On terror...or...SWEET ZOMBIE JESUS

My silly Montaigne tribute serves a specific purpose--to call attention to the "essay" as a form, essais as attempts. Also, I hope to exonerate myself from a potentially troubling title-robbery, while in tandem saving my soul from failing utterly my attempt. Well, that's the hope anyway. There are plenty of other academic heresies that will get me thrown into the pit of fire before this will.

I have been terrified before in my life; multiple times, actually. When I say "terror", I mean the sensation where all parts freeze, the blood turns to ice-water, and your consciousness explodes--an explosion that can be contiguous rather than momentary--dismantling all sense of reason save basic physiological responses. This happens to me whenever I fly--an embarrassing trait, considering that I hail from a family of fighter pilots. I also remember experiencing the sensation upon perceiving what I thought was a ghost as a child.

Terror occurs when something demolishes your orientation of reality, your sense of what is right in the universe. My first plane trip was only a few years ago. Maybe I am too old; my sense of perspective may be off kilter. My brother had never flown, though, and he loves it. There's something cathartic about it for him. For me, I can never define a level plane (no pun intended), nor internally orient myself to what is normally "forward"--only "up" and "down" are applicable.

This is not to say that I have never been on a precipice, or have been in other kinds of truer danger. When I was younger, I used to do all manner of climbing on rocks and hills and trees, ascending to dangerous heights with no fear whatsoever (well, maybe a little fear). I have been on the brink of thousand foot drops and have spotted areas where if I were to fall my body would be irrecoverable. Still, I was not terrified then.

I think that being terrified of the ghost makes sense in terms of being terrified of flying. Both experiences shattered my sense of normalcy to such extremes that my consciousness had no basis for comparison. Sure, I have seen aerial photographs and heard many ghost stories--experiencing those things are another matter altogether.

Anna Barbauld argues that there is pleasure in these amazingly novel experiences, despite the pain that terror causes. I can say, with all manner of certainty, that I do not derive any pleasure whatsoever from flying except to be able to say that "I faced my fear." Ditto for the ghost. However, I have deliberately failed to make a distinction between my experiences and that of Gothic terror; one is temporal, corporeal, and subject to the senses, while the latter plays upon the imagination, inciting it to eventually run wild on itself if not kept in check. Sir Bertrand, in Barbauld's own example, nearly loses control as he approaches the delapidated house, even though all that he must contend with at the moment are some freaky noises and the darkness.
Barbauld is careful to distinguish between cathartic responses and that pleasurable feeling from experiencing something novel, astounding, and horrific. The term "horror" is key in understanding the difference between Gothic terror and terror. I cannot for the life of me remember who said this (or something very akin to it), but "Terror is what you experience when the bomb goes off; Horror is what you contend with after." Thus, horror lingers, a violation of harmony and order. Horror is not so much escapist, as Michael Delahoyde puts it, but "an entry into real psychocultural issues."

Barbauld does not mean to tangle etymology as perversely as I do, though she understands the difference between utter terror and the creeping sensation that allows the imagination to stretch itself, to run wild in vast and unexplored crypts of the conscious mind. The entry into psychocultural issues via horror allows the mind to tread otherwise forbidden ground. What is the significance of Sir Bertrand kissing the lady in the coffin, who reaches with outstreched arms? Necrophilia? Maybe, but that desire seems too alien. I am compelled by the collapsing house; something sexual has transpired between the coffin lady and Bertrand, a violation chivalric codes, the conception of the household, and decorum--Sir knight is an uninvited guest, as is evidenced by the sabres clashing and Jeeves attempting to run him off. Worse, the house itself, symbolic not only of order but also of duty and societal roles, crumbles after the forbidden kiss occurs. Like in The Eve of St. Agnes, the structure of the house is violated--both figuratively and literally.

Barbauld argues that wonderous, unusual things should accompany Gothic horror in order to maximize its effect--after all, the imagination wants stretching! I showed the two clips in class from The Mummy and Dracula to test Barbauld's assertion. In The Mummy, we are set in contemporary Egypt, though in the middle of the desert amongst ancient tombs: an alien environment to most of us probably. Archaeologists poke around with their findings until the creepy Van Helsing character (Edward Van Sloan, who incidentally plays Professor Van Helsing in the version of Dracula I had shown) decides to be a party pooper. Young scientist opens the case anyway--the veritable hand in the forbidden cookie jar--only to awaken Imhotep, who creaks over to his forbidden scroll, retrieves it, and is on his merry way. Mr. Impatience goes nuts, and we are left alone with a laughing madman--"H-h-h-h-h-he decided to go for a little walk! You should have seen the look on his face!" Why should we have seen the look on his face, when the camera won't let us? Obscurity heightens the moment of horror.

Though as alien and fantastic (and disturbing) as that Mummy bit is, the proceedings in Dracula have always bothered me more. Recently, Philip Glass and the Kronos Quartet scored the film--the only music in the original is a rendition of Swan Lake at the credit roll. I can't help but feel that Philip Glass couldn't stand the disturbing vistas of silence, and felt the need to fill space. Certainly Glass's work is creepy, and adds a sense of tension to the film, but on the other hand we don't really need it, considering that the silent spaces are even more tense without the music to latch onto (silent tension and musical tension are different beasts altogether). I am reminded of some individuals who cannot stand silent spaces in conversation--they feel as if silence is some sort of social shortcoming, and overcompensate to remedy the awkwardness. Dracula's silence creates false obscurity in the entropic castle--the Count only breaks it after he himself has broken nearly every rule of good hospitality: greetings at the door, plenty of light, a clean (or at least bearable) home-environment, and a lack of giant spiders. Essentially, Dracula is letting Renfield stew in horror, only to relieve him of his pain temporarily, "like a spider spinning his web..." We know, at least in part, what's in that house--vampire brides (Dracula is a polygamist, presumably, further messing with the ideas of household roles and established order), corpses, and Armadillos. If we were to linger on the issue of Dracula's brides, they further explode normalcy by reversing the roles of motherhood--barren, corpse-like, they feed on other human flesh (including children, we later learn). Where does this fall on Barbauld's spectrum?

Maybe The Mummy isn't alient enough anymore--are we, as academics, close enough to archaeologists and their environments that nothing seems quite as alien to us as it would to a viewer in the '30s? I wonder, however, if it is too alien, especially in comparison with Dracula. The Count and his brides are foreign, yes, but do they not violate that which is most familiar to us? Dracula is a literal anti-Christ, an unliscensed resurrectee, who reverses and corrupts nearly every aspect of Christ: crosses are bad for both, but in diometricallly opposed ways; stabbing with spears and stakes is prevalent for both; vampires, like Christ, exhibit uncanny mobility; one
sucks blood while the other proffers his blood and body (think of the Eucharist and its reversal--a cannibalistic ritual in the figurative sense); baptisms of blood and pollution versus cleansing baptisms--the list can go on. Significantly, Christ cries "Noli me tangere!" when Mary Magdalene attempts to touch him--like Imhotep (who has an awkward moment with his sweetheart when he leaves a trail of himself behind on her arm), Christ is still corporeal, and thus, still very much a zombie: if you were to hand Jesus some skittles right before he ascended, they would drop right out of the holes in his hands onto the ground. Again, the primary difference between the two, aside from intentionality, is that Dracula is an unliscensed resurrectee: he has accelerated events that should only occur during the apocalypse.

"Wait, jackass", you may say. "I am not Christian and still find Dracula creepy." Well, academically speaking, Christian doctrine has, to whatever end, impinged upon Western consciousness--most of this operates below the surface of our concerns anyway. However, other vampire variants show up all over the world: the loss of blood or the pollution of blood seems to be a universal concern.

I tend to want to think that Barbauld would be more approving of The Mummy's horrific effectiveness, though on the other hand her Sir Bertrand bit mirrors Dracula in many ways. The familiar becomes the exotic through a process of dual othering and the adoption of repressed urges--first the coffin lady is othered, heightening her other-worldly qualities, but yet she exhibits desires simultaneously repressed and embraced. We later discover that Imhotep is cursed for attemping to raise his beloved--"They broke in upon me and found me doing an unholy thing." More necrophilia!

I wish I could just show Barbauld those bloody clips and be done with it. What did you find more effective, by the way?