In reviewing my blog posts over the course of the semester, I found that one major theme developed linearly with each post: the inability of our society to face death for what it is, and how we have come to compensate for this inability. This theme appears in my first blog post in discussion of the source of fear in A Head Full of Ghosts. I discuss a particular scene which examples the general fear factor in the novel: the lack of knowledge and loss of control of the situation. The invent of technology and the resulting rapidity with which information can be shared has made our society impatient for knowledge. Thus, when we cannot decipher or exert a certain degree of control over the situation, we not only feel uncomfortable, but may also experience fear. The topic of death is one about which we as a public know very little, which may be why it is something we fear more than most anything else.
In my second post, I build on the idea of fearing death and the societal discomfort we have with the idea of our own mortality. In analyzing “Deadset,” we read a piece which demonstrates how the zombie gothic genre presents zombies in a way which targets our negative feelings about death, but at the same time, dehumanizes zombies enough to appease those anxieties. Another example of this strange fixation yet denial is seen in reflecting on death photography. We, as a society, enjoy watching violence and death of others, whether fictional or not, via TV and movie media. Both the zombie and TV/movie example highlight how humans are much more inclined, if not motivated, to confront death and mortality if at a distance, rather than concerning themselves.
A final way in which humans’ discomfort with death appears is in the commodification and profit derived from the death of others. For the last unit or so of class, we focused on the profit made off of the franchise of the dead, either via memorialization or legal action. What better way to mask our discomfort with something as common and inevitable as death, than by pursuing thing we value second to, if not on par with life? Making money off of death not only takes our own minds off of mortality, but also gives a defensive (and self-convincing?) air of nonchalance .
In sum, my blog posts seem to center around the general discomfort our society holds towards death, and the numerous ways in which we compensate for this discomfort either via technology or other material objects.
In reading Landfill Legend for tomorrow’s class, I felt as though the way in which the author described the Atari video game and its general commercial demise mirrors that of an actual human life. The author speaks about three phases of the game’s life: pre-existence, commercial existence, and disposal and memorialization. There is talk about the conception and discussion of the game before it came to fruition, much like people discuss and then conceive a human baby. The author also discusses the “life” of the game, during which its value and purpose derive from the ability to generate profit. As soon as that ability is stripped, or in this case was never realized, the “life” of the game is ended and then needs to be dealt with.
It is at this point when the comparison of the video game to a human life is most apparent. In describing the role of the landfill in which the video games were deposited, the author calls it a “nondescript marker: a final resting place that propels us backward to learn more about why products were buried, and how they continue to reach beyond the grave and fascinate us decades after” (Guins, 209). This is much like the function of a grave, from which a haunted spirit “emerges” to remind us of past events and or human mistakes made throughout history. Just as a “writer, musician, actor, or porn star, E.T’s fame lives on long after its demise” due to the “memorialization of its burial” (Guins, 210). In this way, the author directly likens the burial of a video game in the landfill to the surviving legacy of a human public figure, as “its afterlife status as memorialized object, particularly that the legend refuses to lie dormant” has survived similarly to how the legacy of a prematurely-ended human life might have been. It is almost as if, given the way the game was hastily generated and rapidly devalued during its time on the market, the essence or spirit of Atari’s ET will not let us forget how the potential of the game was precluded by human haste and greed for profit.
The readings for Wednesday’s class reminded me of the central argument of my haunted media project: the commodification of celebrity death. Just as everything during the celebrity’s life is amount the money and profit which they can make, so is everything after the celebrity’s death. My Haunted media project spoke largely about how there are many theories regarding the death of members of the 27 club, suggesting that their deaths by substance abuse or suicide were actually a business move to capitalize on their fame at the time. While the readings for Wednesday did not approach this subject directly, they do address the fact that celebrities and public figures do make money after they die, and often more money than they made when they were alive.
While I initially found it off-putting that people were fighting over the rights to the images, voice recordings and catch-phrases of the dead, I have to admit I now do not find it surprising. In this capitalist society, in which everything is fast paced and money focused, people will turn whatever they can into a profit. In the case of Marilyn Monroe, the number of people claiming rights to her estate and/or aspects of her identity were numerous. Being that she was a public figure, who has survived the past half a century through video and graphics, Monroe’s network while she was alive reached thousands of people. The claims made by the children of Monroe’s photographers are only taking place because of the money involved. Without the promise of profit through media and market, I doubt these individuals would have come forward to claim something mundane. However, the value assigned to images in our digital generation is far too great to let it go without claiming the rights to someone’s image.
This brings me to two questions which I will leave here:
Who owns your face/biometric data? Does the answer change if you call it one thing or the other?
In submitting yourself to the public eye and the work of consumption during their lives, do celebrities not also surrender themselves to the greater public in death?
Like human culture itself, the human approach to death has evolved with the advent of new technology. Of particular note is the perception of death at the turn of the 19thcentury, or as coined by scholar Philippe Ariès, the age of the death of the other. This era of death is largely characterized by a rapid increase in public memorialization of the deceased, focusing on the experience of the bereaved and a “certain romanticisation of death” (Graham, Arnold, Kohn & Gibbs, 4). A shift in thought similar to that of the 1800s is occurring in our generation, with the new phenomenon of online memorialization which has emerged within the last 10 years. Just as public memorials during the 19thcentury expanded the grieving experiences to wider circles, online memorials are transcending the boundaries previously set in place regarding death and mourning. These memorials, which take form on various social media platforms and websites dedicated to remembering the deceased, are de-sequestering the grief process to remove the temporal, spatial, and social boundaries which previously contained and restricted the personal grief process, along with the death of the individual themselves (Brubaker, Hayes, & Dourish, 15). In this way, the phenomenon of death has become less individual, but communal; less temporal than enduring. These online memorials “support ongoing interaction between the living and the dead (‘an enduring and expanding space for the deceased’) …” as the “engagement of the senses by online memorials mean less exertion of the imagination by the living when memorializing, mitigating the lack of proximity between the physical body and the memorial” (Graham et al., 6). The ease with which an individual can “interact” with the deceased is much greater through an online memorial than through approaching a burial site. Further, as strange as it may be, part of the loss which is felt by the bereaved is the lack of presence of the deceased on digital platforms. However, this loss is minimized via online memorials, as they resemble communication with the living and “express continuing bonds with the dead.” As put by Graham et al. (2015), through online memorials, the dead are “playing a social role in society because of the internet and democratized memory-making.” Thus, the aesthetics of online memorials not only break down temporal, spatial, and social boundaries, but also give the dead a renewed “life” of their own. With this in mind, consider the meaning behind the memorial page at hand.
The present work, a memorial page dedicated exclusively to the 27 club, aims to highlight and reveal the strangeness of both the 27 club itself and the phenomenon of online memorials. Before discussing the design of the memorial page, however, it is necessary to examine the 27 club as an entity in its own right. There exists a purely coincidental mass of young, influential artists and musicians who have tragically died at the age of 27. Many of these members either lost their life to drugs and alcohol or took their own life through suicidal means. The notional club is not recognized by any organization, nor are there official parameters for induction. However, a certain degree of fame, following, and artistic influence seems to be implicit in becoming a member of the club, and obviously, dying at far too young an age. The irony of this club emerges in its exclusivity, in that it seems almost desirable to be inducted, despite the morbid qualifications. After the death of her son, Kurt Cobain’s mother reportedly said, “Now he’s gone and joined that stupid club. I told him not to join that stupid club,” (Sounes, 12) suggesting that there was talk of becoming a member before his death. In the case of Cobain and his suicide, this premeditation may seem plausible, but in the case of other “accidental” deaths, many speculators have interjected their own theories about induction into the club. In his book 27: A History of the 27 Club Through the Lives of Brian Jones, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, Kurt Cobain and Amy Winehouse, Howard Sounes speaks to how this “flippant, vulgar” term has come to be widely understood and is source of intrigue for many. The author mentions that while journalists are the biggest perpetrators of speculation and gossip, some fans have claimed that this club is not due to random events, or a pop culture rampant with drugs and mental illness, but rather that there are higher, supernatural powers at play in selecting and grouping these prominent artists. This intrigue of tragedy and death is not new, but rather fits the mold of the death of the other as described by Ariès in the 19thcentury.
This romanticization of the 27 club death is further investigated in a senior thesis at Tulane entitled “Sells like Teen Spirit” by Bryce Berman, as he speaks about the ways in which those who survive these deceased figures have taken the club, and made it something of their own. As mentioned earlier, there seems to be an intrigue and cultural fascination with tragedy. Fans have come to conceptualize the deaths of these figures as honorable, “idolizing them for ‘dying for their art’ and for public consumption” (Berman, 10). This romantic ideal of dying for a cause, specifically their music, seems to dress up the death and mourning of these young artists despite their heat-breaking end.
While fans and followers are the usual individuals to commandeer the death of members of the 27 club, Berman exposes another, less obvious population of hijackers: managers and even the stars themselves. To die at the age of 27 and become a member of the club is to be memorialized and thus “metaphorically exhumed” (Berman, 13) alongside those greats such as Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison, Brian Jones, Amy Winehouse, and Kurt Cobain. It is rare that death would be conceptualized as anything other than the end of a life, as it is still taboo despite cultural fixation. However, by way of Amy Winehouse as an example, Berman discusses how death at the age of 27 may actually be a business strategy. He explains that after the peak of Winehouse’s fame, her death had become “a predictable but compelling career move—a new-age deus ex-machina in which death can save the celebrity from disintegrated into the cultural abyss” (Berman, 17) Thus, Winehouse’s death, while still tragic, was “the perfect end to a scandalous life and the beginning of cultural exhumation by the media” (Berman, 17). The key word here, aside from “cultural exhumation” is “media.” The deaths of figures such as Hendrix and Joplin were consumed and appropriated by the public through newspaper, radio, and word of mouth. However, for those members of the club who have died in this generation of technology, the commodification of their death is significantly more apparent. With the phenomenon of online memorialization, not only can fans grieve all the more publicly and maintain their ties to the famed figures, but also managers and the stars themselves will experience massive publicity and media consumption.
I have attempted to create an example of such commodification via this online memorial page dedicated to the members of this exclusive 27 club. The home page of this website opens with the faces of the most prominent members of the club, reminding you immediately that they are within a club, and you are on the outside. As you scroll down, you will see the featured club member of the week, Jimi Hendrix (much like an employee of the month). There are YouTube videos specifically about Jimi and his performances, a few featured pictures, and a poll where visitors to the page can vote for their favorite Hendrix song. The pictures and videos are typical of online memorialization, as they allow for individuals to reminisce and relive performances through a lens. However, the poll (although I could not figure out how to make it work) is a way in which, even after the artist has passed, the public can still impose their opinions on their art. This is both an example of the “death of the other,” as it is not so much about the artist as it is about the fan, and the commodification of death, as these top-rated songs are that by which the artist will be remembered andthe songs which fans are most likely to purchase/listen to. Other tabs are dedicated to conventional aspects of memorial pages; A biography page outlines Hendrix’s life, a discography page documents his lasting legacy as a musician, and a memories page on which fans can post their experiences regarding the artist. The memories page, of course, is again for the fans and those who grieve Jimi’s death, demonstrating further the death of the other and the emphasis of the experience of those whom the artist left behind, rather than the deceased himself. Finally, the VIP access page, is the ultimate example of the commodification of death as manifested by online memorial pages. In order to be a part of an exclusive group, in a way similar to that of the 27 club, viewers must register for a monthly fee. This money-making strategy capitalizes off of the grief of fans, their need to demonstrate their fandom, and their desire to be a part of an exclusive group.
In sum, online memorialization has produced a process of centophisation, or a shift in “beliefs about death and how the living should engage with the dead… ‘so that in their new state of being dead, the deceased can be envisaged as in life; doing and being, in familiar or longed-for places that the bereaved can also envisage and may share” (Graham et al., 4). This is exactly the purpose of the online memorial page for the 27 club which I have created, as fans are able to re-experience their memories, or quasi memories, through media. What is unique about my memorial page is the demographic of the deceased who are featured on the page. The core irony lies in the exclusivity of the 27 club—that in order to be inducted you must die tragically at the age of 27. The 27 club itself may be a business strategy, commodifying the death of young artists who have no better career move. However, the nature of the club paired with the phenomenon of online memorialization highlights not only the shifting, and strange attitudes regarding death in our society, but also the infiltration of greed into the one of the most sensitive aspects of human life: death.
References
Berman, B. (2018). Sells like teen spirit: The commodification of the addicted artist. ResearchGate. Tulane University. DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.20320.17920
Brubaker, J., Hayes, G., & Dourish, P. (2013). Beyond the grave: Facebook as a site for the expansion of death and mourning. Information Society, 29(3), 152-163.
Grahman, C., Arnold, M., Kohn, T., & Gibbs, M.R. (2015). Gravesites and website: a comparison of memorialization. Visual Studies, 30(1), 37-53.
Sounes, H. (2013). 27: A history of the 27 club through the lives of Brian Jones, Jimi Hendrix,Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, Kurt Cobain, and Amy Winehouse. Boston, MA: Da Capo Press.
Over the last few class sessions, we have discussed how technology and media are used as tools and vehicles for the grieving process. Many of the bereaved turn social media in search of support, comfort, or “thoughts and prayers.” Unfortunately, while there are many out there who genuinely do offer condolences and their own grief for the deceased, there is a population of media-users who capitalize on the digital expression of grief. We have spoken about “grief trolls,” who make jokes or seek personal gain at the expense of someone’s public grief. I did not fully understand this concept until having read a CNN article which popped-up on my feed earlier today, entitled “Her son died. And then anti-vaxers attacked her.” This short article tells the story of a young mother who’s 2-year-old son tragically dies of the flu, and her choice to reactively vaccinate her two other young children to avoid similar fates. As many of members of this generation do, she sought out the comfort from friends through her expression of grief via facebook. Yet instead of receiving messages of sympathy, kind comments, and sad face emojis, she opened her facebook to find alarming and condemning messages from those referred to as “anti-vaxers.” These messages ranged from blaming her for the death of her child and attacking the young mother’s personhood, to claims that the mother has made up this story to champion vaccinations.
This is a perfect, yet upsetting example of the grief trolls who transform another person’s public grief into a much uglier entity either for their own personal gain or just because they have nothing better to do. To claim that this young mother’s grief is unfounded, that she is to blame for the death of her child, or that the very existence of her child is fabricated completely invalidates the grief experience. These anti-vaxer grief trolls both inflict emotional harm on the bereaved and politicize another’s experience of grief to advance their own political agenda: that vaccines are bad.
While people have been using tragedy for political gain for years, this widespread grief trolling with specific political goals would not be possible without the role of social media in today’s grieving. The popular expression of grief through media platforms has rendered the grieving process notably more public than before, especially given the taboo nature of death in our society. Unlike the previously private dying and grieving process, this unboundedly public grief not only expands the audience which is witness to grief, but also creates a new platform through which strangers can appropriate and exploit the experiences of others.
Memento Mori: remember you must die. Pretty bleak, right? But what makes us think this way?
Death in our society is a complex enigma, considered taboo and accompanied by variety of competing emotions. We rarely speak about death, unless prompted to do so. Death has been dressed up as many other characters, using words such as “passing” and religious justification to make us feel better about it. What’s strange, however, is that while we shield ourselves from the concept of death, our own mortality, and the societal baggage it carries, we love to surround ourselves with the morbid through media.
If you have ever watched Criminal Minds, you know what I mean. Popular TV and film often incorporate and even fixate on the topic of death in their productions, as the audience seems to be fascinated and intrigued by the concept of the death of others. We “enjoy” watching horror movies, where characters drop like flies, or documentaries about serial killers, in which each killing is grotesquely described. The irony, then, appears in our inability to face our own mortality, yet we love to observe the death and dying of estranged others.
While it may seem a far fletched comparison, this pop culture trend of “death in media” is not all that different from the death photography of Victorian England. The use of photography to capture the last image of the deceased, and to immortalize what once was, is just another way in which media exposes human mortality. In Susan Sontag’s “On Photography,” she speaks about how the invent of the photo changed the way in which we view the world, as “taking photographs has set up a chronic voyeuristic relation to the world which levels the meaning of all events” (Sontag, 11). In the case of death photography, the picture “confers on the event a kind of immortality (and importance) it would never otherwise have enjoyed” (Sontag, 11). This paradox of death photography emerges in the way in which a photo of the deceased both immortalizes those in the picture, while also provided a permanent reminder of our own inevitable death.
Death in popular TV and media has come to serve a very similar purpose as death photography, in that while in viewing the death of fictional characters (or distanced, real people in the case of non-fiction) we may have a little comfort in the reminder that we are still living, but also that these images of death also serve as a memento mori in their own way. There is something inherent in human nature that drives us to fixate on death, despite our society’s backwards inclination to deny and bury death as it comes to actually affect us. The use of media, and the protection of a “lens” gives us a vehicle by which we can safely view death and remember our mortality, while being distanced enough that we still feel comfortable.
Despite our innate instinct to survive and avoid threatening situations, humans have come to enjoy and even seek out thrilling and fearful experiences recreationally. From haunted houses to Hollywood horror, the adrenaline rush of jump scares and gore have become commercialized as a way to make money off of our desire for stimulation. One of these most lucrative domains, the film industry, has produced blockbuster after blockbuster to insight fear and unease in the audience, who hungrily consume the media content. With the invent of pervasive technology and rapidly shifting cultural attitudes, this genre of film has evolved into a more menacing, psychologically unsettling form. Postmodern horror, as described by Isabelle Pinedo in her piece “Recreational Terror: Postmodern Elements of the Contemporary Horror Film,” can be identified by five characteristics: the disruption of the everyday world, the transgression of conventional boundaries, concern for the validity of rationality, lack or narrative closure, and a bounded experience of fear (Pinedo, 20).In this way, the conventional horror trope of good conquering evil is replaced by a more ambiguous, unpredictable plot.
The horror genre has continued to change with the times, introducing “late-postmodern horror” in which fear stems from the unexpected, uncategorizable elements of the film. A work of late postmodern horror often includes the characteristics of an unbounded experience of fear, hypermediacy, self-reflexivity, and metalepsis. In particular, metalepsis, or the “transgression of boundaries between narrative levels or between the inside and outside of the text,” (Sample) has become a popular trope by which horror can instill in the audience an uncertainty about what is real and what is not. In this essay, I will explore and compare the use of postmodern and late postmodern horror elements in two works with the intention of highlighting the ways in which they differ and the overarching themes which they share.
Christopher Nolan’s Inception, often argued to be one of the most thought-provoking films of our generation, involves a story in which individuals can enter into and manipulate the dreams of others. There are levels to these dreams, such that you move further and further from the surface of reality as you dive deeper into the dream world. To reference a popular catch phrase regarding this film, the audience follows the characters as they experience the happenings of a dream, within a dream, within a dream etc. This film embodies and employs a number of Pinedo’s identified elements of postmodern horror, namely a disruption of everyday normalcy, the questioning of rationality, and a lack of narrative closure. In the film, characters are seduced from mundane, everyday life by the controllable, vibrate dream-reality. In fact, the dream worlds can so closely resemble reality that the Cobb, one of the main characters, cautions against the incorporation of real memories, as this is “the easiest way of losing your grasp on what’s real and what is a dream.” (Inception, 2010) In the name of rationality, you should always be able to tell what is real and what is not based on tell-tale markers. However, the construction of these “dream worlds” pull from the psychological content of the holder of the subconscious, such that reality and dream merge into an indistinguishable whole. Because rationality is no longer an effective means by which one can distinguish reality and fantasy, the characters each have a “totem” which signals to them which realm they are in. Cobb’s totem, a spinning top which once belonged to his wife (lost to the dream world), will spin endlessly if in a dream. This totem becomes particularly important at the end of the movie, which may be the most psychologically gripping and unsettling scene of the entire work. As the plot comes to a close, the characters successfully achieve their objective and emerge from the layers of dream realms. As the narrative follows Cobb and his pursuit of his goal to reunite with his children, it seems as though there will be a happy ending. However, as he returns, and we are witness to his emotional family reunion, Cobb puts his spinning top in motion on the table. Yet, Nolan plays the ultimate trick on the audience, as the scene goes black before we can see the top cease to spin. The one marker used to distinguish between dreams and reality is compromised by the reminder that we are the audience, viewing a snapshot of a story through a camera lens. This lack of narrative closure, wondering if Cobb has actually made it back or has just managed to enter another layer of dreams, coupled with the overt reminder that medium of this story is film, are two major elements of postmodern horror.
The second work which I will analyze is an episode of Black Mirror, a Netflix show written by Charlie Booker. This series is centered around the theme of technology advancing to the point where it turns sour, either taking over human nature or leading to its ultimate destruction. In the episode “Playtest,” a vulnerable American who claims to enjoy being scared participates in a beta test of a technologically advanced video game. This game uses the psychological content of the player to construct an individually catered horror experience, like the combination of a spider and an old bully.
However, the game takes a rapid turn, as the fear element of the game becomes unbearable for the character. Certain events take place, in which the ability to discern what is real or not real disintegrates. The game moves to use not only characters which take part in the everyday life of the player, but also incorporates tactile sensations such a touch and pain.
The are a number of scenes for both the player and the viewer which cannot be deemed “real” or “not real” until we are shown the comparison to actual reality. This is similar to the dream world of Inception, as dreams “feel real while we are in them. It is only when we wake up that we realize something was actually strange.” (Inception, 2010)This is an overt use of Pinedo’s element of postmodern horror, that the validity of rationality is thrown into question in conjunction with a disruption of everyday life. Overtime, the psychological specificity of the game is too personal, and the player begs to be let out.
We see the player as he is removed from the game, and proceeds through a series of “waking-up,” until he is released to go home and return to his mom. The final minutes of the episode involve everyday elements, such as planes, flight attendants, the player’s home, and even his mother. This is as “real” as it gets, pulling from both unique sentimental aspects of life as well as generically “real” elements with which the audience can identify. However, it is not until the last 5 minutes of the episode, that it is revealed to the audience that the player never did make it home, but that he dies in the testing room. In this way, the audience experiences the majority of the episode thinking that, based on conventional rationality, the player is moving towards returning to the “real world” with a happy ending. The viewer is taken through a rollercoaster of levels, as they are time and time again shown that they are wrong—what they thought was finally “real” was in fact not.
Both of these media works employ postmodern horror elements, as identified by Pinedo, to instill in the audience an unsettling doubt of what is real, not real, and their ability to discern between the two. Yet there is an even greater overarching theme found in the comparison of these narratives: the use of a certain type of metalepsis. Instead of an intrusion of extradiegetic elements into the diegetic realm, the metalepsis “emerges not from the transgressed intrusion between the levels of ‘telling’ and ‘told,’ but from the interferences among the different levels of the ‘told.’” (Kiss, 37) In Inception, this is seen in the layers and layers of “dream” reality through which we follow the characters through the film. In “Playtest,” the different levels within the narrative occur as part of the player’s experience of the horror game. This form of metalepsis can be just as impactful, if not more so, than the typical form. In his analysis “Narrative Metalepsis as Diegetic Concept in Christopher Nolan’s Inception (2010),” Miklós Kiss explains the effect of metalepsis as seen in Inception. By layering diegetic levels within the same narrative, “the viewer becomes doubtful about the status of reality… the idea preys upon the sense that the metaleptic playfulness may transgress not only the story’s embedded levels, but the film’s diegetic frame too, triggering an outward, extradiegetic emotion that unravels baffling feelings in the viewer.” (Inception, 42) While this analysis is specific to inception, and the fact that the deepest level of the dream world could be reality and vice versa, this effect appears in “Playtest” as well. In the book Black Mirror and Critical Theory, by Angela M. Cirucci and Barry Vacker, the episode is described as “moving in the borderland between virtual reality, perception, and memory.” (Circucci & Vacker, 206). The numerous layers of “reality” which the player experiences could all feasibly be true reality, based on rationality and our perception of everyday life. Unlike Inception, where the audience is left without a final answer about reality, it is revealed to the audience in the last five minutes of the show that almost none of the narrative has been real. In the case of both of these works of post-modern horror, the same form of metalepsis instills in the viewer uncertain about the ability to tell what is real or fake, causing a ripple of existential questioning and fear even after the movie or episode ends.
The final point of comparison between Charlie Booker’s “Playtest” and Christopher Nolan’s Inception is the concept of time during the narrative. In recounting his prior experience in the dream realm, Cobb explains the dangers of going too far beneath the surface. He says, “I didn’t understand the concept that hours could turn into years down there, that we could get trapped so deep, that when we wound up on the shore of our own subconscious, we lost sight of what was real.” (Inception, 2010) In the dream world, the deeper you go, the farther away from real time you get. This time disconnect appears in “Playtest,” as the audience experiences what seems to be hours in the game, but in actuality is only a matter of seconds. In the last five minutes of the episode, the audience returns to the brightly lit test room, in contrast with the dark tones of the game-world. In this scene, the camera focuses on testing assistant as she records the data for the test, and under the duration, she types 0.04 seconds.
The hours and hours of time spent in these alternate realities, following the player through the video game, his layers of waking up, and his entire flight from the UK back to his home in the U.S., lasted less than a tenth of a second. Thus, in both media works, the most linear, constant aspect of reality is skewed such that we can no longer rely on it to contextualize our world. Above all other aspects of the media, this crack in the foundational concept of time is the most profound for the audience.
At the core of postmodern horror is the psychological, unnerving elements which stay with the audience beyond the jump scares and gore of conventional horror. In employing Pinedo’s postmodern elements of unbounded experience and the uncertainty of rationality in conjunction with diegetic metalepsis, the 2010 film Inception and “Playtest” shake the foundation of what the audience considers to be constant and non-negotiable: time. Our modern conception of time is linear, as its governance over days, months and years gives meaning to our experience on earth. However, the introduction of multiple narrative layers and the inconsistency of time rips out from under us the meaning of life as we know it. This form of existential fear and uncertainty, in my opinion, is the essence of late postmodern horror.
In the Netflix series “Dead Set,” ordinary people are tragically transformed into flesh-eating zombies faster than the camera can follow. These zombies, which are quick on their feet and unrelenting in their search for a human meal, have bright blue eyes and emit unearthly, snarling and screeching noises as they chase and attack their prey.
While some may say that the noises emitted by these zombies add to the terror which they elicit, I argue that it would be much scarier if the zombies did not make these unearthly sounds and instead maintained their human characteristics. In the reading for today’s class, the author speaks about how simple, almost negligible changes to the “enemy” are used to justify the violent killing which takes place in many horror films or video games (Kocurek, 87). These changes can take the form of different colored blood, alien-like behaviors, or in the case of Deadset, the eyes and noises which characterize the zombies. This change makes the killing more palatable, and creates a distance between the human protagonists and the monstrous enemy. In this way, the horror of the of the zombies stems from the fear of being eaten, and a certain degree of relief is felt by brutally killing them with a head wound.
I argue that while the concept of being eaten by a zombie is indeed horrifying, the snarling dehumanizes the zombies to a point where it actually detracts from the horror. If the zombies were to lose the unearthly sounds, but rather maintain their recognizable human qualities, there would be an added, and more psychological layer of horror to the plot. In the episode, “Her Name Was Claire,” the main protagonist watches someone she knew ravenously munch on a corpse below. This past-tense implies a termination of identity– that this zombie is not longer the human Claire, but rather is a monstrous other who must be killed. But what if Claire maintained the characteristics of Claire, just with the added zombie characteristics of mania and an appetite for human flesh? This would make the hapless killing of zombie enemies much more psychologically complex, with fear stemming from not only the threat of being eaten, but also of having to smash in the head of someone who you actively know. This idea takes the concept of “dead kindred” to an extreme, such that the antagonists of the story are not some distinct, dehumanized other, but rather are still included as part of the human community. The psychological horror which stems from the thought of killing someone you know tends to strike a deeper part of the conscious, and maybe even subconscious, than the gore and violence of conventional horror (unless you are a psychopath). Further, the maintenance of human characteristics without the additive growling and animal like-behavior adds a more realistic feel to the story-line.
The reading for Wednesday’s class discusses the use of zombie gothic genre to both appease and target the real anxieties of society. In Deadset, this is achieved by having a zombie monster which is not quite human, but just human enough to make us think. However, if this is taken a step further, edging on more targeting of real anxiety than appeasing it, the series would be much more effective in instilling fear in the audience. That being said, I am not sure this degree of horror would appeal much to the public, and would probably never actually be enacted in film, as the main point of movies and shows is to appeal to and be consumed by the masses.
In reading the section of Trembley’s books assigned for today’s class, one particular scene stood out to me. The incident in the basement, which seems to be the first normal interaction between Merry and Majorie since the beginning of the book, brought to mind the uncertainty of reality and question of reliability as discussed in class. In this scene, Majorie discloses her “biggest secret of all”: she is faking her possession. Her story seems likely, and almost noble, as she is sacrificing herself for the wellbeing of the family and home. However, as Merry points out, the story is not completely air-tight, but rather is Majorie “trying to convince herself that she was okay and in control of what was happening to her and to us.”
This quote struck me for a number of reasons. First of all, it adds to the theme of unreliability in the novel- what is real or not- a trope of postmodern horror. Second, Marjorie’s questioning of her own state of being and subsequent attempt to feign control makes me think about our society’s need for predictability and authority over a situation. This control that we long for often comes in the form of knowledge, disseminated through and digested by technology. Much of our modern day fears, as evidenced through popular horror, stems from the lack of knowledge or understanding of a situation. When we do not have information automatically at our finger tips, or an easy solution is not readily available, we tend to panic. Majorie is quick to defend herself and her self-governance, stating that her behavior is a game over which she has control and design. Her father, unsure of how to explain his daughter’s behavior, turns to the church to “fix” the problem. While dealt with in different ways by the members of the Barrett household, the main source of fear seems to rise from the uncertainty and lack of “diagnosis and solution” to their family situation.
With the aid of technology and global communication, there is often little in this world which we cannot explain or google to find an answer. However, the inconclusiveness and mystery surrounding Marjorie’s ailment, as reinforced by her own failure to understand what is going on, adds to the fear of both the family and the reader.
Just as Marjorie’s father easily adopts the idea of possession and Majorie herself claims that it is all an act, our society tends to jump on the easiest explanation for things to dissolve fear and restore normalcy. Scape goats, while first introduced to me as something from the time of the Scarlet Letter, are still very present in our culture. We have become accustomed to immediate gratification via technology, thus have lost the skill of patience in finding the worthwhile answer. If a solution cannot be reached within a certain period of time, panic ensues and we begin to grab at straws. Technology has been glorified for uniting the globe and providing a medium through which information can be shared. However, with the growing need for immediate gratification and the tendency to jump on the easiest, potentially detrimental, way out, technology may be hurting out society rather than helping.
After recognizing Marjorie’s bluff, Merry says, “in that moment, i was afraid for her instead of being afraid of her.” In this scene, the aspect of fear is not the possession itself, or even the prospect of possession, but rather is Majorie’s inability to grasp and make sense of what is happening to her. Funny how not knowing the facts may be scarier than possession by the devil himself.
