Fall, and October especially, is the time for watching horror. Horror is a genre with a large built in audience in a time when interest in movies and movie theaters is dwindling. Many people find great fun in horror but what I find most interesting about it is that horror movies create a cultural snapshot of their time and place. For instance, from watching the 1955 film Creature with the Atom Brain, we can see America’s large and newfound fear of nuclear power. The movie is about an ex-Nazi who controls zombies with radio waves in order to aid a criminal. This premise seems silly now, but the unfamiliar power of the atomic bomb and a fear of foreign influence would have been on the minds of the audiences that watched the movie at the time. Horror captures the fears of a moment in history because the sole objective of a scary movie is to scare and what people find scary is always changing. So, what do tropes of horror represent and why do we find them scary?
Zombies:
Zombies commonly stand for a fear of a potential hive mind and large scale disaster. That maybe society as a whole is doing something bad and we are complicit, that it would take little to bring our inner evil to the surface or that our country might collapse one day. Zombies all think the same, they often come with the apocalypse and were formerly humans. In the last hundred years these ideas have kept connecting with us. The idea of the zombie comes from the Voodoo religion in Haiti, a belief system created by slaves held by the French. It was a way of finding personal identity and individualism while enslaved. In Voodooism, someone who dies from unnatural causes could be resurrected and controlled for a short time after their death, becoming a “zombi”. United States missionaries in Haiti during the US occupation of the country (1915-1934) saw (and perhaps misinterpreted) this belief in what led to the movie White Zombie in 1932. The first zombie movie came out just as horror movies were becoming popular in the USA. Early zombie movies were fearful of the Voodoo religion and anyone who white Americans viewed as uncivilized. By the end of the decade zombies had become popular in American culture and lost their initial meaning, taking on the fear of communism. In the 40’s, 50’s and 60’s, zombie movies were about American clashes with other places, countries and nuclear power, centering around WWI and the Cold War. The idea of the zombie waste land emerged. In 1968, Night of the Living Dead was the first to feature hordes of zombies. Though still racially problematic, it marked a shift into political messaging. Through the 80’s zombies were a fear of consumerism and capitalism where they had previously been communism. By the end of the twentieth century zombies had taken on meanings of mass destruction and pandemics. The sickly look of zombies and the way they spread is a near perfect metaphor for disease. Zombie movies mean societal collapse or fears that the larger group is operating immorally.
The Gothic Age of Horror:
Monsters and folk tales resembling horror have been around since ancient memory, but the horror genre as we know it was done first by gothic literature. The first book of the gothic horror genre was The Castle of Otranto by Horace Walpole in 1764. Gothic horror is highlighted by authors like Mary Shelly, Edgar Allen Poe and H.P. Lovecraft. Gothic fiction spans many subgenres but is often marked by battles between humans and forces of evil, bleak or unhopeful stories, symbolic villains and unhappy endings. Early horror movies in the thirties drew great inspiration from nineteenth century gothic fiction. The film adaptations of Frankenstein and Dracula both from 1931 were huge hits that helped create a market for horror movies. Some people call the 30’s the “golden age of horror”. Horror movies as we know them are heavily based in fiction of the past.
Clowns:
The purpose of clowns is to make people laugh but they are frequently seen in horror. There are a few hypothesis about why clowns can be scary or off putting:
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- Clowns show fake emotion: Clowns often appear overly happy or overly sad and they wear makeup that enhances the look. It’s hard to tell what a clown is really feeling. This can make people, especially children feel uneasy around them because they appear to be faking emotion. They can also act erratically or insanely. This lack of predictability in what a clown is going to do next and lack of confidence in their ability to control their emotions can make people feel unsafe around them.
- Cultural fears: Somewhat ironically, a fear of clowns caused by horror media might be what leads to even more clown horror movies. Clown serial killers starting with John Wayne Gacy, created a real life fear of clowns. Stephen King’s It depicted a scary clown in 1986 and since the start of the media portrayal of clowns, they have gotten increasingly exaggerated, movies getting gorier and more horrific to top themselves. A recent example being Terrifier 3, the continuation of the story of Art the clown who is known for killing his victims in extremely violent and graphic ways. Horror movies that show scary clowns often warp their appearance to be scarier and draw inspiration from the classic clown smile. Killer clowns in media might be a sort of positive feedback loop that keeps increasing fear of clowns.
- Unsettling appearance: Clown makeup can sometimes work to hide the humanness of the clown, creating a doll-like look or even the uncanny valley effect (the uncanny valley is a “valley” along the spectrum of how human something looks where things look very closely human but are not). White makeup might remind people of death or infection and exaggerated facial features on clowns can make them look suspiciously happy or just villainous.
Possessions:
Possession stories are for the most part religious in some way. An increase in possession stories can signify a country that’s grappling with its religious identity or in the midst of a moral panic. Possession in movies of the twentieth century was mostly an exploration of morality. The concept of possession is scary because it includes a loss of autonomy by the person being possessed as well as an unknown figure inhabiting the possessed body. Possessions can be a metaphor for a lack of trust in authority, addiction or internally conflicting personality, fears of spirits and loss of autonomy.
Children and Dolls:
Small or innocent children and dolls often feature in horror. Some famous examples include the twin girls in The Shining and the movie Annabelle. Kids are frequently possessed or turn murderous. In our culture, children are seen as the height of innocence and are to be protected always. Kids and animals put in danger in horror is of course referencing a desire to protect children and creates fear that something loved will be hurt. Their use as aggressors in horror can create a juxtaposition between good and evil and can add shock value to movies because the ideas explored by many horror movies and our interactions with children seem so separate. Dolls share a similar role to children in many horror films. Creepy little kids and creepy dolls are often almost interchangeable, at least in terms of the plot devices, but dolls bring in a new component, inhumanness. A use of creepy children can bring a fear of unknown intentions in people or a corruptibility in people while dolls bring a fear of unknown beings.
The human brain is extraordinarily good at recognizing human faces. This is to the point that even our most abstract depictions of faces with just two dots for eyes and a mouth are easily desirable as a representation of a human. Dolls look like miniature humans, signaling to our brains that the face we see is in fact a person, however they are completely inanimate. This can give off a feeling of being watched or a feeling that they ought to be alive. Dolls get close to personhood but are hollow inside. This can be comforting to us. Some children enjoy playing with dolls because in some ways they are fun. We can make up stories around them and use them as a representation for ourselves but, they scare us in horror when they seem human but are unknown.
Looking back at the history of American horror, eras can be seen of what people feared most in their time. It’s harder to have this insight into our own current era. Interpretations of the meanings behind monsters, tropes and subgenres can be accurate but few people think they have a clear read on what horror media as a whole is telling us now. Some people think contemporary movies show uncertainty and dread for the future but it may take hindsight to truly know.
The basis of every horror movie lies in our deep seated fears of physical danger and of the unknown. Still, horror movies are fun, scary and sometimes silly. They can be a way to safely engage with fear, feel excitement or connect with friends. Have fun this spooky season.
Happy Halloween!
Sources
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2016/10/31/13440402/zombie-political-history
https://hudsonvalleyone.com/2023/10/08/the-history-of-horror-in-american-culture/
https://www.nypl.org/blog/2018/10/18/brief-history-gothic-horror
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-weird-reason-were-afraid-of-clowns/
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/history-creepy-dolls-180955916/
