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A review by fredsphere
The Philosophy of Horror: Or, Paradoxes of the Heart by Noël Carroll
Did not finish book.
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.