A Neuropsychological Account of the Horror Film
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
DORN THESIS 1 Wesleyan University The Honors College Scare Me, I Dare You: A Neuropsychological Account of the Horror Film by Maya Dorn Class of 2019 A thesis submitted to the faculty of Wesleyan University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Bachelor of Arts with Departmental Honors in General Scholarship Middletown, Connecticut April, 2019 DORN THESIS 2 Table of Contents Acknowledgements………………………………………………………3 Introduction: The Paradox of Horror…………………………………….4 Chapters 1: The Biology of Fear as a Reward……………………………………13 2: Scares………………………………………………………………...45 3: The Spaces In Between the “Scares”………………………………...71 4: Beyond Horror: Constructive Interactions with Other Emotions……98 Conclusions: Fear Reconsidered………………………………………121 Appendix: Key to Relevant Neuroanatomy…………………………...128 Bibliography…………………………………………………………...132 Filmography…………………………………………………………...142 DORN THESIS 3 Acknowledgements First and foremost, I would like to thank Scott Higgins for being so supportive throughout the process of writing this thesis. Thank you for taking the time to listen to me ramble about the psychology and neuroscience of fear and how cool I thought horror films were whenever I dropped in for office hours when I was taking Cinema of Horror, then for letting me write an entire thesis about all these ideas I had floating around my mind. Without your guidance, vast knowledge about film, constructive feedback, and encouragement, I could not have turned these ideas into a coherent work. Your consistent optimism and enthusiasm about these interdisciplinary ideas reminded me that I should be excited, not overwhelmingly stressed, to write this thesis. I could not have asked for a better mentor to advise my thesis. Thank you to Will Barr for acting as my thesis writing mentor and taking the time to read drafts of my thesis, give me feedback, and help me navigate scientific research and writing. I became much more confident in my writing through your mentorship. I am grateful to the Wesleyan Psychology, Neuroscience & Behavior, and Film Studies Departments for encouraging me to grow as a student over the past four years and for fostering an environment for interdisciplinary learning. Courses such as Research Methods in Emotion, Advanced Research in Culture and Emotion, Research Methods in Animal Research, Behavioral Neurobiology, and the Cinema of Horror built the foundations of this work. Notably, thank you to Professor Robinson for taking the time to meet with me to help me navigate the motivation and reward literature. I would like to especially thank everyone who acted as academic mentors for me throughout the years. I am in debt to Patricia M. Rodriguez-Mosquera for teaching me how to be a precise and rigorous researcher, teaching how to critically read scientific papers, and allowing me my first opportunity to pursue my own research project. I am also deeply grateful to Zhen Yan and Josh Drake at the University of Virginia for pushing me to grow as a scientist and become more confident in my science. Thank you to my friends who supported me during this thesis writing process and keeping me less stressed. Many of my insights for this work actually came from conversations with friends that started with me asking, “so why do you think we like horror films?” The friends who have cooked food for me when I was in a time crunch, watched horror films with me, and kept me focused doing work side-by-side, etc. have made this process far smoother and deserve a special shout-out. Finally, I am forever in debt to my family for raising me and giving me the opportunity to study at Wesleyan. I would especially like to thank my parents. Thank you to my mom for bugging me to add images to this work and print enough copies for the whole family, to my dad for sending me so many neuroscience articles, and to both of you for all of the family scary movie nights. DORN THESIS 4 Introduction: The Paradox of Horror “Now I need you to put your thinking caps on because I want each of you to draw what you think the future is going to look like. Then we’ll put the pictures in the capsule, and 50 years from today, a group of children, just like yourselves, will open it up to see what you drew. Doesn’t that sound exciting?” Five-year-old, Lucina Embry furiously scribbles numbers onto a piece of paper, and hands it to her teacher to put in the time capsule. This document reveals the time, date, and location of every mass disaster for the last 50 years until the end of humanity. Once Lucina’s writing is uncovered and decoded, Professor John Koestler realizes that the apocalypse is only days away. As a chain of mass disasters builds up to the end of the world, we see planes burn up in flames upon crashing, subway train cars derailed and crushing pedestrians waiting on the platform, tiny cars carrying our protagonists T-boned by large 16-wheeler trucks, and more. I was 11 when I saw Knowing (2009) come out in theaters. Though it’s not a horror film, the film terrified me, not only as I was watching it, but also whenever I was at home alone in the dark. I had to sleep in my mom’s bed for nearly an entire year after watching the film. To this day, I still have a visceral reaction when I see 16-wheeler trucks. Anyone would think that I would never want to watch a “scary” movie again. After all, people are drawn to do more of things they enjoy, and less of things that lead to negative consequences. Yet, the next year, I grabbed tickets to Insidious (2010)–– an actual horror film–– when it came out in theaters. Typically, we strongly avoid things that scare us. Some people have such strong acrophobia (fear of heights) that they avoid going to rooftop bars, looking down staircase railings, and traveling to DORN THESIS 5 places like the Grand Canyon. It is our instinct to avoid things that we are afraid of that saves us by telling us to run away if there is a poisonous snake in front of us, rather than to approach it. Still, millions of us pay money to watch our worst nightmares projected onto a screen in front of us, and stay in our seats for the entire movie. Perhaps more interestingly, many of us come back to watch another horror film after experiencing one. What is it that appeals to us and draws us to come back to watch more scary movies after having suffered the negative consequences of one? The paradox of horror is such that we enjoy watching horror films, though fear is otherwise an aversive emotion. The aim of this thesis is to explore two questions: why and how do we enjoy horror film? I will explore answers to these questions from the perspectives of psychology, neuroscience, and film studies. My fundamental argument is that fear, when experienced in a safe context, activates our reward system, and allows us to enjoy horror film. As long as we are safe when we are experiencing the fear, we pay to enter a contract with the filmmaker, where we want the filmmaker to scare us as much as possible. Filmmakers fill scary movies with jump scares, monsters, creepy atmospheres, etc. because we asked for it. In this work, I will elucidate neurological and filmic mechanisms through which we are allowed to enjoy horror film. As art has the power to uncover parts of the human psyche before the advances of science can, an investigation of the paradox of horror can be revealing of human psychology and the largely mysterious mechanisms of the brain. The scope of this thesis will progressively go from small to large, first searching for solutions to the paradox of horror in neurons and systems of neurons. DORN THESIS 6 Then, we will look at horror scenes, entire feature films, the genre as a whole, and finally how horror interacts with other genres. The first chapter takes a primarily neurological perspective on our enjoyment of fear. Here, I describe the fear mechanism and the reward system, and how the two systems interact. The second chapter will focus on the parts of the horror film that pump adrenaline through our bodies, primarily jump scares. This chapter’s aim is to use evidence from contemporary neuroscience to highlight how filmmakers use film form to generate thrill from jump scares. The third chapter will focus on the parts of the horror film in between jump scares, and how horror functions as entire feature films. The aim of the last chapter is to look beyond horror and investigate two examples of how horror interacts with other concepts: sex and comedy. From its beginnings with Nosferatu (1922), sex has strongly underlied horror films. Comedy-horror is a genre that seems counterintuitive, but has generated several successful films. I write this thesis acknowledging that we are far from knowing everything about the human brain. In this work, I cannot, myself, contribute any new lines of research. Yet, I will attempt to build a new picture of the horror film by integrating three areas of study that do not typically interact. I believe that interdisciplinary studies between science and the arts can generate unique and valuable ideas. Alfred Hitchcock was the instigator of my interest in film. When I watched Psycho (1960) for the first time in high school, I was left stupefied, despite the film’s famous ending having been spoiled for me. What astonished me was how intimately Hitchcock seemed to know me. He knew that we’re most scared when we’re vulnerable–– when we lull ourselves into a sense of safety, only for it to be DORN THESIS 7 undermined.