,

falters in this respect.

The first criticism is absolutely on target about the limitations of my hypothesis in its present

state. My view is not yet sufficiently comprehensive. The horror genre includes examples, like

photographs and paintings, that do not involve sustained narration, especially sustained

narration of the particular sort I have emphasized; and, there are horror narratives of the pure

onset or pure confrontation variety that do not offer audiences the refined and sometimes

intricately articulated strategems of disclosure referred to above. However, I do not regard

these observations as decisive counterexamples to my approach, but rather as an opportunity

to deepen and expand it, indeed in ways that will also enable me to handle the second of the

objections in the course of adjusting my position in order to accommodate the first objection.

I do think that the best account that can be given of the paradox of horror for the majority

of works of horrific art will be very much like the one that I have already offered. However, it

is true that it fails to cover non-narrative horror and horror fictions little concerned with the

drama of disclosure. To deal with these cases more needs to be said; but the more-that-

needs-to-be-said fits with what has already been said in a way that enriches while also

extending the theory developed so far.

Central to my approach has been the idea that the objects of horror are fundamentally

linked with cognitive interests, most notably with curiosity. The plotting gambits of

disclosure/discovery narratives play with, expand, sustain, and develop this initial cognitive

appetite in many directions. And as well, this is the way in which horror fictions usually go.

But it would be a mistake to think that this curiosity is solely a function of plotting, even if

the plotting of certain types of fictions—namely those concerned with disclosure—brings it

to its highest pitch. For the objects of art-horror in and of themselves engender curiosity as

well. This is why they can support the kind of disclosure plots referred to above. Consequently,

38 NOËL CARROLL

even if it is true that horrific curiosity is best expatiated upon within disclosure plots, and that,

in its most frequent and compelling cases, it does mobilize such plots, it is also true that it

can be abetted and rewarded without the narrative contextualization of disclosure/discovery

plotting. Thus, it can be the case that while horror is most often, and perhaps most powerfully

and most primarily, developed within narrative contexts of disclosure, it may also obtain in

non-narrative and non-disclosure contexts for the same reason, viz., the power of the objects

of art-horror to command curiosity.

Recall again that the objects of art-horror are, by definition, impure. This is to be

understood in terms of their being anomalous. Obviously, the anomalous nature of these

beings is what makes them disturbing, distressing, and disgusting. They are violations of our

ways of classifying things and such frustrations of a world-picture are bound to be disturbing.

However, anomalies are also interesting. The very fact that they are anomalies fascinates

us. Their deviation from the paradigms of our classificatory scheme captures our attention

immediately. It holds us spellbound. It commands and retains our attention. It is an attracting

force; it attracts curiosity, i.e., it makes us curious; it invites inquisitiveness about its surprising

properties. One wants to gaze upon the unusual, even when it is simultaneously repelling.

Monsters, the anomalous beings who star in this book, are repelling because they

violate standing categories. But for the self-same reason, they are also compelling of our

attention. They are attractive, in the sense that they elicit interest, and they are the cause of,

for many, irresistible attention, again, just because they violate standing categories. They are

curiosities. They can rivet attention and thrill for the self-same reason that they disturb,

distress, and disgust.

If these confessedly pedestrian remarks are convincing, three interesting conclusions are

suggested. First, the attraction of non-narrative- and non-disclosure-type narration in horror

is explicable, as is disclosure-type narrative, fundamentally by virtue of curiosity, a feature of

horrific beings that follows from their anomalous status as violations of standing cultural

schemes. Second, horrific creatures are able to contribute so well to sustaining interest in

disclosure plots to an important degree just because in being anomalous, they can be

irresistibly interesting. And lastly, with special reference to the paradox of horror, monsters,

the objects of art-horror, are themselves sources of ambivalent responses, for as violations

of standing cultural categories, they are disturbing and disgusting, but, at the same time,

they are also objects of fascination—again, just because they transgress standing categories

of thought. That is, the ambivalence that bespeaks the paradox of horror is already to be

found in the very objects of art-horror which are disgusting and fascinating, repelling and

attractive due to their anomalous nature.4

I have identified impurity as an essential feature of art-horror; specifically, the objects

of art-horror are, in part, impure beings, monsters recognized as outside the natural order of

things as set down by our conceptual schema. This claim may be tested by noting the truly

impressive frequency with which the apparition of such monsters in horror fictions correlates

explicitly in such texts with mention of revulsion, disgust, repulsion, nausea, abhorrence,

and so on. The source of this attitude, moreover, seems traceable to the fact that they, as David

Pole puts it, “might in a way be called messy; they defy or mess up existing categories. . . .

[W]hat initially disturbs us is most often merely a jumbling [or obfuscation] of kinds.”5 But

at the same time that the breakdown of our conceptual categories disturbs, it also fixes our

attention. It stimulates our cognitive appetite with the prospect of something previously

inconceivable.

WHY HORROR? 39

The fascination of the horrific being comes in tandem with disturbance. And, in fact, I

would submit that for those who are attracted to the genre, the fascination at least

compensates for the disturbance. This may be explained to a certain extent by reference to

the thought theory of fictional emotion discussed earlier in this book. According to that view,

the audience knows that the object of art-horror does not exist before them. The audience is

only reacting to the thought that such and such an impure being might exist. This mutes,

without eliminating, the disturbing aspect of the object of art-horror and allows more

opportunity for fascination with the monster to take hold.6

One supposes that fascination would be too great a luxury to endure, if one, against

all odds, were to encounter a horrific monster in “real life.” We, like the characters in horror

fictions, would feel distressingly helpless; for such creatures, insofar as they defy our

conceptual scheme, would leave us at a loss to think of how to deal with them—they would

baffle our practical response, paralyzing us in terror (as they generally do to characters in

horror fictions for the same reason). However, with art-horror, it is only the thought of the

creature that is at issue; we know that it does not exist; we are not taxed literally by practical

questions about what is to be done. So the fearsome and loathsome aspects of the monsters

do not impinge upon us with the same practical urgency, allowing a space for fascination to

take root. So, as a second approximation for resolving the paradox of horror, we can explain

how it is that what would, by hypothesis, ordinarily distress, disturb, and disgust us, can also

be the source of pleasure, interest, and attraction. With reference to art-horror the answer is

that the monster—as a categorical violation—fascinates for the self-same reason it disgusts

and, since we know the monster is but a fictional confection, our curiosity is affordable.

This position enables us to give an answer to the justified objection to our first response

to the paradox of horror, which response was so wedded to disclosure-type narratives, to wit:

non-narrative examples of art-horror, such as those found in the fine arts and narrative horror

fictions that do not deploy disclosure devices, attract their audiences insofar as the objects

of art-horror promote fascination at the same time they distress; indeed, both responses

emanate from the same aspects of the horrific beings. The two responses are, as a matter of

(contingent) fact, inseparable in horror. Moreover, this fascination can be savored, because

the distress in question is not behaviorally pressing; it is a response to the thought of a

monster, not to the actual presence of a disgusting or fearsome thing.

If it is true that fascination is the key to our attention to the art-horror in general, then it

is also the case that the curiosity and fascination that is basic to the genre also receive

especial amplification in what I have referred to as narratives of disclosure and discovery.

There curiosity, fascination, and our cognitive inquisitiveness are engaged, addressed, and

sustained in a highly articulated way through what I have called the drama of proof and such

processes of continuous revelation as ratiocination, discovery, hypothesis formation,

confirmation, and so on.

At this point, then, I am in a position to summarize my approach to the paradox of horror.

It is a twofold theory, whose elements I refer to respectively as the universal theory and the

general theory. The universal theory of our attraction to art-horror—which covers non-

narrative horror, non-disclosure horror narratives, and disclosure narratives—is that what

leads people to seek out horror is fascination as characterized in the analyses above. This is

the basic, generic calling card of the form. At the same time, I should also like to advance what I call a general—rather than a universal

—theory of the appeal of art-horror. The most commonly recurring—that is to say the most

40 NOËL CARROLL

generally found—exercises in the horror genre appear to be horror narratives of the disclosure sort. The attraction of these instances, like all other examples of the genre, are to be explained

in terms of curiosity and fascination. However, with these cases, the initial curiosity and fascination found in the genre are developed to an especially high degree through devices that enhance and sustain curiosity. If the genre begins, so to speak, in curiosity, it is enhanced by the consilient structures of disclosure plotting. In such cases, then, what attracts us to this sort of horror—which seems to me the most pervasive7—is the whole structure and

staging of curiosity in the narrative, in virtue of the experience of the extended play of fascination it affords. That is, as Hume noted of tragedy, the source of our aesthetic pleasure in such examples of horror is primarily the whole structure of the narrative in which, of course, the apparition of the horrific being is an essential, and, as the universal theory shows, a

facilitating part.

[. . .]

One advantage of this theoretical approach over some of the rival theories, like psychoanalysis, is that it can accommodate our interest in horrific beings whose imagery

does not seem straightforwardly, or even circuitously, rooted in such things as repression. That is, the religious awe explanation and psychoanalytic explanations of horror confront counterexamples in those cases of horror where the monsters seem to be produced by what might be thought of as virtually formal processes of “categorical-jamming.” Wells’s

cephalopods engender neither cosmic awe nor are they worked up pointedly enough in the text to be linked with some identifiably repressed material. Thus, these attempted explanations are not sufficiently comprehensive, because they cannot assimilate that which we can call formalistically (or formulaically) constructed horrific beings.

My approach, on the other hand, has no such problems with horrific beings generated solely by classificatory obfuscation, since I trace their fascination (as well as their distressfulness) to their category-jamming. Thus, the comprehensiveness of my theory in the face of such counterexamples counts as a strong consideration in favor of my theory.

At this point, it may be helpful to remind the reader that I have been concerned to find a comprehensive account of the appeal of horror—that is, an account of horror that pertains to its attraction across periods of time, across subgenres and across particular works of horror, whether they be masterpieces or not. In this respect, I am, in part, regarding horror as what

Fredric Jameson has called a mode. He writes:

when we speak of a mode, what can we mean but that this particular type of literary discourse is not bound to the conventions of a given age, nor indissolubly linked to a given type of verbal artifact, but rather persists as a temptation and a mode of expression

across a whole range of historical periods, seeming to offer itself, if only intermittently, as a formal possibility which can be revived and renewed? 8

To ask what is compelling about horror as a mode is to ask for the most basic, recurring “temptations” afforded by the genre for what one supposes to be the average audience. My

answer is the detailed account of fascination and curiosity found above. This answer seems more comprehensive than psychoanalytic and religious explanations of horror as a mode— more encompassing of the widest number of recurring cases.9

However, having said this, I do not necessarily preclude that psychoanalytic and religious

explanations may not offer supplemental insight into why particular works of horror, particular

WHY HORROR? 41

periodic cycles, or why specified subgenres may exert their own special attractions over and

above the generic attraction of the mode. Whether and to what extent such explanations are

convincing depends on the critical and interpretive analysis of individual subgenres, cycles,

and works. I have no theoretical reason to announce ahead of time that such critical work may

not inform us about the levers of attraction that certain cycles, subgenres, and individual

works deploy over and above the generic attractions of the mode. The persuasiveness of such

critical work will have to be judged on a case-by-case basis. I have only been concerned to

advance a view of the generic power of the horror mode and I will not here and now express

any principled reservation to the possibility of the application of religious criticism, myth

criticism, psychoanalytic criticism, cosmic-awe criticism, etc. to isolated cycles, subgenres and

works in the horror mode.

It is my impression that the curiosity/fascination resolution that I have offered to the

paradox of horror—despite its reliance on somewhat technical notions like categorical

violations, and co-existentialism—is pretty obvious. It is certainly not as jazzy as many

reductivist psychoanalytic theories. In fact, it may strike many as not being theoretical at all,

but as nothing but a long-winded exercise in common sense.

I do think that the approach—especially in the way it works out the interplay of the forces

of attraction and repulsion—is elucidating; though I can see why when stated in abbreviated

form—horror attracts because anomalies command attention and elicit curiosity—it may

sound platitudinous. Three remarks seem appropriate here: first, the very comprehensiveness

of the explanation of the phenomena that we are seeking might tend to make the solution

appear truistic and trivially broad, even if it is not; second, that the theory seems common-

sensical need not count against it—there is no reason to think that common sense cannot

contribute insight; and last, as perhaps a corollary to the latter observation, that competing

explanations resort to arcane sources is not of necessity a virtue in their favor.

[. . .]

Notes

1 The special fermata over the discovery/disclosure of the monster in horror narratives is

also in evidence in some of the most standardly employed expositional strategies in

movies. For example, with respect to point-of-view editing in horror films, J. P. Telotte

writes: “one of the most frequent and compelling images in the horror film repertoire is

that of the wide, staring eyes of some victim, expressing stark terror or disbelief and

attesting to an ultimate threat to the human proposition. To maximize the effect of this

image, though, the movie most often reverses what is a standard film technique and, in

fact, the natural sequence of events. Normally an action is presented and then commented

upon with reaction shots; the cause is shown and then its effect. The horror film, however,

tends to reverse the process, offering the reaction shot first and thus fostering a chilling

suspense by holding the terrors in abeyance for a moment; furthermore, such an

arrangement upsets our ordinary cause–effect orientation. What is eventually betrayed

is the onset of some unbelievable terror, something which stubbornly refuses to

be accounted for by our normal perceptual patterns.” Though I do not agree with

the analysis—in terms of identification—that Telotte appends to this description, the

42 NOËL CARROLL

description itself is an apt one of a recurring cinematic strategy in horror films, and it

suggests the way in which this editing figure reflects, in the form of a “mini-narrative,” the

larger rhythms of discovery and disclosure in horror plotting. See J. P. Telotte, “Faith and

Idolatry in the Horror Film,” in Planks of Reason, ed. Barry Keith Grant (Metuchen, New

Jersey: The Scarecrow Press, 1984), pp. 25–26.

2 In claiming that the pleasures derived from horror are cognitive in the broad sense—of

engaging curiosity—I am attempting to explain why the genre often engages us. I am not

attempting to justify the genre as worthy of our attention because its appeal is cognitive.

Nor by saying that it is cognitive, in the special sense of engaging curiosity, am I even

implicitly signaling that I think it superior to some other genres whose appeal might be

said to be exclusively emotive.

3 “Ideally” here is meant to take note of the fact that not all such horror fictions are

successful.

4 This is not said to retract my earlier claim that with disclosure-type narration our

fascination fastens primarily on the way in which our curiosity is orchestrated. However,

in order to be orchestrated and so have that orchestration rewarded, the monster will

ideally be capable of some independent source of fascination. And that source of

fascination, I conjecture, is its anomalous nature.

5 David Pole, Aesthetics, Form and Emotion (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1983), pp. 228–29.

In composing the last stages of this book I was pleasantly surprised to learn that the

late David Pole had reached a number of the same conclusions about disgust and horror

that I advanced in the opening part of this book in his essay “Disgust and Other Forms of

Aversion” (in Aesthetics, Form and Emotion). Much of this correspondence in approach is

explicable by the fact that both Pole and I rely very heavily on the researches of Mary

Douglas. Pole explicitly cites Mary Douglas’s book Implicit Meanings, a text that I also

independently consulted in the construction of my theory. (See Mary Douglas, Implicit

Meanings [London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1975].)

There are, however, some differences between Pole’s view and my own. He considers

horror in the actual contexts as well as aesthetic ones, whereas my focus is narrowly on

art-horror. Also, whereas I am only concerned with the way in which entities, specifically

beings, are horrifying, Pole is interested in horrifying events as well as entities.

Nevertheless, both of us take disgust to be a central element in horror, and both see the

disgust and fascination of horrific things to be grounded in their categorically anomalous

nature.

But there is one point of strong disagreement between Pole and myself. Pole thinks

that every instance of horror involves self-identification of the audience with the object

of horror. When the horrific is manifested we incorporate it through some process of

identification such that it becomes part of us (p. 225). The gesture of being horrified, then,

is seen as an extrusion or expulsion of that which is disgusting, which has been

incorporated. The model of being horrified here is that of vomiting.

I find this hypothesis dubious. In previous sections I have argued against the notion

of identification. Also, I have maintained that if identification amounts to admiring or

being seduced by horrific creatures like Dracula, then, even in this loose sense,

identification is not definitory of all our encounters with horrific beings. That is,

identification in this psychologically inoffensive sense is not a comprehensive feature of

art-horror.

WHY HORROR? 43

Undoubtedly, an advocate of Pole’s position would respond to this objection by noting

that Pole includes under the rubric of self-identification being interested in or fascinated by

the object of horror. But to view identification (even “self-identification”), interest, and

fascination in the same light distorts all of the concepts in this cluster beyond recognition.

I do not have to identify with everything that interests me; nor need I be fascinated by

everything with which I identify (for I might not be fascinated by myself). In any case, the

extension of the concept of identification to subsume interest is clearly strained.

Therefore, I question the viability of the identification/fascination/interest characterization

of horror, which, of course, also challenges the extrusion/vomiting model of the horrific

response as an adequate, general theory.

Moreover, Pole appears to me to want us to think of disgust exclusively as a process

in which we imaginatively swallow the object of our loathing and then spit it out. But with

regard to horror, it is hard to imagine swallowing something as big as Mothra or even

something the size of the Creature from the Black Lagoon. And in any case, not all disgust,

it seems to me, is connected with oral incorporation, e.g., the aversion to funestation

(something that comes into play with many monsters, such as zombies).

6 In her article, “A Strange Kind of Sadness,” Marcia Eaton postulates that in order to

appreciate distressing fictional events we must somehow be in control. As Gary Iseminger

points out—in his “How Strange A Sadness?”—the idea of control here is a bit ambiguous.

However, if the control that Eaton has in mind is self-control (rather than control over the

events in the story), then adoption of the thought theory of fictional response with respect

to horror could explain how we have this control, by virtue of the fact that we are knowingly

only responding to the thought that some impure creature is devouring human flesh.

Indeed, perhaps the very notion that I am merely entertaining this thought implies the

requisite self-control. See Marcia Eaton, “A Strange Kind of Sadness,” in The Journal

of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, vol. 41, no. 1 (Fall 1982); and Gary Iseminger, “How Strange A

Sadness?” in The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, vol. 42, no. 1 (Fall 1983).

In his “Enjoying Negative Emotions in Fictions,” John Moreall also cites the importance

of control in enjoying fictions. He seems to suggest that such control enables us to

vicariously feel the pleasure of the characters when they are angry or sad (p. 102). But I

am not convinced that it is correct to say of the victims in horror fictions that they can feel

pleasure in the state they are in. Perhaps some examples of anger and sadness have

pleasurable dimensions. But surely not all the emotional states of fictional characters

have such a dimension—surely, for example, horror does not. See John Moreall, “Enjoying

Negative Emotions in Fiction,” in Philosophy and Literature, vol. 9, no. 1 (April 1985).

7 If I am statistically wrong about the pervasiveness of disclosure narration in the genre, then

I would probably want to rename the second part of my view the special theory of the appeal

of horror. For I think the account of the appeal of disclosure narration offered above is right

for that “special” group of horror narratives even if that group does not represent the most

common formation in the genre. Needless to say, however, at present, I still am of the

opinion that the drama of disclosure—in the ways discussed earlier in the book—is

the most commonly practiced form in the genre.

8 Fredric Jameson, “Magical Narratives: Romance as Genre,” New Literary History, 7, 1 (Autumn

1975), pp. 133–63.

9 Some readers may be surprised that I have not reviewed the possibility of some sort of

catharsis explanation—after the fashion often attributed to Aristotle’s analysis of

44 NOËL CARROLL

tragedy—of the pleasures of horror. Such an approach sees the aesthetic pleasure of

distressful representations to be a matter of having our negative emotions relieved. Stated

one way, this kind of theory is quite absurd. The pleasure in a given genre is located in

getting rid of certain negative feelings that we have. But we only have these feelings

because a given instance of the genre has engendered the relevant displeasure in us in

the first place. And this hardly makes the interest we have in the works in the genre

plausible. For it would make no sense for me to put my hand in a vise simply for the

pleasure of having my pain relieved when the vise is loosened.

Of course, a catharsis theorist might avoid this attempted refutation by analogy by

claiming that the negative emotions relieved are not those engendered by the fiction itself

but rather are negative emotions that have built up over the course of everyday life. The

cathartic effect, then, would be the evacuation of these pent-up emotions. But if this is

the way that catharsis is thought of, then it will clearly have no application to art-horror.

For horror of the sort found in horror fictions has no correlate in ordinary life and,

therefore, cannot be pent-up in the course of everyday events. This is entailed by the fact

that we don’t encounter monsters in everyday life; so we are not accumulating the

requisite sort of negative emotion to be relieved upon attending to horror fictions. This

indicates that catharsis cannot possibly be the correct model for art-horror; whether it

is relevant to the discussion of other negative, aesthetic emotions is an issue beyond the

scope of this book.

WHY HORROR? 45