Introduction: Nightmares made Manifest
What does it mean when a spectator identifies more with the villain of the film than the protagonist? In this series, I examine this question in the context of horror. I use national-character studies style anthropology (a la Margaret Mead), Marxian critique of ideology, critical film theory and Freudian psychoanalysis as my lenses.
Horror is that unique genre that allows the viewer to both despise and root for the monster. Perhaps the popularity of the horror genre is because we often see something of ourselves in the monster, that figure that is both protagonist and antagonist, holder of the subjective gaze, what Žižek and Lacan would call the master signifier. The viewer of a horror film roots for the monster that he or she despises because there is an identification going on there.
Freud, in his writings on dream analysis, describes the dream as fantasy fulfillment. For him, it is the realization of repressed desires that motivate our creative subconscious to develop these nonsensical narratives. Isn't that indeed what film is? The visual and auditory manifestation of the director's dreams, fantasies and deepest desires. Yet, if a film is a dream then what is a horror film if not a nightmare? What then does Freud have to say about nightmares?
Freud hypothesizes that the reasons that these distressing dreams arise are all related to wish-fulfillment. First, there is the ego, which creeps into even our unconscious life. The stresses and anxieties of our waking life invade the dream world so that even our dreams are not without a certain amount of moral guilt attached with them. Some of these dreams are what Freud terms 'punishment dreams' whereby our wish is to be punished for a past wrong-doing: fulfilled in our subconscious, dream life.
However, this does not account for all nightmares. Some of them are related to stressful stimuli accumulated throughout the day, whether it be emotional stress or physical ailment. One thing is clear in these dreams, though The ego tends to play a much larger role in these types of dreams than in what Freud terms 'straightforward dreams of satisfaction.'
How can we extrapolate this concept into the realm of film? Horror is a much more ego-centric genre than the romance or the comedy. In romances and comedies we are offered escape. Of course, often in these films there is little choice as to whether or not to identify with the protagonist, as is even more clearly evidenced in the ideologically-charged action genre (I will return to this idea later). In horror there is not a clear good or evil. In some films evil is even celebrated as the good. This is not necessarily true with all horror films, but the ambiguity of the genre is often what separates it from others. There is also the celebration of the inner sado-masochist. Horror allows us to experience, by proxy, the atrocious fantasies of either punishing our enemies or being punished by our enemies. These are the desires Freud tells us need to be repressed in order to get along with others in society. These are also the desires that psychopaths are unable to suppress. That is why horror is often psychopathic and utilizes psychosis' cousin, surrealism. In the Nightmare on Elm Street films, for example, Freddy Kruger is the ultimate psychopath, blurring the lines between the conscious and the subconscious.
Ideology also plays a part. Mussolini is famously quoted as saying, "Every anarchist is a baffled dictator." Passolini took this concept to its extreme in his most cringe-worthy film Salo: 120 Days of Sodom. The film would prove to be his last. During one of the films many scenes of sadistic sex the monsters of the film, the dictators, say to each other, "The true anarchist is the fascist because freedom comes from power." It is this unbridled, sado-masochistic hedonism that makes horror enjoyable to watch. It is flirting with the perverse, while at the same time we are aware that it's not real. It is merely a nightmare where we are in control. We can turn it off, close our eyes or even walk out of the theater if we want to.
As I've stated earlier, horror is unlike the action film for example, because the viewer is able to choose whether or not to identify with the master signifier of the film. In the action film the hero is always the hero, the protagonist always the protagonist. We don't have a choice but to root for the protagonist. But what if we don't relate with the protagonist and even, frankly, think the protagonist is a bit of an asshole? Neil LaBute's remake of the Wicker Man exemplifies this, even more so than the original (and vastly superior) 1973 version directed by Robin Hardy. Nicholas Cage plays a male police officer who invades the matriarchal community of Summersisle. When he bursts into the schoolhouse the teacher asks the girls the question, "What is man?" to which the girls reply, "Phallic symbol, phallic symbol." (In the original it is the Maypole that is the phallic symbol). In the end Cage's character is ritualistically sacrificed and righteously so. Cage is the phallic symbol, the puritanical penis demanding the rule of patriarchal law. The Wicker Man remake was marketed as a horror film, but fits more into the action genre's mores due to LaBute's interpretation.
A similar objection holds true for Christopher Nolan's the Dark Knight Rises. Bane, a preacher of freedom, equality, autonomy and class warfare is the villain against which what Žižek terms the Dickensian 'good capitalist' (a la Tale of Two Cities), Batman, must fight.
Put quite simply, LaBute's the Wicker Man is here read as an anti-feminist film just as Nolan's the Dark Knight Rises is read by Žižek as an anti-Occupy/anti-leftist film.
These two films are in stark contrast with the complexity of the Michael Myers character in Rob Zombie's retelling of Halloween. Myers is a psychologically complex individual. Abused as a child, he has learned to harden his heart and leave the virtue of mercy behind. He is the personification of a monster. However, even this monster has elements of humanity. He saves a woman in the mental institution from being raped by the orderlies and when he goes on a killing spree he mercifully does not kill her. Instead, he poetically punishes her would-be rapists. However, Myers is still a psychopath, unable to know the difference between right and wrong. He inevitably does murder the one orderly who actually is nice to him, solidifying his status as a monster.
The monster-archetype is thus exemplified in the Jungian sense. We see that the monster is within us all, but also not like us for one reason. The monster is the actor, the perpetrator of the Žižekian/Lacanian act; that which breaks all previous notions held within the master signifier of a particular ideology.
Another indication that the monster is the prevailing archetype in horror films is the seemingly universal character of the monster. A supernatural J-horror, an American slasher film or even the newer torture sub-genre all contain elements of the monster-archetype.
Yet, where does morality fit into the horror-genre and its tropes? The cultural relativism concept contributed to anthropological theory by Franz Boas tells us that morality is culturally determined. Horror films seek to subvert the morality of the cultures from which they come. However, in so doing horror is paradoxically moralistic. By portraying what we should not do horror films thereby identify what we should not do. As much as we may identify with the sadistic monsters on screen, we realize that they aren't real and we cannot do that in real life. Suspension of disbelief is necessary in order to enjoy horror or any other type of film, but for horror this disbelief is also part of the fun. We are scared when we suspend our disbelief, but in order to comfort ourselves we must tell ourselves continually that it is not real, even if only in the back of our minds. It is this that makes the horror genre unique, brilliant, open-ended and fun.
What does it mean when a spectator identifies more with the villain of the film than the protagonist? In this series, I examine this question in the context of horror. I use national-character studies style anthropology (a la Margaret Mead), Marxian critique of ideology, critical film theory and Freudian psychoanalysis as my lenses.
Horror is that unique genre that allows the viewer to both despise and root for the monster. Perhaps the popularity of the horror genre is because we often see something of ourselves in the monster, that figure that is both protagonist and antagonist, holder of the subjective gaze, what Žižek and Lacan would call the master signifier. The viewer of a horror film roots for the monster that he or she despises because there is an identification going on there.
Freud, in his writings on dream analysis, describes the dream as fantasy fulfillment. For him, it is the realization of repressed desires that motivate our creative subconscious to develop these nonsensical narratives. Isn't that indeed what film is? The visual and auditory manifestation of the director's dreams, fantasies and deepest desires. Yet, if a film is a dream then what is a horror film if not a nightmare? What then does Freud have to say about nightmares?
Freud hypothesizes that the reasons that these distressing dreams arise are all related to wish-fulfillment. First, there is the ego, which creeps into even our unconscious life. The stresses and anxieties of our waking life invade the dream world so that even our dreams are not without a certain amount of moral guilt attached with them. Some of these dreams are what Freud terms 'punishment dreams' whereby our wish is to be punished for a past wrong-doing: fulfilled in our subconscious, dream life.
However, this does not account for all nightmares. Some of them are related to stressful stimuli accumulated throughout the day, whether it be emotional stress or physical ailment. One thing is clear in these dreams, though The ego tends to play a much larger role in these types of dreams than in what Freud terms 'straightforward dreams of satisfaction.'
How can we extrapolate this concept into the realm of film? Horror is a much more ego-centric genre than the romance or the comedy. In romances and comedies we are offered escape. Of course, often in these films there is little choice as to whether or not to identify with the protagonist, as is even more clearly evidenced in the ideologically-charged action genre (I will return to this idea later). In horror there is not a clear good or evil. In some films evil is even celebrated as the good. This is not necessarily true with all horror films, but the ambiguity of the genre is often what separates it from others. There is also the celebration of the inner sado-masochist. Horror allows us to experience, by proxy, the atrocious fantasies of either punishing our enemies or being punished by our enemies. These are the desires Freud tells us need to be repressed in order to get along with others in society. These are also the desires that psychopaths are unable to suppress. That is why horror is often psychopathic and utilizes psychosis' cousin, surrealism. In the Nightmare on Elm Street films, for example, Freddy Kruger is the ultimate psychopath, blurring the lines between the conscious and the subconscious.
Ideology also plays a part. Mussolini is famously quoted as saying, "Every anarchist is a baffled dictator." Passolini took this concept to its extreme in his most cringe-worthy film Salo: 120 Days of Sodom. The film would prove to be his last. During one of the films many scenes of sadistic sex the monsters of the film, the dictators, say to each other, "The true anarchist is the fascist because freedom comes from power." It is this unbridled, sado-masochistic hedonism that makes horror enjoyable to watch. It is flirting with the perverse, while at the same time we are aware that it's not real. It is merely a nightmare where we are in control. We can turn it off, close our eyes or even walk out of the theater if we want to.
As I've stated earlier, horror is unlike the action film for example, because the viewer is able to choose whether or not to identify with the master signifier of the film. In the action film the hero is always the hero, the protagonist always the protagonist. We don't have a choice but to root for the protagonist. But what if we don't relate with the protagonist and even, frankly, think the protagonist is a bit of an asshole? Neil LaBute's remake of the Wicker Man exemplifies this, even more so than the original (and vastly superior) 1973 version directed by Robin Hardy. Nicholas Cage plays a male police officer who invades the matriarchal community of Summersisle. When he bursts into the schoolhouse the teacher asks the girls the question, "What is man?" to which the girls reply, "Phallic symbol, phallic symbol." (In the original it is the Maypole that is the phallic symbol). In the end Cage's character is ritualistically sacrificed and righteously so. Cage is the phallic symbol, the puritanical penis demanding the rule of patriarchal law. The Wicker Man remake was marketed as a horror film, but fits more into the action genre's mores due to LaBute's interpretation.
A similar objection holds true for Christopher Nolan's the Dark Knight Rises. Bane, a preacher of freedom, equality, autonomy and class warfare is the villain against which what Žižek terms the Dickensian 'good capitalist' (a la Tale of Two Cities), Batman, must fight.
Put quite simply, LaBute's the Wicker Man is here read as an anti-feminist film just as Nolan's the Dark Knight Rises is read by Žižek as an anti-Occupy/anti-leftist film.
These two films are in stark contrast with the complexity of the Michael Myers character in Rob Zombie's retelling of Halloween. Myers is a psychologically complex individual. Abused as a child, he has learned to harden his heart and leave the virtue of mercy behind. He is the personification of a monster. However, even this monster has elements of humanity. He saves a woman in the mental institution from being raped by the orderlies and when he goes on a killing spree he mercifully does not kill her. Instead, he poetically punishes her would-be rapists. However, Myers is still a psychopath, unable to know the difference between right and wrong. He inevitably does murder the one orderly who actually is nice to him, solidifying his status as a monster.
The monster-archetype is thus exemplified in the Jungian sense. We see that the monster is within us all, but also not like us for one reason. The monster is the actor, the perpetrator of the Žižekian/Lacanian act; that which breaks all previous notions held within the master signifier of a particular ideology.
Another indication that the monster is the prevailing archetype in horror films is the seemingly universal character of the monster. A supernatural J-horror, an American slasher film or even the newer torture sub-genre all contain elements of the monster-archetype.
Yet, where does morality fit into the horror-genre and its tropes? The cultural relativism concept contributed to anthropological theory by Franz Boas tells us that morality is culturally determined. Horror films seek to subvert the morality of the cultures from which they come. However, in so doing horror is paradoxically moralistic. By portraying what we should not do horror films thereby identify what we should not do. As much as we may identify with the sadistic monsters on screen, we realize that they aren't real and we cannot do that in real life. Suspension of disbelief is necessary in order to enjoy horror or any other type of film, but for horror this disbelief is also part of the fun. We are scared when we suspend our disbelief, but in order to comfort ourselves we must tell ourselves continually that it is not real, even if only in the back of our minds. It is this that makes the horror genre unique, brilliant, open-ended and fun.
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