John Armellino

Major Garriott

ERH 202

3/5/15

The Impact of the Horror Film on Rhetoric
The invention of film, in my opinion, is the largest catalyst for the greatest new rhetorical medium in history. The idea of film, of moving pictures as a storytelling device came to life all the way back in the 19th century. Film photography was born in 1839. Since its invention, film has been continually improved upon as an artistic medium and of the largest, most lucrative industries in the world. Film has had quite a journey since its inception until now, and that journey is where film changed rhetorical practices as we knew it. When artists realized the potential of film, it became an entirely new medium for rhetoric to sink its teeth into. The medium of film does allow for society to look at itself with both praise and criticism. On a smaller scale, film can be used to look at individuals and how their minds work. One particular genre does an excellent, and unsettling job of examining societal issues and fears, and by extension, our own individual fears. That genre is horror, and it has allowed us to look at the most terrifying thing of all, our minds.
I would like to provide a little bit of context to my examination of horror films. So first, I will give a brief history lesson, and hopefully show you how film has evolved to where the horror genre can be so skillfully used to demonstrate humanity’s weaknesses.
Due to technological constraints at the beginning of film history, it was difficult for movies with coherent plots to be made. In fact, one of the first films to feature a sizable, mature plot was “The Great Train Robbery,” which was made in 1903. It is considered the “first blockbuster.” Films following “The Great Train Robbery” used the same formula of black and white, good versus evil plots in which evil triumphs for most of the film until good is the ultimate victor in the last act. Even today we see bland, uncomplicated plots like this, but ultimately films evolved to convey more complex ideas. That is why I will be focusing on a specific area and genre of films. Consider the emergence of popular horror movie franchises in the 1970s and 80s, particularly “slasher” films. While many non-horror films have been used as a form of social commentary (King Kong and slavery, Fight Club and consumerism), horror films act as commentary on our deepest, darkest fears and/or our secret desires. Of all the genres of film, horror is the most thought provoking in a rhetorical sense. Horror films, to me at least, leave a certain impression. When I finish watching a good one, I cannot stop thinking about it for a long time. Usually this is a result of the film having a sort of layered feel to it. Did I fully understand the message that the filmmaker was trying to get across? Is there more to it than I realized? A good horror film does not necessarily confuse you, but does provide enough of a mystery to keep you thinking.
To provide an example of this, I would like to nod to the excellent HBO series True Detective. While the show is not your traditional horror (all the murders that the detectives are trying to solve happen off screen), there is a dark atmosphere to the show. One of the main characters himself noted that the “psychosphere… left a bad taste” in his mouth, “like ash and aluminum.” What he means by this is the general personality; the atmosphere of a place is determined by the minds of those who live in it. In the setting of True Detective, the minds of sick men and women were polluting the atmosphere, causing it to effect everyone. This, plus the excess of references to weird, Lovecraftian horror makes True Detective a disturbing look into our own psyche, and a great example of the rhetorical use of horror. Horror, as a rhetorical device, reveals our “psychosphere,” the darker world around us we prefer to ignore.
Of course, this all depends on how one defines rhetoric. As long as I have known about it, I have seen rhetoric as “language designed to have a persuasive or impressive effect on its audience”. Is that not what a good horror film aims to do? The lasting mark of a good film (but horror in particular) is a scarred audience. Of course I do not mean so scarred as to cause permanent psychological damage, but a horror movie audience should always be disturbed and titillated at the same time, and should remain that way long after leaving the theatre. John Carpenter’s infamous film The Thing is a perfect example of this. The titular creature, an alien beast without form, takes on the appearance of members of a small group of men in a remote Antarctic station. Neither the characters, nor the audience know who is human and who is not. The ensuing panic and paranoia is disturbing as the audience asks itself “is this how I would react?” “Would I have a chance of surviving this?” The idea of a hostile, shape shifting creature that looks and sounds like us plays into the attitudes of the Cold War era during which the film was made and released (1982). Americans had this idea that Soviet spies could be everywhere, who looked and talked just like us. The threat of the unknown, of a camouflaged foreign hostility was definitely prevalent during the time. The Thing made Americans fear something worse than that: our own compulsions. The characters in The Thing all turned on each other at some point in the film.
Perhaps that is what the horror genre is all about. If film were to be described as a “language,” with “the analogy between the word and the shot,” then horror is a dialect of that language. This language is used to discuss the darker sides of human behavior, even in those films with an unearthly and/or unnatural antagonist. The greatest example of this is the horror subgenre of zombie films.
Of course the undead are terrifying in their own right. They are walking corpses that want to eat us, so if that is not scary then I do not know what is. But, zombies can be used, and have been used as effective social commentary. George A. Romero is the pioneer of this subgenre, and his films to this day remain some of the best within it. Each one has targeted some disdainful aspect of society. The first film in his series, The Night of the Living Dead, takes a glaring look at issues of the time (1968). Doctor Martin Luther King was recently assassinated and the war in Vietnam was raging. The main character of film is a black man named Ben who must take control of the situation, that being him and a group of white people holed up in a house trying to survive the zombie-infested night. Relations are a little tense at best, and outright hostile at worst.
A young black man leading the otherwise white group of survivors in their fight for survival may have made white audiences uncomfortable, but he is a likeable character, and unless anyone in the audience is a total bigot, they learn to root for him. Unfortunately (and somewhat ironically), Ben is the sole survivor of the night, only to be shot dead by a “redneck posse” after being mistaken for a zombie. The commentary is unmistakable. Just when 1960s era audiences learn to sympathize with a black man, he is killed by a group of white men. Even after fighting so hard to earn others’ trust, he is betrayed by those sworn to protect him (the police).
The films discussed in this paper were just the tip of the iceberg. Horror, let alone film as a whole, is an excellent medium to convey social fears, and many horror flicks do it beautifully. There is nothing more terrifying than the human mind, and we now have a medium capable of demonstrating that terror with the visual language it deserves.