(no subject)
i just got an e-mail from the horror chair at the PCA/ACA wanting clarification on a few points...i didn't really figure they would go through the trouble of making a list of questions for me to answer...i'll take that as a good sign. anyway, here was my response, for anyone who is interested:
1) I apologize for the lack of clarity here. By "certain aspects of reality specific to our involvement in war," I mean, specifically, the reality of dead bodies, both of our own people and those of our "enemies," technological progress seemingly motivated by our need for increasingly efficient war machines in the face of a decrease in our ability actually effectively wage war, as well as a general distrust, perhaps rightfully so, of the present administrations ability to be militarily effective, etc. Much of these types of things become increasingly problematic with a shift in how we define "enemy" and thus how we define our Other in in the context of war and national and personal identity. This shift can be seen in the horror genre from WWII to our present War on Terror and is embodied in the development of the image of the zombie, which is by definition the walking dead, come back to pursue and devour us, and is a force whose technology is the lowest conceivable, against which all the technological progress we have amassed, military might, and governmental authorities are ineffectual at best.
By "certain possible realities that we find threatening the stability of our culture," I mean the fact that we have an inkling that we are not, in fact, in control of the events that shape us personally and as a culture--a fact that, if it were found to be the actual state of reality, would fly in the face of everything we believe as Americans about personal value, identity and democracy. Regardless of whether or not we are agents in our own history, it is a source of anxiety in a time of war, and our aesthetisization of war is one way we construct and support the illusion that we, as a culture and as individuals, are not merely impotent spectators to the events of war and history.
2)The "identifiable set of cultural anxieties that provide the underlying motifs of the horror genre," as I put it in my proposal, are the set of anxieties that form around such points as an ambiguous or unidentifiable "enemy," technological progress, the competency of governmental authorities and the military-industrial complex and it's eminent collapse, personal survival, the meaning and value of "family," personal and group identity, as well as other things such as a distrust of the human body in the face of decay, disease, etc.--all of which are readily exemplified in the run of the mill zombie flick. These are points of anxiety that exist separately and often distinctly in a culture but are unified and otherwise confounded in the context of war, which is why I argue that horror is specifically, and primarily, the genre that embodies the set of anxieties we have in relation to war.
3)As for the suggestion in point 3 below, I'm a little confused. I am not saying that our involvement in war is simply an exercise in morbid entertainment. I am saying that horror provides a safe place for us to pretend that the realities we face by our involvement in war is an exercise in morbid entertainment...that is, by our aestheticization of war, we create an illusion of the state of reality that does not allow us to see the actual state of reality, which includes messy things like unidentifiable enemies, the possibility that we are the bad guys, dead bodies, etc.. We cannot allow ourselves to see these things as reality, but we still need to deal with them if we are to remain psychologically stable as individuals and as a culture, so we translate this reality into a fiction and convince ourselves that, when we engage a horror film, we are not entering into a dialogue about reality, per se, but are engaging in an exercise of morbid entertainment. In this way, the horror genre becomes that safe place in which we can work through all the contradictions we face between our values, ideals and the realities of war without the stability of our individual selves and that of our culture bing threatened.
4) I intend to focus specifically on the zombie sub-genre, though I will mention that the theory behind my analysis is generally applicable to the horror genre as a whole. Specific films I will be interested in discussing are Romero's films, as they have been the defining force behind much of the sub-genre and exemplify in the most obvious fashion the set of anxieties related to war and how those anxieties are translated into fictional horror narratives.
At the time of writing my original proposal, I wasn't sure if I was going to focus on zombie films or slasher films, so that may be why it felt like it needed to be nailed down. The presentation will be focussed specifically on a description of the set of anxieties related to our involvement in, and aestheticization of, war after 9/11 and how that set of anxieties is translated into horror films, using the zombie sub-genre as an example.
1) I apologize for the lack of clarity here. By "certain aspects of reality specific to our involvement in war," I mean, specifically, the reality of dead bodies, both of our own people and those of our "enemies," technological progress seemingly motivated by our need for increasingly efficient war machines in the face of a decrease in our ability actually effectively wage war, as well as a general distrust, perhaps rightfully so, of the present administrations ability to be militarily effective, etc. Much of these types of things become increasingly problematic with a shift in how we define "enemy" and thus how we define our Other in in the context of war and national and personal identity. This shift can be seen in the horror genre from WWII to our present War on Terror and is embodied in the development of the image of the zombie, which is by definition the walking dead, come back to pursue and devour us, and is a force whose technology is the lowest conceivable, against which all the technological progress we have amassed, military might, and governmental authorities are ineffectual at best.
By "certain possible realities that we find threatening the stability of our culture," I mean the fact that we have an inkling that we are not, in fact, in control of the events that shape us personally and as a culture--a fact that, if it were found to be the actual state of reality, would fly in the face of everything we believe as Americans about personal value, identity and democracy. Regardless of whether or not we are agents in our own history, it is a source of anxiety in a time of war, and our aesthetisization of war is one way we construct and support the illusion that we, as a culture and as individuals, are not merely impotent spectators to the events of war and history.
2)The "identifiable set of cultural anxieties that provide the underlying motifs of the horror genre," as I put it in my proposal, are the set of anxieties that form around such points as an ambiguous or unidentifiable "enemy," technological progress, the competency of governmental authorities and the military-industrial complex and it's eminent collapse, personal survival, the meaning and value of "family," personal and group identity, as well as other things such as a distrust of the human body in the face of decay, disease, etc.--all of which are readily exemplified in the run of the mill zombie flick. These are points of anxiety that exist separately and often distinctly in a culture but are unified and otherwise confounded in the context of war, which is why I argue that horror is specifically, and primarily, the genre that embodies the set of anxieties we have in relation to war.
3)As for the suggestion in point 3 below, I'm a little confused. I am not saying that our involvement in war is simply an exercise in morbid entertainment. I am saying that horror provides a safe place for us to pretend that the realities we face by our involvement in war is an exercise in morbid entertainment...that is, by our aestheticization of war, we create an illusion of the state of reality that does not allow us to see the actual state of reality, which includes messy things like unidentifiable enemies, the possibility that we are the bad guys, dead bodies, etc.. We cannot allow ourselves to see these things as reality, but we still need to deal with them if we are to remain psychologically stable as individuals and as a culture, so we translate this reality into a fiction and convince ourselves that, when we engage a horror film, we are not entering into a dialogue about reality, per se, but are engaging in an exercise of morbid entertainment. In this way, the horror genre becomes that safe place in which we can work through all the contradictions we face between our values, ideals and the realities of war without the stability of our individual selves and that of our culture bing threatened.
4) I intend to focus specifically on the zombie sub-genre, though I will mention that the theory behind my analysis is generally applicable to the horror genre as a whole. Specific films I will be interested in discussing are Romero's films, as they have been the defining force behind much of the sub-genre and exemplify in the most obvious fashion the set of anxieties related to war and how those anxieties are translated into fictional horror narratives.
At the time of writing my original proposal, I wasn't sure if I was going to focus on zombie films or slasher films, so that may be why it felt like it needed to be nailed down. The presentation will be focussed specifically on a description of the set of anxieties related to our involvement in, and aestheticization of, war after 9/11 and how that set of anxieties is translated into horror films, using the zombie sub-genre as an example.