[Class Assembly]
Welcome to FilmmakerIQ.com I'm John Hess and today we'll probe into the brain, digging
deep for clues to the question - why do we go to scary movies?
There's something about horror that speaks directly and instinctively to the human animal.
Millions of years of evolutionary psychology have ingrained in our minds certain fear triggers
- a survival instinct - Fear of the Dark where predatory animals might be laying in wait
- Fear of animals with large sharp teeth who would make a quick meal of us. Fear of Poisonous
Spiders who can kill with one bite. So ingrained into our developmental psychology that research
done by Nobuo Masataka show that children as young as three have an easier time spotting
snakes on a computer screen than they do spotting flowers. Research by Christof Koch show that
the right amygydala, the portion of the brain associated with fear learning, responds more
vigorously to images of animals than to images of people, landmarks or objects even though
those are much more dangerous in our civilized world.
This may explain the shape of our movie monsters: creatures with sharp teeth or snake like appearance.
The fear of being eaten alive also explains the cannabilistic traits of human monsters
like Dracula and Dr. Hannibal Lecter.
But brain scan research in 2010 by Thomas Straube at the Friedrich Schiller University
of Jena show that scary movies don't actually activate fear responses in the amygdala at
all. Instead, it was other parts of the brain that were firing - the visual cortex - the
part of the brain responsible for processing visual information, the insular cortex- self
awareness, the thalamus -the relay switch between brain hemispheres, and the dorso-medial
prefrontal cortex - the part of the brain associated with planning, attention, and problem solving.
So we're not really being scared at the movies - at least not necessarily in the brain
chemistry way... what's going on?
Before we try to explain the psychological attraction to horror lets try to establish
what the allure of horror is. Psychologist Dr. Glenn D. Walters identifies three primary
factors of the horror film allure.
The first is tension - created through mystery, suspense, gore, terror, or shock. This is
pretty straight forward elements of horror, the craft and technique of filmmaking.
The second factor is relevance. In order for a horror film to be seen, it has to be relevant
to potential viewers. This relevance can take the form of universal relevance - capturing
the universal fear of things like death and the unknown, it can take on cultural relevance
dealing with societal issues. Audiences can find subgroup relevance - groups like teenagers
which many horror films are about. Lastly, there's personal relevance - either in a
way that identifies with the protagonist or in a way that condemns the antagonists or
victims to their ultimate fate.
The last factor, which may be the most counter intuitive is Unrealism. Despite the graphic
nature of recent horror films, we all know at some level that what we are watching is
not real. Haidt, McCauley and Rozin conducted research on disgust, showing students in 1994
a series of gruesome documentary videos... few could make it to the end - and yet these
same students would pay to see even worse acts conducted on a movie screen. Why? Perhaps
its because when we walk into a theater we know what we're seeing on screen is fabricated
reality. Movies are edited from multiple camera angles with soundtracks and sometimes horror
is tempered and made palatable with black humor - a sly wink that what you're seeing
on screen isn't real. This also explains why we all remember that scary movie we saw
when we were way too young but looks hokey now. Children have a harder time separating
reality and fiction especially when its on a movie screen
According to Walters, movies that bring high levels of tension, are relevant in universal,
cultural, subgroup and personal ways while maintaining an air of unrealism will have
greater horror appeal.
So we have an idea of what horror is... why are people drawn to it?
The Psychoanalytic community, including Sigmund Freud himself posited that horror came from
the "Uncanny" - emergence of images and thoughts of the primitive id that were being
suppressed by the civilized ego. Jung thought that horror movies tapped into primordial
archetypes buried deep in our collective subconscious - images like shadow and mother play important
role in the horror genre. But psychoanalysis is hard to test empirically, so it's hard
to say if these ideas fall more in the realm of philosophy.
Speaking of philosophy the Greek Philosopher Aristotle, yes - he I know, he didn't exactly
get to watch scary movies - he thought that people were attracted to scary stories and
violent dramatic plays because it gave them a chance to purge their negative emotions
- a process he called catharsis. Using Aristotle's argument, we would watch violent movies and
play violent video games to release the pent up feelings of aggression. Unfortunately for
Aristotle, research has shown the opposite - watching violence actually makes people
MORE aggressive. Pent up feelings of anger can actually be reduced by watching something
else like humor or erotica. But there may still be a correlation between watching horror
films and the reduction of fear.
The Excitation Transfer theory is sort of a new take on Catharsis. Dr. Dolf Zillmann,
argued in 1978 that the negative feelings created by horror movies actually intensify
the positive feelings when the hero triumphs in the end. But what about movies where the
hero doesn't triumph? And even in some small studies have show that people's enjoyment
was actually higher during the scary parts of a horror film than it was after.
Film Scholar Noel Carroll puts forth the idea that horror films are the product of curiosity
and fascination. Horror exists outside of the everyday existence of normal behavior.
Studies by Tamborini, Stiff and Zillmann have shown that there is a significant correlation
between people who are accepting of norm-violating behavior and interest in horror movies. But
that doesn't explain why some viewers respond positively when the norm violators such as
the sexual promiscuous teenage couple, the criminal, the adulterer - are punished and
killed by the movie monster.
This "enjoyment" of the punishment of those that deserves it makes up the Dispositional
Alignment Theory. We like horror movies because the people on screen getting killed deserve
it. But this may give us insight into who the audiences want to see eat it but it's
not a clear picture of why horror films are popular in the first place.
Another theory put forth by Marvin Zuckerman in 1979 proposed that people who scored high
in the Sensation Seeking Scale often reported a greater interest in exciting things like
rollercasters, bungee jumping and horror films. Researchers have found correlation but it
isn't always significant. Even Zuckerman noted that picking only one trait misses the
fact that there are lots of things that draw people to horror films.
The Gender Socialization theory put forth in 1986 by Zillman, Weaver, Mundorf and Aust
considers horror films as sort of a codification of traditional gender roles which is often
referred to as the "Snuggle Theory". Experiments with adolescent boys found that they enjoyed
a horror film more when their female companion (who was a research plant) was visibly scared.
The opposite was true with girls who found horror films less enjoyable when their male
companions were physically scared. The girls enjoyed the film more when their boys were
brave and handled their fear. This may be one shade of how horror films play in our
culture but it doesn't explain why some people go to horror films alone or what happens after adolescence.
Finally, DJ Skall posits that horror films are a reflection of our societal fears. Looking
at the history of horror you have mutant monsters rising in 50s from our fear of the nuclear
bogeyman, Zombies in the 60s with Vietnam, Nightmare on Elm Street as a mistrust in authority
figures stemming from the Watergate scandals and Zombies again in the 2000s as a reflection
of viral pandemic fears. But for as many horror cycles that fit the theory, there are many
that don't. And horror films work on a universal level crossing national boundaries while still
working in different cultures..
If these 8 theories are at best incomplete -what's going on?
First we have approach the question with the idea that not all of us watch all horror movies
for the same reason. In a 1995 study Deirdre D. Johnston studied 220 high school students
watching slasher films and found that motivations fell into four general categories:
Gore watching - characterized by low empathy, high sensation seeking, and in males a strong
identification with the killer
Thrill watching - high empathy and high sensation seeking - motivated by the suspense of the
film and more identification with the victims.
Independent Watching - high empathy for the victim with a high positive effect of overcoming fear
Problem Watching - high empathy for the victim but characterized by negative effect - sense
of helplessness.
With just a small sample of adolescents in a subset of horror films - the slasher genre
- we can see that there are many reasons people watch horror and sometimes those motivations
might change from day to day or from movie to movie. The complexity of the brain and
variation in people's tastes, don't allow for a simple universal explanation, though
the brain scan research I mentioned earlier may shed some light on this topic.
Film is the ultimate artistic medium so far devised by mankind. It combines photography,
motion, visual arts, acting, writing, and music - a sensory experience that engages
us so completely that watching a movie is often compared to dreaming. So would that
make horror films nightmares?
The truth is we still don't know why we dream. The Contemporary theory of Dreaming
as described by Ernest Hartmann, the professor of psychiatry at Tufts University School of
Medicine, sees dreams as the brain's sorting through the bits of information it's gathered
throughout the waking hours. But the images and connections we make while dreaming aren't
totally random, they're guided by our emotions - maybe working through a recent trauma or
dealing with angst and fear.
So perhaps watching a film is somewhere between being awake and being in a dream state. Much
like play - films are a safe place where we can sort through stuff, learn skills to apply
in everyday life. How do you defeat the a slow walking Jason Vorhees - you can't outrun
his slow stride. The only way is to face him straight on. Though a zombie apocalypse is
a far fetched reality, the survivorship skills on display in a zombie horror film have some
practical merit in our normal every-day world..
Horror movies require us to face the unknown - to understand it and make it less scary.
They allow us to see our fears and put them into context, to play what if, and in doing
so, they shape our belief systems, how we see each other and ourselves. They are a safe
place to explore and for some just a good bit of fun. The fact is we are just getting
to understand how our brains work, but Scary stories - that is something that will never
go away - in the words of Aurther Conan Doyle: "Where there is no
imagination - there is no horror" - go out and make something terrifying - I'm John
Hess and I'll see you at FilmmakerIQ.com