Our discussion in class on Wednesday regarding the postmodern horror film really got me thinking about current aspects of horror that have changed since the classical era of film. One particular feature that I wanted to bring up at the end of class was directly related to the idea of ambiguity. In particular, my focus turned towards the increasing “moral ambiguity” within the postmodern horror genre. What was once a clear dichotomy between a distinct good and evil has since become something much more complex and uncertain.
To better explain this idea, it is important to understand how it functions within specific films. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is a perfect example of the distinct dichotomy between good and evil. A person is essentially split into two halves, one good, and one evil. Dr. Jekyll fights to keep the evil Mr. Hyde at bay, who keeps coming back to wreak havoc and commit crimes. The tension and divide between the two could not be more clear cut. The man has a literal monster inside of him, after all.
Opposingly, an example of a postmodern horror film(s) that stuck out to me for its ‘moral ambiguity’ was the Saw franchise. Under all the grotesque, dramatized gore, there really is a good question at hand. It has been a few years since I have watched any of the Saw films, but a recurring theme throughout each is about how Jigsaw only deploys people that he knows have done something bad into his torture chambers. Sure, it is heinous of Jigsaw to invoke such gruesome conditions, but the films do make you think about whether or not some of the characters had it coming. Are they right to kill other characters to save themselves? Do they deserve to be there? Are they are the truly evil characters or is Jigsaw? I recall one of the films contained a lawyer of sorts who denied health insurance to a man with cancer, who ended up dying. At the end of the movie, the same man was killed by the family of the father he denied healthcare to. No one felt bad for his death, which recalls this same moral ambiguity. I am in no way advocating for the Saw films, but the overt sense of ambiguity within these films fit the argument perfectly. My theory is that this growing trend of moral ambiguity stems from our own fear that we ourselves are the ones that are the true evil monsters–an uncomfortably self-aware truth…
Within the first 60 pages of Paul Tremblay’s A Head Full of Ghosts, it is clear the story is structured in a way that imposes a similar ambiguity. The fact that Merry is recounting events from when she was 8, the fact that the people involved are all family members, etc… all suggest that the reader will be forced to make active judgments to fill in the gaps as the narrative progresses. Given the current uncertainty, I’m excited to see where the story ends up going and if it will leave the reader with an ambiguous sense of what exactly happened and what was right or wrong.