HORROR: DISCOVERING THE GENRE
To define the core of the genre, it is important to take a look at the word and its history. “Horror,” according to the Oxford English Dictionary, begins its career in English as a roughness or ruggedness; there is something uneven about it. It also means “a roughness or nauseousness of taste, such as to cause a shudder or thrill.” Nausea remains part of the horror response, part of the definition—and so do the shudder and the thrill… “A horror” also means a shuddering or shivering, especially “as a symptom of disease,” but in Latin the verb horrere—the source of “horror”—means to tremble, shiver, shake or shudder, not necessarily because of disease, but in some cases because of fear; it also means to loathe and to dread as well as to bristle, to stand on end as hair does, and to be rough. The hair-raising shudder is part of the term. The fullest and most lasting sense of the word is in place by the late fourteenth century: “a painful emotion compounded of loathing and fear; a shuddering with terror and repugnance; strong aversion mingled with dread; the feeling excited by something shocking or frightful.” Beginning in the late fifteenth century it is also used to signify “a feeling of awe or reverent fear (without any suggestion of repugnance); a thrill of awe, or of imaginative fear,” a usage that touches on the heights to which fear can lead the imagination, an important aesthetic consideration, which also provides a link with our sometimes ineffable response to the sublime. There it is: rough, nauseating, dreadful, frightening, hair-raising, repulsive, unspeakable, nameless, loathsome—an odd foundation on which to build an art.
– Excerpt from Horror and the Horror Film by Bruce F. Kawin
“Horror audiences stick their hands into a black box knowing something will bite, only uncertain as to how and when”
–Thomas M. Sipos, Horror Film Aesthetics
“Horror audiences stick their hands into a black box knowing something will bite, only uncertain as to how and when”
–Thomas M. Sipos, Horror Film Aesthetics
IN THE CLASSROOM
BEFORE: What are your expectations for this show, knowing that it has the subtitle “a weight loss horror comedy”?
AFTER: What elements did the play use that could be classified in the horror genre? Did you think it deserved to be called a horror comedy? List specific instances to support your claims from the play. If you were going to create a simile using other well-known horror films to describe January Joiner, what would it be?