meaning and modern horror
Jun. 20th, 2010 10:44 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tropiaveraSo, my rewatch of the first season of The X-Files (and a sizeable chunk of season two) has been accomplished with the excellent company of ![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png)
rawles.livejournal.com and allchildren! I am in the process of writing up a larger reaction post, because if there anything I like better than lists and evaluation, I haven’t yet found it, but one of the things that kept coming up in my opinions was how I have changed in my feelings regarding horror, especially as regards two particular MOTW, and why some things still bother me much more than others.
Horror, as a genre to itself, does not interest me very much. I am by nature a somewhat anxious person, and this often manifests itself as becoming terrified of stories that I start imagining in the middle of the night, which as you can probably imagine, horror stories (literary or cinematic) tend to exacerbate. When I was in high school a number of my friends really, really loved horror movies, especially terrible ones, and as a result I ended up watching a fair number, but never developed an increased appetite. This is not to say that I think as a genre it is without merit; it is merely one for which I do not have particularly strong affection! (If you want to talk about different subgenres, e.g. torture porn, we could have a very different conversation.) This is all a fairly extended tangent to say, when I was younger (i.e., watching The X-Files for the first time), I had a different relationship with horror in general than I do now, since left to my own devices I very, very rarely seek it out on my own.
Stories about evil or possessed children in and of themselves do not interest me, but I find the rise of horror movies about uncanny children in the 1970s fascinating. I don’t find vampires and vampire lore to be of guaranteed interest, but the stories told about them are frequently of interest to me because of the way they are used as narrative devices. Similarly, I don’t find stories about bloodthirsty mutants or killers on the loose to be intriguing on the surface, but depending on the story being told, I often find the stories taking place around them to be, for lack of a better word, very interesting!
Episodes like "Squeeze" (and "Tooms"), featuring the liver-eating Eugene Victor Tooms (if you’re remembering green eyes, that’s the one), primarily scare the absolute bejeesus out of me, but there is a lot there going on that is still interesting twelve years after I first saw them. “Squeeze” does a lot to establish the larger world in which The X-Files takes place: a chaotic universe, in which bad things may occur, in which a few strive to achieve truth and order. And, more importantly, as "Squeeze" and "Tooms" demonstrate, it is a universe in which order may prevail. The universe contains dangerous, unsavory, and deadly things which will do wrong, but is not an inherently unjust place.
Season two’s "Irresistible", in contrast, demonstrates the opposite. This one follows the human (or is he?) Donnie Pfaster, who has an initial baseline of cutting the hair off dead girls and is what Mulder describes as an escalating fetishist. Like Tooms, Pfaster is coded as representing a kind of cumulative evil in humanity. Pfaster is initially seen as a demonic figure by several characters, and the show visually name-checks several serial killers, one I assume was Charles Manson and another I didn’t place. Like "Squeeze" and "Tooms", "Irresistible" displays a chaotic universe, in which things happen to people essentially at random. And of course, both Tooms and Pfaster go after the enigmatic Dr. Scully as their next victim. Where "Squeeze" ends with the assurance that Tooms in jail and unable to obtain future victims (though as with many first season episode, the unspoken OR IS HE? Is less than subtle), "Irresistible" ends with Mulder describing the inevitability and inescapability everyday horrors.
There are stories that use horror to demonstrate the nature of an act as horrifying (in Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood, sometimes over and over again, they reiterate this). Other incorporate elements of horror in order to comment on and subvert them, as Buffy The Vampire Slayer did frequently. In "Irresistible", however, horror seems to be primarily deployed for horror’s sake; for the sake of saying, here is a monster, watch him destroy. It’s not just the fact that it’s another episode about sex crimes (though that doesn’t help). It’s not just the bleakness (though that doesn’t help). It’s that the episode is essentially lacking in discourse: it puts forth a meaningless horror, and concludes nothing. It was never one of my favorite episodes, though I always viewed it as effective, though not enjoyable, and I still agree. Chris Carter (who wrote "Irresistible") likely set out to tell a creepy story about a serial killer without much else going on, and he did that. I just no longer think those stories are inherently meaningful or worthwhile.
NB: I excluded "Orison" partly because I haven’t seen it, and partly because it takes place so much later than "Irresistible" that it feels like a separate story. Also, if you’re wondering, yes, I am obviously super excited for "Home".
rawles.livejournal.com and allchildren! I am in the process of writing up a larger reaction post, because if there anything I like better than lists and evaluation, I haven’t yet found it, but one of the things that kept coming up in my opinions was how I have changed in my feelings regarding horror, especially as regards two particular MOTW, and why some things still bother me much more than others. Horror, as a genre to itself, does not interest me very much. I am by nature a somewhat anxious person, and this often manifests itself as becoming terrified of stories that I start imagining in the middle of the night, which as you can probably imagine, horror stories (literary or cinematic) tend to exacerbate. When I was in high school a number of my friends really, really loved horror movies, especially terrible ones, and as a result I ended up watching a fair number, but never developed an increased appetite. This is not to say that I think as a genre it is without merit; it is merely one for which I do not have particularly strong affection! (If you want to talk about different subgenres, e.g. torture porn, we could have a very different conversation.) This is all a fairly extended tangent to say, when I was younger (i.e., watching The X-Files for the first time), I had a different relationship with horror in general than I do now, since left to my own devices I very, very rarely seek it out on my own.
Stories about evil or possessed children in and of themselves do not interest me, but I find the rise of horror movies about uncanny children in the 1970s fascinating. I don’t find vampires and vampire lore to be of guaranteed interest, but the stories told about them are frequently of interest to me because of the way they are used as narrative devices. Similarly, I don’t find stories about bloodthirsty mutants or killers on the loose to be intriguing on the surface, but depending on the story being told, I often find the stories taking place around them to be, for lack of a better word, very interesting!
Episodes like "Squeeze" (and "Tooms"), featuring the liver-eating Eugene Victor Tooms (if you’re remembering green eyes, that’s the one), primarily scare the absolute bejeesus out of me, but there is a lot there going on that is still interesting twelve years after I first saw them. “Squeeze” does a lot to establish the larger world in which The X-Files takes place: a chaotic universe, in which bad things may occur, in which a few strive to achieve truth and order. And, more importantly, as "Squeeze" and "Tooms" demonstrate, it is a universe in which order may prevail. The universe contains dangerous, unsavory, and deadly things which will do wrong, but is not an inherently unjust place.
Season two’s "Irresistible", in contrast, demonstrates the opposite. This one follows the human (or is he?) Donnie Pfaster, who has an initial baseline of cutting the hair off dead girls and is what Mulder describes as an escalating fetishist. Like Tooms, Pfaster is coded as representing a kind of cumulative evil in humanity. Pfaster is initially seen as a demonic figure by several characters, and the show visually name-checks several serial killers, one I assume was Charles Manson and another I didn’t place. Like "Squeeze" and "Tooms", "Irresistible" displays a chaotic universe, in which things happen to people essentially at random. And of course, both Tooms and Pfaster go after the enigmatic Dr. Scully as their next victim. Where "Squeeze" ends with the assurance that Tooms in jail and unable to obtain future victims (though as with many first season episode, the unspoken OR IS HE? Is less than subtle), "Irresistible" ends with Mulder describing the inevitability and inescapability everyday horrors.
There are stories that use horror to demonstrate the nature of an act as horrifying (in Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood, sometimes over and over again, they reiterate this). Other incorporate elements of horror in order to comment on and subvert them, as Buffy The Vampire Slayer did frequently. In "Irresistible", however, horror seems to be primarily deployed for horror’s sake; for the sake of saying, here is a monster, watch him destroy. It’s not just the fact that it’s another episode about sex crimes (though that doesn’t help). It’s not just the bleakness (though that doesn’t help). It’s that the episode is essentially lacking in discourse: it puts forth a meaningless horror, and concludes nothing. It was never one of my favorite episodes, though I always viewed it as effective, though not enjoyable, and I still agree. Chris Carter (who wrote "Irresistible") likely set out to tell a creepy story about a serial killer without much else going on, and he did that. I just no longer think those stories are inherently meaningful or worthwhile.
NB: I excluded "Orison" partly because I haven’t seen it, and partly because it takes place so much later than "Irresistible" that it feels like a separate story. Also, if you’re wondering, yes, I am obviously super excited for "Home".