Certain horror films comfort us by their cyclical structure, according to a recent article by Chuck Palahniuk
It's a strange argument. On the face of it, the idea makes sense, given the comforting nature of many other formulaic or tightly-genre-based works. Repetition rewards our attention, confirming an older pleasure, extending it mostly in time, with a minimum of variation. Moreover, we win a sense of superiority, by seeing past the protagonist's perspective, all the way to their gory end - this connects with the moral layer applied to much of horror
Yet Palahniuk overstates the cyclical nature of some of those stories. For instance, The Wicker Man (1973) is about an exceptional sacrifice, not a regular one. The story is about the cycle having been broken, then restored into a shape other than that we've just experienced. The restoration occurs (or is supposed to) beyond our ken, since we're stuck with the embarrassed, outraged, and terminal perspective of the cop.
Steven Kaye offers a different argument against the comfort-in-cycles thesis, noting that some horror stories punish characters who haven't really made mistakes. The teens in Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974) may be annoying, for example, but don't commit any crime, merely stopping their van in the wrong town. Palahniuk also links this comforting feeling to news stories about disasters, which surely implies a bizarrely judgemental reading of atrocity!
Moreover, "the cycle speaks only to a certain kind of horror," Steven tells me, after a pleasant half-hour of wood-chopping, "slasher horror, drawing on Italian giallo." There's other horror. S. T. Joshi's study of the weird tale emphasizes unpredictability in such stories, rather than repetition. It's the moment of opening into possibility, the vertigo of surrealism, that powers such Gothic tales.
I'm reminded as well of a different plot arc. Borrowing a bit from Chuck P's framing device of a terminally ill friend, some horror is about evil out of bounds, metasticizing evil, horror erupting out of bounds. Some vampire stories are all about repetition (Anne Rice's, for example), but the most influential of all, Stoker's Dracula (1897), concerns breaking that cycle. The Count will escape his castle, and broaden his parasitical web into a self-reproducing, widening, viral pattern, potentially overwhelming (transforming) humanity at large. Consider as well Dracula's contemporary, The War of The Worlds, which is about the fall of humanity, rather than, say, a regular raiding party. (If you don't think this is horror, reread this chapter)
I don't think the point that Chuck is making is that certain types of horror films "punish" characters, or that a particular cycle may be broken or unbroken, small, large, personal or societal. The point is that because we are in our *own* real cycles -- most particularly mortality -- we find comfort in being able to be the observer in another's. If the cycle is more complex, as in "War of the Worlds," that's fine. Then we may contemplate a more nuanced version of our own life's place in a great cycle. If it's a simple, "one villain, one murder" story... but where we get the feeling that it might repeat... we still feel comforted by the fact that we have seen through the frame.
The father of modern horror, Poe, was an expert in setting up and breaking frames within stories. "Fall of the House of Usher" being the most obvious example. It doesn't make it any less scary that we can see his hand in the work, or the devices he uses.
It doesn't make the roller coaster any less thrilling that we can see all the brakes and gears and safety harnesses. It still goes wicked fast. And we still feel more alive when we contemplate that we have experienced something that, were it not for our human craft, would kill us. Coasters are safe because of engineering. Horror stories are safe because they're not real. Either way, we get to experience the "cycle" without the grim, red ruin at the end. And that's always a comfort.
Posted by: Andy Havens | May 29, 2006 at 18:50