What drew me to he text “The Nature of Horror” was the first sentence Noël Carroll writes, “–horror has flourished as a major source of mass aesthetic stimulation” (Carroll, 51). Even as I continued reading the text, I found several parts that caught my attention, including the fact that it was published in a journal called The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism. I liked Carroll’s approach which goes beyond traditional literature to embrace horror in film, music videos, musicals, TV, and other artforms. The analysis highlighted horror as an aesthetic experience that captures both fascination and revulsion, a duality that made me rethink horror as not just a genre, but an art form capable of evoking deep and sometimes conflicting emotions. This resonated with my studies, particularly in film and gender, as it framed horror as a lens through which audiences confront and process fear, pleasure, and even societal anxieties. Carroll’s work helped cement my interest in analyzing horror, especially as I prepare my thesis on the connection of horror, gender, and generational shifts in the genre.
In horror, the characters’ reactions to monsters can serve as a blueprint for the audience’s own emotions. Carroll suggests that unlike in other genres, where viewer reactions may be ‘more ambivalent or open to interpretation’, horror provides clear emotional cues through the “positive human characters” who are often terrified, repulsed, or desperately trying to survive. This mirroring effect aligns audiences with the protagonists’ emotions, intensifying the fear and tension. One example being when a protagonist encounters a creature and recoils in horror, we, too, feel a visceral reaction, compelled by their fear to respond in kind. This connection between characters and audience establishes a direct and almost participatory relationship with the horror itself, as viewers are drawn into the narrative and prompted to experience the characters’ dread firsthand. This dynamic sets horror apart from other genres, where characters’ emotions may not always dictate audience response and t underscores the genre’s unique power to evoke empathy and psychological engagement through fear.
fourleafclover, this text sounds very detailed. As someone deeply interested in most forms of horror media myself, I’ll have to give it a read! The “emotional mirroring” you talk about in relation to the text is a concept that has also appeared in my personal readings related to analysis of horror media. It has also appeared in writing advice I have been given—that is, when sad things happen, readers are more interested in the reactions of other characters than the sad things themselves. It is easier to become absorbed in a story, and the emotions it is trying to evoke, when we have characters to project onto. (In fact, my creative writing Professor emphasizes character above all else in our work for this reason). I find things like survival horror videogames an interesting form of horror media for this reason, as well (the new remake of Silent Hill 2, a popular horror franchise, comes to mind). These games are often in the first-person in order to evoke this effect (as in, visually, you see through the character’s eyes), to put you in a character’s shoes more literally. Sound design is also an important part of immersion. Characters you play as might react audibly when something startles them or when they get injured, which will make it more likely for players to panic alongside them. In Silent Hill 2, players become invested in the story of James Sunderland, an extremely flawed protagonist. We still root for him and feel sympathy for the exact reasons you and your text describe: we see his reactions to the surreal atmosphere he is trapped in, and we are forced to confront his trauma and mistakes in an utterly grotesque form. Therefore, because we as the audience have him to project our reactions to the game onto, we are left feeling more invested in being frightened, triumphant, saddened, or otherwise.
One interesting aspect of the aesthetic of horror genre is sound. Try watching a Slasher film, or any jump-scare scene without any sound, or even better play “September” by Earth, Wind, and Fire in the background (The Jackson 5 is sufficient for this experiment) and the scenes aren’t particularly scary anymore. In fact, some of the Slasher scenes especially with Jason slowly lumbering around are almost comedic. It might be interesting to look at how sound enhances the emotions the audience gleans from the characters.
I think pairing aesthetic ideologies with your exploration of the horror genre is so interesting, and seems so useful! I think you should look back at Bora’s Outing Texture that we read in class, because diving into these aesthetics through their underlying contextual implications would say a lot about expectations and conventions of the genre and how they are subverted after being established. I think the film Barbarian would be interesting for you to look at because it frames the final girl trope and subverts these aesthetics in an interesting way!
This reminded me a lot of some of the research I’ve been doing into horror and the gothic that focuses on the uncanny. I think what makes horror so successful at engaging the emotions of its audience is the use of these visual aesthetics that simultaneously evoke this uncanny sense of familiarity and strangeness. Your post has also made me think about how rife with symbols horror movies are. Imagery such as haunted houses, closed basement doors, and flickering lights are so well used within the genre that the sight of them prompts a sense of anticipation/fear in the audience for what they know comes next.