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The Horror of the Other - Amiee PreFontaine



Horror never exists in a vacuum; fears emerge from the cultural consciousness as manifestations of our collective anxieties that the horror genre reveals and exploits. While normally confined to the maligned category of ‘genre fiction’, horror is in fact a powerful tool to peer into the subconscious mind of society; whether it be the gothic literature of the Victorian era or the low budget slashers of the 80s, there is something to learn from the things that scare us. In contemporary horror, this is reflected through the focus on social realism and genre-awareness. These films weave the collective knowledge of their genre into their narratives, using horror as a metaphor, but with an awareness of our desire to confront our own fears through the lens of cinema. This self-awareness is further applied to society as a whole. As contemporary filmmakers use horror to evaluate and often criticise the foundational principles of modern society, a society that champions a specific social ideal and casts anything outside of that as the undesirable other.

One of these foundational principles that contemporary horror seeks to dismantle is capitalism. Critic Paul Buhle suggests that the genre is “the natural concomitant to the socialist critiques of Capitalism” through its exposure of western capitalism. Marx describes communism as a ‘spectre’ fighting against the parasitic, ‘vampire-like’ power of capital, imbuing his theory with the language of horror and mythos. Here, Marx casts 20th century economic theory as horror performance of its own and allows the genre’s ability to carry metaphor to emphasise the terror and power of capitalism.  Horror writers in literature and film have used the same imagery to explore the alienation of those deemed different to normative society. The horror genre shadows popular culture as a platform to criticise political and patriarchal structures by representing those who are repressed within them. Horror takes what haunts society the most and personifies it, often holding up a mirror to ourselves in terror and disgust. Jameson writes that:

“Gothics are ultimately a class fantasy (or nightmare) in which the dialectic of privilege and shelter is exercised: your privileges seal you off from other people, but by the same token they constitute a protective wall through which you cannot see, and behind which therefore all kinds of envious forces may be imagined in the process of assembling, plotting, preparing to give assault.”

Indeed, horror exists always in service of the status quo, constantly redefining its dominant social structure. It is through horror that we can consolidate hierarchy. Stephen King said, “Monstrosity fascinates us because it appeals to the conservative Republican in a three-piece suit who resides within us all”, the reinforcement of order, the prevailing of the normative good, over the unfamiliar other. The horror genre feeds off of prejudice and historically much of it has been inescapably xenophobic due to the monsters they present who possess an inherently hostile attitude to humanity, as an outsider, as different, or as ‘The Other’. Horror revolves around various iterations of ‘The Other’, whether this be as the Devil, a ghost, a woman, a vampire, or a zombie. Zygmunt Bauman writes that ‘otherness’ is central to the way in which societies establish identity categories. “The Other” highlights how societies create a sense of identity, social status and belonging by constructing social categories as binary opposites. Historically the has been used to define social identity as well as repress and alienate that which does not fit with a particular concept, culture, or institution. This includes women, the proletariat, the queer community, and ethnic minorities.

It is clear how social othering shapes our ideas when considering the inherently unequal relationship between the two categories of ‘man’ and ‘woman’. These two identities are set up as opposites, without acknowledging alternative gender expressions that do not fit within this binary. In the early 1950s, Simone de Beauvoir argued that: “Otherness is a fundamental category of human thought.  Thus, it is that no group ever sets itself up as the One without at once setting up the Other over against itself.” She argues that The Other is constructed in western contexts as anything outside of the hegemonic ‘universal human being’ - that being the white, middle class, heterosexual, able-bodied cis man. Films such as Rosemary’s Baby and Stepford Wives defined the female social horror which was followed by the iconic Carrie which came to inspire a great number of female centred horror narratives.

Similarly, ‘sexual others’ figure prominently in horror films as the classical Hollywood narrative system imposes heterosexual romances on the stories they create. The monstrous other is the embodiment of a force that attempts to block that romance. When the horror genre was first being established homosexuality was considered a mental illness or an evolutionary defect and generally identified as a rejection of traditional masculinity. The connection then of monstrosity and homosexuality was considered a reasonable one at the time, because it reflected the American view of the homosexual as an unnatural outsider that threatened to corrupt gender roles and sexual values. Furthermore, sexuality, whether gay or straight has often been punished within horror to reaffirm Christian ideology by killing deviant sinners. (Think Scream’s horror movie rule: You may not survive the movie if you have sex). The ‘queer other’ has permeated horror culture to the point of becoming significant within itself through the popularity of cult queer horror such as Dracula’s Daughter, The Rocky Horror Picture Show, or more recently, Jennifer’s Body. Horror is transformed and becomes culturally significant as powerful iconography for the disenfranchised.

Ultimately ‘the other’ most often refers to the perceived ‘racial other’. Minorities have historically been subjected to tokenism throughout western media and have habitually been misrepresented within the horror genre. More often than not, minorities are cast as violent, criminals or villains. The attention that minorities do get within the horror genre often is a misuse of their cultural as a plot device. Mythologised and twisted to fit into the idea of the horrific unknown other, minority identities are reduced down to the black magic medicine man, the vengeful Native American spirit, the black guy who will not make it to the end of the movie. These cultures are often portrayed as aspects of the past, simultaneously acknowledging the erasure of minority identities within western imperialism while reinforcing the conception of contemporary hegemonic culture as distinctly without this cultural otherness.

Entering the 21st century, the endless reviving, recycling, and repetition in mainstream horror, along with the confluence of postmodern thought has led to an acute awareness of its context, allowing it to evolve and change while providing more complex sociological critique. Encroaching upon Y2K The Blair Witch Project shook up horror establishing the found footage genre and raising the bar for horror film marketing through its mythos. Unable to compete, Scream became a parody of itself, Scary Movie came along to parody…well everything, and it seemed the genre had become old, tired, worn out, and cheap. A decade later Cabin in the Woods (2011) successfully unravelled the played-out slasher film and provided a metacritic of what horror had become. Once again, the genre evolved for age, no longer able to stand on the procedural nature of mainstream franchised horror that now failed to scare.

Jordan Peele’s Get Out (2017) redefined horror cinema for a new decade and coined the term ‘Social Thriller’ to describe a new sub-genre. Get Out uses absurdist satire to reflect contemporary racial issues. The family’s black body snatching represents the white ownership of black bodies through slavery. The film, littered with imagery reminiscent of the old American south, signals how white people co-op black culture as their own while still treating them as the social other, forcing them to assimilate to the dominant norm. Simultaneously the film challenges the narrative that the covert, assimilationist racism of liberal America is just as dangerous as the overt racism of America’s past, all while using the iconography of southern sensibility to remind you of the historical weight of the issue.

While the term ‘social thriller’ has been slapped onto a number of projects across genres, what Get Out has inspired, is an influx of horror which offers the perspectives of minority identities finally giving a voice to that once horrifying social other. Jordan Peele’s Us (2019) has less overt racial themes but generally deals with America’s misplaced fear of outsiders. Ari Asters blinding Midsommar (2019), has gained popularity as a ‘good for her’ movie, a title prescribed to horror that acts out female revenge fantasies and often centres around female rage. Assassination Nation (2018) attempted to attack a series of themes, most notably the abundance of gun culture in the US. The Invisible Man (2020) tackles themes of domestic abuse. Even Bong Joon-ho’s widely successful Parasite (2019), although not technically a horror film, incorporates horror elements in the perspective of the Kim family and their class struggle. Social issues find themselves at the centre of horror, finally presenting multiple perspectives on real fears shared by the majority. These films guide to root for these main characters and their reclamation of power. These people escape their societal trauma but are ultimately still just as present within its confines by the end of the film. These narratives provide a catharsis however are still aware of the reality in which this catharsis does not always come.

Otherness is innate to our capitalist society structures but at least horror is starting to get the message. While horror has always somehow addressed societal change, in the last decade the medium got self-reflective, aware of its power as a critical medium. Contemporary horror is elevated through both its creator and audience awareness. No longer distancing itself from the monstrous other through fear, but instead making horror the space for addressing these issues in a thought-provoking, politically charged manner. The genre provides a playground of tropes to subvert and explore overshadowed by the anxieties of late capitalist doom. Contemporary horror builds on the history of the genre but also the presence of postmodern culture and the current desire we have to dissect and reengaging with old ideas. It embraces the other whilst reflecting the current cultural zeitgeist, illuminating our collective fears through the perspectives of those who were once projected as fear itself.