I do not enjoy horror films. Not even a little bit. They genuinely terrify me. I hate them, I won’t voluntarily go to them, and no amount of cajoling or ridicule will change my mind about that.
Now, I should note here at the start that I don’t believe that ghosts or spirits or devils (or vampires, or werewolves, or zombies) are real. I don’t believe in supernatural forces. I don’t really believe in “evil” as a positive (rather than privative) force. I believe that things that go bump in the night have a scientific explanation. It’s also important to note that I’m not, as a general rule, risk-averse. I’ve skydived, I like roller coasters and rickety-old carnival rides, I’ve performed on stage, I’ve stood up for myself and/or others in dangerous situations, I’ve even brushed up closely with my own mortality. So, the fact that something as silly as horror films absolutely paralyzes me with fear is a character tic that I’ve always found quite strange.
For the past several years, I’ve been regularly teaching a course in Philosophy and Film, which requires that I not only teach about the cinematic genre of horror, think a lot about what horror is and does, but also watch horror films. This was the most difficult in the first year teaching the course, when I had to screen a number of horror films in order to construct the syllabus, but it’s gotten slightly easier over the years (since I don’t add any “new” horror films to the course anymore). My students and I read sections of Noël Carroll’s The Philosophy of Horror, or Paradoxes of the Heart for this section of the course. Carroll considers horror as a “transcendental” phenomenon, and his basic argument is that the experience of horror involves a paradox, namely, that we actively desire the feelings of fear and disgust that horror inspires in us. The paradox is that we find pleasure in what are, under normal circumstances, unpleasant emotions. (You can watch a brief interview with Carroll here, where he more or less synopsizes the paradox of horror.) Carroll ultimately provides a kind of cognitivist solution to the paradox of horror: what we are “enjoying” or finding pleasurable in horror is not the experience of intrinsically negative emotions like fear or disgust, but rather the experience of curiosity, wonder, or fascination that is triggered by basic conceptual puzzles like “monsters.”
As with many other scary things in life– death, freedom, politics, friendship–I’ve found that taking up the phenomenon/experience/idea of “horror” philosophically has allowed me to consider it at just enough of a remove for that consideration to be productive. In fact, I am now persuaded that that horror films are not only some of the most cinematically inventive and groundbreaking films, but also among the most philosophically interesting. Even still, I hate them and, even still, I cannot bring myself to stand in front of the teenager at the multiplex ticket-oooth and willingly purchase a ticket to see one. I would 100% prefer to read the script of a horror film and talk/think about what it entails than to actually sit through the assault of fear and disgust that I know it entails. And, on a number of occasions, I’ve done just that, most recently with the critically-acclaimed Joss Whedon meta-horror film Cabin in the Woods. Great script, great film (I imagine), but I’m not going to watch it.
There are fears that I think we, as humans, are capable of “pushing through” and others that we simply are not. I don’t know if there is a transcendental explanation for what marks the difference between the two. There are things that I have been afraid of– roller coasters, for example, at one time– that I came to understand as exciting, exhilarating even, and not terrifying in any real sense, but only after pushing through my initial apprehension and giving the experience a chance. Horror films, on the other hand, represent an experience about which I had the same sort of initial apprehension, which I similarly pushed through and made myself experience, and which remained terrifying afterwards. For that reason, I’m inclined to say that it may be something like the “disgust” operation that is most potent in horror, and not necessarily the “fear” operation. Genuine disgust is something that I don’t think can be voluntarily “pushed through.”
A few years ago, my good friend Ideas Man, PhD and I bandied about the idea of auditioning for the reality television show The Amazing Race. My primary reservation was that I knew each season of The Amazing Race includes at least one challenge that requires contestants to eat disgusting stuff. I remember thinking to myself, and I saying as much to my friend, that I would not be capable of eating some of those things. There are plenty of genuinely scary challenges that contestants complete on The Amazing Race— including participating in The Pampantia Flying Man Dance— which I would be terrified to do, but could make myself do. But I don’t think I could make myself keep down disgusting food, Not that I wouldn’t want to do it, not that I wouldn’t cognitively understand that my disgust is largely conditioned by cultural and social forces, but only that I can not will my body to not be disgusted, to not gag or vomit. Disgust is categorically different than fear in that way, I think.
In my experience, that is how horror films “feel.” I know it’s art, I know its representations are imaginary, I know that monsters aren’t real and I know that I am not in any real danger… but, for reasons I cannot explain, I cannot not be terrified. I cannot not have the experience of my will being paralyzed and, in a feeling that is infinitely terrifying, the experience of my will being turned against me.