Please Terrorize Responsibly: Why Horror and Vent Art Matter
Why Should we Create Dark Art?
It’s important to address how much power the driving force behind artistic pursuits can hold — more specifically, how crucial it is to be yourself and not shy away from that force just because it might seem intimidating to others.
In other words, don’t only nurture the aspects of your consciousness that look friendly and non-threatening — embrace all of your true nature, even the morbid side that most would caution you against ever exposing to the light of day. Don’t ask yourself how you can keep your inner demons at bay. Instead, ask yourself: “Why should I keep my inner demons at bay?”
Art and true expression aren’t about suppressing your appetite for everything morbid, they’re about channeling that appetite responsibly.
We cannot go on uninhibited rampages, giving in to all of our darkest dreams regardless of whether they become someone else’s nightmares. Delicacy and caution must be exercised when working with controversial thoughts, but your health and spirit will suffer if you repress these very real and important parts of yourself.
The themes of intense, dark energy in need of expulsion persist through countless classic horror concepts — The Grudge, The Eye, and any number of other haunting movies reiterate the fact that experiences can create a powerful impact that demands some sort of shock absorption or outlet. Paintings like Edvard Munch’s The Scream depict that same, inevitable explosion of energy. Media of this nature makes us think and prompts us to look inwards. It inspires us to question whether we have internal demons of our own that need dealing with.
This is why I love bizarre and horrific subject matter, and see it as a necessary “evil” — if we do not give the monsters within us the attention they demand by exploring them through media both consumed and created, we’re going to be in for one literal Hell of a time when they claw through our composure, screeching over their mistreatment and neglect. However, when we satiate our darker urges with ideas and media rather than deplorable actions, we can balance things out by keeping the monsters contained.
We all Have a Monstrous Side
We all house monsters. They aren’t going to go away. They might simmer just beneath the surface waiting to seep through the delicate veil that conceals them, or they might lurk quietly through the subconscious instead, waiting to burst out at just the right moment of our weakness. We like to think of ourselves mainly as evolved beings of superior intellect, but the truth is that we still remain creatures of feral, primal instinct.
We’ve long since hashed and re-hashed the concepts of Nature vs. Nurture, and the answers turned up in our investigations always seem to circle back around to balance. Our nature is what it is — but we can still train it.
We don’t have to push our inner demons away in order to temper them . . . and to be blunt, we couldn’t if we tried. Rather than pouring our energy down the drain of futility, shouldn’t we instead put it to better use by learning to accept ourselves as we truly are and learn to live authentically with finesse?
What do the Monsters Want From Us?
Society often fears the dark so blindly that it dissuades us with wide eyes and hushed voices from even entertaining questions of what would happen if we gave in to our wicked sides. Many shy away from even thinking about the possibilities, believing that if they open that door they’ll find themselves in far too deep before they know it. In doing so, they shut away their inner demons, leaving them to fester and grieve. But this approach is overzealous, because our inner demons often crave answers rather than action.
Questions are not evil, and the sinister facets of the mind can be embraced in harmless ways despite the sometimes-disturbing nature of their queries. Malevolence and destruction don’t necessarily go hand in hand — sometimes, we need to simply ask ourselves:
“What if . . . ?”
Everyone has toyed around with visions of what would happen if they truly indulged in their dark side. How would it feel to become as feral beasts and hunt our enemies with wild abandon, unburdened by the psychological weight of morality as we shredded everything that ever held us back? Surely we’ll never know firsthand — but the tortured werewolf in that TV series you just binge-watched sure does, and watching him rampage allows you to explore those ideas vicariously without suffering from real-life consequences.
In the same way that watching other people fail can help us avoid making the same mistakes, seeing a likely outcome of our darkest urges presented through fantasy erases some of the mystery. It helps us address forbidden ideas by showcasing the ugly reality of a dark fantasy. When we see how they might play out in the real world, we often realize that the ripples they’d create cause their siren’s call to fall flat.
The “what if” queries put forth by our sinister sides burn, and they demand engagement — if we do not address our own demons, they will spring up in other areas of our lives and spread their bitterness. Far better that we should take responsibility before they get the chance, and move closer to inner peace in the process. In this way, either consuming or creating horrific content can be truly cathartic — instead of ignoring the “problems” in our minds, we can evolve them into something we can explore safely.
How do we Live Authentically but Responsibly?
We’ve already discussed that no matter what we tell ourselves, the simple truth remains that our shadow sides will never go away — and they shouldn’t. The side of self-love that many people refuse to talk about tells us that we need to embrace our demons as part of who we are and gently guide them according to the lives we want to live. The rough, raw sides of us hold just as much value as the parts of us that smile through each day . . . if not infinitely more.
These disturbing ideas, startling thoughts, and morbid fascinations are all manifestations of us — parts of our consciousness. As such, they deserve to be treated with care and respect. We cannot cherry pick the parts of ourselves to love . . . at least, not to any truly successful end. In order to embrace the self, you must embrace the whole self.
So, how do we do this while still remaining compatible with human society? A rain of blood and hellfire born from our unhinged minds certainly wouldn’t be well received, and I’m not trying to say that it should be. The best way to love and nurture our darker selves is through creativity. Fantasy. Artistic expression. The medium is irrelevant — painting, music, writing, film . . . the direction in which the creativity flows once it’s released is secondary to its need to simply be released.
Why Use Art to Soothe Your Monsters?
The best ways of exploring our monstrous desires involve venting them through creativity and art. Well, you know . . . the grim castle painting and horror game kind of art. Not the “I’ve arranged these severed human limbs into the shape of a flower!” kind. Maybe I should have mentioned that sooner . . . But better late than never.
Anyway, we find ourselves free to explore anything and everything through various artistic mediums — and we know that once we put it there, it will stay put. Instead of playing a hellish game of psychological Whack-A-Mole, constantly trying to beat our inner demons back down lest they make a dangerous escape, we can pour their ideas into our art, and let them remain there.
Darkness in media doesn’t just give us the tingly sensation of being tantalized by the danger of the unknown. Real, good horror explores something much deeper — the twisted monsters that hide within us all. Once we welcome them to come and draw, write, or sing with us, we re-integrate them back into our conscious mind.
By acknowledging our demons as part of ourselves and giving them an equally important voice, we achieve the ideal balance between authenticity and responsibility. We must give them a canvas, screen, or file through which to express themselves in a way that’s compatible with the civilized human world. We must give them a safe place to call home.
If You Take Nothing Else from this Post, Take This:
Don’t push away your inner demons — they are you, and to do so is to push away an important part of yourself that should be beloved. Unify these aspects with the rest of your identity, and make peace with them. Don’t try to silence the monsters within — use creativity to give them the voice they deserve, and thus integrate them into your daily life so that you can feel more complete as a living creature.
Open your heart to the darkness within, and give that part of yourself safe and free expression within the realms of creativity and art.
At the end of the day, you need demons and horror in order to properly complete your human experience — and better to write them out in a book that you can close or draw them in a picture that you can face towards the wall, than to experience them for real.
