Throughout the course of the semester, my blog posts managed to touch upon a number of key themes from the class including death, horror, the eerie, the Internet, and artificial intelligence. A large portion of my posts, however, seemed to have a focus on the moral implications of our technology, media, and consumption. More specifically, nearly all my posts touched on the issue of ethics and morality. In a world dominated by endless conflicting viewpoints and disagreements, the same problem seemed to manifest itself across our course material. Though each post was in response to different articles/novels/shows, a seeming lack of clear, objective morality permeated across all subjects, which was one of the key takeaways I had from the course. The relationship between us as humans and the technology we use is inescapable, which I saw pertinent to understand the effects both can have.
My most recent blog post discussed the implications of AI ethics and the difficulty in deciding how these machines ought to be programmed. Funnily enough, my issue is not with the AI itself, but rather how we as humans would successfully agree on some definitive morality for these machines when we can’t even agree on our own moral issues. My first blog post, on the other hand, was focused upon the moral ambiguity that exists within the modern horror genre. This seems like the core issue I found in the class was regarding our own societal values and ethics. I was able to learn a ton about our relationship with death, technology, and media throughout this course, but this does not answer the larger question: what are the moral implications of all this? Obviously, the answer will vary from person to person which is why I see morality and ethics as the largest issue surrounding our relationships to death and technology. Technology, after all, is supposed to simplify our lives and compute without bias. In the case of morals, however, technology seems to serve the opposite purpose and complicate things even more. This understandably causes discomfort amongst people, which make it an ongoing, unsolved dilemma. It will be interesting to see where AI advances in the next few years and how we attack the issue of conflicting morals.
The ultimate takeaway I have from the class is the fact that everything operates in the grey area. Technology can be both good and bad. Social media can be both good and bad. Phones, cars, robots, reality television–the list could go on. But most importantly, we as humans operate within this same space. We are neither inherently good or bad or right or wrong. It is our choice to make that decision ourselves through our own lived experience. Our technology just happens to be a “black mirror” that we can use to reflect on our own values and practices, which, eventually, will have a lasting impact on the future. To maximize the potential of our own creation (technology), we as a society must first reach the potential within ourselves. “Death” comes into play when, or if, we don’t.
Perhaps the most prominent fear around the growing artificial intelligence industry focuses on the autonomy of the robots. More specifically, there seems to be a lot of anxiety about the unpredictability, or lack of morals, that these robots may exhibit when capable of making their own decisions. As humans, we question the ability of machines to make rational, ethical decisions, which also must align with our own conceptions of morality. However, figuring out just what our own societal morals and ethics are may be harder than originally thought.
In the STET piece we read for class, Ed, who appears to comment on the workings of a fictional Anna, expresses concern “about subjectivity intruding into some of the analysis” at the top of the article. At first, I was highly confused by what this website was supposed to be but began to get a better idea once I figured out that “stet” is used by writers to let editors know to let the marked phrase stand. As I reevaluated the article with this knowledge, I noticed that Anna writes “STET” in response to every comment that Ed has. Ed gets progressively more personal with Anna as the comments continue, ending with “We haven’t seen you in months, Anna. Everyone here cares about you. Please let us help?”. Predictably, Anna responds “STET”, meaning that she wants that statement to stand true.
So where do ethics regarding artificial intelligence fit into this? Going back to the quote about subjectivity mentioned earlier, this brief interaction on a proofread between Anna and Ed shows the complex morality that varies between each human. Unfairly, artificial intelligence is expected to have some objective, unflawed sense of ethics that are somehow more developed than that of humans. If Ed and Anna are unable to reach an agreement, then how can the technology which we program avoid our own biases? Ed and Anna represent a microcosm of the greater crisis we face–what do our morals ought to be? Highlighting this dilemma also questions why we, as individuals, place value on certain things but not on others. The issue is complex, and seemingly every answer raises at least 5 more questions.
With certain artificial intelligence like self-driving cars, the ethics typically follow a model of keeping the passengers safe and saving the most pedestrian lives as possible, which is relatively straightforward. When the situation is not so clear-cut, all expectations are thrown out the window. For example, an artificially intelligent lawnmower must choose between running over a cat or dog to avoid running over a rock and killing the man walking down the street. The mower must have some program that allows it to make this decision in a split second. Being the cat lover that I am, I’d program the AI to save the cat over the dog every time. But obviously, this opinion is not universally popular. So what should the robot do? Is there even a ‘right’ answer? Ed and Anna show us that an agreement will probably never be reached.
The talk of the algorithms often used with both social media and ads from the readings reminded me of all the instances in which I have been ‘attacked’ by targeted ads. Almost daily, and I’m sure every student in the class could attest to this, my phone seems to ‘spy’ on my conversations and actions, later gearing the ads on my feed accordingly. For example, I can Google places to eat breakfast in the morning and find an ad for McDonald’s breakfast on my Instagram feed minutes later. While not particularly something encouraging, it does make logical sense for my phone/laptop/etc… to use my browsing history in order to get a clearer picture of my wants and desires. This is sadly what happened to the woman who was constantly reminded about the loss of her daughter and many others like her.
The more sinister and invasive means of algorithmic cruelty, as seen in the other article, seems to stem from the targeted ads that are attained by the algorithm spying on our real life. People are ready to accept their moves being monitored while online, but draw the line when that same monitoring carries over to life away from the screen. We are told to believe that our ads do not listen to our conversations, but I can assure from experience that more people believe it to be true than not. How else can I explain the time before I studied abroad when a friend and I were talking about Marmite, something I had never previously heard of, and later open my phone to find an ad for the very same product? I don’t know how Mark Zuckerberg is going to defer that one, but ‘advanced algorithms’ do not seem to be a possible answer.
My lack of computer and programming expertise will probably prevent me from ever knowing for certain. But the way it stands now, and as the articles have suggested, people seem to be fed up of the pervasive and downright distasteful nature that ‘advanced algorithmic ads’ seem to be trending towards.
Humans have an innate desire to want what they can’t have. When a close friend, family member, or lover passes away, we tend to possess this same desire–to remain in contact with those that have left us. As Natalie Zarrelli’s article we read for class shows, even the brightest minds in history, like Edison, have sought ways to contact the deceased. Countless practices, traditions, and beliefs regarding a connection between the living and the dead have existed across varying religions, belief systems, and cultures. A staple of American spiritualism, which has since transcended into cult status, is the Ouija board.
Ever so present within American lore and horror, the Ouija board is believed to have origins just as mysterious as the boards themselves. Most are familiar with the simple board and totem that is supposedly capable of contacting spirits. I myself own a Ouija Board and have tried to contact spirits on several occasions with friends. Though I’m not entirely convinced of their efficacy, the experience is still highly eerie and potentially downright scary. Sitting in a pitch black room with the intention of contacting the spirit will put anyone on edge. As Fisher mentioned in their article, the ‘eerie’ stems from either “a failure of absence or by a failure of presence“. In either case, a Ouija board is clearly certain to invoke a feeling of eeriness. If the board piece does not move, aka a failure of presence, a sense of eeriness is created by the anticipation of movement or hope that a spirit will, in fact, respond. On the other hand, a failure of absence–i.e., a spirit communicating through the movement of the board piece–seems just as, if not more, eerie. While the hope of using a Ouija board is to engage with ghosts/spirits/the dead, when such engagement actually occurs, we fear the existence of these spirits since it reverts our general assumptions about life and death. It also creates a sense of curiosity about the spirits themselves, like who they are, why there are contacting us, and what their intentions are.
Either way, a Ouija board is an interesting relic of both spirituality and horror. If we can’t contact the paranormal through this game, then our assumptions about death seem to be confirmed. But if the board cooperates (even if it is just a friend moving the piece on purpose), we are then filled with an anxious wonder about our very own place within reality and doubts about our own mortality. Until someone like Elon Musk decides to abandon his aspirations for SpaceX and dedicates his efforts towards improving the Spirit Phone, we may just have to remain in eerie uncertainty.
Horror is a genre that seems largely incompatible with children. Many of these films are too graphic and too frightening to show most young children. I myself remember watching my first few scary movies when I was a child, the first of note being The Ring (2002). Though twenty-two-year-old me may no longer be frightened by most of the images in the film, six-year-old me distinctly remembers the nightmares I had in the ensuing weeks, and I can assure my parents do not forget either. Over the next few years, I tended to avoid scary movies as much as I could. By the time I was ten, however, I had developed an early obsession with horror films. Horror soon became my favorite genre, but sadly I couldn’t even get my sister that is two years my elder to watch these films with me. In a sense, it was illogical for me to engage with films that either horribly misrepresented children or made them unquestioning pawns of evil-doing. A child’s place within the postmodern horror genre thus became my question.
Are children just ‘extras’ to these films to ensure their grounding within our own reality? Do they act as reflections of our own societal fears about children? Or do children have more autonomy than we credit them for? While the correct answer probably lies somewhere in between, two distinct horror films with varying levels of child involvement, morality, and agency–Sinister (2012) and It (2017)–reflect society’s beliefs about children’s role within the postmodern horror genre in very different ways. Sara Martin Alegre, a professor of film at Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, posits, “writers like King no doubt use the child to portray the faults of the adults, but in the process they offer adult readers disturbing images of victimised and victimising children” (Alegre, 2001). At first glance, this appears to suggest that children in horror films are mere symbols that represent parental failure. While true, this definition seems to lack an encompassing reason that is applicable across all postmodern horror representations of children.
In her article Recreation Terror: Postmodern Elements of the Contemporary Horror Film, author Isabel Pinedo suggests that there are five required characteristics that work in unison to create a postmodern horror film, including, “(1) [a] violent disruption of the everyday world; (2) there is a transgression and violation of boundaries; (3) the validity of rationality is thrown into question; (4) there is no narrative closure; and (5) the film produces a bounded experience of fear” (Pinedo, 1996). As this essay will explain in further detail below, both Sinister and It both seem to comfortably fit within the postmodern horror film. Their existence, however, is complicated by the use of children, with each film possessing a different reason for doing such. As Alegre mentioned previously, children in horror partially exist to represent the shortcomings of parenthood and society. But as these films show, particularly It, children have a greater function beyond existing as a reflection of the fears and anxieties of parents. This mirrors the constant fluctuation and transgression of expectations so central to the postmodern genre.
Sinister
Scott Derrickson’s 2012 film Sinister follows the life of a once successful crime-fiction writer, Ellison, and his family as they move into a new house. Soon after the move, the family begins to uncover a series of murders that are linked to a collection of Super 8 films found in the attic. From the first scene of the movie, it becomes abundantly clear that the film exists within a postmodern context. A form of found footage, this clip of a family being brutally hung exemplifies, as Pinedo requires, a violent disruption of the norm, a violation of boundaries, and a sense of total irrationality. As it follows, these films end up closer to the family than previously envisioned. Ellison, the patriarch, and protagonist of the film, soon discovers that these tapes document a series of unsolved murders. For most, this would be a sign to stay away, but considering Ellison’s writing interests, these tapes become a point of intrigue.
A key feature of these *graphic* homemade tapes (seen above), as well as the movie, is the rampant use, or exploitation, of children. In all of these clips, the audience watches along as a child goes about killing their family in various ways. Highly grotesque and heinous, these clips soon become the focus of the film. Ellison catches onto the trend of these children murdering their family and seeks their origin. To his inner crime-writer, this is a juicy case waiting to be put on shelves. Ellison’s own personal aspirations appear to get in the way of properly serving the wants and needs in his family, which support several of the claims Alegre makes. “Men like King are looking into the darkest aspects of masculinity and considering how the destruction of the current model of failed fatherhood may bring hope for the child and the future,” she writes, which directly parallels Ellison’s own fear of failure in both his career and his fatherhood (Alegre, 2001).
Ellison’s failure to succeed in either facet ends up birthing the climax of the film in which his own daughter, Ashley, follows through with the murder of the entire family. We learn throughout the film that the demon, Bughuul, who is loosely based off the infamous “Boogeyman”, is the agent responsible for making these children commit gruesome murders. This suggests the negative impact that adults can have on highly-influenceable children. The tapes relay that Bughuul habitually preys on said children and succeeds in luring them into murdering their entire family; a twisted sense of ‘success’ that Ellison lacks.
The children of this film do not have much, if any, jurisdiction over their own lives and actions, which reinforces Alegre’s argument that “just as children were infantilised in the past to signify the patriarch’s total control of family life, they are now demonised to express the parents failure to control them” (Alegre, 2001). In this case, Bughuul assumes the role of the ‘patriarch’ that Ashley lacked in Ellison. She is misguided and easily influenced, resulting in her demise. This fear directly follows Alegre’s notion of children’s role in horror films, as Ashley literally becomes the monster that the parents are unable to contain. In this case, Ashley’s murder of her family represents the most severe instance of parental incompetence.
It
Based on the novel by Stephen King by the same name, Andy Muschietti’s 2017 film, It, follows a group of seven young outcasts that band together against an evil force reigning over their small town in Maine. After Bill’s younger brother, Georgie, goes missing (see above), the team of misfits works together to unearth the true nature of Georgie’s disappearance. Soon the children discover the existence of an ancient monster that takes the form of a clown–the infamous Pennywise. The clown itself is one of the most feared images in horror, especially for children. Pennywise, however, has a distinct advantage over the prototypical clown in the sense that he is capable of taking any form he wants. For each child in the movie, he takes on the form of one of their greatest fears. In the case of Stanley, seen here, Pennywise takes the form of an admittedly nightmarish painting. Pennywise’s form changes depending on the child, which invokes a very targeted type of horror for each individual. As the film progresses, each kid must conquer their own greatest fears, whatever it may be, in order to come together to later defeat the evil Pennywise.
Like Bughuul in Sinister, Pennywise embodies the recipe for a postmodern monster: a 1) violent clown that 2) disrupts the normal boundaries of daily life by 3) irrationally tormenting and capturing innocent children by preying on their fears. Pennywise, however, does so in a way that inherently grants the children more agency. He does not seek to possess these children to serve as pawns for his own agenda, like Bughuul. Instead, Pennywise requires the form of each child’s unique phobias to lure them with the hopes of acquiring their souls. It forces the children to make their own decisions that will ultimately decide their fate, as they have the choice to either succumb to their fear or fight it.
In this scene, Henry Bowers, the bully of the film, gives in to the allure of Pennywise and ends up killing his father, who oddly enough is a cop. When contrasted with the scene in which Beverly stands up against her abusive father, it becomes clear that the children and young teens in this film are more than just reflections of the wrongdoings of their parents. Henry’s father simply wants his son to stop being a deviant and bully, but Henry’s warped sense of reality does not allow him to do so. He is manipulated by Pennywise and, in turn, serves his agenda by giving in to his greatest fear (disapproval from his father) and erasing him from existence entirely. One would expect Beverly, who was subject to years of physical and emotional abuse from her father, to lash out in such violent and aggressive ways, but this does not hold true. She made the choice to stand up to her father which directly parallels standing up to Pennywise. The children in this film, as opposed to Sinister, have a choice of who they want to be. She appears to have a more developed sense of morality than both the adults in the film and Henry.
The complexity of Pennywise as a monster directly relates to the complex role the children have in this film. Though Alegre directly references It (the 1986 novel) in her article focused on the works of Stephen King, the film subverts her idea of children in horror more than Sinister, the film that was written by someone other than King. The group of outcast children thus revert the common trope of the helpless child, perhaps highlighting their standing as outcasts. In doing so, these children ‘bridge the gap’ between child and adulting, acting as individuals that, for the most part, have yet to be morally corrupt. They are able to combat Pennywise so effectively because these children exist outside the labels and expectations of their society. The children defeating Pennywise represents a divide between groups of outcasts (children) and Pennywise (pressures and expectations of society).
Analysis
Both Sinister and It comfortably exist within the most recent generation of postmodern horror films, considering both their subject matter and respective releases within the past 10 years. With that being said, these films leave the audience with entirely different senses of morality, representation, and justice. At the end of Sinister, the evil entity Bughuul remains victorious as Ellison unknowingly damns his whole family to death by moving to a new house. His own daughter ends up killing the entire family and serves as a pawn for Bughuul’s agenda. The children in this film are not seen to have any autonomy and act as objects of control for both the demons and the parents. It, on the other hand, exemplifies persistence and success with the children. All seven of the outcasts team up to defeat Pennywise in the end, though it is suggested Pennywise can only be defeated for a period of time and will eventually return for blood in the future. The triumph of the children in this film happened without the aide of parents, and perhaps in spite of them. Their outcast label allows them to act outside the expectations of normal children, which grants them liberty within the film that children are not normally granted.
At the end of both films, however, the fate of the monster remains at large. Bughuul was an obvious victor in Sinister by achieving his purpose once again, suggesting that he is likely to do so again in the future. It, interestingly enough, circumvents the children’s triumph of the monster by alluding to the fact that Pennywise can only be defeated for a period of time. The children then must create an oath, seen below, to ensure their mutual agreement to combat Pennywise when he inevitably returns. As Pinedo requires, both films possess ambiguous endings and a bounded experience of fear, which sets up perfectly for a sequel. (Note: Sinister 2 was released in 2015, while It: Chapter Two is set to release in Fall 2019).
So where exactly do children fit within the postmodern horror genre now? Conflicting roles of children in each film suggest that perhaps children serve a multitude of purposes within a postmodern horror flick. Alegre believes that “the function popular American Gothic fulfills today is that of pointing at the dark areas of contemporary American society, among which the troubled relationship between children and adults stands out” (Alegre, 2001). In both Sinister and It, this struggle between adult and child functions on multiple levels. This explanation of children’s roles in horror that Alegre asserts is undeniably evident in each film. For example, Ellison’s failure both as an author and a parent is projected onto his children in Sinister. After all, he is the one that set the course of events into action by obsessing over the Super 8 films and inadvertently shunned his children by getting so caught up in his own business. Sinister would thus appear to further the ‘genre norm’ assertions made by Alegre, that children in horror represent the anxieties of parenthood.
Contrary to what Alegre argues in her own paper, however, the children of the 2017 rendering of It appear to have a heightened sense of ‘self’ when compared to the children in Sinister, and horror films more broadly. This distinction is crucial to acknowledge the varying purposes that children serve within a postmodern horror film, which Alegre fails to adequately account for. In his piece Staking the Monster, Edward Ingebretsen suggests that “for one thing, the child represents the vulnerability and powerlessness that society presumably exists to connect” (Ingebretsen, 1998). The children in Sinister would appear to fall within this reading, while the children of It would not. Ingebretsen then goes on to say that “throughout subsequent history, the child/monster icon provides a tactical method by which civic emotions contra can be mobilized, focused, and placed in the service of social reformation” (Ingebretsen, 1998). I argue that, in the case of It, children also act as a means to examine the inherent opposition of child and monster, which tend to carry antonymous connotations. Ingebretsen’s claim then suggests that the children in the film posses ‘contra-morals’ to those of the monsters. Rather than just pointing out the failures of parents and society as seen in Sinister, the children in It represent a model of ‘social reformation’, offering a foundation of morals and identities to build upon. As a group, the band of misfits in It represent a hope for a better future in addition to a critique of the past.
At the end of her article Alegre goes onto say, “[each film] present, thus, different aspects of the relationship between children and monstrosity in adult fiction. What emerges from them is a common portrait of childhood as a time of isolation spent facing the horrors created by adults, while fatherhood is portrayed as the task of facing the monsters arising from faulty parenting” (Alegre, 2001). As is true with the postmodern movement in general, the place of children in films should be taken on a case-by-case basis. Children serve a number of purposes that are incapable of being replicated by adult characters. Children are increasingly becoming an autonomous group, which follows the societal trends of equality and proper representation. In any case, the role of the child in postmodern horror would ultimately depend on the context and desired ideologies of the film. The children either exist in contrast to the parents (Sinister), the monster (think of Insidious), or both (It), reflecting the failures of child-raising and modern society, while perhaps offering insight on how to reverse this, as is the case with It. In unison, the ideas of Alegre and Ingebretsen work in unison to form a working, though constantly transforming, basis for the role of children within the postmodern horror genre. As is true with all postmodern fiction, the use of children allows for a distanced look at our own values, hopes, and successes, in addition to our own anxieties and shortcomings.
Conclusion
While our highly vulgar horror films of the 21st Century may never be suitable for general child audiences, children still deserve critical roles and proper representations in the genre. Neither Sinister nor It abandon the norms of the postmodern horror genre, but they do display varying degrees of representation among children within the genre. As it stands, the child’s role within art is on the rise, representing societies movement towards the equal, ethical treatment of all children.
A child’s fit within the postmodern horror genre would thus appear to be non-linear. Children are the most explicit representations of empathy within the media. Their existence in horror films heightens the tension and allows a more overt look at our own anxieties and failures as a society. Children represent the future, which subliminally hints that the future is either doomed or saved. Depending on the writers/directors intended morality and commentary, the role of the child is always in fluctuation within postmodern horror. If only six-year-old me was aware that a demon coming out of the television was a comment on societal shortcomings and parental failure, rather than a targeted warning of my future fate, I might have been able to sleep better at night.
Works Cited
Alegre, Sara Martín. “NIGHTMARES OF CHILDHOOD: THE CHILD AND THE MONSTER IN FOUR NOVELS BY STEPHEN KING.” Atlantis, vol. 23, no. 1, 2001, pp. 105–114. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/41055012.
Ingebretsen, Edward J. “Staking the Monster: A Politics of Remonstrance.” Religion and American Culture: A Journal of Interpretation, vol. 8, no. 1, 1998, pp. 91–116. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/1123915.
Pinedo, Isabel. “RECREATIONAL TERROR: POSTMODERN ELEMENTS OF THE CONTEMPORARY HORROR FILM.” Journal of Film and Video, vol. 48, no. 1/2, 1996, pp. 17–31. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/20688091.
Zombie cinema and television have become a staple of American media since their inception in the 1930s. Popularized by Romero’s Night of the Living Dead in 1968, the genre has largely become a commentary about human nature itself, with the zombies acting as a sort of catalyst to instigate the human conflict. Dead Set, a British mini-series, seems to follow this same structure throughout the first two episodes of the show.
The most celebrated and mainstream example of zombie television is The Walking Dead. With its initial release in 2010, the show came 2 years after Dead Set. Having once been an avid fan of TWD for the shows first few seasons, I now have not kept up with the show for ~5 years. Part of the appeal early on, for me, was the constant struggle between human/zombie enemies. The outbreak, much like in Dead Set, caused instantaneous widespread panic, as people fought for their survival. The action and uncertainty of fighting an unknown enemy, much like what was seen at the beginning of both series, is the most satisfying aspect of the genre. Balancing that against battling other humans for power, wealth, and resources requires every character on the show to remain honest and aware at all times, even when there are no ‘undead’ are around to attack. Each week was a new struggle with both the human and zombie enemies, as things were still relatively new.
Around Season 5 of TWD, however, the zombies took a second-hand (they stopped being a major threat to the action of the show) to humans as the primary enemy. While realistic, human enemies are not why audiences tune into watch the show. As soon as TWD became so overt in its critique of humanity, it lost its appeal for me and many others that watched the show. I may have jumped ship earlier than others because of several of my favorite characters being killed, but Miles Surry, in an article from this past season, discusses TWD‘s decision to stray further from being a show about zombies. TWD is finally shifting the show’s themes, after the show stagnated between finding new settlements and fighting their corrupt leaders with the occasional zombie massacre for the past few years since I stopped watching. Now the show intends to examine the reconstruction of a zombie outbreak, as opposed to the fallout. Perhaps a fault of making the series so long, and thus needing to extend the plotlines, ratings and viewership have both been trending down over the years. With most of the criticism stemming from the writers introducing too many stale, unwanted, or unconvincing characters, it would seem that the show got too caught up in expanding the story and only spun the tires. The legacy of the show remains to be seen, with the success of this ‘rebirth’ likely being the determining factor.
Zombies clearly seem to be a critique of mindless Western consumerism and the “pack mentality”, which are commonly cited as issues ‘plaguing’ these societies. The half-dead, half-living appeal paired with the apparent lack of brain function and free-thought thus make zombies a perfect rendering of a tool scary yet recognizable enough to analyze certain aspects of our own human behavior. Dead Set fits the mold of balancing conflict, with the reality show being an obvious criticism of mindless consumerism. The fact that its a 5-episode mini-series leaves far less room to ‘go wrong’ since the show is not required to build massive plotlines. While TWD might be a better drama-series, Dead Set seems to do a better job of nailing the zombie-genre down effectively.
**I also greatly appreciated how seamlessly Dead Set fit against A Head Full of Ghosts, with both including external anxieties, such as demons and zombies, contrasted against a reality television set.
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.
The children of this film do not have much, if any, jurisdiction over their own lives and actions, which reinforces Alegre’s argument that “j