Horror and Slenderman

It is hard to come up with a reason as to why humans are obsessed with horror. Why do people sit through hours of binge-watching all of the Saw movies? Why do we want to see the carnage in Friday the 13^th? According to Carrol, we are all part of a collective Scooby Doo gang, looking to unmask the villain, so to speak. Essentially, we are too curious to turn away (p. 190). Additionally, we get engrossed in the story’s narrative which only fuels our fascination. Honestly, it is hard to dispute these. While watching Psycho, I understood how it was scary for the time (to be honest, I didn’t think it was that scary, but it came out in 1960, so the horror aspect was pretty cheesy). I could definitely imagine people being glued to their seats but also not too interested in the killing scenes. However, they stayed through it, wanting to know about Norman and his ridiculous mother. I can’t dispute this either since I have seen plenty of gory movies where I really wanted to leave, but I found myself sticking around for the story and the “who-did-it” part at the end.

Aside from movies, this fascination with horror bleeds out into other aspects of the theatrical world. We channel it with video games, too. If you have ever played Slenderman online, you find yourself engrossed in fear. Your character literally walks around the dark woods aimlessly searching for pieces of paper. Even though you know it is possible for Slenderman to appear at any moment, you still jump out of your skin when he appears. So why not just stop? As Carrol insists, it “stimulates our cognitive appetite with the prospect of something previously inconceivable.” Slenderman is a character we cannot fathom because nothing about his background is known. We don’t even know WHAT he looks like. We are fascinated with the unknown, so we work to sort out his story. In relations to Carroll, this easily fits in with his Universal Theory. It is easy to relate this theory to horror games, though, because they are basically mini movies.

What about our actual reality? Why do people run out to haunted corn mazes and houses? Why are we literally paying other human beings to briefly show us horrors we never would have encountered otherwise? Unlike movies, we know the people behind the horror, maybe not personally, but we do know it. They cannot keep us in suspense, right? I think Carroll would care to argue that they absolutely can: “the whole structure and staging of curiosity in the narrative, in virtue of the experience of the extended play of fascination it affords.” They are mainly narratives with different stories along with them (especially Universal Studios Halloween Horror Nights). We are still part of a story – more of an observer than a player. We are willingly entering into this house, regardless of how much we hate the horror involved. We are participants, not necessarily players in it. In a sense, it might not be a movie, but it follows the narrative that Carroll stresses in his General Theory.

However, I still have no earthly idea how to justify people wanting to go into those haunted houses where they actually get tortured and touched by actors. Sounds a bit too intense for my taste!