THE PHILOSOPHY OF HORROR THE PHILOSOPHY OF HORROR or PARADOXES OF THE HEART NOËL CARROLL ROUTLEDGE • New York & London Published in 1990 by Routledge An imprint of Routledge, Chapman and Hall, Inc. 29 West 35 Street New York, NY 10001 This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2004. Published in Great Britain by Routledge 11 New Fetter Lane London EC4P 4EE Copyright © 1990 by Routledge, Chapman and Hall, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Carroll, Noël (Noël E.) The philosophy of horror. Includes index. 1. Horror in literature. 2. Horror tales—History and criticism. 3. Horror films—History and criticism. I. Title. PN56.H6C37 1989 809’.916 89–10469 ISBN 0-415-90145-6 ISBN 0-415-90216-9 (pbk.) British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Carroll, Noël The philosophy of horror. 1. Arts. Special subjects. Horror I. Title 704.9’4 ISBN 0-203-36189-X Master e-book ISBN ISBN 0-203-37447-9 (Adobe eReader Format) ISBN 0-415-90145-6 (Print Edition) 0-415-90216-9 (pb) Dedicated to Sally Banes Contents Acknowledgments ix Introduction 1 1 The Nature of Horror 12 The Definition of Horror 12 Fantastic Biologies and the Structures of Horrific Imagery 42 Summary and Conclusion 52 2 Metaphysics and Horror, or Relating to Fictions 59 Fearing Fictions60 Character-Identification? 88 3 Plotting Horror 97 Some Characteristic Horror Plots 97 Horror and Suspense 128 The Fantastic 144 4 Why Horror? 158 The Paradox of Horror 159 Horror and Ideology 195 Horror Today 206 Notes 215 Index 251 Acknowledgments Undoubtedly, my parents, Hughie and Evelyn Carroll, inadvertently gave birth to this treatise by telling me not to waste my time and money on horror books, magazines, comics, TV shows, and movies. In a final act of filial defiance, I, a middle-aged baby-boomer, have set out to prove to them that I was gainfully employed all along. My thinking about horror really began to assemble itself when Annette Michelson and I taught a course in horror and science fiction at New York University. Annette soldiered the science fiction half of the course, while the gooier parts of the terrain became my lot. Annette was, and has continued to be, very helpful in the development of my theory. She suggested casting my notions about horrific biologies in terms of fusion and fission, and, as well, she has continually pressed me, with regard to my skepticism about contemporary film theory, to take the paradox of fiction seriously. Though my solutions to her questions may not be what she expected, I hope they are at least intriguing. Early on, two philosophers—both of them horror addicts—abetted me in the conviction that pursuing this topic could be interesting. Judith Tormey and I spent an exhilarating drive to Mexico together, boring everyone else in the car while we swapped favorite monster stories. Jeff Blustein read my earliest attempts in horror theory with the analytical rigor and the enthusiasm only a fellow horror buff can appreciate. The late Monroe Beardsley also read my nascent efforts at horror theory. He wondered aloud how I could be interested in this stuff. But then he addressed my hypotheses with what could only be thought of as arcane counterexamples. Sheepishly, he explained his estimable expertise in the field by saying that he had had to squire his sons through the fifties horror movie cycle, and that he just happened to remember some of the films (in amazing detail, I would add). My interest in horror gradually turned into academic papers, delivered at the University of Southern California, the University of Warwick, the ix x / Acknowledgments Museum of the Moving Image, LeMoyne College, Cornell University, New York University, and the University of Iowa. Each audience provided challenging comments—of special note are those of: Stanley Cavell, Ed Leites, Karen Hansen, Richard Koszarski, Johnny Buchsbaum, Stuart Liebman, Allan Casebier, Jim Manley, Bruce Wilshire, Susan Bordo, the late Irving Thalberg Jr., Stephen Melville, Mary Wiseman, Ken Olsen, Nick Sturgeon, Anthony Appiah, David Bathrick, Cynthia Baughman, Murray Smith, Dudley Andrew, Henry Jenkins, Kristin Thompson, Berenice Reynaud, and Julian Hochberg. Much of the initial writing of this book began during a sabbatical at Wesleyan University. Early discussions with Kent Bendall—one of the most precise and yet imaginatively open philosophers it has been my privilege to know—gave me important clues for solving what I call the paradox of fiction. Long talks with Chris Gauker, over several extremely pleasant dinners, helped me clarify my position. Ken Taylor and especially Philip Hallie, whose pioneering work on the philosophy of horror in his book The Paradox Cruelty served as an exemplar, listened to my theories with a critical attentiveness that was generous, and always supportive and instructive. Phil was even willing to go to a number of movies with me and to discuss them afterwards (something only someone who works on the genre of horror can realize is a gesture of unstinting companionship). Michael Denning, Nancy Armstrong and Leonard Tennenhouse provided many useful suggestions about correspondences between my research and contemporary literary studies. Betsy Traube, transcending her aversion to my topic, made many pertinent recommendations about relevant anthropological literature. Khachig Tololyan who, among his many accomplishments, runs one of the world’s great clipping services, kept me constantly on top of my subject. And Jay Wallace, who read drafts of the first two chapters with immense care, supplied me with copious criticisms and suggestions. On more than one occasion, Jay showed me how I could modify my claims judiciously and still make my points. Both his unalloyed interest and his arguments have made significant differences in this book. It was wonderful to have been his colleague. Francis Dauer, Annette Barnes, John Fisher, Dale Jamieson, George Wilson, Arthur Danto, George Dickie, John Morreall, Richard Moran, Terry Irwin, Laurent Stern, Paul Guyer, Alex Sesonske, Daniel Banes, Jennefer Robinson, Susan Feagin, Gary Iseminger, Roy Gordon, and Myles Brand listened to, or read my hypotheses, and made comments which I found important to consider. Joe Margolis, across a number of conversations, showed me the need to make several distinctions I had ignored, as well as pointing me toward some authors of whose work I had been uninformed. Richard Shusterman, after reading my essay “The Nature of Horror,” Acknowledgments / xi alerted me to Peter Lemarque’s seminal and more advanced writings on the very type of theory of fictional objects that I was attempting to develop. Tony Pipolo and Amy Taubin, both of whom see and read everything, gave me “front-line” reports on every novel, film and video that I hoped to accommodate in my theory. If their sensibilities outstrip my formulas, I hope they can nevertheless see some of their sensitivities worked into my descriptions. David Bordwell, David Konstan, and Peter Kivy read the entire manuscript. Each made provocative criticisms and useful suggestions. David Bordwell showed me how I needed to clarify the distinction between my theory and reigning psychoanalytic models in the humanities today, as well as correcting some (there weren’t that many) of my film-historical errors. David Konstan made sentence-by-sentence remarks, many of which I have incorporated; those I have bypassed, I suspect, I have so done at my own peril. Peter Kivy not only copy-edited the manuscript, but made many penetrating philosophical comments about the content. However, above all, it is to Peter that I owe, due to his work in the philosophy of music, the insight of the applicability, in general, of the theory of the emotions to questions in the philosophy of art. Special thanks are due to William Germano who, it can be said, first had the thought that such a book could be written. In the course of a conversation on other matters, he indicated that he would “love” (his word) a proposal for a book on the philosophy of horror from me. I would not have thought of it otherwise. The rest is history (destiny?). I have dedicated this book to my wife, Sally Banes. She courageously accompanied me on my many forays to cinemas and theaters all over the world for the sake of my “research.” She patiently waited while I perused innumerable bookstalls any time we went to a grocery store, a pharmacy, or a department store outlet. Her own work on the fairy tale also afforded me an extremely useful complement to my theorizing about horror. Sally has read every draft of this project and provided endless comment: grammatical and logical; stylistic and conceptual. If such a book is a labor of love, it is also a labor of lovers. And I have been blessed with a lover willing to make my project her own. So many smart and talented people have told me so much. If there are flaws remaining in this text, it only shows that I’m a bad listener. Introduction Context For over a decade and a half, perhaps especially in the United States, horror has flourished as a major source of mass aesthetic stimulation. Indeed, it may even be the most long-lived, widely disseminated, and persistent genre of the post-Vietnam era. Horror novels seem available in virtually every supermarket and pharmacy, and new titles appear with unsettling rapidity. The onslaught of horror novels and anthologies, at present at least, is as unstoppable and as inescapable as the monsters they portray.