Noël Carroll and the Definition of Horror

One of the seminal theoretical works on horror is Noël Carroll’s The Philosophy of Horror.¹ In this work, Carroll explores answers to two major questions related to the genre: Why are we disturbed by fictions?² And why do we seek out fictions that disturb us? Through the disciplines of philosophy, psychology, and literary theory, Carroll provides many satisfying answers.

However, before he addresses those questions directly, Carroll defines what he means by “horror,” beginning with a brief sketch of horror’s roots in Gothic literature, in which he distinguishes four types:

• Historical: set in an imagined past without suggestion of supernatural
• Natural: events appear to be supernatural, but eventually are given a rational explanation
• Equivocal: the presence of the supernatural is ambiguous, and often given a psychological explanation; this is the origin of modern-day “uncanny” or “fantastic” fictions
• Supernatural: unnatural forces are clearly asserted; this is the origin of modern-day horror fictions

For Carroll, the defining aspect of modern horror is our emotional response to it, which he terms “art-horror” (as opposed to our emotional response to “natural” horrors, such as the death of a child). In an excellent interview with Carroll at Senses of Cinema, he explains this emotional response:

I crafted my theory of the nature of horror by saying that horror is defined in terms of its elicitation of fear and disgust. Then I needed to say what the object of those two component emotional states were. For fear, there was a long history of analysis of the formal criterion as the harmful, and I drew on that. For disgust, I hypothesized the criterion was the impure … So the emotion of horror is elicited by beings not acknowledged to exist by science that are both harmful and impure

Therefore, the emotion of “art-horror” is elicited specifically by monsters: beings that are outside of the natural order and that are both threatening (physically, cognitively, psychologically, morally, or socially) and impure (categorically interstitial, contradictory, incomplete, or formless). Furthermore, the absence these characteristics moves the fiction into another genre: thriller, fantasy, etc.

Carroll also defines four major tropes for presenting monsters in art-horror, all of which may serve as corollaries to larger thematic concerns:

• fission – contradictory elements distributed over different physical/spatial or temporal categories (Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde, werewolves, dopplegangers)
• fusion – contradictory elements conflated, colligated, or condensed (Frankenstein)
• magnification/massing – enlargement or grouping of aspects or entities already deemed impure within a culture (Arachnaphobia, Them, etc.)
• horrific metonymy – surrounding the horrific with aspects/objects already deemed impure (Dracula’s association with vermin and the “children of the night”)

As for why “art-horror” is a modern development, Carroll suggests this concept or genre emerges post-Enlightenment because the Enlightenment supplied the “norm of nature” necessary for their to be a violation of that norm. In some sense, then, a pre-Enlightenment monster is indistinguishable from a fantasy or fairy tale monster in that neither are considered “unnatural” to the worlds they inhabit, though they may still be threatening and undesirable.

This definition has some problematic implications for contemporary horror. For example, while Jason Voorhees, Michael Meyers, and Freddy Kreuger have obvious “super-natural” aspects to them that categorically take them beyond the norm … does Jigsaw? Certainly he is dangerous, and his delight in confronting victims with near-impossible choices is disturbing, and he’s obviously extremely intelligent, but there’s nothing “outside the natural order” about him. The same could be said for many of the serial killers that stalk recent slasher films. Or, again, consider Hostel: dangerous and disturbing, but nothing categorically beyond the norm there, either. Indeed, part of Hostel‘s horror is the suggestion that ordinary people are capable of committing gruesome violence against others, and are even willing to pay for the experience. The same could be said of Patrick Bateman in American Psycho.

One could argue that the extreme nature of the evil-doers in these films qualifies them as “outside the natural order,” providing the necessary second component of “disgust.” Yet, none of this seems beyond scientific imagining or like true categorical violations. And some fictions, like Hostel and American Psycho, rely on the audience’s understanding that the “monsters” as “not too different from you and me.”

In the same Senses of Cinema interview, Carroll welcomes these kinds of discussions:

Maybe, however, a filmmaker would want to undermine some of my generalizations. I think that’s fine; it’s part of the conversation of theory. In fact, I hope that happens, because I think that film theory should be closer to the practice of filmmaking and fiction-making in general.

So are these films instead merely very-bloody thrillers? Blood-soaked modern examples of the “Natural and/or Equivocal” Gothic? Cautionary tales about a culture disconnected from empathy? In any case, it’s possible to argue that these kinds of films don’t necessarily fit Carroll’s definition of “art-horror.” Instead, they portray themselves as extreme versions of the “natural” real-life horrors Carroll distinguishes from art-horror fictions. Yet contemporary audiences obviously consider them “horror” films.

Which definitions (if any) need revision? Am I misunderstanding Carroll in some way? Or am I being too rigid in how I apply the definition?