Images & Iconoclasm

So, today's earlier post got me thinking about the images fantastic cinema burns into the collective unconsciousness' brain and how, ergo, horror plays an important role in regulating the psyche. It's an issue many a film scholar, social critic, cultural anthropologist has written about (my favorites are Freud's essay on The Uncanny and Noel Carroll's The Philosophy of Horror), so I will blessedly leave the issue where it stands, merely stating that something with as much endurance as the horror genre must have some sort of social and psychological significance, despite what conservatives might say to the contrary.

So I decided to compile a list of horror images that have been burned irrevocably into my mind, for better or for worse, as well as urge others to submit their lists.

• Walt Disney's The Skeleton Dance: A Very Interesting look at the danse macabre theme from a child's standpoint. As a child, I remember such things being deliciously frightening but just as deliciously enticing - the exact feelings terror narratives seek to bring forth. It wasn't until I was older (having had the urge for "scary stuff" as my mother put it, taken permanently out of my mind by The Man), that I was able to distance myself from the grown-up barriers adults build in their brains, so that I could enjoy horror for simply being what it is.
  
• Tim Burton's early work, especially Vincent: My first example of a man (and by extension, Vincent) who not only liked horror, but had incorporated it into his worldview.
  
• The Universal Monsters: What I credit as the first springboard into film appreciation. I remember checking out a monster fan book (the kind you saw a lot of in the 80's, along the lines of Monster Squad) almost weekly during a difficult adjustment to moving in grade school. I can now see that obsession with the otherwordly as a little girl's desperate attempt to gain some control over the only thing she could: her reading material. I really owe Bela, Boris, Lon, Colin, Elsa and the gang a hearty thanks.
• Bruce Coville's book, Monster of the Year: Same concept, only Coville's obvious love of the genre and excellent YA writing made the monsters lovable, kind, and most of all, human (kind of). From then on I always remembered the everyone - people and monster alike - had a backstory that contributes to their monstrousness.
• Sugar Hill & Her Zombie Hitmen: A more recent favorite, I saw this 1974 film while doing research for a paper on women in zombie film for the 2007 National Conference for Undergraduate Research. Commonly termed a "cheesy blaxpolitation" film, I didn't have high expectations. Not only was I proven wrong, but delighted by the powerful feminism. It was unforgettable, especially the tagline, "Sugar is sweet, but Revenge is Sweeter!" Classic!
  

Goodnight sweet prince, and flights of angels sing thee to thy rest...

Filmmaker Ingmar Bergman has died.

“Film as dream, film as music. No art passes our conscience in the way film does, and goes directly to our feelings, deep down into the dark rooms of our souls.” -Bergman

Nothing could be any truer.

I can still remember seeing the knight playing chess with Death, an image that's been burned on my and the collective unconscious' brain. It's a theme culture has readily snatched up to parody, mock, and reproduce, but that distilled, laconic image still haunts us with Bergman's personification.

I know it has deeply affected my art. The incorporation of death imagery with the cerebral is powerful, yes, sometimes morbid, but filled with too much pregnant meaning to be ignored. I unconsciously must have thought, if he can do it and make it genius, make it loved by critics and audiences, then there must be some validity to it.
So I trudge on, hoping for a small sliver of the insight and prowess he achieved.

He will be missed.

You, Sir, are a Gentleman and a Scholar (and a horror fan)

If I have any beef with Horror as a genre and a cultural institution (and I have many, torture porn and obsessive fans, notwithstanding - but those will be dealt with later) it's that there is an over-abundance of novice horror criticism floating about. Everyone - from the fangirl who's gotten her hands on Max Brook's World War Z or the reviewer when a rare high budget horror film comes around - feels qualified to take a stab at what horror films really mean, what it's all about, the social significance of monster/killer/slasher XYZ. Now, I'm not an educational snob - I think it's just as viable to be an autodidact as it is to be university taught - but the key concept is knowledge, something most would-be reviewers lack.

Horror has an egalitarianism about it, an everyman aura that welcomes the poor and huddled masses; the basis of its appeal, and its wonderful magic, depends on it.

Like any film genre, it has a vocabulary for its criticism, a delightfully varied pattern of themes that accompany it. And most people, by sheer ignorance or snobbery (as if to say, how can something as low as horror have a world of criticism to it? as the nose points in the air) lack it.

Maybe I'm just jaded by all the hoopla brought upon by the release of Captivity and Hostel II. Or maybe it's every single news source - who until recently wouldn't touch a horror movie with a ten foot pole if it lay bleeding on the pavement outside the office - jumping into the "torture porn" debate. Who knows.

That's why it's such a treat to read horror criticism from a true scholar's viewpoint. I am speaking, in favorable terms, of S.S. Prawer's Caligari's Children: The Film as a Tale of Terror (De Capo Press, 1980). I had been itching to get my hands on this book ever since I'd seen it referenced (in Robin Wood, I think) and was lucky enough to get a reasonably priced copy at a used book store. Talk about sublime! With references to literature, horror/mainstream film, psychology, philosophy, history (ad infinitum, ad nauseaum), this beautifully written piece of non-fiction is largely overlooked in splatterati circles. Not that there are many of them - especially in a university setting, but I digress.

Prawer's words, like the illumination on a medieval manuscript, manage to gild and dignify a genre that prides itself on its jocularity and readability. Though it is a bit heavy on the German horror films - Prawer is Taylor Emeritus Professor of German Language and Literature at the University of Oxford, so read up on your German expressionism, kids - and a little conservative by modern standards (the man was born in 1925, so we can give him a break), the marvelous insight and language the man imbues in his writing are worth the search for this magnificent book. One can only wonder what he thinks of the horror films that came after publication, as I'm sure they're fascinating.

Do yourself a favor, get yourself a copy. You'll be a better horror fan for it.

Back in Black!

Alright, have decided to start this up again. There are far too many fun little horror tidbits floating around that need to be gathered. Found this over at AMC's Monsterfest blog, which isn't just for Halloween, folks. No siree bob. Not your typical hyper-obsessive fanboys, these guys (who include in their cavalcade of contributors the awesome Scooter McCrae) really know their shit and can present it in an intelligent, yet easy-like-Sunday-morning kind of way. While there are occasional asides to the hauteur horror types (we are a snobby bunch, aren't we?), the blog is entertaining enough for the burgeoning horror fan to cut their teeth on.

Oh, and they show installments of classic camp horror movies too! The Horror of Party Beach, anyone?

And now, GODZILLA!!!