For those of you familiar with Bravo's "100 Scariest Movie Moments" program - usually aired every Halloween for the last few years, it's difficult to to forget the segment on Guillermo del Toro's The Devil's Backbone (2001). The commentators themselves waxed poetical on the images of the murdered child, "eerily beautiful" as John Landis puts it, in death. Nobody summed up his film better than the director himself (I feel the need to insert a huge DUH here) when he said something along the lines of how he dislikes Hollywood movies where children are portrayed as insipid and dumb, but rather how "dangerous it is to be a child".Many of us forget the fear and constant insecurity one feels as a child, thrown by the overpowering wills of grown-ups in our incomplete understanding of the world like a ship in stormy waters. Those of us who won't (or are unable) to shake these childhood fears find ourselves at the shit-end of our peer's mockery (No, I'm not bitter at all). I'll admit, I'm still terrified of the dark, of dead things. While it can be a royal pain in the ass sometimes, I think - paradoxically - it allows me to see horror as a child does.
Recently, I had the chance to be re-introduced to some of the literature I read as a kid. I was genuinely shocked by how much of it was horror-related....and how I could ever have ended up studying anything else, no longer a mystery. With this in mind, I wanted to pick two of my favorites: Roald Dahl & Bruce Coville, and dig around to see what I'd find. Dahl is on the docket today, Bruce tomorrow.
Roald Dahl's stuff can be downright terrifying; this coming as no surprise to anyone who's read The BFG, The Witches, James and the Giant Peach, or his screenplay for Chitty, Chitty, Bang, Bang (now THAT's some terrifying stuff!). No doubt because of the horrors witnessed in WWII.
Like the Brothers Grimm, Dahl manages to capture the essence of powerless and vulnerable children are - and how they're often mistreated at the hands of adults. Parents abuse their children (Matilda), orphans are placed with terrible guardians and forced to labor for them (James), children are snatched out of their beds (Sophie), even turned into mice by a coven of witches. Not to mention the other unspeakable horrors perpetrated in the world: plans to kill children, giants that eat humans in sickening detail, marauding rhinoceroses intent on maiming. The horrors in Dahl's work - never imaginary - makes it clear that giants, witches, magic, and talking bugs DO exist, though the silly, unimaginative masses might have you think otherwise. And they are out to get you.
This is, of course, terrifying. And while their are terrible things, there is love and friendship (often found within the realm of the fantastic) and the simple knowledge of knowing evil exits in the world is enough to give an advantage. Texts such as these provide important outlets for children - giving them the psychological tools for dealing with the big, scary world and the powerful adults that populate it (Matilda's torment towards the Trunchbull is still hilarious) with a humor that says, "Laugh. Or you'll never get through it."
Dahl also wrote for adults. One particular short story, "Lamb to the Slaughter" tells the story of a "woman who beats her husband to death with a frozen leg of lamb" and then cooks the murder weapon, serving it to the officer investigating the man's death. One the subject, Dahl says,
"It wasn't nasty...I thought it was hilarious. What's horrible is basically funny. In fiction."
Maybe, as adults, we have the same fears and deal with them in the same way. Only with more blood. And guts. And intestines. But it's all the same.
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