Scan barcode
a_kindle_bookworm's review
This was a school book I read a few months ago but I forgot to include. I forget the actual date I read it so I'm just putting in today's date.
fredsphere's review
No rating because I could not finish it before its library due date.
Compared to the other academic writings I've picked up lately, the writing is clear and jargon-free. Still, for some reason--a misguided pursuit of rigor, perhaps?--each point is belabored beyond my patience. I did feel I learned some things, however, which is more than I can say about Fred Botting's writings, or Freud's essay on the uncanny (i.e., to the man with an Oedipal theory, every problem looks like a penis).
Four chapters are intended to define horror, explain our emotional reaction to it ("art horror"), describe typical horror plots, and try to understand the "paradox of horror" (that is, why would anyone want to be scared by a story?). The first chapter spends a lot of time developing the idea that a monster causes horror when it is both threatening and impure. This is convincing. I would have included a description of twin instincts which are pre-rational: revulsion over rotting things and the uncanny valley response to corpses. These are important survival instincts and cause pre-rational reactions (because who has time to be rational when life is on the line?) and they go a long way to explain why we are horrified at fictional horror.
The second chapter considers ways to deal with 3 contradictory premises:
I enjoyed the 3rd chapter a lot, but it was there I ran out of time. Perhaps my provisional rating would have risen from 3 stars to 4 if I had finished.
Compared to the other academic writings I've picked up lately, the writing is clear and jargon-free. Still, for some reason--a misguided pursuit of rigor, perhaps?--each point is belabored beyond my patience. I did feel I learned some things, however, which is more than I can say about Fred Botting's writings, or Freud's essay on the uncanny (i.e., to the man with an Oedipal theory, every problem looks like a penis).
Four chapters are intended to define horror, explain our emotional reaction to it ("art horror"), describe typical horror plots, and try to understand the "paradox of horror" (that is, why would anyone want to be scared by a story?). The first chapter spends a lot of time developing the idea that a monster causes horror when it is both threatening and impure. This is convincing. I would have included a description of twin instincts which are pre-rational: revulsion over rotting things and the uncanny valley response to corpses. These are important survival instincts and cause pre-rational reactions (because who has time to be rational when life is on the line?) and they go a long way to explain why we are horrified at fictional horror.
The second chapter considers ways to deal with 3 contradictory premises:
1. We are genuinely moved by fictionsThe illusion theory denies #1; the pretense theory denies #2. Too much time was spent refuting these implausible theories. The clear answer (imho) is to deny #3. A more illuminating direction, I think, would lie in expanding our understanding of the brain's hard-wired reactions of sympathy while watching other people perform actions, or the role storytelling and play have in learning.
2. We know that that which is portrayed in fictions in not actual
3. We are only genuinely moved by what we believe is actual
I enjoyed the 3rd chapter a lot, but it was there I ran out of time. Perhaps my provisional rating would have risen from 3 stars to 4 if I had finished.
beholderess's review
2.0
The subject of the book is interesting to me, however, the author's style is difficult to read. It does feel like a scientific monograph that does not have any reader in mind sometimes.
Also, the author is keen to push his own understanding of what counts as "horror", to define it as something that a) features monsters b) those monsters are repulsive, which leaves quite a lot of fiction typically understood as "horror" unaccounted for. He does notice that, and delegates such fiction to "thriller" or "doom" category, but I still think that it should have been seen as an integral part of horror, as it elicits pretty much the same reaction in people, usually placed on the same place in stores, and people seek it out for the same reasons.
Yet the whole thesis of the author hinges on defining horror as featuring "repulsive monsters", which allows him to use Purity and Danger-inspired framework for analysis.
Also, the author is keen to push his own understanding of what counts as "horror", to define it as something that a) features monsters b) those monsters are repulsive, which leaves quite a lot of fiction typically understood as "horror" unaccounted for. He does notice that, and delegates such fiction to "thriller" or "doom" category, but I still think that it should have been seen as an integral part of horror, as it elicits pretty much the same reaction in people, usually placed on the same place in stores, and people seek it out for the same reasons.
Yet the whole thesis of the author hinges on defining horror as featuring "repulsive monsters", which allows him to use Purity and Danger-inspired framework for analysis.
christytidwell's review
3.0
Although this is a useful approach to the horror genre, addressing significant questions - what is horror? why do we have such strong emotional responses to things we know to be false? why would we want to have such responses? - and proposing interesting responses to these questions, the book could be cut by at least half if the author removed all repetitions of his points. That is to say, Carroll's arguments could be made just as clearly, thoroughly, and convincingly in less than half the time and space. To conclude, I wish Carroll's editor had been ruthless in ordering Carroll to eliminate the repetitions and rephrasings and revisitings; I'm glad I read it, but it shouldn't have taken so long.
niv7's review
5.0
A thorough look, if a little too painstakingly, at the crux of 'art-horror', and an excellent read.
More...