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A review by christytidwell
Horror Fiction: An Introduction by Gina Wisker
2.0
If you're entering into a critical study of the genre and have little to no background in literary theory, this book provides some key concepts that will be useful. Otherwise, this book may not have much to offer. These key concepts are generally not new to the field of literary or horror studies, the discussion is incredibly repetitive across the different sections of the book, the coverage of major movements is thoroughly skimmable (and also likely to spoil lots of texts if you haven't read everything Wisker discusses yet), and the basic argument about the value of studying horror fiction is frequently overstated. In addition, I found myself wondering on multiple occasions why Wisker was focusing on films at the expense of the books they were based on (instances that stand out to me are The Shining [in which case she conflates the film and book without acknowledging doing so], Bladerunner [with absolutely no discussion of Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?], and I, Robot [again, with no mention at all of Asimov's story]) and whether she understands or has conceptualized a distinction between horror and dystopian fiction. In her attempts to show the value of horror fiction, she sometimes tries to include texts that are normally considered science fiction. That would be okay (there's definitely overlap between the two in lots of cases) if she would just acknowledge this. But she doesn't. One example will serve to illustrate the problem: in all of her discussions of horror tropes, she doesn't mention environmental apocalypse at all but yet she wants to include The Day After Tomorrow, a global warming environmental apocalypse story, based in science, easily read as an apocalyptic or dystopian text, as horror. This is something that could be easily dealt with by including a little explanation or broadening the discussion of horror to include this kind of narrative, but this is just not done. One of the greatest irritations for me in reading theory and criticism about genre fiction is the tendency of apologists for various genres to try to make their genre the best and most widespread and influential genre (I've read a lot of SF criticism and I've definitely seen it there, too). That kind of overselling is really not necessary, however, and, as in this case, I find that it just dilutes the power of the central argument and weakens the credibility of the writer.
On the other hand, having presented all of this criticism, Wisker has some really interesting things to say (or point to) about feminist and post-colonial horror. These subsets of the field are clearly where she normally works and I will definitely look for more of her writing in those fields. I am also very happy to see feminist and post-colonial thought represented so well in an introductory book like this.
On the other hand, having presented all of this criticism, Wisker has some really interesting things to say (or point to) about feminist and post-colonial horror. These subsets of the field are clearly where she normally works and I will definitely look for more of her writing in those fields. I am also very happy to see feminist and post-colonial thought represented so well in an introductory book like this.