Stranger Things: How We Find Wisdom in the Upside Down of Horror

The Horror! The Horror!

It has been said that there are only so many stories one can tell. Across cultures and time, groupings of the long list of stories we have told emerge within discernible patterns. Stories take on provincial nuance to be sure, as what is funny or scary, for example, are recognized in distinct ways across cultures. But the fact that there are a handful of genres that appear to be fairly widespread across the narrations of humanity is quite extraordinary. The particulars of these narrations vary from culture to culture, but certain genres tend to appear wherever the human animal tells stories. We are homo narrans.

One of these seemingly universal genres is horror. What is it about us that is drawn to being scared? Why do we subject ourselves to the spectacle of horror? Or is this even the right way of putting it? Perhaps we should first begin by asking why such narratives exist? Horror stories should “be examined within the intricate matrix of relations (social, cultural, and literary-historical) which generate them.” As the anthropologist Mary Douglas rightly noted, feelings of disgust and fear, or aversion to apparent transgressions or violations makes sense only within specific cultural categories. The horror genre might then be usefully seen as not necessarily fitting within the conceptual scheme of one sort, but in violation of it. But why do we tell scary stories?

This has been the subject of much theorizing from the likes of Freud to a host of contemporary theorists. Perhaps such stories are safe exercises of our most foreboding socio-cultural fears? Freud himself suggested that “uncanny experiences” mark the return to consciousness of repressed infantile complexes. Or, following Douglas, we might see the horror story as a group exercise in social norms and categories. We might even press here for specificity as to what kind of horror story we are talking about. Within the horror genre, there are many subgenres: demonic, alien, monster, slasher, and so on. Stephen Asma suggests that “stories about monster threats and heroic conquests provide us with a ritualized, rehearsable simulation of reality, a virtual way to represent the forces of nature, the threats from other animals, and the dangers of human social interaction.” There are also elements in which horror might crop up in other genres without that story being classified as horror.

Latent within most horror stories is a breach of some kind. A party is wronged, a spirit is disturbed, or as in the case of the original Godzilla (1954), hubris has crossed nature’s lines. The unfolding plot often takes the form as an attempt to heal that breach. It is this breach, along with what the noted film theorist Mario Rodriguez has described as the social commentary the horror genre gives, that I would like to consider.

This breach communicates a fundamental unease and imbalance within the symbol system and narrative world. Something, someone, some force, has been upset, unsettled, and is loosed for vengeance. The perception of this breach introduces crises into the story. In Hamlet, that great story of vengeance, we get a sense of this foreboding early when Marcellus reports to Horatio after the appearance of the haunting ghost, “something is rotten in the state of Denmark.” The haunting specter disjoints time — or, better, the vengeful spirit is loosed through the fissures of the breach caused by Claudius’ fratricide. The very presence of the horror genre, or elements of horror within other genres, demonstrates at least the threat of the world’s dissolution.

The world in which we live is sustained and maintained through a complex network of rituals and rules. This network is fluid, even allowing for its own forms of trespass and rebooting, as in the phenomena of Saturnalia or carnival, or the scapegoat. But it is when this network is disrupted outside these allowable forms of purification and trespass that horror resides. Horror is guided by a series of balances and imbalances. The movement from one to the other and back again not only drives the plot, but also alerts us to the fragility of our world, the reality of threats to our world, and the importance of rituals and rules for its maintenance. The plot and drive toward resolution within the horror genre is thus more than simply healing this breach; it is the attempt to rebuild one’s world.

There are, as stated above, many aspects and elements of horror. In classical stories like Godzilla, there is an ambiguity introduced with respect to the label of “monster.” Who, or what, is the monster in this story? Is it the giant radioactive reptile emerging from the depths of the sea? Or is it the hubris of science’s careless courting of nature? We might also ask this of Frankenstein as well: Who is the monster? Is it the creature or the scientist who created it? The culpability of the carnage and wreckage wrought in these two stories is brilliantly ambiguated — not only the culpability, but the very identities of the players involved. It may be perhaps too much to say that the roles of protagonist and antagonist get reversed in such stories, but they do get blurred. To put the question rather perversely: which is more “monstrous,” the “monsters” who emerge or the conditions which create them? Godzilla and Frankenstein are not about gratuitous carnage from mindless monsters, but rather revenge and retaliation precisely where the maintenance of rituals and boundary rules were neglected. Horror, then, and the labeling of the monstrous, is utterly perspectival.

The Fool’s Monstrosity

The book of Proverbs contains surprising and spectacular elements of horror in this respect. Early in the book we read that the “simple are killed by their turning away, and the complacency of fools destroys them” (1:32). Within the horror genre, there appear to be a set of rules dictating whom will be killed throughout the story. These rules are often spoofed in such movies as Scream or Cabin in the Woods. The fool is often among the unlucky in such stories for breaking these rules. We might picture the “simple” here as the hapless stoner who wanders off on his own, turning away from the group to relieve him in some sort of way. Or the frisky couple who disappear into the dark for a quick exercise of their passions. Those who turn away or wander off are picked off like wounded animals by predators in horror films. The foolish — those who do not operate within the horror genre’s rationality of wisdom and folly — are brutally murdered one by one. Their destruction in the horror genre allows for comedic relief in some cases, while allowing the killer to accrue power and foreboding. What is striking in Proverbs 1:32 is that though we do not know the immediate cause of the simpleton’s death, what is clear is that the ultimate cause for the destruction of the fool and simple is their own folly. And, Wisdom, which was once crying aloud in the streets (1:20), now laughs and mocks the foolish in their death throes (1:26–27).

Zombie stories continue to grow in popularity. From Mel Brooks’ War World Z, to the hit TV show The Living Dead, the story of the zombie is the story of a contagion — usually a scientific experiment or drug gone wrong — setting loose an epidemic of de-humanization. The terror of the genre is that it depicts the blind aggression and lethal capacities of the undead as a threat to the frailty of life. The undead are crazed with the insatiable need to feed. Proverbs depicts the foolish in zombie-like ways as those who are never satisfied or filled: always feeding yet never full (e.g., 27:20).

Elsewhere in Proverbs we read of the “forbidden woman” who, vampire-like, seduces the weak and drags them to hell (7:22–23; cf. 5:3–6; 22:14). The temptress in Proverbs is not necessarily evidence of a misogynistic view of women. Women are used throughout as personifications of the ways of wisdom (life) and folly (death) alike. The point is not gender politics but the way one follows. The way most men consider right is actually the broad road to death (14:12). The call of Proverbs is to reject the illusion — the way of appearance that leads to death — and walk in the way of life. The vampire-like temptress feeding off the foolishness of the weak, has laid low many, and her lair lies on the way to Sheol. When she rises from her coffin, the life of the living is sucked from their bodies and brought down to the chambers of death (7:27).

The fool is also depicted as a ravenous monster. Bloodthirsty and hating the wise, these monsters stalk the life of the upright (29:10). They prey upon the poor of the earth, seeking to devour them with their sword-like teeth and knives for fangs (30:14). They are more dangerous than an attacking bear (17:12). Better to be cornered by the monstrous bear in The Edge (1997) than to be near the most dangerous animal of all: the fool.

The way of wisdom is the path through these balances and imbalances. As with the horror genre, all restorations of balance are temporary. When balance is restored, there is always the looming threat of return. We see this masterfully in the final paragraph of Camus’ The Plague. The good Dr. Rieux listens to the cries of joy rising from the city when the imbalance of the plague was finally brought back into balance. But he knows that “such joy is always imperiled.” He knew that the plague bacillus never dies or disappears for good; that it can lie dormant for years and years in furniture and linen-chests; that it bides its time in bedrooms, cellars, trunks, and bookshelves; and that perhaps the day would come when, for the bane and the enlightening of men, it would rouse up its rats again and send them forth to die in a happy city.

The wisdom of Dr. Rieux is in seeing that even when the horror recedes, there is always the threat of return. In horror, there is never finality. Because life is lived between these competing forces, there is always sequel. Life will therefore always contain elements of horror. This is why Proverbs lives within the imagery of journey, of life lived along a path. Wisdom is never the once for all. It lives within the choices of the everyday, threatened by horror within the spaces of imbalance on every side. Folly stalks wisdom just as wisdom stalks folly.