Toward a Philosophy of Horror

There is in the human imagination an instinctive need to confront what is frightening in life and to survive the encounter. Perhaps this is because all fears are a reflection of the primordial fear of death. Art in its various forms allows us to confront and practice transcending this most basic fear in metaphors of the monstrous, demonic, or alien. Narratives of horror, in particular, are ultimately conversations between the human mind and its most persistent existential demons. The art of nightmares is therefore a fundamental and necessary response to the primitive terror which lies at the root of human existence.

The surface nature of the nightmare really doesn’t matter: a human body that turns into an insect; an ax murderer waiting beneath the bed for the child to fall asleep; a stuffed doll with stitches for a mouth suddenly animated with consciousness, but unable to speak; a faceless monster chasing a defenseless woman through the shadows of an endless midnight. The nightmares come in classic forms, repeated with countless variations. It’s as if the human mind needs to keep coming back to certain themes, in order to dilute the power of a trauma. This is why the art of horror has survived and will survive. Because until the trauma is vanquished, people need to relive it again and again. And because the ultimate trauma derives from the inescapable fact of our own annihilation, horror — like funerals — is a perennial business.

The art of horror clearly has its uses. But what is, in fact, horror? As a writer I find the term “horror fiction” problematic. People mean different things when using it. For me, “horror” has a certain significance which cannot be separated from my own practice as a writer of “horror” fiction. I have already described the basic etiology of horror as a necessary response to the primordial conditioning of fear in the human mind. Now I would like to attempt a working definition of what I mean by the term “horror fiction.” I do this completely as a matter of self-interest. By defining “horror fiction,” it is my hope (quite possibly a futile one) that I will arouse something other than the burst of laughter, the shifting of nervous eyes, or the damning pause, which usually greets me when I answer the question, “What kind of stories do you write, Bill?”

It must be said at the outset that I offer this definition not as an ironclad rule to be used to dismiss the worthy work of other writers of darkness. Indeed, my personal interpretation of the term “horror” would exclude much fine work that is usually given that label. I’ve designed this model primarily for myself as a yardstick by which to measure whether certain works of writing and film contain the elements that draw me to horror as a form of expression. Ultimately, anything can be horror if it makes you confront fear. What follows is what constitutes horror for me.

As a basic starting point, I distinguish true horror from the merely horrific, nauseating, or psychologically suspenseful literature and film which is often marketed as horror. For me, true horror is always about two things: subversion and transformation. By subversion, I mean subversion of reality itself. Horror is no less than the interrogation of consensus reality, the topsy-turvying of our habitual views. Horror basically asks, What does it mean to be embodied? Our universe, our flesh and blood, our minds, what are they? And what is behind them? What is behind the surface of this grand deception we call the world? This is a vital question, and it is one that horror fiction is uniquely qualified to ponder. A classic tale like Maupassant’s “The Horla” would fit this model of horror perfectly. So would Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos, the supernatural tales of Poe, Sheridan LeFanu, M. R. James, and Algernon Blackwood, and — more recently — the subtle urban horror tales of Ramsey Campbell and the stylish arabesques of Thomas J. Ligotti.

Secondly, horror as I define it is about the transformation of fear into an investigative tool for exploring the unknown. The identity of this unknown can be cosmic or personal, or a little of both. Fear thus becomes a form of awakening, of creative imagining, instead of a form of paralysis. With insight into the unknown comes, perhaps not less fear, but at least the unfreezing of the mind. What ultimately matters in a tale of horror is that something has shifted about in the awareness of the reader, that a door has been opened onto a different view of reality which dwarfs our previous conceptions.

Horror, above all, has little to do with escaping, and everything to do with splitting things wide open.
The point of horror is not to scare for the sake of scaring, trapping us in our fears forever. The point of horror is to establish an intimacy with the monstrous so that it becomes beautiful, its potency released into awareness. But how can the monstrous be beautiful, and why would we wish to liberate it? Because what is ugliest and most frightening in our experience is also what has the most energy in our minds. We can spend a lot of time and effort avoiding that energy — denying, pathologizing, or narcotizing it. Or we can delve into the darkness and stay awhile. When we stay with our fear, observing it instead of reacting to it, its nature begins to change. What we thought of as evil and egregiously other becomes a teaching, a way of transformative knowing. The old saw that if you face your demons they’ll disappear is only partially true — it’s not that the demons disappear into thin air, it’s that their vast energy is freed and made available to you. Communicating with the monstrous can thus be seen as a way of accessing the untapped energy (wealth) of our own minds. It is not surprising that in fairytales the being assigned to guard the treasure is usually a dragon or other monster. In alchemy, the idea of turning into gold what is rotten echoes a similar notion.

The idea of the beautiful and precious residing paradoxically in the bowels of the grotesque has ancient roots in various cycles of myth and folklore. But one does not have to look far to discover this theme in more recent art and literature. Certainly one can observe it in the beautiful language of Poe’s supernatural tales or in the weird grandeur of Lovecraft’s; but we can also find such a paradox in the disturbing paintings of Francis Bacon or in the fractured symmetries of the Cubists; in the savage and brutal elegance of the rock group King Crimson; in the surreal dreamscapes of filmmaker David Lynch; or in the works of many other artists and writers. Because the grotesque is what we deny, tension builds up in the mind which gives rise to a chronic fear. Rilke’s line, ”Every Angel’s terrible,” captures this tension most succinctly.

Horror is a doorway; crossing its threshold for a few pages on a stormy night or a few hours in a dark theater, we practice facing that primordial fear which we will confront in reality some day at a time and a place not of our choosing. We may never get through the door, but because horror exists as a form of expression, the door will at least remain open.

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