Category: Unit 06

After reading the article “Why Horror” by Noel Carroll, I have a brief understanding to how  horror fiction writers catch their audiences’ attention and peak their anxieties/fears. Basically, there are two main factors that build our interest to the horror stories. First, by using filming techniques and writing skills.  Through different techniques, it is not hard to influence a person to be frightened or more curiously in a storyline. Second, Carroll expresses that audiences  have a certain need for fulfilling emotions such as “curiosity, excitement, and the affection of uncertainty”.  With these two factors , Carroll revealed the principles or spirits of horror movies industry and how they works in sparking people’s nerves and fears. For this assignment, I found  two online articles that agree with the ideas that Carroll expressed  in his article.

The first article I found was “Why Our Brains Love Horror Movies” by Sharon Begley. In the article,  Begley analyzed major reasons why most people would  want to spend their money watching horror movies and its relations to physiological reaction of human’s nervous cells while watching the movies. She described that human’s nervous system required “periodic revving” to be continuously active and watching horror movies will excite this part of nerve system and keep the system active. In current society, many people face a lot of stress during their daily life, such as unemployment, education and health problems. When they go to the movie theater and watch horror movies, they can use this way to active their nerve system and release stress. It releases stress with the influential writing and storyline that engages the audience to feel  “curiosity, excitement, and the affection of uncertainty”. It puts the audience in a world that they know is not real, which adds comfort know that the “horror” is not real, but it keeps the mind active in a way that relieves stress. The “Safe” property of horror movies will attract people to increase their visit of horror scene. Unlike, for example, extreme sports, which may bring dangerous, horror movie can bring people the feeling of excitement without getting hurt.

The second article I found  answers the theory that  horror movie “touches” psychologically with curiosity. “The Allure of Horror”  by  Scott Nicholson, demonstrated similar notions with Carroll’s. Within horror stories, what drives the story lines and its success is based on curiosity. Carroll has made this point well in his article, “Monsters are, then, natural subjects for curiosity, and they straightforwardly warrant the ratiocinative energies the plot lavishes upon them” (pp. 281)  As a movie watcher myself, I like to explore into something unknown and uncertain, and I would assume others do as well. At the same time, I know that most people fear the unknown and uncertain objects. When the sense of fear and curiosity in our mind competing with each other, the sense of curiosity normally overweigh the fears because we don’t know whether the object is as a bad as we make it out to be, so we must explore the unknown to find out. In this case, curiosity drives people to discover the horror.

 

Carroll, N. (2002). Why Horror?. In Neill, A. & Riley, A. (eds.) Arguing About Art: Contemporary Philosophical Debates (2nd ed., Chap. 17). New York, NY: Routledge.

Begley, S. (2011). ‘Why Our Brains Love Horror Movies’, The Daily Beast. Retrieved February 17, 2013, http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2011/10/25/why-our-brains-love-horror-movies-fear-catharsis-a-sense-of-doom.html

http://www.hauntedcomputer.com/scottst22.htm

 

 

 

 

At the 2:05 mark, there is a sound of a girl voice singing.  This is an example of non-diagetic sound as it’s source is not visible on screen. Further, it’s a sound/singing effect that contributes to the story line.  The non-diagetic sound contributes to the aesthetic of horror in this situation because it alludes to a suspense that will scare viewers. It then becomes a diagetic scene as she is shown later in the scene. Also at the 22:05 mark, there is a sound of breaking of glass that it off camera.  This is an example of another non-diagetic sound that is also adding suspense and potential horror.

An example of a diagetic scene is at 22:45. We see a door opening out of a room. It makes a creaking sound that makes a very audible creaking sound that most old doors make. The sound is visible on screen and is present through action of the film. This adds to the suspense of horror because usually if one is alone and one hears the sound of creakiness, the person may feel some sort of anxiety.

An example of mise-en-scene occurs in the beginning when Buffy and the male character kiss each other. As they kiss the lighting turns dark and the “sun” goes down. Using mise-en-scene the director is able to set the scene and alert the audience to cues towards the plot, without using dialogue. This is also accompanied with the girl singing adding the the sense of horror.