The dreaded green mankini, eating eyeballs and two degrees of horror

A photo of an overweight man in a standard, green Borat mankini, with a few pubes showing, caused interesting reactions on a Facebook group recently. It's one of those viral photos that does the rounds of Facebook, collecting likes and comments, alongside the cute kitties and inspiring attitudinal quotes. It wouldn't be anything to write home about in most of Europe or the Mediterranean locations, except perhaps in winter.

The reaction would not be worth mentioning if it were not for the composition of the group: horror aficionados who would probably not make much comment if, for instance, an eyeball was plucked from the face of someone writhing on an altar, and popped into a dainty mouth full of needle-sharp teeth. What could make them react in that manner?

The Borat mankini might be attributed to bad taste, but an eldritch creature eating the eyeball of its living victim might not be in the best taste either, especially from the victim's somewhat diminished point of view.

This leads me to to the idea that there must be two degrees of horror, the first being the relatively 'tame' monster, which limits itself to mildly arousing our interest by eating eyeballs, and a different type of horror which causes people to shudder and react loudly in public forums. That second degree of horror has to be closely related to a disruption of what we accept as the norm.

Look at it this way. Freddy from the 'Nightmare on Elm Street' series caused horror fans to begin to laugh after a couple of witty killings. The human horror of an urban legend, such as the hook-handed murderer or a hundred other variants, can cause greater alertness when we hear steps behind us in a carpark. We understand that both are fictional, but we know on a subconscious level that the hook-handed killer is less fictional than Freddy.

In that second degree of horror, uniformity plays an important role. A monster might be a catastrophic event, but the discovery that a neighbour is a serial killer, a trusted priest is a child molester or that Megan is possessed (even decades on) can be profoundly disturbing. The greater the ability of the deviation to assume the outer form of the people that surround it, the more likely it is to traumatize.

Some of the greatest horror ever written has relied very little on the forms of zombies, vampires and monsters from the deep. Robert Aickman and writers like him tease a growing and lasting sense of unease from their readers by revealing bit by bit the inconsistencies in what appear to be a peaceful and orderly setting or scene.

People no longer go to see horror movies with the intent of a thrilling fright. They go to be entertained. It's time to put away the monsters, relegate them to closets or under beds where kids can laugh at them, and start looking for fresh new ways to frighten, preferably without mankinis.