Literary criticism and horror

guroweekly 2020-04-29 16:47:15 UTC #1

In the new episode of Guro Weekly, we went for some weird mix of literary criticism and horror.

It seems odd, but we think that numerous concepts of different school of thoughts could be presented and explored with horror narrative structures and themes.

What do you think?

You can read the full episode here:

C_o 2020-04-29 17:17:56 UTC #2

I like the idea of defamiliarization as a theme in horror, I mean that is more or less what a lot of Junji Ito's work is all about (especially Uzumaki). I feel like the pay-off for Martin's death could have been something more clever and uncanny as a reflection of this theme however, rather than something gory. Great art!

guroweekly 2020-04-30 04:12:43 UTC #3

The idea was born seeing this panel from Providence (Alan Moore and Jacen Burrows).

The idea is that those statues on top of lots of buildings tend to disappear for those coming and going. They are just something in the background, nameless.

The killing is a way to punish Sophia for having sex with Martin and desacralizing the word 'ostranenie' as some kind of inner joke during orgasm. 'Ostranenie' is the artistic technique of presenting to audiences common things in an unfamiliar or strange way in order to enhance perception of the familiar. So Victor kills Martin with a bloody eagle and people doesn't pay attention, he's up there, just like the statue, invisible in its familiarity.

Have you noticed the differences regarding the statue between the two panels where the building is presented?

Note: Junji Ito is great. Also Hino, Tatsumi and many more!

darthmongoose 2020-04-30 08:13:37 UTC #4

I'm not sure what would be odd about it. Why would horror be any less suited to discussion of literary criticism than any other genre? There was an entire module on Gothic Literature people could do on my English Lit degree (sadly couldn't take it due to scheduling conflict) which covered Frankenstein and Dracula among other works.

Generic critcisim can definitely be applied to how the genre emerged, historical criticism absolutely in how horror works reflect the anxieties of the times they're written in (ie. Dracula and the themes of xenophobia, Frankenstein and worries about scientific hubris), you could absolutely do a Marxist reading of many horror works (in Frankenstein, the Monster just wants the same things humans feel entitled to; shelter and love and he is denied this by his upper-class creator who abandoned responsibility for the monster he unleashed on the world), or a feminist reading (Women as victims... the way virgins often survive while "impure" women with sexual desires and history tend to be killed), or Post-modernist (horror monsters in the popular consciousness and depictions of them divorced from the meaning of their works etc.) And don't even get me started on Queer theory and how vampire stories both celebrate and demonise queer identities.

So yeah, you can definitely explore Literary Theory and Criticism through Horror works, just like any other texts. Horror can actually be a great place for it because it's often such a showcase of "what people are afraid of or anxious about" and how they give that form through metaphor.