I don't know what it is that might frighten a seasoned horror reader. After the first few reads, everything becomes dispassionate, yet another 'creature feature'. This is born out by the fact that the movie market which uses tropes such as ZVW and killers is almost entirely targeted at kids, with the exception of a couple of art movies such as 'Pan's Labyrinth' and 'Let the Right One In'.
Reading Marina Warner, 'No Go the Bogeyman', she talks about the ideas of cannibalism and infanticide sometimes combined, as archetypes.
Except in mythology and the old wives' tales, infanticide is taboo. Cannibalism is now a media phenomenon on par with the man caught having sex with a donkey or a chicken, a by-the-way item further back in the newspaper.
If psychological horror means dragging through the mill a character which the reader indentifies with closely or creating a monster in which the reader can see something uncomfortably close to himself or herself, then that is about the only way to go. However note that the reader uses horror to alleviate fears or as a form of projected vengeance, so once the psychological need is satisfied, eliciting fear has a very limited lifespan.
Honestly, as I think of it,
people are working hard to become fearless. Belief systems in which fear
is almost always rooted have become easily mutable. Here, note for instance the 'Twilight' series by Stephanie Meyer, a Mormon who cleaned up by creating terminally romantic vampires that sparkle in the sun or Anne Rice's 'Memnoch the Devil'.
The idea of going back to storytelling in the almost classical sense, the way Neil Gaiman, Caitlin Kiernan, Kim Newman, Clive Barker, as well as Tracie McBride, Jerry McKinney, Lisa McCourt Hollar, Lori Lopez and a few others do, finding the novelty, seems to be the most likely route.
Interesting entry; you're spot on about the effect over-exposure to horror has on us generally. Even dragging a protagonist through hell has become commonplace and banal in this age of horror; it becomes voyeuristic and gross rather than horrific. I think your solution to the problem (returning to a more classical style of storytelling) is a good one (depending on what we mean by "classical"). I also think that, if written and presented effectively, most monsters can probably still have a fearful effect on us. In my opinion, a large part of this can be achieved by making use of the "unknown" quality monsters possess before we encounter them (which is what we find in classic horror stories such as "The Haunting of Hill House," for example).
ReplyDeleteI've written an entry on this very question recently at www.ReceptionGrownStronger.com. Great work, keep it up!