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Horror and the Idea of Everyday Life Philip J. Nickel Sometimes art provokes outrage, fear, and disgust. In the case of horror, that is the point. Those who enjoy horror might seek no justification or defense for it. But because of the strong feelings elicited by horror and the outrageous acts that are depicted in it, to those sensitive to offense it is hard not to feel that some justification or defense is needed. There are some obvious strategies for this, for example, raising the flag of “art for art’s sake” (or “entertainment for entertainment’s sake”); or, by contrast, explicating the value of horror (for example, its moral or educational value—see Nietzsche 1968, 92–93). There are also strategies appealing to other categories of value, along the lines of Nietzsche’s explanation of the value of tragedy as a Dionysian rallying cry. In this essay I intend to explain the value of horror in terms that are neither aesthetic nor moral. My goal is to show that horror has an epistemological value.1 The Concept of Horror In what follows I will use the term horror mostly to refer to a literary and film genre (or, more broadly, a motif) instantiated in artistic works. I will also occasionally refer to horror as a particular emotion or a kind of psychological experience. The defense I propose of horror in the first sense (as a genre or motif) requires us to take up two philosophical questions: What is horror? and What is good about it? My main interest here is not in defining what horror is but rather in exploring the defense of horror—the prospects of an 14 On Skeptical Threats in Psycho and The Birds Horror and the Idea of Everyday Life 15 “apology” in the classical sense. But we cannot say in general what is good about horror unless we understand what it is. Thus I propose the following workingdefinition.Horrorhastwocentralelements:(1)anappearanceofthe evil supernatural or of the monstrous (this includes the psychopath who kills monstrously); and (2) the intentional elicitation of dread, visceral disgust, fear, or startlement in the spectator or reader.2 On this understanding, some of the most popular and critically acclaimed works of art and entertainment contain elements of horror. It is instantiated not only in contemporary film but in the whole history of literary and representational art (Dante’s Inferno, Shakespeare’s tragedies, paintings by Caravaggio and Goya, to mention some obvious examples). This definition builds upon others offered in the philosophical literature on horror. Noël Carroll defines horror as a genre representing unnatural, threatening monsters (1990, 15–16, 27–29). According to Carroll, the genre plays upon a viewer’s characteristic emotional aversion to the idea of such monsters as they are represented in his or her thoughts. For Carroll, monsters are essentially fictional, not something to be worried about in real life. The viewer knows that they do not exist. My definition is broader than Carroll’s in that it allows for horror with no specific monster and also allows for “realistic ” monsters. I have attempted in this way to respond to the criticism that Carroll’s definition is too narrow, excluding works like Psycho and The Shining.3 In my view, unlike Carroll’s, the threats that horror presents are not always fictional but can bleed into the actual world. The Value of Horror The question of horror’s value has been clouded in a couple of ways. First of all, some horror films emphasize graphic depictions of sadistic violence to the exclusion of almost everything else, in something like the way pornographic films focus on graphic depictions of sex to the exclusion of almost everything else. This has led many people to question the value of the horror genre as a whole. For example, Gianluca Di Muzio (2006) takes The Texas Chainsaw Massacre as a model. (In fact there is much more to this film than graphic violence, but let us set our quibbles aside.) In this film a few youths wander into the clutches of psychopaths who torture, murder, and eat them. The film depicts their sadistic torture and murder. One character narrowly escapes. Di Muzio argues that to enjoy such a film is to enjoy a depiction of the torture of children. He claims that it could only have a corrupting influence on one’s moral character since it involves “silencing one’s compassionate attitudes” in the face of (depictions of) terrific and pointless...

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