The Psycho Hiding in Plain Sight<\/b><\/p>\n
Creep<\/span><\/i><\/a> (2014), directed by Patrick Brice, utilizes and subverts elements of postmodern horror to evoke fear through metalepsis. Pinedo discusses the violation of boundaries, the blurring of \u201cboundaries between subjective and objective representation\u201d (Pinedo, 22), as a method of generating metalepsis, the transgression of said boundaries. In the film, we are presented with the POV (point of view) perspective of Aaron\u2019s relationship with Josef. Immediately, this puts us in the shoes, rather the eyes, of the protagonist and allows us to better empathize with the character. However, Brice subverts the POV perspective by carefully weaving in alternate perspectives that create a greater sense of voyeurism towards the found footage. The film interestingly intersplices the POV perspective with set stills of the camera resting on a table or counter, as well as pull backs that remind us that we are in fact still watching a film. The play between immediacy and hypermediacy (Bolter, Grusin) creates a sense of uneasy voyeurism that evokes aspects of postmodern horror. For example, <\/span>the haircutting scene<\/span><\/a> has us helplessly watching Aaron sleep when all the sudden, Josef takes the camera and begins to \u201ccheck out\u201d, a la the male gaze, his victim. He then sets the camera down and begins to cut a lock of Aaron\u2019s hair. This shift from immediacy to hypermediacy and then back to immediacy, alongside the act itself, is unsettling for the viewer because we are forced to reconcile the nature of the film, a found footage film. Similarly, the film utilizes pull back shots to again remind us that we are in fact watching a found footage film. The first instance of this shot is <\/span>the \u201cburial\u201d scene<\/span><\/a>. At first, we think Josef is burying a Aaron\u2019s dead corpse, but the camera quickly pulls back and we realize it is Aaron just recording the television screen. This abrupt jump from perceived immediacy to hypermediacy creates more unease that we as viewers feel as we try and determine what is real and what is not. Additionally, this scene incorporates aspects of metaphysicality because we are watching Aaron view found footage. Typically in found footage horror, we maintain our immediacy because the film is shot from solely one perspective, the \u00a0singular POV. In her article, \u201c<\/span>Found-Footage Horror and the Frame\u2019s Undoing<\/span><\/a>\u201d, Cecilia Sayad argues that the found footage genre is so effective in generating metalepsis \u201cbecause the camera through which we see things is not external to the diegesis\u201d (Sayad). <\/span>Creep<\/span><\/i> metaphysically subverts that postmodern element of a transgression of boundaries, of which POV found footage is an example of, by playing with the diegesis of the camera, by interweaving multiple alternate perspectives with the original POV that shift our perception of the film from immediate to hypermediate, forcing us to think critically about the genre itself. <\/span><\/p>\n Creep <\/span><\/i>additionally evokes elements of postmodern horror by see-sawing the sympathy and empathy for the monster. The film continually builds and breaks the sympathy Aaron, and the viewer, feels for Josef, thus playing with the monster form as described by Jeffrey Jerome Cohen in his essay, \u201cMonster Culture (Seven Theses)\u201d. Cohen claims that monsters are \u201cdisturbing hybrids whose externally incoherent bodies resist attempts to include them in any systematic structuration\u201d (Cohen, 4). I argue that the film plays with Aaron\u2019s sense of sympathy through a back and forth exhibited by the monster, Josef. Though Cohen is discussing the physical problems with monster structuralization\/categorization, I think his argument applies here as well as we the viewers try to categorize our sympathy, or lack thereof, for Josef. At the start of the film, we are given key plot to the story itself through <\/span>Josef\u2019s background<\/span><\/a>. We learn that Josef hires Aaron to film himself talking to his unborn son, as his cancer returns and he is given only a few months left to live. We, through Aaron\u2019s view, immediately feel sympathy towards Josef, a dying father who wants to leave some sort of remembrance for his unborn son. However, directly following Josef\u2019s garnered sympathy is an awkward invitation to film him in the tub. <\/span>The tub scene<\/span><\/a> begins the see-sawing of Aaron\u2019s, and our, sympathy as we start to see Josef in this dual, give and take nature. Our sympathy remains here, but is thrown into question because the awkwardness of the scenario. Imagine meeting somebody for the first time and then within the first few moments of interaction, they ask you to film themselves in the bathroom. The film purposefully includes these dynamic shifts in sympathy and lack thereof to play with our understanding of the monster. Another example of this see-saw of emotion is how Josef continually garner\u2019s sympathy and then pretends to scare Aaron, and the audience, through jumpscares (a horror film trope). Multiple times in the film, Josef will encourage Aaron and ourselves to give him some sympathy, one example is <\/span>the initial invitation<\/span><\/a> for a casual drink. We are forced to feel some sense of sympathy for the monster; what is the harm in a casual drink? However, Brice intentionally throws the sympathy back at Aaron and the audience through jumpscares that revoke the emotion. The last example of this in the film is of <\/span>Josef\u2019s earnest confession<\/span><\/a> and then <\/span>his analysis of Aaron as a victim<\/span><\/a>. We sympathize for a lonely man who is just looking for a friend because we know that loneliness is agony. However, that sympathy that continually drives the narrative is what leads to Aaron\u2019s death and our confusion surrounding Josef as a monster. Because we feel both extremes of the emotion in play, we are unsure what to make of it as a whole. I believe the film intentionally plays with this emotion to play with genre norms, in this case, with how we view the monster in horror film. Where we typically feel no direct sympathy for the monster, postmodern horror throws that sympathy on its head and makes us critically analyze every detail in an effort to categorize our own emotions towards a dual natured monster.<\/span><\/p>\n Living in the Dream<\/b><\/p>\n P.T. (Silent Hills)<\/span><\/i><\/a> (2014), developed by Konami and Hideo Kojima, evokes postmodernism through its use of the surreal to generate metalepsis, a blurring of lines between what\u2019s real and what\u2019s not. Aiding the surreal in the postmodern game is the lack of logic, as Pinedo writes \u201cthat not everything can or should be dealt with in rational terms\u201d (Pinedo, 22). Beginning with the setting of the game, you are situated in a corridor that has one entrance and one exit. <\/span>This exit seemingly leads back to the entrance of the original corridor<\/span><\/a>. Pinedo writes that in postmodern horror, we are \u201ccaught within a closed system from which there is no exit\u201d (Pinedo, 22). I believe that this game plays that quote literally, where there is no real exit from this suburban corridor (there is a front door to the outside but it is locked). What generates the metalepsis is that to progress through the game, you never move on to another area, you instead descend into a more twisted and surreal version of the same looped corridor you have been in since the beginning. The realistic setting of the suburban home contrasting the increasingly dreamlike logic creates a lack of bearing that ultimately blurs the lines between fact and fiction. Furthermore, the progression through the game requires the player to look for enigmatic clues, ones that would not necessary think of doing. One example is in the later part of the game, you must <\/span>listen to the radio<\/span><\/a> give you instructions and then examine a portrait on the table in order to progress. The radio\u2019s broadcast interspersed with fourth wall breaking (more surrealism) instructions and the fantastical gunshot wound to the woman\u2019s head inside the portrait help create more metalepsis and blur lines because the offputting logic does not follow the realistic setting of the suburban home. Because we all assume the home to be a safe space, the lack of logic here creates a sense of unease that we as the players drown in. It is hard to determine what we can classify as real and what is a dream. However, <\/span>P.T. (Silent Hills)<\/span><\/i> has a scene in the game where its own logic becomes broken, a dream within a dream. Here you are in the house but <\/span>in an even more nightmarish version<\/span><\/a>. The game\u2019s setting becomes overtly distorted as \u201creality\u201d warps into a living nightmare. The looping corridor that you have been inside all game seems to coil itself into a maze of eyeballs and bare photos. Sonically, the non diegetic music also shifts into an even more ominous, foreboding haze the engulfs the player. The idea of a dream inside of a dream metaphysically takes the logic postmodernism subverts and pushes it through the glass ceiling. I argue that this is one of the strongest points of postmodernism in the game and that it takes the line between what\u2019s real and what\u2019s not and obliterates it, to the point where we can only assume that we as the player are stuck in the dream. However, after all logic and illogic have homogenized into one, the game throws a curveball at the player and <\/span>pretends to glitch out<\/span><\/a>. This scene also includes more enigmatic, surreal clues (a series of numbers), spoken by an outside voice that add to the overall metalepsis but what peaks the fourth wall meter is when the game seemingly resets and catches the player off guard, a true transgression of boundaries. This abrupt shift hypermediates the mainly immediate view of the player. For most of the game, the only fact we can hold onto is the camera\u2019s perspective, first person view. Kojima intentionally throws this \u201cbug\u201d into the game in order shake up the only thing we as players have left to hold onto, the framing. This fourth wall breaking scene makes us reanalyze the game as a medium and creates a distance between us the player and the player character. But we have to reacclimate ourselves to the game\u2019s setting once it reboots so that we can continue pressing forward towards the unknown goal. Parallel to found footage horror as described by Sayad, \u201cthe frame\u2019s elasticity and permeability\u201d (Sayad) envelops us the player because we have moment of withdraw from the game itself through the \u201cglitch\u201d. The frame extends to include us, the player, which enters us into the dreamlike setting of the game as a whole. <\/span>P.T. (Silent Hills)<\/span><\/i> takes surrealism and makes the player agree to play by its terms so that it can then break those terms and further isolate the player.<\/span><\/p>\n The Birth of Self Aware Postmodernism (coin new term here\u2190)<\/b><\/p>\n I believe that by comparing these two postmodern horror works, I am able to say that the genre has began to sprout an offshoot subgenre of postmodernism. A brand of postmodernism that itself is aware of genre code and works to play with that code. Firstly, both medias serve to point out mediacy and dismantle their own logic. While <\/span>Creep<\/span><\/i> shifts its mediacy through the movement in the camera (pull back shots), <\/span>P.T. (Silent Hills)<\/span><\/i> shifts the mediacy through the introduction of the fourth wall (the game glitch). I believe that this concurrent shift from immediacy to hypermediacy and then back to immediacy disorrients our logic and then requires it to work and resituate itself in an attempt to make sense of what is what. In <\/span>Creep<\/span><\/i>, the entire movie, we assume it is Aaron that has control over the camera, our view. Even when the camera shifts between immediacy and hypermediacy, we know that it is Aaron that holds us metaphorically in his hands. However, the ending \u00a0of the movie plays with that when it is revealed that Josef is the one that has the camera, it is his footage we as viewers find. Similarly, <\/span>P.T. (Silent Hills) <\/span><\/i>sets up the gameplay inside dreamlike logic. It commands the player to adhere to the logic, or lack thereof, in order to progress throughout the game. Even when there is a shift in mediacy, when the game pretends to glitch, we have time to resituate ourselves in the logic that was presented to us earlier in the game. However, in the red hallway scene, our newfound sense in dream logic is taken from us when we the player lose all bearing in the setting we thought to be true. We are forced to learn the new rules or risk being stuck in the infinite loop. Both medias intentionally throw their own rules out in an effort to critique the postmodern horror genre itself. Secondly, both works serve to cause confusion in the audience by presenting two extremes and forcing the audience to reconcile for themselves what is real and what is not. In <\/span>Creep<\/span><\/i>, we are presented with a dual natured villain, one who displays sympathy, even begs for it at the end, but who ultimately revokes it from us. He continually plays off of Aaron\u2019s good nature and then immediately throws it back at his face to make a point (a wolf in sheep\u2019s clothes!). He garners sympathy in his stories but his actions serve to undermine Aaron\u2019s, and our, sympathy. We are left to decide whether or not we should feel bad for the monster. The film plays with our emotions by presenting us with two extremes and causing us to see-saw back and forth between each. Similarly, <\/span>P.T. (Silent Hills)<\/span><\/i> plays with our emotions through its deliberate setting and mechanics. Because it situates us inside the home, we assume that we are allowed to be at ease. However, it takes the suburban setting and contrasts it with surreal and gruesome images. Additionally, I think the decision to maintain the same floorplan of the corridor throughout the game was intentionally chosen in order to give the player something concrete to rely on, something to situate ourselves around while the exterior slowly deteriorates into a nightmare. Because we as players cannot distinctly feel the presence of the home or the surreal singularly, we cannot separate out what is real and what is dream. The \u201cglitch\u201d scene itself begs us to reconcile with the game and determine which parts are real and which parts are not. Both medias understand that an element of postmodern horror is the transgression of boundaries, the unreal bleeding into the real. However, unlike previous postmodern works, they both effectively move from real to unreal and vice versa seamlessly to push our emotions to edge just swing them back in again. These two medias display the postmodernism can be reflexive upon itself and can be self aware. I argue that one of the genre\u2019s fundamental characteristics, subverting norms, can be self reflexive upon itself and that a new subgenre of postmodernism is beginning to form. A subgenre that critiques what postmodern horror has laid out in an effort to make the genre fully self aware, not just of other genres and mediums but of itself as well.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Bibliography<\/span><\/p>\n Bolter, Jay David, and Richard Grusin. 1999. Remediation: Understanding New Media. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.<\/span><\/p>\n Bolter, Jay David, Blair MacIntyre, Maribeth Gandy, and Petra Schweitzer. 2006. \u201cNew Media and the Permanent Crisis of Aura.\u201d Convergence 12 (1): 21\u2013 39.<\/span><\/p>\n