When I was a little kid the thing I loved
about Halloween was the transformation, the corruption of the mundane into the
stuff of fantasy; and the corruption fantasy into horror. Your normal home
transformed into a haunted house with spider webs and screaming pictures and
skeletons and witches in sight. And on Halloween night, YOU would transform;
into the monster of your dreams, and you would go hunting, prowling the night
for your feast.
And the horror genre remains etched in
fantasy; so much of the horror genre is actually objects of or fascination and
fantasy with a horror spin. Haunted houses alone tap into our desire for life
after death and to contact the deceased as well as making the most everyday of
places (a home) into an exotic portal to a world beyond where anything might
happen. Dracula seems especially tapped into fantasy; life after death, eternal
youth, supernatural power over others, exotic background, etc. For all
skeletons are seen around Halloween, they're more often found in fantasy video
games than in horror films. Werewolves tap into our desire to release our inner
beast, to be wild animals, and they are just the horror branch of the many
fantasy stories about humans transforming into or gaining the power of animals.
Things like the full moon are an example of how a lot of fantasy attaches
magical significance to certain times or things in nature. And horror is filled
with such summoners to; special anniversaries
where the Headless Horseman or other phantoms ride through the night and
holiday-themed slashers on the prowl, spoken incantations and special music or
objects that release demons and raise the dead, from the mummy's curse to the
puzzle box in Hellraiser.
Night itself is a special time in horror,
the darkness is like the magician's curtain, a cloak from which anything can
materialize.
Fantasy is filled with fascination with
both the past, especially medieval times, and so does horror; from prehistoric
monsters awaking from their dormant rest to ancient curses and ghosts of the
past.
In the horror branch of fantasy, the
enchanted objects are malicious, the magic is black, the enchanted forest will
rape you, the exotic creatures are monstrous, life after death is Hell and so
on. The dead can come back, normal objects are magical or a portal to other
worlds, people can transform into the fantastic and everywhere there's
adventure, but somehow it all goes horribly wrong. The clowns are only
perversely funny and while all your dreams are coming true, that includes the
ones that woke you up soaked in cold sweat.
Of course, horror isn't just the nightmare
edition of our fantasies, but of things we find awesome, things we find strange
or exotic, and things we find fun and interesting. Powerful creatures inspire
awe, and we have horror about great white sharks and Godzilla. Bats and spiders
aren't just staples of Halloween, they're also strange and somewhat exotic,
with an alien or mysterious essence to them.
And ever notice there are no horror stories
centred around banks, business meetings and accountants? Horror is about things
we find fun; people go camping, take vacations, have sex and party. Horror
often happens either in a) places that are VERY
familiar, like home or for horror centred around kids, school, b) places
associated with fun or leisure or c) places considered interesting, exotic,
somewhat unfamiliar, especially if it's creepy or intimidating. Places that are
remote or connected to the past. This includes places people stay for short
periods of time but not long enough to get to know well, like hotels, strange
towns and hospitals.
The occasional horror story also involves a
museum, library or more commonly a school. But these places of learning are
also fantasy fodder; Night At The Museum, The Never Ending Story, Harry Potter,
etc.
Science fiction is also a form of fantasy,
though science based, and so is sci-fi horror. Aliens are just stories of
strange creatures from far away land, the equivalent of dragons and sea
serpents in a time when the last frontier is outer space. And where science
fiction/fantasy have superheroes resulting from radiation and mutation; horror
has radioactive monsters from the 50s and lab mutants like The Fly. As fearful
as Science Gone Wrong stories might be, they are still stories about science
creating a world where anything can happen, a world of endless possibilities.
It's exciting and even in some way hopeful; stories of black magic and
horrifying discoveries are stories of magic and discovery all the same; the
horror just adds the excitement of danger. (And not like action and adventure
stories, where you know the hero's going to win with barely a scratch)
Not all fantasy involve the encounters with
the amazing and extraordinary. There are also revenge fantasies, fantasies that
the dead will right the wrongs done to them or at least not let them be
forgotten, that theft, murder and general jerkiness can result in inescapable
supernatural consequences. Ghost stories are filled with tales of restless
spirits seeking retribution or haunting the location of their murder. Haunted
houses often have homicide, execution or grave desecration in their past. And
lots of horror movies and other horror have at least one jerkass victim who had
it coming. Jason Voorhees, Candyman and the Blair Witch all died because of the
wrong doing of others. Then there are the various “meddling with nature” and
“nature strikes back” movies, from King Kong being put on display in the city
and going on a rampage to, well, there's a point around here where it's not so
much fantasies about people get their comeuppance and more about validating the
way some people see the world, or believe the world should be. i.e. “Science
led to catastrophe 'cause that's what happens when Man plays God!”. Or
condemnations of human faults (“See? Humans the real monsters!”)
Stories about people’s world views being
validated are still a form of fantasy, but now we’re also stretching the
commonly understood definition a little, and we’re definitely beyond the
fantasy Halloween usually embodies, so I’ll stop here and recommend the movie
Caroline, which this essay was partially inspired by. It had that child-like
fantasy element; a child going through a secret door to a strange and eerie
world. It reminded me of the show Are You Afraid of the Dark and the Goosebumps
books which I loved in the 90s, as they were all about the horror elements of
fantasy. Good stuff.
