Horror+Genre+Distinctions

Horror Genre Definitions



A. Kawin, Bruce F. “Children of the Light.”

Description of Good Horror, according to Kawin:
 * 1) “Noone gets off easy”
 * 2) “A good horror film takes you down into the depths and shows you something about the landscape.”
 * 3) The seeker, who is often the survivor, confronts his or her own fallibility, vulnerability, and culpability as an aspect of confronting the horror object, and either matures or dies.” (example, Mad Love (1935), which includes a love triangle among boy, girl and monster “where Stephen and Yonne Orlac survive only by agreeing to function in the terms in which the villain, Dr. Gogol, has cast them.” This is how the castration crisis is resolved.)



Difference between Horror and Sci Fi:
 * 1) Science fiction asks, “What would happen if…?” backed up with hard science and logical speculation.
 * 2) Horror is distinguished from sci fi based on “attitudes toward plot elements.”
 * 3) “Horror and science fiction are different because of their attitudes toward curiosity and the openness of systems, and comparable in that both tend to organize themselves around some confrontation between an unknown and would-be knower.”
 * 4) “The best horror films offer another image of human perfectibility”

Categories:
 * 1) monster stories
 * 2) supernatural stories
 * 3) psychosis stories

B. Yacowar, Maurice. “The Bug in the Rug: Notes on the Disaster Genre”



<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 150%;">Types:
 * 1) <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 150%;">Natural Attack: a) destructive form of nature, b) attack of elements, c) atomic (or some other) mutation
 * 2) <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 150%;">The natural disaster dramatizes people’s helplessness against the forces of nature (or by the technology they create).
 * 3) <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 150%;">The Ship of Fools: dangers of an isolated journey—The Cars that Ate Paris (1974)
 * 4) <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 150%;">The City Falls: People dramatically punished for placing their faith in their own works and losing sight of their maker—Metropolis (1926)
 * 5) <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 150%;">The Monster: natural and aberrant monsters from beyond—zombies and vampires, for example.
 * 6) <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 150%;">Survival: Detail the problems of survival after a disastrous journey—The Road (2009), Tank Girl (1995)
 * 7) <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 150%;">War: Imagery of carnage and destruction predominates over the elements of human conflict—Total Recall (1990/2012)
 * 8) <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 150%;">The Comic: a) can provide a happy ending, b) destruction extended into exuberant absurdity (This is the End (2013), c) parody (Eight Legged Freaks (2002))



<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 150%;">Conventions: <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 150%;">1. immediacy <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 150%;">2. little iconography—focus on disaster <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 150%;">3. entire cross section of society usually represented in the cast <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 150%;">4. often dramatizes class conflict <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 150%;">5. gambling may be a recurrent device <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 150%;">6. exception to cross-section drama is where the family is feset by the disaster <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 150%;">7. disaster film is predicated on the idea of isolation <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 150%;">8. characters’ isolation exacerbated by various conflicts among them. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 150%;">9. the war and disaster genres share the further sense that savagery continues to underlie pretense to civilization <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 150%;">10. Among the recurring character types is the specialist <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 150%;">11. There is rarely a religious figure in the disaster film. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 150%;">12. All systems fail in the disaster. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 150%;">13. The hero is usually a lay person with practical sense but without specialized knowledge <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 150%;">14. Almost invariably there is a romantic subplot. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 150%;">15. Often the disasters have a contemporary significance. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 150%;">16. Poetic justice in disaster films derives from the assumption that there is some relationship between a person’s due and his or her doom.