Narrative Design Halloween Special: Terror and Taboo
Or, The Evolution of Horror Fiction and Its Cultural Message
Halloween is all about the horror. But what exactly makes us so obsessed with the horrific and the uncanny? How has that changed over time?
This Halloween, we take a detour from our regular interview episodes and talk instead about horror. We open with quotes from Stephen King’s three types of terror and Devendra Varma’s The Gothic Flame. We also discuss James Portnow’s question on the lingering fear (video below) beside Freud’s Totem and Taboo.
We talk about the modern horror fiction genre, from the quintessential gothic novel The Castle of Otranto onwards. H.P. Lovecraft, David Lynch, Junji Ito, and a host of other horror-tastic names will be briefly mentioned.
We finally return to the question: What makes horror good or bad? Hint: It’s not about seeing the strings pulling the demons… But in a way, it also is.
This episode features public domain sound effects and music. Original music scores were created by our editor and audio engineer CJ Camelia Jonathan.
Check out the full list of episodes on our Publication Page!
PREVIOUS EPISODE:
NEXT EPISODE:
Places you can subscribe and listen to:
SoundCloud | iTunes | Stitcher | Pocket Casts | TuneIn
How to’s:
- Show your support? Hit ♥ Recommend so more people can read it!
- Let people know it’s great? Leave us a review on iTunes!
- Comments and questions? Leave a response below!
- Propose a guest? Tweet @bonni07!
- Have your music featured on our show? Tweet @cjcamjoe!
- Help keep the show going?
Narrative Design is entirely self-funded, so we really do depend on all of you. Click here or on the image above to check out our Patreon page, and if you like what we’re doing, please consider making a small monthly donation. Thank you!
