"Horror" books/ movies/ etc.
We are well into October now and Halloween season is upon us. I adore Halloween - it's my favourite holiday. Not for the candy but for the costumes. I love dressing up and actually having a reason to dress up. I love being out in the darkness, seeing all the costumes, talking to people. And using the fire pit is a bonus! :-)
When the boys were young and asked why we went trick-or-treating, I told them that we were there to accept offerings from the various households - offerings which were bribes to the spirit world to leave them alone for the rest of the year. This is something that I truly believe. (although, I didn't mind having the chocolate either!)
I love Halloween.
I hate horror flicks/ books/ etc.
I don't know about most people, but it seems that the people who programme the SciFi channel (or SyFy - which does rather explain a lot) feel that Halloween means horror and horror is defined by body count.
To me, Halloween is more about suspense and the Otherworld, not the morbid imagination of people with little inner humanity.
During this month, I reach for books about the origins of Halloween, for books that take place during the season or deal with the Otherworld. Books like The Halloween Tree and Something Wicked This Way Comes (Ray Bradbury), like Witch Week (Diana Wynne Jones) and A Night in the Lonesome October (Roger Zelazny). And I just finished reading The Tangled Web by Anne Bishop wherein I had a epiphany.
Body count "horror" books appeal to those who feel that they are 'special', who expect to be the ones who will survive anything because they do everything "right". They don't recognise in themselves the Slut, the Jock, the Jerk or any of the other types who raise the ire of the monster predator. They identify with the heroes who make the effort and survive, not those who make the effort and die.
I don't. I have a gut sense that disaster can happen to anyone, that there's little difference between the girl who has sex and the one who doesn't, between the BMOC and the computer nerd. Anyone can be a victim. And blaming the victim for their own misfortune is ... well ... it's monstrous.
One of the things I like about The Tangled Web is that the "author" character who set up the death-trap is caught and punished. There's an additional layer of irony in that Bishop's Dark Jewels series is often horrific to me. But even in the midst of horror, her characters have a sense of balance. As I often put it - She doesn't take herself too seriously, there's a touch of humour ... or humanity ... in what she writes. A sense of ... compassion maybe?
A few months ago, I borrowed a werewolf book from the library. The set-up was interesting - a werewolf serial killer ... no, that's not right. A serial killer who was a werewolf. (To my mind, the first implies a lycanthrope who kills under the full moon, this was someone who picked his prey as human, then changed in order to fully "enjoy" the kill). The book set up several people to be the hero - some cops, a Native American shaman-in-training, another werewolf. But one by one, they were eliminated and ... at that point, I realised that the true serial killer was the author and he was completely enjoying his rising body count. I took the book back without reading another word of it.
(fwiw, imho, Val McDermid is worse offender than Stephen King. The loving detail she expends on the horrific elements of her fiction is absolutely appalling. She goes further than the Jesuits every imagined during the worst excesses of the Inquisition!)
While I'm on the soapbox, I want to throw out there that works of fiction that offer the explanation that Hitler or Jack the Ripper were actually aliens in disguise ... disgust me. Their evil is part of humanity just as much as the sanctity and wisdom of Jesus, Buddha and Mohammed is. Denying the darkness is to deny the light. Denying the darkness is to give it license to thrive.
When the boys were young and asked why we went trick-or-treating, I told them that we were there to accept offerings from the various households - offerings which were bribes to the spirit world to leave them alone for the rest of the year. This is something that I truly believe. (although, I didn't mind having the chocolate either!)
I love Halloween.
I hate horror flicks/ books/ etc.
I don't know about most people, but it seems that the people who programme the SciFi channel (or SyFy - which does rather explain a lot) feel that Halloween means horror and horror is defined by body count.
To me, Halloween is more about suspense and the Otherworld, not the morbid imagination of people with little inner humanity.
During this month, I reach for books about the origins of Halloween, for books that take place during the season or deal with the Otherworld. Books like The Halloween Tree and Something Wicked This Way Comes (Ray Bradbury), like Witch Week (Diana Wynne Jones) and A Night in the Lonesome October (Roger Zelazny). And I just finished reading The Tangled Web by Anne Bishop wherein I had a epiphany.
Body count "horror" books appeal to those who feel that they are 'special', who expect to be the ones who will survive anything because they do everything "right". They don't recognise in themselves the Slut, the Jock, the Jerk or any of the other types who raise the ire of the monster predator. They identify with the heroes who make the effort and survive, not those who make the effort and die.
I don't. I have a gut sense that disaster can happen to anyone, that there's little difference between the girl who has sex and the one who doesn't, between the BMOC and the computer nerd. Anyone can be a victim. And blaming the victim for their own misfortune is ... well ... it's monstrous.
One of the things I like about The Tangled Web is that the "author" character who set up the death-trap is caught and punished. There's an additional layer of irony in that Bishop's Dark Jewels series is often horrific to me. But even in the midst of horror, her characters have a sense of balance. As I often put it - She doesn't take herself too seriously, there's a touch of humour ... or humanity ... in what she writes. A sense of ... compassion maybe?
A few months ago, I borrowed a werewolf book from the library. The set-up was interesting - a werewolf serial killer ... no, that's not right. A serial killer who was a werewolf. (To my mind, the first implies a lycanthrope who kills under the full moon, this was someone who picked his prey as human, then changed in order to fully "enjoy" the kill). The book set up several people to be the hero - some cops, a Native American shaman-in-training, another werewolf. But one by one, they were eliminated and ... at that point, I realised that the true serial killer was the author and he was completely enjoying his rising body count. I took the book back without reading another word of it.
(fwiw, imho, Val McDermid is worse offender than Stephen King. The loving detail she expends on the horrific elements of her fiction is absolutely appalling. She goes further than the Jesuits every imagined during the worst excesses of the Inquisition!)
While I'm on the soapbox, I want to throw out there that works of fiction that offer the explanation that Hitler or Jack the Ripper were actually aliens in disguise ... disgust me. Their evil is part of humanity just as much as the sanctity and wisdom of Jesus, Buddha and Mohammed is. Denying the darkness is to deny the light. Denying the darkness is to give it license to thrive.