In
Part 1, I discussed the 22 stories in
I Shudder At Your Touch. Here, I'll look at Michele Slung's interesting preface to the book.
I wouldn't call myself a "horror reader", because I'm not a fan of the most visible parts of the genre--e.g. Stephen King and slasher flicks. However, Slung frames horror as a form of fiction that appeals strongly to our emotions, and challenges the boundaries between self and normalcy, or self and Other. In those terms, horror is related to much of my reading.
Love, sex, death, and...?
My favorite reading chair is currently piled with love and death, sex and death, resolution and death—in fact, many forms of consummation and death. Márquez's
Love in the Time of Cholera. Wagner's
Tristan and Isolde (a veritable lovesexdeath fest--Wagner popularized the term
Liebestod for the lovers' wish to be united in death). Lorca’s
Blood Wedding (along with
Saura’s flamenco interpretation). Hand’s
Mortal Love. These are tales of forbidden love, betrayal, obsession, madness, the supernatural, and death... but not horror in the style of the
I Shudder stories.
Death, and ghosties and ghoulies, aren't in themselves horrific; the extra ingredient in
I Shudder is the unknown, the extreme, or the frightful. As
Eric Nuzum says, the essence of a vampire is not its fangs--picture
Count Chocula and
Bunnicula. The true vampire preys on our fears. The "horrid" vampire has often been cast as whatever was most frightful or most sexy at the time: as a woman, as Jesus, as
a black man.
The other distinctive ingredient in the
I Shudder stories is emotional: each story uses dread, despair, or surprise. Death isn't inevitable; it's a kicking and screaming end. (In McCormack's
Festival, death seems
a consummation devoutly to be wished, but the outcome proves unsatisfying.) Madness isn't compensated by artistic inspiration. The world doesn't make sense.
Sex enhancing horror
Slung describes a two-way relationship between sex and horror:
What horror story isn't about sex?... The eroticism… can be as obvious as a vampire's embrace or as subtle as the imperfectly perceived corruption permeating Henry James's The Turn of the Screw.
I certainly see a strong relationship, but I'm not sure I'd say
all horror is connected to sex. Is the eroticism of
The Turn of the Screw too subtle for me, or is it an instance of the erotic being a function of
the individual reader’s wiring?
Sex can make us powerful, or render us vulnerable. Vampires mix bloodletting and sex; strong emotion (e.g. rage, sex, or art) opens up characters to supernatural powers. This idea of passion as a gateway to darker powers is central to the Barker story,
Jacqueline Ess. The human equivalent is a horrific crime of passion in Rendell’s
A Glowing Future. In many of the
I Shudder tales, a victim is in bed, with overtones of both vulnerability and desire.
Sex involves judgment and trust. Fowler's stalker tale illustrates the tension between judgment and desire, intuition and common sense. Sex leaves people in dangerous thrall in
Jacqueline Ess and Gilchrist’s
The Basilisk. Encounters with horror often threaten not only body, but also heart, soul, or self-will. (The one vampire story in
I Shudder doesn’t consummate the relationship, but shows how the vampire’s powers of persuasion and attraction can corrupt human judgment.)
Is horror innately sexy?
Slung makes the case that horror and pleasure are at some level indistinguishable:Whether one shivers in pleasure or pleasurable anticipation, or whether one recoils shudderingly, in dread, the gooseflesh raised is the same.
There’s no doubt that sex and horror can co-operate, and even intensify each other: the transgressive can add to the erotic, and the erotic to the horrific. But surely for each reader, whether that shudder of dread translates to a shiver of pleasure is mediated by personal associations and boundaries.
Recent posts on Lust Bites and Teach Me Tonight trod the line between horror and eros, asking about readers' reactions to images of bloodied men. It's clear from the comments that for some, a particular horror may be too outré for eros, for some the eros of violence or blood is limited to fantasy, and for others that sensibility is part of daily life. Some interpret the appeal as solely about violence as a facet of masculinity, a step removed from the taboo and thrill of blood itself. Still others are doubtless disturbed by "invest[ing] power and meaning" in what may be taboo or shocking, much like this concern in a separate discussion:If I continued to read [disturbing erotic stories]...how far was I willing to go, and how would I feel about myself if I continued?
Sex, horror, and morality
Becoming what we fear is among the most important themes in horror. Every story in I Shudder At Your Touch can be read as a cautionary parable of what humans could become: vampires, animals, murderers, extreme thrill-seekers, abusers of power. In general, the stories don’t reward risk-taking; characters are endangered by buying a new house, sharing close quarters with others, or being a good Samaritan.
In several of the I Shudder stories, sex is innately risky. In Villa Désirée (written in the 1920s), the fiancé's lustful side is inhuman and evil; in Cleave the Vampire (1991), McGrath fuses desire with madness and the occult. More often it’s not sex itself that’s the danger. Rather, it’s sex that’s risk-taking or rule-breaking--e.g. committing adultery, desiring a brother or a creature, or using desire to summon supernatural powers.
But horror fiction's messages aren't always delivered with gore or organ music. Stoker’s Dracula was social satire. John Marks writes vampire fiction based on his experience as a producer for 60 Minutes; he says it's a way to satirize "a world that's already satirizing itself, every single day". On the same program, Charlaine Harris says her Sookie Stackhouse vampire novels should give her church "something to think about".
Much of the current craze for vampire fiction is in a more lighthearted vein, more like Marks and Harris than like Stoker's Dracula. However, even vampire chick lit, vampire romance, and vampire comedy bear a thematic resemblance to the I Shudder stories. Characters outside the norm, or with unusual powers, provide an extra-dramatic demonstration of the usual human struggles with self and society.
Read more...
Show less...
Burton's take on Wood is sympathetic; Johnny Depp's Wood is an obsessive with a good heart. Martin Landau's Lugosi is doddering but he comes to life (so to speak) when talking about his glory days as Count Dracula. The friendship between the two men adds some sweet moments to the film; it's not all laughs.
More than just a bad film, Plan 9 is something of a one- stop clearinghouse for poor cinematic techniques: The time shifts whimsically from midnight to afternoon sun, Tor Johnson flails desperately in an attempt to rise from his coffin, and flying saucers zoom past on clearly visible strings. Fading star Bela Lugosi tragically died during filming, but such a small hurdle could not stop writer-producer-director Ed Wood. Lugosi is ingeniously replaced with a man who holds a cape across his face and might as well have "NOT BELA LUGOSI" stamped on his forehead.
Roger Corman (
