It was a typical Friday night on Maynard Street.
My roommate and I had just finished up with
a week of online classes from within our sublet
apartment. Still in the heart of the pandemic,
we acquired it immediately after University of
Michigan President Mark Schlissel notified us
that the dorms would be changing to single-
occupancy residency.
Our freshman year of college had so far been
tumultuous, unpredictable, suffocating and
monotonous all at once. We were always on our
toes, waiting for the next bad thing to happen,
while simultaneously exhausted by staring at the
same four walls day-in, day-out.
Plagued by our boredom, we began a tradition
that would ground us while simultaneously
exciting us, drawing us out of our repetitive
routine and allowing us to escape our less-than-
perfect circumstances.
Every Friday night, my roommate and I
immersed ourselves in horror movies.
We began the tradition in the dorms the night
before Halloween and brought our obsession
with us into the winter semester. We had both
loved horror movies before college, yet the
stimulation of watching these films became more
of a restorative experience in 2020 rather than
mindless entertainment. It was an escape from
reality, a controlled, thrilling environment that
captivated us.
My fascination with horror grew exponentially
throughout my COVID-19 freshman year. Each
day I listened to true crime and fantastical horror
podcasts while washing dishes or working out.
I binge-watched every season of “American
Horror Story” while falling asleep. My constant
engagement with the horror genre made me
progressively more desensitized to the content
of the stories; at this point, it takes an incredibly
creative director or writer to get a genuine
fearful
reaction
from
me.
My
roommate and I are always
searching for a film
that
will truly scare us to the core, a narrative that
will shock us out of the real world and leave us
haunted.
Some might find this almost therapeutic
perception of horror strange, or even disturbing.
Horror movies allow me to focus on someone
else’s world. In a strange way, their tragic
circumstances
make
our
own
real-world
problems seem manageable. But though there
are numerous die-hard horror fans, others see
no appeal in voluntarily igniting feelings of fear,
disgust or dread. Why do some love this rush of
adrenaline, while others avoid it at all costs? Why
do certain individuals have such a high threshold
of fear that even the most gruesome films elicit no
reaction?
The Halloween season forces us to reflect on
these questions and the curiosity surrounding
fear as a whole. The fact that we allot a whole
month to the concept of “spookiness” and horror
certainly indicates a collective attraction to the
idea of fright. Going into October, I wanted to
understand this allure of the eerie, the creepy and
the ghastly that movies present to us. Whether we
like it or not, horror surrounds us during the fall,
and horror films are ever an essential component
of this spine-chilling period.
D
issecting a Horror Movie
Horror movies are characterized
by their ability to create an ambiance
of uncertainty, eliciting feelings of suspense,
disgust, shock or terror. According to AMC,
horror capitalizes on “whatever dark, primitive,
and revolting traits that simultaneously attract
and repel us,” tapping into the twisted allure of
unthinkably heinous circumstances. Viewers are
drawn in by a collective fascination with brutality
and a peculiar gratification that they are not
experiencing similar atrocity in their own lives.
The human interest in the macabre is not
new. Horror has been around for centuries,
evidenced by the more morbid stories from
folklore or popular 19th-century gothic novels
from Bram Stoker and Mary Shelley. Directors
have been producing films that cater to this
feeling of terror almost since
the beginning of the movie
industry. Since then, horror
has developed into eight
different
sub-genres
—
psychological, slasher, gore,
body horror, found footage,
monster, paranormal and
comedy — that approach
the category from a distinct
perspective.
The
movies
amplify different types of
fears so each consumer can
obtain a thrilling experience
fitting to their idea of what’s
terrifying.
This is what makes my
horror-going
experiences
so intriguing. Whether I
wish to experience a succession
of quick jump scares or evoke a lasting
psychological paranoia, horror has the
capacity to cater to whatever effect I
want to incite.
The diversity of the genre also makes
it a unique tool for artistic expression.
Horror explores the most appalling
parts of humanity, the roots of our fears and
worries, and reflects the state of society. Take
the example of the U.S. in the 1970s: Serial killer
murder rates were the highest they’d ever been in
the country’s history. Not coincidentally, slasher
films became a cinematic staple, presenting
viewers with a heightened production of the
reality they were living in. Jordan Peele’s 2017
film “Get Out” explores the deep roots of racism in
America while social justice movements became
more visible in real-life mainstream media. The
visual effects of horror thrills audiences, but
witnessing a twisted version of the issues of one’s
own world is what’s truly terrifying.
Mark Kligerman, a lecturer in the LSA
Department of Film, Television and Media,
emphasized the importance of this cultural
component of horror.
“Each time I revisit the genre in the classroom,
I ask students to tease out relationships between
horror movies and the broader system of values
that form the basis of culture, both domestically
and internationally,” Kligerman said.
Kligerman also urges students to, “focus on the
fluidity of the form” of horror, paying attention
to how directors adapt their films over time to
reflect current society.
“The original ‘Halloween,’ for example,
premiered in 1978, yet Hollywood has produced
countless sequels, remakes and knockoffs
since then,” Kligerman said. “Though the film
certainly belongs to the same genre as the
original superficially, its attitudes toward politics,
violence, sexuality and even monstrosity are
much different, alerting us to the very dynamic
and unstable nature of horror. Recognizing and
delving into this instability with students is when
discussions of the form become really interesting.”
Kligerman highlighted the revealing nature
of horror films, whether in the U.S. or abroad.
These movies, he explained, spotlight the central
issues and philosophies of each culture in a more
poignant manner than other genres.
“I do tend to stress the importance of cultural
specificity when teaching horror,” Kligerman said.
He cited Vanderbilt professor Teresa A. Goddu, who
he says argues “that the gothic narrative in early
American literature was a resistant cultural form
that unsettled myths of New World innocence by
revealing the darkness at the heart of the American
civilizing process: the trans-Atlantic slave trade
and the legacy of racial exploitation and exclusion
have formed the basis of a living nightmare that has
haunted American culture for centuries and from
which we have yet to awaken.”
Diving into the world of horror films with my
roommate was simultaneously an act of escapism
and an ongoing education on the history of the
world around us. Sexism, health, violence, racism,
family and mental health — we explored all of
these issues in horror while they reached a fever
pitch in the events and movements occurring
outside of our apartment walls.
We immersed ourselves in fantastic tales that
magnified the problems of disease, environmental
collapse and political division plaguing our world.
Through film, the issues were easier to absorb,
allowing us to examine their truths as outsiders to
the unfolding events. While the sensational effects
of horror were upfront and at times extreme, we
internalized themes that addressed some of the
largest and darkest issues haunting humankind.
F
ear and How We Deal With It
Though many directors use horror
movies as a medium for expressing
important ideas, the main draw for audiences is the
thrill of its content — the unexpected and extreme
events that make up the plot.
“What is perhaps the primary appeal of the
horror genre,” Kligerman said, “is its ability to wreak
havoc on our emotional equilibrium… Charting
(discrepancies) in affective response is in itself
fundamental to the work of genre analysis and
raises critical questions concerning the nature of
spectatorial desire and pleasure.”
There is obviously an overlap between the fear
response and more pleasurable emotions, such as
“desire” and positive excitement. It’s the reason that
my roommate and I can’t wait for our Friday horror
nights and why audiences flood to theaters when
a new movie is released. Dr. Kent Berridge, U-M
professor of psychology and neuroscience, explained
the connection between these vastly different
reactions and their shared origin in the amygdala, a
brain structure responsible for emotion recognition.
“Fear, of course, can be a very terrible
experience,” Berridge said. “But the kind of fear
where people are actually kind of chasing horror
movies or roller-coaster experiences, there’s a
kind of active fear connected to the dopamine
reward system.”
Berridge outlined how in this “reward system,”
certain “cues or sights or images” will incite the
urge to react to the reward. For example, “when
you’re thirsty for something, water” provokes your
urge to drink. These cues are equally important in
fear as they are in desire.
“Just like the reward cues are attention riveting,
a threatening percept is also attention riveting,”
Berridge said. “It’s hard not to look at it, but it’s in
a threatening way, not in an attractive way. It’s so
attention-grabbing it has to mean something, it’s
motivationally significant.”
People are so attracted to horror movies
because the brain’s responses to both fear and
desire share the same chemical and psychological
components involved in emotional processing.
“(It’s possible) to flip back and forth between
fear and desire,” Berridge said. “In the lab, we can
create this, and it may be that in the roller coaster
and in the horror movie, the situation is scary but
it’s under control. Part of you knows that, and
so you can oscillate and enjoy the oscillation in
the overlap. It’s sort of counterintuitive that fear
would overlap with desire, but it does, and that
may be one reason why people can seek out fearful
experiences that scare them just enough.”
For many, there’s a fine line between finding
stimulation that “scares them just enough” and
those that put them over the edge in terror. There
are personal discrepancies that prevent some from
indulging in activities like horror films, while others
with high thresholds for fear actively seek out these
experiences. Individual distinctions, according
to Berridge, arise from certain personality traits
such as thrill-seeking, which draws people to these
rousing attractions.
Some people are simply more likely to enjoy
horror and other heart-racing attractions. My
own thrill-seeking character explains why I
search regularly for the ideal horror film that will
astound me with its ghastly content.
Wednesday, October 27, 2021 // The Statement — 2
Are you scared yet?
By Sarah Stolar,
Statement Correspondent
Design by Sonali Narayan
Page Design by Sarah Chung
Read more at MichiganDaily.com