I’m working on a english question and need a sample draft to help me study.Chapter 4From Dracula Bram Stoker Bram Stoker was educated at Trinity College in Dublin, where he earned a degree in mathematics in 1870. His work as a theater manager at the Lyceum Theatre in the West End of London, however, initiated a second career in writing, and in 1897 Stoker published Dracula. Since then, Count Dracula has been the subject of innumerable film, stage, and literary renditions. In this excerpt, young Jonathan Harker is in Transylvania on legal matters. Against the advice of the count, of whom he is already suspicious, Harker wanders the castle and falls asleep in a room that is not his bedroom. He awakens to find himself the interest of three young ladies, and their attention is simultaneously sexually stimulating and horrifying. 15 May.—Once more have I seen the Count go out in his lizard fashion. He moved downwards in a sidelong way, some hundred feet down, and a good deal to the left. He vanished into some hole or window. When his head had disappeared, I leaned out to try and see more, but without avail—the distance was too great to allow a proper angle of sight. I knew he had left the castle now, and thought to use the opportunity to explore more than I had dared to do as yet. I went back to the room, and taking a lamp, tried all the doors. They were all locked, as I had expected, and the locks were comparatively new; but I went down the stone stairs to the hall where I had entered originally. I found I could pull back the bolts easily enough and unhook the great chains; but the door was locked, and the key was gone! That key must be in the Count’s room; I must watch should his door be unlocked, so that I may get it and escape. I went on to make a thorough examination of the various stairs and passages, and to try the doors that opened from them. One or two small rooms near the hall were open, but there was nothing to see in them except old furniture, dusty with age and moth-eaten. At last, however, I found one door at the top of the stairway which, though it seemed to be locked, gave a little under pressure. I tried it harder, and found that it was not really locked, but that the resistance came from the fact that the hinges had fallen somewhat, and the heavy door rested on the floor. Here was an opportunity which I might not have again, so I exerted myself, and with many efforts forced it back so that I could enter. I was now in a wing of the castle further to the right than the rooms I knew and a story lower down. From the windows I could see that the suite of rooms lay along to the south of the castle, the windows of the end room looking out both west and south. On the latter side, as well as to the former, there was a great precipice. The castle was built on the corner of a great rock, so that on three sides it was quite impregnable, xvi and great windows were placed here where sling, or bow, or culverinxvii could not reach, and consequently light and comfort, impossible to a position which had to be guarded, were secured. To the west was a great valley, and then, rising far away, great jagged mountain fastnesses, rising peak on peak, the sheer rock studded with mountain ash and thorn, whose roots clung in cracks and crevices and crannies of the stone. This was evidently the portion of the castle occupied by the ladies in bygone days, for the furniture had more air of comfort than any I had seen. The windows were curtainless, and the yellow moonlight, flooding in through the diamond panes, enabled one to see even colors, whilst it softened the wealth of dust which lay over all and disguised in some measure the ravages of time and the moth. My lamp seemed to be of little effect in the brilliant moonlight, but I was glad to have it with me, for there was a dread loneliness in the place which chilled my heart and made my nerves tremble. Still, it was better than living alone in the rooms which I had come to hate from the presence of the Count, and after trying a little to school my nerves, I found a soft quietude come over me. Here I am, sitting at a little oak table where in old times possibly some fair lady sat to pen, with much thought and many blushes, her ill-spelled love-letter, and writing in my diary in shorthand all that has happened since I closed it last. It is nineteenth century up-to-date with a vengeance. And yet, unless my senses deceive me, the old centuries had, and have, powers of their own which mere “modernity” cannot kill. • • • Later: the Morning of 16 May.—God preserve my sanity, or to this I am reduced. Safety and the assurance of safety are things of the past. Whilst I live on here there is but one thing to hope for, that I may not go mad, if, indeed, I be not mad already. If I be sane, then surely it is maddening to think that of all the foul things that lurk in this hateful place the Count is the least dreadful to me; that to him alone I can look for safety, even though this be only whilst I can serve his purpose. Great God! merciful God! Let me be calm, for out of that way lies madness indeed. I begin to get new lights on certain things which have puzzled me. Up to now I never quite knew what Shakespeare meant when he made Hamlet say:—“My tablets! quick, my tablets! ’Tis meet that I put it down,” etc., for now, feeling as though my own brain were unhinged or as if the shock had come which must end in its undoing, I turn to my diary for repose. The habit of entering accurately must help to soothe me. The Count’s mysterious warning frightened me at the time; it frightens me more now when I think of it, for in future he has a fearful hold upon me. I shall fear to doubt what he may say! When I had written in my diary and had fortunately replaced the book and pen in my pocket I felt sleepy. The Count’s warning came into my mind, but I took a pleasure in disobeying it. The sense of sleep was upon me, and with it the obstinacy which sleep brings as outrider.xviii The soft moonlight soothed, and the wide expanse without gave a sense of freedom which refreshed me. I determined not to return tonight to the gloom-haunted rooms, but to sleep here, where, of old, ladies had sat and sung and lived sweet lives whilst their gentle breasts were sad for their menfolk away in the midst of remorseless wars. I drew a great couch out of its place near the corner, so that as I lay, I could look at the lovely view to east and south, and unthinking of and uncaring for the dust, composed myself for sleep. I suppose have fallen asleep; I hope so, but I fear, for all that followed was startlingly real—so real that now sitting here in the broad, full sunlight of the morning, I cannot in the least believe that it was all sleep. “I felt in my heart a wicked, burning desire that they would kiss me with those red lips.” 5 I was not alone. The room was the same, unchanged in any way since I came into it; I could see along the floor, in the brilliant moonlight, my own footsteps marked where I had disturbed the long accumulation of dust. In the moonlight opposite me were three young women, ladies by their dress and manner. I thought at the time that I must be dreaming when I saw them, for, though the moonlight was behind them, they threw no shadow on the floor. They came close to me, and looked at me for some time, and then whispered together. Two were dark, and had high aquilinexix noses, like the Count, and great dark, piercing eyes that seemed to be almost red when contrasted with the pale yellow moon. The other was fair, as fair as can be, with great wavy masses of golden hair and eyes like pale sapphires. I seemed somehow to know her face, and to know it in connection with some dreamy fear, but I could not recollect at the moment how or where. All three had brilliant white teeth that shone like pearls against the ruby of their voluptuous lips. There was something about them that made me uneasy, some longing and at the same time some deadly fear. I felt in my heart a wicked, burning desire that they would kiss me with those red lips. It is not good to note this down, lest some day it should meet Mina’sxx eyes and cause her pain; but it is the truth. They whispered together, and then they all three laughed—such a silvery, musical laugh, but as hard as though the sound never could have come through the softness of human lips. It was like the intolerable, tingling sweetness of water-glasses when played on by a cunning hand. The fair girl shook her head coquettishly, and the other two urged her on. One said:—“Go on! You are first, and we shall follow; yours is the right to begin.” The other added:—“He is young and strong; there are kisses for us all.” I lay quiet, looking out under my eyelashes in an agony of delightful anticipation. The fair girl advanced and bent over me till I could feel the movement of her breath upon me. Sweet it was in one sense, honey-sweet, and sent the same tingling through the nerves as her voice, but with a bitter underlying the sweet, a bitter offensiveness, as one smells in blood. I was afraid to raise my eyelids, but looked out and saw perfectly under the lashes. The girl went on her knees, and bent over me, simply gloating. There was a deliberate voluptuousness which was both thrilling and repulsive, and as she arched her neck she actually licked her lips like an animal, till I could see in the moonlight the moisture shining on the scarlet lips and on the red tongue as it lapped the white sharp teeth. Lower and lower went her head as the lips went below the range of my mouth and chin and seemed about to fasten on my throat. Then she paused, and I could hear the churning sound of her tongue as it licked her teeth and lips, and could feel the hot breath on my neck. Then the skin of my throat began to tingle as one’s flesh does when the hand that is to tickle it approaches nearer—nearer. I could feel the soft, shivering touch of the lips on the super-sensitive skin of my throat, and the hard dents of two sharp teeth, just touching and pausing there. I closed my eyes in a languorousxxi ecstasy and waited—waited with beating heart. But at that instant, another sensation swept through me as quick as lightning. I was conscious of the presence of the Count, and of his being as if lapped in a storm of fury. As my eyes opened involuntarily I saw his strong hand grasp the slender neck of the fair woman and with giant’s power draw it back, the blue eyes transformed with fury, the white teeth champing with rage, and the fair cheeks blazing red with passion. But the Count! Never did I imagine such wrath and fury, even to the demons of the pit. His eyes were positively blazing. The red light in them was lurid, as if the flames of hell-fire blazed behind them. His face was deathly pale, and the lines of it were hard like drawn wires; the thick eyebrows that met over the nose now seemed like a heaving bar of white-hot metal. With a fierce sweep of his arm, he hurled the woman from him, and then motioned to the others, as though he were beating them back; it was the same imperious gesture that I had seen used to the wolves. In a voice which, though low and almost in a whisper seemed to cut through the air and then ring round the room he said:—10 “How dare you touch him, any of you? How dare you cast eyes on him when I had forbidden it? Back, I tell you all! This man belongs to me! Beware how you meddle with him, or you’ll have to deal with me.” The fair girl, with a laugh of ribald coquetry, xxii turned to answer him:—“You yourself never loved; you never love!” On this the other women joined, and such a mirthless, hard, soulless laughter rang through the room that it almost made me faint to hear; it seemed like the pleasure of fiends. Then the Count turned, after looking at my face attentively, and said in a soft whisper:—“Yes, I too can love; you yourselves can tell it from the past. Is it not so? Well, now I promise you that when I am done with him you shall kiss him at your will. Now go! go! I must awaken him, for there is work to be done.” “Are we to have nothing tonight?” said one of them, with a low laugh, as she pointed to the bag which he had thrown upon the floor, and which moved as though there were some living thing within it. For answer he nodded his head. One of the women jumped forward and opened it. If my ears did not deceive me there was a gasp and a low wail, as of a half-smothered child. The women closed round, whilst I was aghast with horror; but as I looked they disappeared, and with them the dreadful bag. There was no door near them, and they could not have passed me without my noticing. They simply seemed to fade into the rays of the moonlight and pass out through the window, for I could see outside the dim, shadowy forms for a moment before they entirely faded away. Then the horror overcame me, and I sank down unconscious.
What observation does Harker make as he passes through the rooms in Count Dracula’s castle? What does this say about his character?
On the morning of May 16, Harker observes in his diary, “Whilst I live on here there is but one thing to hope for, that I may not go mad, if, indeed, I be not mad already” (par. 2). Why is Harker afraid that he is going insane?
Count Dracula, in pushing away the three sisters, says, “This man belongs to me!” (par. 10). In response response, they say that he never loved. What do they mean by this?
Bram Stoker’s Dracula is a novel written near the end of the nineteenth century. Analyze Stoker’s use of language—diction, sentence structures, punctuation—and describe how his use of language is different from contemporary usage. Provide examples.
Why does Jonathan Harker make so many comments about possible past inhabitants of Count Dracula’s castle? How does alluding to the past instead of finding comfort in “modernity” (par. 1) provide him with a sense of normalcy in a place that seems anything but normal?
Harker comments that writing in his diary “must help to soothe me” (par. 2). How can the act of writing be therapeutic, especially given the horrific events he encounters?
When Harker becomes aware of the sisters, his feelings are conflicted. At one point, he comments, “There was something about them that made me uneasy, some longing and at the same time some deadly fear” (par. 5). How are sexual desire and danger intermingled in this passage? What is the basis of his contradictory feelings
Un) safe Sex: Romancing the Vampire Karen Backstein With a PhD in cinematic studies from New York University, Karen Backstein has written on film and dance in both academic journals and popular magazines. Her book credits include several children’s books, including The Blind Men and the Elephant (1992) and Little Chick’s Easter Surprise (1993). This article initially appeared in Cineaste, a magazine that covers the art and politics of the cinema. Backstein argues that newer vampire stories, such as the Twilight series and True Blood, have altered the traditional sexual dynamic of the vampire narrative. In the past, the vampire combined sexual allure and evil, emphasizing that the woman who is the target of the vampire’s desires needs to remain chaste. Now the vampire is a romantic hero who protects the female protagonist from evil humans as well as other vampires, and sexual energy between vampire and human abounds. The woman is no longer the passive, chaste object of desire, but an active, sexually aware force of her own. In the horror universe, the popularity of vampires never seems to die. This makes sense: forever young and beautiful, they are, as Twilight’s Edward Cullen points out to his inamorata, xxiii Bella, specifically designed to be irresistible to humans. But if the greatest (and most filmed) of literary bloodsuckers, Count Dracula, served as a warning about what would happen to the pure Victorian woman who succumbed to the lure of the mercurialxxiv and seductive man, the contemporary vampire often is a very different figure altogether. Just as the eternally living creature within the narrative must adapt to the passing centuries in dress and manner, the fictional construction of the protagonist has had to shift in order to survive as a meaningful symbol for audiences with modern sensibilities. Across every medium, from books to films to television, today’s vampire—at least, that particular type of vampire who serves as the narrative’s male lead and the heroine’s love interest—has transformed into an alluring combination of danger and sensitivity, a handsome romantic hero haunted by his lust for blood and his guilt for the humans he killed in the past. No bats, no capes, and perhaps just a touch of white pallor to provide a whiff of the grave (the black vampire remains a rarity in mainstream texts)—and so much the better if he shimmers in the manner of Twilight’s Edward and resembles an Armani model. He’s often courtly, too, in the fashion of another age—the age, in fact, when he was born and lived as a human before “being made.” At the same time, the vampire’s power can never be underestimated: the very notion of “devouring” and “eating” someone is redolentxxv of sex (and, in some cases, rape), and he could have what he wants for the taking. “When we taste human blood,” Edward hesitatingly says, “a sort of frenzy begins.” But he has now become too evolved and moral to engage in that frenzy: “I don’t want to be a monster.” In part, the modern vampire story is one about self-control, about man struggling to master his worst impulses—perhaps even his essential nature—through whatever means necessary, be it with synthetic substances (True Blood) or by finding other sources of food (Twilight). In an almost Victorian ethos, this “civilizing impulse” is strengthened by the arrival of the heroine, who cements the vampire’s determination not to succumb to his bloodthirst. To further stress the point, a “bad vampire” usually throws the hero’s chivalrousness into relief: Twilight’s vicious and murderous tracker James contrasts with Edward, while True Blood juxtaposes the gentlemanly Bill Compton with the imperious and manipulative (but equally sexy) Eric Northman, The Vampire Diaries has two divergent brothers, and Buffy had Angel and Spike. But the complex qualities of the hero—his mix of sex and sensibility—is not the only reason women seem to have such an insatiable appetite for vampires today; another attraction may be the point of view these texts adopt. They are female-centered narratives that strive for audience identification with the heroine—with her strength, her extraordinary capabilities, her status as an object of desire, or a combination of all these traits. She is the focus of the story, whether she’s narrating it (Twilight) or the active visual center of the screen image (Buffy the Vampire Slayer, True Blood). 5 Apart from the pioneering works of Anne Rice (who a while ago set aside Lestat and company in favor of Jesus, anyway), many of these modern vampire narratives have been directed primarily to teen females and spotlight young heroines—perhaps all the better to stand out against their centuries-old paramours. Twilight, True Blood, and The Vampire Diaries, to name but a few, all have their origins in young adult novels aimed specifically at girls. They then crossed over to capture a huge audience of older women, who lapped up their Gothic atmosphere, dreamy heroes, and romantic focus. True Blood, in particular, is pure Southern Gothic that moved into adult mode in its TV incarnation, with its graphic sex scenes and its use of the vampire to signify “the Other.” Imagining a world where an artificial blood allows vampires to live among us without feeding, the series plays with the idea of “interspecies mixing” as miscegenation—a metaphor that encompasses sexual fear and potency, as well as a social critique. Vampire Bill Compton is literally a refugee from the Civil War, when he was brought over, and the credits feature assorted images from the Old South, including a Klansman. Despite their dissimilarities, and varied approaches to the construction of vampire life and rules, all these supernatural stories are driven largely by female desire and the female voice. The virginal Victorian ladies of Dracula may have needed Jonathan Harker to tell their tale; no longer. Ever since Buffy the Vampire Slayer came on the scene, the ladies have spoken for themselves. This is not to say that vampire narratives are necessarily feminist. Their degree of girl power varies, with Buffy perhaps the strongest, rarely in need of rescue and able to slay multiple neck biters with a single kick and knife thrust—and master them romantically, too. (A point wittily made in a fan-created viral video that juxtaposed shots of Buffy at her fiercest with images of a dreamy, clearly smitten, and physically passive Edward from Twilight. Rolling her eyes at his persistent advances, the Buffster resisted his charms and killed.) Like Buffy, singled out among all girls as the one in her generation to be the Slayer, Sookie in True Blood is not quite human; possessing extra-normal skills (including the ability to read minds and a strange kind of electrical energy that sometimes flows from her hands), she sidesteps the many lures that drag down her fellow townsfolk, family, and friends. But no heroine, and no relationship, seems to have enthralled female readers and spectators like that of Bella and Edward in the Twilight saga. Unlike much in the horror genre, Twilight—both the book and the film—is the product of women: novelist Stephenie Meyer, screenwriter Melissa Rosenberg, and director Catherine Hardwicke. (Hardwicke was replaced by Chris Weitz for the sequel, New Moon, a more male-focused and presumably more action-centered narrative in which Bella cedes some of the spotlight to the Native American character Jacob, a werewolf. The removal of Hardwicke is particularly fascinating for Hollywood watchers given the box-office success of Twilight—over $ 70 million the first weekend—as compared to the critical and financial disaster that was Weitz’s Golden Compass.) It would be impossible to overestimate the popularity of the novels. At a time when the publishing industry is collapsing, sales of Meyer’s books played a huge role in ensuring the financial health of Little, Brown, Twilight’s publishing house. As was the case when the final Harry Potter tome came out, bookstores stayed open at midnight on its release day, hosting parties to draw in readers eager to get their hands on the next installment as soon as possible. When casting for the movie adaptation was announced, its unknown leads became instant celebrities, and the film not unexpectedly was a blockbuster, too. Despite the fact that Twilight is remarkably poorly written and astonishingly repetitive, clearly Meyer has her finger on the pulse of young female America. In Twilight (2008), Bella Swan (Kristen Stewart) falls for fellow student Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson), who, since he’s a vampire, is truly a boyfriend to die for. Twilight tells the story of Bella Swan, a teenager who reluctantly leaves her home in sunny Phoenix to come to the gray and rainy climes of Forks, Washington, where her father is sheriff. The move is nothing less than a sacrifice, prompted by her mother’s remarriage; Bella generously gives her mom the space, time, and freedom to travel with her new husband as he pursues his career. Almost immediately upon her arrival, however, Bella, formerly an outsider, finds herself the center of attention at school, with a group of friends and plenty of male interest. But her eye is drawn irresistibly to Edward Cullen and his four sisters and brothers, all startlingly beautiful and supremely standoffish. Bella is shocked when Edward initially reacts to her presence with pure, overt hostility. The truth will out, however, when she discovers that his coldness was just a ploy: he is so deeply drawn to her, and so scared he might harm her in the throes of passion, that he tried to resist his feelings. For Edward and his entire family are vampires—albeit vampires who wish to live peacefully with humans—and this love appears to be star-crossed. Bella and Edward’s relationship grows ever more passionate, but always with Edward attempting to make Bella feel a healthy sense of fear at what he is. The true danger, however, comes in the form of a different group of neck biters, including a “tracker” who hunts down humans forever until he catches the prey he wants. And he wants Bella. Why have female audiences of all ages so embraced the series, both on the page and on screen? Why, like the character of Edward Cullen himself, has it proven so irresistible? And how do both hero and heroine differ from their vampire/ human counterparts—and what do those differences mean? First, although vampire stories generally fall within horror—and Twilight has its share of blood and violence—in many ways it has just as much in common with the romance novel, except with a paranormal twist. Other than his fondness for the taste of blood, Edward is the perfect dark, brooding, romantic hero; tormented by his past and so protective of the woman he loves that he willingly pushes her away for her own good. Only, he happens to have extra vampire powers to help him safeguard the woman better—and to make him even more compelling to viewers. 10 As with any romantic hero, Edward’s worth has to be established within the narrative, which measures him against both vampire and man (and eventually werewolf) in order to validate him as a singular figure and force in any world. On the human side are Bella’s male schoolmates, almost all with a crush on her, and all boyish and immature in contrast to Edward (who of course is many years older than them). Sweet and welcoming, into sports and the prom, they represent a normalcy Edward can never have; they also are roundly rejected as boyfriend material by Bella, who gently guides them instead to more appropriate girls. Also human are the men who try to rape Bella one evening in town; in the book, which is actually scarier than the film’s depiction of it, they slyly “herd” a lost Bella to an abandoned cul-de-sac where she has no hope of escape. In the movie, Bella first glimpses two young men at the end of an alleyway after she emerges from a bookstore at night; apprehensively, she heads in the opposite direction, but the pair chase her to a clearing. There, they and a group of drunken friends surround and menace her; as the camera turns slowly around the leering circle of men, a series of nervous jump cuts follows the tormentors’ movements as they close in on Bella. Just as she finally tries to defend herself, Edward zooms up in his car, wheels squealing, to act as her savior. The implication is clear: not all dangers come from the paranormal. That the scene is lit to have the same gray-green mistiness as ones featuring several vampire-caused murders further links the human and the undead. “While the vampire, in almost every artistic incarnation, symbolizes impossible desire and transgressed boundaries—the romantic idea that sex = death—. . . Twilight’s operative equation is love = death.” Additionally, this almost-rape by flesh-and-blood males acts as a mirror image to James’s even more sadistic abduction of Bella, both in its elaborate entrapment and Edward’s rescue operation. Both these sequences stand out in this otherwise romantic movie for their terror, explicit threat to Bella’s body, and dependence on male physical violence. After luring Bella in, James presses up against her stroking her hair, adding a sexual element to the kidnapping. Unlike the earlier sequence, a long time elapses before Edward arrives and the brutalization is visualized. When Bella tries to escape, James flies to intercept her, using techniques familiar to fans of martial arts films. The surface grace of his airborne trajectory contrasts with Bella’s body, which goes into flight in a different way: by being thrown. The crack of her “fragile little human” bones is audible. And James films it all to torment Edward, in what is one of Twilight’s several interesting and negative references to still and movie cameras in relation to women. While the vampire, in almost every artistic incarnation, symbolizes impossible desire and transgressed boundaries—the romantic idea that sex = death—Twilight shifts the paradigm in interesting ways. Twilight’s operative equation is love = death, which Bella reaffirms in a voice-over at the start, a ghostly reference to a later point in the story when she expects to die. The gentlemanly Edward not only refuses sex because of the danger to Bella, he also swoops in to pluck her out of sexually threatening situations. In fact, as we’ve seen, whenever someone in Twilight does want sex, or cannot control his desires, he is evil. Twilight makes an argument for abstemious love, no surprise given that the story sprung from the pen of a Mormon writer. In a day when the romance novel is packed with explicit semipornographic depictions of bedroom activities far beyond the old-fashioned bodice ripper, Twilight harks back to a time when sexual attraction was implied, not acted upon. In this regard, Bella stands apart from such heroines as Buffy and Sookie who consummate both human and vampire relationships. There is perhaps a touch of Heath-cliff and Catherinexxvi in Edward and Bella, an affirmation of a powerful love that transcends the limits of human life. For young readers especially, there may be a kind of safety in a story that steers clear of perilous sexual territory and that suggests gazing into one another’s eyes and holding hands are the most sublime joys. At the same time, however, the narrative is packed with sexual substitutes, so the vampire retains his potency even if he pulls back. It is always clear that when the time comes (and it does, in later novels) that sex is permissible, he will be the perfect lover. Perhaps the book, a little more than the film, overtly emphasizes the power of Edward’s vampiric touch and kiss, which induces an almost orgasmic reaction in Bella (who faints). Nonetheless, the film finds its stand-in for Meyer’s intricately physical descriptions in a soaringly romantic cinematic style. Manipulation of motion becomes one of the movie’s hallmarks, a slowing down or hastening of time, most notably to capture Edward’s vampire superspeed, but also to indicate perceptual awareness, self-consciousness, and even grace. In lengthy wordless and lushly scored sequences, cameras circle the Pacific Northwest landscape from up high, flying with Bella and Edward as he carries her up trees and cliffs, or looking down upon them lying in the grass. His near-magical powers, and his speed, his ability to bring her into a different world, imply sexuality, skill, and thrill, enhanced by the vertiginousxxvii patterns traced by the cinematography. And a large percentage of the audience comes armed with a knowledge of the written text, which will influence their reading of the cinematic images. 15 Twilight the novel is told almost exclusively from Bella’s perspective, which the film to some extent replicates, through her voice-overs placed throughout, as well as through the use of point of view. It is Bella who first sees the Cullens, through the slats of the school windows, moving in graceful slow motion, outdoor light falling on them. “Who is that?” she asks. Edward’s glance only later meets her originating gaze; with him, she is rarely the “looked at,” but the one doing the looking or an equal in an exchange of glances—except at night, when Edward sneaks in simply to watch her sleep. (But we only see that when she wakes suddenly and catches him, so we never share his point of view of her vulnerable body.) And not only does the camerawork emphasize Edward as visual object through lingering shots, but actor Robert Pattinson, a former model, assumes the photographic poses and runway walks of a self-aware performer. Even when we know he is looking at her because of an eyeline match, he stays the visual object for the audience. The usual paradigm of female viewed/ male viewer has shifted thoroughly, especially as Bella makes clear how much she despises being the center of attention when under the curious stares of her fellow students. In one of the most telling scenes, students mill about in front of the school and Angela, a photographer and Bella’s friend, aims her camera at something we cannot see; “Oh my God,” she exclaims, lowering it, and we cut to a classy sports car from which Bella and Edward emerge. Pattinson plays it with the enigmatic smile of a model or movie star on the red carpet who knows all eyes are on him. “Well, everyone’s staring,” [actress Kristen] Stewart’s unsmiling Bella points out, and we cut to her point of view. As the camera moves forward into the crowd, the scene alternates between normal and slow motion as if emphasizing the sense of unreality Bella feels. In fact, Bella is defined through scent more than look, a more difficult quality to convey visually, hence the constant verbal allusions to her smell. But when she walks into her science classroom—where she will be seated next to Edward—she steps in front of a fan, again as slowly as the Cullens strode into the lunchroom where Bella first glimpsed them. The wind ruffles her hair, and the film cuts to Edward as the paper on the desk in front of him sharply blows as her bella aroma reaches his nose. His body quivers and his hand reaches up to cover his nose and face. When the scene cuts back to Bella, still standing in front of the room, her smile fades. This scene repeats, to more ominous effect, when the wind blows through her hair when James and his more vicious vampires meet Bella; hiding among Edward’s family, the breeze alerts him to a human presence. The vampire’s effect on his victim has always been one of transformation, but a negative one: the draining of blood, the draining of energy, the draining of life. Twilight, unlike its predecessors, tells a story of transformation in a more positive sense. While it has elements of horror, particularly near the end with James’s attack, it more closely resembles a fairy tale—Bella and the Beast, if you will, with elements of Cinderella. At the start of the story, Bella comes to the town of Forks without ever having had a boyfriend, and indeed having had few friends at all. But in this new territory, she turns into the central object of desire for every man, and finds her “beast” who is really a prince in disguise. Like a fairy-tale heroine, her qualities are innate, not just the beauty that’s de rigueur, xxviii but even her smell, which shocks Edward into submission and draws the deadly attention of James. And, as in a fairy tale, all females are secondary to her: helpmates whose own interior lives remain obscure. Given this generic shift, it is logical that the vampire hero is moved out of the night and into the light, not just able to see the sun but also to sparkle brilliantly in it. Twilight, as a film, rejects Expressionist or neo-noir style: it is not a film of jagged angles or darkness, but of fog and the mossy, hazy green of the Northwestern forest. Water, mountains, and majestic trees form the backdrop for Bella and Edward’s intimate talks, substituting for the moors that Heathcliff and Cathy wandered. The vampires have homes, not coffins, and because they are not limited to sundown, the night is no more threatening than the day. Bella, though a figure who can articulate her desire, becomes an object in need of protection, this time by the vampire rather than from him. Edward rescues his princess from careening cars, a roving band of human rapists, and a vampire who hunts his prey without cease. Ultimately, what Edward would most like to save her from is himself, the one task where he cannot succeed.
“How does the character of Edward Cullen from the Twilight series differ from more traditional portrayals of vampires, particularly Count Dracula?
Backstein argues that the new vampire stories are “driven largely by female desire and the female voice” (par. 6). What evidence does she give to support this statement?
In discussing Twilight, Backstein focuses on Bella’s scent. How does scent work in terms of making Bella an object of desire for Edward, as well as the prey hunted by James?
Read Backstein’s article with an eye toward her use of topic sentences. How does her use of topic sentences help develop her arguments?
Backstein argues that the vampire story has always been a story of “transformation” (par. 18). How and why has the transformation changed from the days of Bram Stoker and older movie versions of Dracula to contemporary images of vampires as presented in Twilight, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, True Blood, and other stories?
In analyzing the scene where Edward saves Bella from the gang of potential rapists, Backstein writes, “The implication is clear: not all dangers come from the paranormal” (par. 11). What do you make of this statement? What does this scene say about humanity?
Hyde as a Monster Villain Erica McCrystal Robert Louis Stevenson wrote The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde during the late nineteenth century, a time when the theory of evolution started to compete with religious teachings about the origins of humanity. The notion that people had the capacity to be both good and evil was a long-held belief, but now the concept conflated Satan with the animal world. Add the growing interest in physiognomy—a pseudoscience that held that a person’s moral character was revealed by his or her facial features—and you have the fertile ground for Stevenson’s character of Edward Hyde. The fear that Hyde represents goes beyond the mere criminal: there is something about Hyde that is deeply disturbing to the existing social structure. Thus, he must be controlled. Erica McCrystal teaches English and writing at Montclair University, Berkeley College, and St. John’s University. She is also the host of the Villains 101 podcast. This excerpt is part of “Hyde as Hero: The Changing Role of the Modern-Day Monster,” which appeared in the Winter 2018 issue of the Toronto Quarterly. In Stevenson’s novella, Hyde is a villainous creature—the pure embodiment of fin de sièclexlvi Gothic monstrosity. His barbarism is visible through both his aberrations from respectable society’s code of conduct and his physical appearance. Hyde exists as a Gothic villain who embodies the abject living conditions of the working class and the threat of degeneration and biologically inherited criminality. The novella draws awareness to psychological conditions, the dangerous uncertainties of science, and class disparities. As Peter Conolly-Smith argues, the novella employs a “strategy of confronting its Victorian readers with their own inner demons,” suggesting the ease with which the monster within can emerge (n. pag.). Certainly, the novella grapples with the psychological capacity for an individual to unleash repressed monstrosity. But the text also exacerbates the terrifying biological possibilities of human degeneration, which could instigate a widespread decline of humanity. Theories of degeneration, popularized by Max Nordau, and criminal anthropologist Cesare Lombroso’s theories on atavism and anatomical signifiers of criminality raised anxieties within the fin de siècle populace. Hyde is the physical embodiment of such concerns; thus, his character as a Victorian monster represents the horrific possibilities for human degeneration and retrogression to a primitive, bestial state. During the nineteenth century, Charles Darwin, Thomas Henry Huxley, Herbert Spencer, and others presented their theories on evolution. In response, degeneration theorists suggested that the degenerate figure is one who is unhealthy, abnormal, and deformed and who can pass such traits to offspring. Nordau draws parallels between the physical appearance of a degenerated human face and corrupt morality. He further finds: That which nearly all degenerates lack is the sense of morality and of right and wrong. For them there exists no law, no decency, no modesty. In order to satisfy any momentary impulse, or inclination, or caprice, they commit crimes and trespasses with the greatest calmness and self-complacency, and do not comprehend that other persons take offence thereat. (17–18) Degenerates are abnormal because they do not have a moral code. They are misaligned with society and the expectations of proper human behavior. The deviation from normalcy and lack of morality reveals degenerates as monstrous figures (found in both real-world criminals and Gothic fiction). Degeneration theory thus instigated fears in the people of Victorian England of the threat of human retrogression to such a state. Although now proven inaccurate, Lombroso’s theories on criminology present traceable physiognomicalxlvii abnormalities in criminals. Atavism, which Lombroso defines as the reversion to a savage, animalistic race, is a major component of his studies on criminality: “Born criminals, programmed to do harm, are atavistic reproductions of not only savage men but also the most ferocious carnivores and rodents . . . these beings are members of not our species but the species of bloodthirsty beasts” (348). 3 Lombroso dehumanizes criminals, envisioning them, essentially, as animalistic monsters. Linking Mr. Hyde to a feared degenerate, Stevenson frequently uses bestial and animalistic rhetoric in describing his Gothic villain. Hyde attacks Danvers Carew “with ape-like fury” (Stevenson 46). Jekyll later describes Hyde’s actions: “Hence the apelike tricks that he would play me, scrawling in my own hand blasphemies on the pages of my books, burning the letters and destroying the portrait of my father; and indeed, had it not been for his fear of death, he would long ago have ruined himself in order to involve me in the ruin” (92). Jekyll finds more animal than human in Hyde because of his destructive and unrestrained tendencies. He does note that fear of death provides mild restraint, but this is instinctual; Hyde’s behavior cannot be controlled by morality. He does not care for consequence and, instead, engages in destructive behavior simply because he is a simian beast, not a human. As Hyde’s monstrosity is clearly animalistic, the novella also links monstrosity to the inhuman, essentially creating a hierarchy in which humans are superior beings to Others. Jekyll writes about Hyde: “That child of Hell had nothing human; nothing lived in him but fear and hatred” (Stevenson 90). Emotions and passions may be present within Hyde, but his existence as a being with only “fear and hatred” makes him a spawn of Satan, an inhuman monster. Mr. Utterson exclaims that Hyde seems hardly human! Something troglodytic, shall we say? or can it be the old story of Dr. Fell? or is it the mere radiance of a foul soul that thus transpires through, and transfigures, its clay continent? The last, I think; for, O my poor old Harry Jekyll, if ever I read Satan’s signature upon a face, it is on that of your new friend. (42) Describing Hyde as “troglodytic” xlviii suggests a reversion to a primitive state, which embodies the fear of how far degeneration can go, transforming humans into something Other, unknown, and lost centuries ago. But, after contemplating the possibilities of what Hyde actually is, Utterson concludes that he must be a creation of Satan. Utterson refers to this being visible on Hyde’s face, suggesting that the sign of monstrosity, in contrast to being human, is a physical aberration. 5 Stevenson’s Hyde is a monstrous being that lacks organic humanity. His barbaric tendencies mark him as more than a degenerate man or a criminal; he is an inhuman monster. Jekyll “thought of Hyde, for all his energy of life, as of something not only hellish but inorganic. This was the shocking thing; that the slime of the pit seemed to utter cries and voices; that the amorphous dust gesticulated and sinned; that what was dead, and had no shape, should usurp the offices of life” (Stevenson 91). Here, he describes Hyde as “slime,” “amorphous dust,” and “dead” and, in doing so, defines characteristics of a monster as ones that completely contrast with those of a living human being. Even though they share a human body, Hyde emanates something inhuman—the “radiance of a foul soul”—that Utterson describes (42) and that is physically noted here by tangible monstrous features. Hyde’s animalistic and unnatural qualities contribute to his rejection from society. Hyde does not fit “normal” society, as Mr. Enfield remarks: “He must be deformed somewhere; he gives a strong feeling of deformity” (Stevenson 35). Jekyll, too, describes the image of Hyde as evil having left “an imprint of deformity and decay” (81). The visual impression of deformity suggests a deviation from normalcy that is based on societal expectations. In his statement, Jekyll notices that “when I wore the semblance of Edward Hyde, none could come near to me at first without a visible misgiving of the flesh” (81). Hyde does not meet the image of acceptable society. With such a perspective, Dr. Lanyon notes that “there was something abnormal and misbegotten in the very essence of the creature . . . there was added a curiosity as to his origin, his life, his fortune and status in the world” (74–75). Hyde’s animalistic and often indescribable body puts him in opposition to a more traditional, standardized image of man, one who cannot be placed or truly known. In this way, Mr. Hyde is assumed to be Other, and the disgust that the other characters feel upon seeing him amounts to judgment and rejection from acceptable society. “Mr. Hyde is assumed to be Other, and the disgust that the other characters feel upon seeing him amounts to judgment and rejections from acceptable society.” Hyde’s monstrosity is physical, behavioral (found in his cruel actions toward others and in committing murder), and moral. Robert Mighall finds that “moral monsters” include “the criminal, the degenerate, and the pervert” and were studied by the sciences of “mental pathology, criminology, and sexology” (173). Hyde’s moral monstrosity emerges in his lack of concern for others and his ease in hurting others. Enfield details the incident on the street where Hyde “trampled calmly over the child’s body and left her screaming on the ground” (Stevenson 33). Hyde clearly has no care or concern for others. He has a degenerated morality or perhaps none at all. Hyde’s moral monstrosity sets him apart from Jekyll, who, in his statement, says that he grew unable to handle “the horror of being Hyde” (90). Jekyll characterizes Hyde as having “moral insensibility and insensate readiness to evil” (86). Such monstrosity is characteristic of a Gothic villain, a degenerate whose mere existence threatens the social fabric of humanity for fear of widespread degenerative morality. Truly embracing the Gothic, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde exacerbates fin de siècle anxieties and raises social awareness to psychological, biological, and societal threats to humanity. Sarah D. Harris claims that “monsters are simultaneously universal and particular: they emerge from universal societal needs, including the need to exteriorize fears and build an ‘us’ in contrast to a ‘them,’ but the particular form that monsters take speaks to the specificity of a time and place” (116). Harris’s reference to “us” versus “them” positions Manichean dualities of good and evil in contrast to one another. Stevenson’s novel excels in establishing such oppositional forces but complicates them by putting “us” and “them” into one Jekyll/ Hyde body that destabilizes notions of both human identity and social infrastructures. The monster figure is, first, timely in its ability to embody and incite fin de siècle anxieties and, second, timeless through its adaptations and their arousal of twentieth-and twenty-first-century concerns. Hyde is certainly an outsider due to his monstrosity. The root of the monstrosity may affirm fears of degeneration or the effects of scientific experimentation. But Jekyll finds that Hyde originates from a bifurcated interiority—a “dual nature”—and he laments his existence because of this. He wishes, instead, that he could separate the two selves, even calling it “the curse of mankind that these incongruous faggots were thus bound together” (Stevenson 78–79). Jekyll rationalizes Hyde’s social rejection by suggesting that he is the embodiment of one aspect of mankind. He claims: “[ A] ll human beings, as we meet them, are commingled out of good and evil: and Edward Hyde, alone in the ranks of mankind, was pure evil” (81). Jekyll assumes he is the “good” in contrast to Hyde’s “evil,” presuming a superior understanding of the composition of man. Linda Dryden finds that Hyde’s monstrosity is a testament to the complexity of mankind in which man can be both moral and monstrous: “Hyde is an expression of a bestiality that is part of the human condition, and the human dilemma is that the Hyde in each of us must be suppressed” (32). In this case, all humans have the capacity to be a monster—to appear as atavistic reversions of an uncontrollable version of man. Such a possibility instigates terror in the novella, as anyone could potentially turn into an inhuman beast.
McCrystal states that The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is horrifying because it shows the “psychological capacity for an individual to unleash repressed monstrosity” (par. 1). How does this happen within Stevenson’s story?
What is important about Stevenson’s comparison of Hyde to animal behavior? Does it advance an understanding or a misunderstanding of Hyde?
Why is Hyde unable to fit into normal human society? Be specific.
McCrystal’s essay relies on multiple research sources. How does she integrate her research into her argument? That is, how does she retain control of her own analysis while still supplying evidence from others? Examine her use of quotations and paraphrases in formulating your response as it can be a model for your own academic writing.
McCrystal states, “Degenerates are abnormal because they do not have a moral code” (par. 2). What implications does that have for the understanding of the monster, especially as it relates to religious or ethical boundaries that often limit human action?
McCrystal argues, “Hyde exists as a Gothic villain who embodies the abject living conditions of the working class and the threat of degeneration and biologically inherited criminality” (par. 1). How is the story of Jekyll and Hyde connected to questions of social and economic class?
The Lure of Horror Christian Jarrett Taken from the view of evolutionary psychology, fear of monsters may well have kept us alive over time. Although monsters such as vampires and werewolves may seem to have distinct cultural origins, perhaps our fears predate any culture—they may come from a time when humans were more likely to be prey than predator. The strangeness of monsters makes them remarkable and memorable so that we might better recognize and escape them. Thus, the true power of the monster might be that it helps us survive in the real world. Among his many writing credits, Christian Jarrett is the author of 30-Second Psychology: The 50 Most Thought-Provoking Psychology Theories, Each Explained in Half a Minute (2011), The Rough Guide to Psychology: An Introduction to Human Behaviour and the Mind (2011), and Great Myths of the Brain (2014). He is also a staff writer for the Psychologist, which published this article in its November 2011 issue. Fear coils in your stomach and clutches at your heart. It’s an unpleasant emotion we usually do our best to avoid. Yet across the world and through time people have been drawn irresistibly to stories designed to scare them. Writers like Edgar Allen Poe, H.P. Lovecraft, Stephen King, and Clive Barker continue to haunt the popular consciousness. Far longer ago, listeners sat mesmerized by violent, terrifying tales like Beowulf and Homer’s Odyssey. “If you go to your video store and rent a comedy from Korea, it’s not going to make any sense to you at all,” says literature scholar Mathias Clasen based at Aarhus University, “whereas if you rent a local horror movie from Korea you’ll instantaneously know not just that it’s a horror movie, but you’ll have a physiological reaction to it, indicative of the genre.” Why Is Horror the Way It Is? Fresh from a study visit to the Center for Evolutionary Psychology at the University of California, Santa Barbara, Clasen believes the timeless, cross-cultural appeal of horror fiction says something important about humans, and in turn, insights from evolutionary psychology can make sense of why horror takes the form it does. “You can use horror fiction and its lack of historical and cultural variance as an indication that there is such a thing as human nature,” he says. This nature of ours is one that has been shaped over millennia to be afraid, but not just of anything. Possibly our ancestors’ greatest fear was that they might become a feast for a carnivorous predator. As science writer David Quammen has put it, “among the earliest forms of human self-awareness was the awareness of being meat.” There’s certainly fossil evidence to back this up, suggesting that early hominids were preyed on by carnivores and that they scavenged from the kill sites of large felines, and vice versa. Modern-day hunter-gatherers, such as the Aché foragers in Paraguay, still suffer high mortality rates from snakes and feline attacks. 5 Such threats have left their marks on our cognitive development. Research by Nobuo Masataka and others shows that children as young as three are especially fast at spotting snakes, as opposed to flowers, on a computer screen, and all the more so when those snakes are poised to strike. Modern-day threats, such as cars and guns, do not grab the attention in this way. That we’re innately fearful of atavisticxlix threats is known as “prepared learning.” Another study published just this year by Christof Koch and his team has shown how the right amygdala, a brain region involved in fear learning, responds more vigorously to the sight of animals than to other pictures such as of people, landmarks or objects. Viewing the content of horror fiction through the prism of evolutionary evidence and theory, it’s no surprise that the overriding theme of many tales is that the characters are at risk of being eaten. “Do we have many snakes or snake-like creatures or giant serpents in horror fiction?” Clasen asks. “Yes we do: look at Tremors—they were really just very big snakes with giant fangs.” In fact, many horror books and movie classics feature oversized carnivorous predators, including James Herbert’s The Rats, Shaun Hutson’s Slugs, Cat People, King Kong, and the Jaws franchise, to name but a few. Where the main threat is a humanoid predator, he or she will often be armed with over-sized claws (Freddy Krueger in Nightmare on Elm Street) or an insatiable taste for human flesh (e.g. Hannibal Lecter in the 1981 novel Red Dragon). Vampires and Other Mythical Monsters And yet, arguably, the most iconic horror monsters are not the furry or slimy toothed beasts of the natural world, but the unreal, mythical fiends that we call vampires, werewolves, zombies and ghosts. Can a psychological approach explain their enduring appeal too? On the face of it, the answer is straightforward: with the exception of ghosts, these mythical monsters are exaggerated, souped-up versions of the more realistic threats faced by our ancestors. They’re strong, they’re unstoppable and very, very hungry. But digging deeper, these monsters may also endure culturally because they press the right cognitive buttons. For example, just as Pascal Boyer (cited in Barrett, 2000) has argued that many religious entities thrive by being “minimally counter-intuitive”—that is, they fulfill nearly all the criteria for a given category, but violate that category in one particularly memorable, attention-grabbing fashion (a random example would be Moses and the bush that’s in flames but doesn’t burn)—a similar account could explain the enduring appeal of horror monsters. In this vein (ahem), vampires fit the human category in most respects, except they are undead. Ghosts are similarly person-like but have no body. Another cognitive button pressed by horror would be our tendency to see agency where there is none, a kind of over-active theory of mind that facilitates a belief in wraiths and specters. Similarly, perhaps clowns (e.g. as in Stephen King’s 1986 novel It) have the capacity to provoke fear because their make-up conceals their true facial emotions, thus thwarting our instinctual desire to read other people’s minds through their faces (it’s notable that many other horror baddies conceal their faces with masks). 10 There are other overlaps with religion based around the disgust-reaction and the far-reaching effects of our deep-seated fear of infection. The term “psychological immune system” is used to describe findings such as that people are more prone to racial prejudice when primed with reminders of infection. In the same way that many religious practices are thought to have evolved to deal with corpses and the infectious health risks they present, the cultural origin and persistence of some mythical monsters can similarly be understood in terms of our fixation with death and infection. For example, one theory has it that the vampire myth emerged from a prescientific misinterpretation of the appearance of corpses—bloated and apparently full of fresh blood. A 16th century skeleton with a brick jammed posthumously in its jaw was uncovered recently from a mass grave near Venice. Archaeologists at the University of Florence believe the brick was intended to prevent the corpse feasting after death. The horror creature whose popularity feeds most obviously from our fear of contagion is the unstoppable, flesh-eating automaton known as a zombie. One possible source of the zombie myth is Haiti where deceased relatives are sometimes believed to be living with their families in an undead state. Research suggests these “zombies” in reality are brain-damaged or mentally ill relatives, but a controversial suggestion made by anthropologist Wade Davis is that victims are enslaved by witch doctors using a “zombie powder” containing tetrodotoxin, a compound found in puffer fish, which can cause zombie-like symptoms such as lassitude and loss of will. Besides its disgustingness, another feature of the zombie movie monster that exploits our cognitive machinery is known as the uncanny valley [. . .]—that is, there’s something particularly unnerving about an entity that moves jerkily in a way that’s nearly human, but not quite. “Zombies also drastically reduce the moral complexity of life,” says Clasen. “Zombies are unequivocally bad, they need to be killed, they need to be shot in the head. There is no moral shade of grey and that can be a pleasurable fantasy—a way to relax your mind.” No wonder, in the competition to scare audiences, zombies are staggering towards dominance at the box office (recent hits including Zombieland, I am Legend and 28 Days Later). Does this idea, that fictional monsters tap into our evolved mental habits and fears, amount to anything other than speculation? In a 2004 paper, Hank Davis and Andrea Javor at the University of Guelph provided a simple test. They took three of the evolutionary-cognitive themes we’ve discussed so far—predation, contagion and violations of the person category—and had 182 participants rate 40 horror films on their successful portrayal of these features. Films that scored higher tended to have performed better at the box office. The Exorcist, often described as the ultimate horror film, scored highest and came out joint fifth in terms of box office revenue. “Successful horror films are those that do the best job of tapping into our evolved cognitive machinery—they exploit topics and images we already fear,” says Davis. If monsters succeed by playing on our primal fears and flicking our cognitive switches, this begs the question: which monster does it most successfully? The zombie may be clawing its way ever deeper into pop culture, but vampires probably remain the quintessential movie monster, at least according to a 2005 survey by Stuart Fischoff at California State University’s Media Psychology Lab. 15 Fischoff’s team asked 1166 people aged 6 to 91 to name their favorite movie monster and the reasons for their choice. Vampires, and in particular Count Dracula, came out on top overall. The youngest age group (aged 6–25) preferred Freddy Krueger, but vampires still came in at number two. In general, younger viewers were more partial to slasher film baddies than older participants. Popular reasons for participants’ choice of monster included superhuman strength, intelligence and luxuriating in evil. “Movie monsters tap into our archetypal fears that never entirely disappear no matter how mature, smart, informed and rational we think we’ve become,” says Fischoff. “As the American cartoonist of Pogo, Walt Kelly, might have said, ‘We’ve met the monster and he is us.’” “We’ve met the monster and he is us.” But why the particular appeal of vampires? Fischoff thinks it may have to do with their sexiness. Since at least Bram Stoker’s Dracula (but with the exception of F.W. Murnau’s Nosferatu) and continuing to modern incarnations in the True Blood and Twilight series, they are, Fischoff says, “. . . inherently sexy . . . Even their act of monstrousness, neck biting and blood sucking, with or without killing, is intimate and sensuous.” Other factors, according to Fischoff, include: their immortality; their fascinating, tormented characters (most of them are not simple killing machines); and the fact they often have a vestige of humanity, and can fight their impulses. “They can be ‘us,’” Fischoff says, “epitomising our flirtation with our dark side, our Id, our selfish, impulse-ridden, tantruming child who battles with our adult-parent side.” Who Wants to Be Afraid? Psychology can help explain why horror takes the persistent form that it does, but that still leaves the question of why we should want to scare ourselves through fiction in the first place. One suggestion is that, like play, it allows us to rehearse possible threatening scenarios from a position of relative safety. “Movie monsters provide us with the opportunity to see and learn strategies of coping with real-life monsters should we run into them, despite all probabilities to the contrary,” says Fischoff. “A sort of covert rehearsal for . . . who knows what.” Despite its fantastical elements, Clasen explains that successful horror fiction is usually realistic in its portrayals of human psychology and relationships. “That’s where horror matters,” Clasen says; “that’s where horror can teach us something truly valuable.” Further clues come from a line of inquiry, most of it conducted in the 80s and 90s (coinciding with the rising popularity of slasher films), that looked at individual differences in horror film consumption. After all, although many people enjoy horror, most of us don’t. Who are these people who pay out money to be scared? A meta-analysis of 35 relevant articles, by Cynthia Hoffner and Kenneth Levine published in 2005 in Media Psychology, highlights the principal relevant traits: affective response; empathy; sensation seeking; aggressiveness; gender; and age. The more negative affectl a person reports experiencing during horror, the more likely they are to say that they enjoy the genre. Media experts like Dolf Zillmann make sense of this apparent contradiction as a kind of conversion process, whereby the pleasure comes from the relief that follows once characters escape danger. This explanation struggles to account for the appeal of slasher films, in which most characters are killed. Part of the answer must lie with meta-emotion—the way we interpret the emotional feelings we’re experiencing, with some people finding pleasure in fright. Another possibility is that, for some, pleasure is derived from the sense that film victims are being punished for what the viewer considers to be
