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This Week in Horror

10/12/2014

24 Comments

 
I thought for a change of pace today I might talk about the past week in the supernatural—the fictional kind that is. It was a big week for supernatural horror, and I have a few thoughts about some of the highlights.
I might as well start with the disappointing conclusion to the first season of The Strain, which ended its run last Sunday. The FX series, based on the literary trilogy of the same name, was marketed as a “unique” and “original” take on the vampire genre, but after watching the full thirteen episode run, my view of the show hasn’t changed since the pilot. The show is in no way original but rather a postmodern mashup of earlier vampire stories, and the only parts of the series that actually work well are the Gothic elements stolen wholesale from iterations of Dracula. As I noted in reviewing the pilot episode, the doomed plane motif was lifted almost verbatim from the “Demeter” scene in Dracula, and things did not progress much from there.

To the extent that the Master works as a character, it is because he steals mightily from Dracula. He skitters up walls like the Count, takes his visage and clothing from Nosferatu, and—in the rip-off most critics overlooked—he speaks to his minions in Biblical language and imagery; this is taken over directly from the novel Dracula, where the Count is presented as an Antichrist and speaks in the language of the New Testament devil: “All these lives will I give you, ay, and many more and greater, through countless ages, if you will fall down and worship me!” (cf. Matthew 4:9). Critics, like LaToya Ferguson of The A.V. Club praised the show for its unconventional view that religion is powerless before a material evil that works in the idiom of faith. But this is merely a reversal of Dracula, where the Count is the Devil rather than God, and not a clever reversal at that.

But the most bizarre of the show’s many—let’s call them “adaptations”—is the idea that there are some dead but dreaming Old Ones whom we must fear to waken, with a gnarly dude who speaks for them. They are a close parallel—and not a welcome one—to the Ancient Ones who sleep on their pillars in H. P. Lovecraft’s “Through the Gates of the Silver Key” and speak through ’Umr at-Tawil, the Prolonged of Life. But as really old vampires, they are nothing if not close copies of the Old Ones from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, originally introduced as vampire versions of the their Lovecraftian progenitors early in the show’s run. Not that Buffy was unique there, either; hierarchies of ancient vampires are a dime a dozen.

But I’ve wasted enough space on this juvenile version of vampire horror, though if you are interested in the backstory to the apparently dreadful new film Dracula Untold, my article on the real life inspiration for the cave where Vlad goes to gain superpowers from a cranky old vampire might be of interest to you.

Anyway, speaking of the Prolonged of Life, this week also saw the return of Supernatural for its tenth season, which makes it one of the longest-running horror series in television history, longer than Night Gallery (three seasons), Dark Shadows (six seasons), and even The X-Files (nine seasons). It’s also morphed into a weird, virtually all-male soap opera that bears only a passing resemblance to the show it began as in 2005.

Earlier this week the CW had a Supernatural special in which the show’s staff discussed the production, and I was amused but not surprised to see that everything I liked about the original conception of the show, the current show-runners considered its worst aspects, and everything I hate they found to be of overwhelming interest. They singled out the show’s second episode, “Wendigo” (2005), as a particular low point because of poor special effects and a lack of soap opera drama. Oddly enough, I’d have placed the episode high up on the list of early successes because it was a strong distillation of a B-level horror movie into 40 minutes.

In fact, in my 2008 book Knowing Fear—written during Supernatural’s second season (2006-2007)—I specifically praised the show for its adaptation of horror movie plots and its use of the forbidden knowledge motif. Then, of course, the show took a hard turn and doubled down on demons, added angels, and became a caricature of a Catholic guilt trip. Pretty much everything established in the first season or two—from the nonexistence of angels to the unparalleled power and horror of demons—went by the wayside, and what remained was … different.

I wasn’t surprised, but I was disappointed, to hear the production team talk about their love of the angel stories and of the endlessly repeated fraternal angst motif, both aspects I’d have avoided. Of course, doing so would have made Supernatural more like Kolchak: The Night Stalker, and it undoubtedly would have flamed out years ago since a decent semi-anthology of suspense is almost impossible to maintain. But would it have burned brighter than the current soap opera that masquerades in the original version of the show’s clothes?

Lastly, the biggest news in horror this week wasn’t technically supernatural at all. American Horror Story: Freak Show debuted this week, taking a clear inspiration from Tod Browning’s 1932 horror classic Freaks (his follow-up to Dracula), from which the first episode borrows the classic line “One of us!” (If the final scene of Freak Show’s first episode is any indication, it may even be a kind of sequel to Freaks.) American Horror Story is more of a Gothic novel than a horror story, despite its name, and this latest iteration of the horror franchise managed a series of scenes that were grotesque, though not exactly horrifying.

Like the movie that inspired it, Freak Show asks us to simultaneously sympathize with and gawk at its “freaks,” some of whom appear as themselves without computer or makeup enhancement. It’s hard line to walk, and a single episode is nothing to judge the series by. I discuss the role of freak shows in the development of the horror genre in Knowing Fear, including the unconscionable fact that in the 1800s, gentlemen would pay for the privilege of poking the freaks with a stick. Seriously. It was considered educational.

That said, I want to note the presence of a killer clown in the show. The evil clown is kidnapping kids for some ungodly purpose, but the costume used for the killer clown is that of Pagliacci, the Victorian-era killer clown of opera, whom I discussed in my pieces on killer clowns earlier this year. It’s good to know that American Horror Story respects the origins of this weird, mostly modern trope. 

24 Comments
ggt102
10/12/2014 05:41:07 am

The idea of a killer clown kidnapping kids reminds me of Stephen King's It. In that story Pennywise the Clown kidnaps and kills children following a hibernation period of about 30 years. I happen to think it's one of King's best novels.

Reply
Matt Mc
10/12/2014 06:31:27 am

I thought the first AHS FREAK SHOW was excellent now I have to admit to bias since FREAKS is one of my favorite movies and I have worked closely for years with SHOCKED AND AMAZED helping promote and document modern and classic burlesque and sideshows acts. I hope it continues along the path it introduced in the first episode and uses the series normal absurd and over the top presentation within the parameters it was set up. Overall my favorite offering of the series so far and I cannot wait to see what is going to happen. Also on a side note the creators of AHS did spent a decent amount of time interviewing James Taylor that head of SHOCKED AND AMAZED in their research of sideshows and the mysteries and myths behind them.

Reply
Jason Colavito link
10/12/2014 06:34:40 am

I'm going to agree with you that of the four season of AHS so far, this one probably had the best produced and most promising opening episode. I, too, am interested to see where they are going with it.

Reply
Matt Mc
10/12/2014 07:23:14 am

My one complaint so far is that of the clown itself. I thought the use of modern makeup really took that character out of the Fifties time period that episode exists in. That said the use of David Bowie and Fionna Apples songs was fantastic, I would gladly pay to see a burlesque/sideshow review as was presented in the show, truly fantastic and really set a great twisted mood.

spookyparadigm
10/12/2014 07:18:51 am

"a weird, virtually all-male soap opera"

Is it really that hard to say "they realized their core audience is the same that consumes paranormal romance books and produces slash-fanfic"?

Reply
spookyparadigm
10/12/2014 07:19:15 am

:)

spookyparadigm
10/12/2014 07:14:10 am

- the sleeping vampires sounds extremely close to White Wolf's Antediluvians. I assume you are familiar with it, but it's worth mentioning anyway. They seemed like something between a modest Lovecraft homage to something more akin to Rice's Queen of the Damned (and of course, White Wolf stole liberally from Rice's books up and down the line).

- Supernatural

"Earlier this week the CW had a Supernatural special in which the show’s staff discussed the production, and I was amused but not surprised to see that everything I liked about the original conception of the show, the current show-runners considered its worst aspects, and everything I hate they found to be of overwhelming interest. They singled out the show’s second episode, “Wendigo” (2005), as a particular low point because of poor special effects and a lack of soap opera drama. Oddly enough, I’d have placed the episode high up on the list of early successes because it was a strong distillation of a B-level horror movie into 40 minutes."

This sounds precisely why I liked the first two seasons of The X-Files so much. The first season in particular is pretty much one movie homage/adaptation after another, but with some exceptions, they were good. They found their own style a bit in the second season, with the height of that in the third season before it started to quickly go downhill.

But your description of how Supernatural has become a high fantasy soap opera sounds like so many fan-focused products out there (including eventually the X-Files, but Buffy also went this way though it didn't get simply soap opera-ish because Whedon does indeed have an idea what he's doing; I even think about the old webcomic Sluggy Freelance this way). They start as something mildly derivative, distilling previous art and putting their own spin on it. This draws in an audience, but the most dedicated members of that audience want soap opera. Tortured protagonists. More plot than theme. And the producers start to give it to them. And the core audience is really happy, and casual people who channel surf and see pretty faces don't really care. But if you liked any of the ideas that were once there, good luck with that.

Which you know, fine. TV is clearly well-suited to the soap opera, there have been many different takes on the concept, blending it with everything from grotesque gothic horror to absurdist comedy to cartoons.

All that said, specifically talking about supernatural themes, the real question, IMO, is where the line between pop pseudo-Christian style ends, and superheroes begins. Yes, we're talking angels here again, but looking at all the paranormal and supernatural soap operas in manga, novels, tv, comics (web or otherwise) etc., while stock characters like vampires and angels and demons all appear, they have almost no relation to the past. I'm not even talking their folkloric past, but their past in recent fiction. Look at all the reviews complaining about Dracula Begins or whatever it is called being a superhero origin story vs. a horror story. To which I'd say: have looked at how vampires have been treated for 30+ years? All of these stories of superpowered individuals seem to be working less with mythology (horror characters or old-style gods mythology) and more with the kinds of serial plotting and characterization found in both soap operas and comics. I'm by no means the first person to point this out when it comes to things like vampires, but I suspect it isn't any different with angels or other constructs.

Regarding The Strain, are you feeling we may have dodged a bullet re: del Toro ATMoM?

Reply
Jason Colavito link
10/12/2014 08:13:48 am

Regarding ATMoM, yes, I think it's for the best.

The problem with Supernatural is more or less that it is a show designed for a specific audience, which happens to only somewhat overlap with the show's initial audience. I don't have all of the figures at hand, but in its first few years it had the WB/CW's largest male audience and produced horror-themed material for them, but over the years, the show's female following has grown markedly, and the turn toward relationship drama correlates with this, though as cause or effect (or a sexist stereotype about what women want) I can't say. I do know that relationship drama is a lot cheaper than CGI and special effects, so it makes economic sense.

Reply
spookyparadigm
10/12/2014 08:43:12 am

And again, I'd say it's a more extreme version of what you routinely see in serial entertainment. And it isn't like relationship drama is exclusively found in female-focused fiction. Superhero comics went down that road a long-time ago, and as I was trying to get at with too many words, the plot structure, the angst, etc. is just not that different from a lot of superhero comics from the 1970s on. Yes there are more fisticuffs and less sucking of necks and wrists and such, but yeah. Whedon's career of comics and Buffy and Angel (which as much as the Whedonites don't want to admit it, Buffy is a lot closer to paranormal romance than they might want to think, even before we got tortured angsty Spike with his shirt always off during Marti Noxon's final handling of the show) being a perfect example.

If you do want to go back to your larger social interpretations, including the emphasis you have placed on knowledge and horror, one could draw parallels between the canary in the coal mine of supernatural soap operas, and the decline and debasement of science-flavored occulture (in favor of giants, nephilim, demons, etc.).

Speaking of the death of the science future, did you see the trailer for Tomorrowland? I winced.

Jason Colavito link
10/12/2014 10:45:39 am

I have nothing against paranormal romance: "The Vampire Diaries" announced what it planned to do up front and stuck with it, and became a decent genre show for it, at least until sheer age started to weigh it down. Paranormal romance is a return to the Gothic and the Romantic--and probably why so many are set in the South. The only reasons Supernatural stands out is (a) the lack of actual romance and (b) the hard turn the show made from its original concept (X-Files for the WB set), which is also the reason for (a). It's unusual in TV, where shows very rarely change into something different, and even more rarely pretend that they didn't and it was part of the plan all along.

Tomorrowland's trailer doesn't make much sense (a magic pin?--must be quantum!), but I will given them this: The retro-style graphic design of the pin is wonderful. Apparently the best future was the one 1960s people thought we would have had by now.

spookyparadigm
10/12/2014 12:07:55 pm

Well sure, PR is what is, if one is honest about it. But it has taken a while to get there, and I think part of the reason many do revile it is that it can get confused for other "genre" material. This stuff did emerge out of "urban fantasy" and other material in the 1990s (Laurel Hamilton's descent from White Wolfish before White Wolf urban fantasy to supernatural erotica, for example). Or people who get pissed off about Twilight, but less so Shades of Grey, since one is more obvious about what it is.

Or, you know, how ST:Voyager was not just a piece of shit, it was a bait-and-switch piece of shit soap opera (whereas DS9 had soap opera elements to its larger story, which even then was sort of a bait-and-switch from the Trek ethos, but a well-done one).

As for Tomorrowland, of course they're pointing at that future. It's everyone's future, including the ST I just referenced. That's the great joke behind the first seasons of The Venture Brothers (another show that went from genre adaptation/parody to being a sort of soap opera but as farce) with its SuperScience.

Have you read William Gibson's short story "The Gernsback Continuum"? It's in Burning Chrome, IIRC. It's pretty much the exact same idea, a metaphorical peek into the world of the future by a photographer doing a project on all the old rusted out space age architecture in Southern California.

Of course, Gibson was writing for SF readers who would get what he was on about, rather than yet another take on "hey kids, listen to these old Baby Boomers who are getting close to the end of their lives and can't handle mortality as their entire identity is wrapped up in extended youth, so they want to sell you a fantasy about why the world is screwed and you can't change it, except maybe in the post-apoc ashes"

EP
10/12/2014 02:47:16 pm

"people who get pissed off about Twilight, but less so Shades of Grey, since one is more obvious about what it is."

To be fair, Twilight really is epically awful. Like, it literally is slashfic-tier writing filled with creepy propaganda and bizarre fetishization of puritanism, which is aimed at a significantly more undeveloped and impressionable demographic than Fifity Shades is. Fifty Shades is just lame (and owes much of its success precisely to its lameness). Twilight, when it is all said and done, will probably be justifiably blamed for a notable part in retarding the progress of humanity.

EP
10/12/2014 09:50:16 am

Just out of curiosity, has anyone here read much Stanislaw Lem? And if so, do you have any thoughts on the "horror" side of his work?

Reply
Residents Fan
10/12/2014 10:28:21 am

" Tod Browning’s 1932 horror classic Freaks ".

Which was based on the story "Spurs" by the
long neglected horror writer Tod Robbins.

As for AHS: I have always thought there was something
cynical and mean-spirited about all of Ryan Murphy's
TV shows, and the first season of AHS confirmed it for
me. I disliked the way the show insensitively
referenced real-life tragedies like the Columbine massacre
and the murder of Elizabeth Short to give itself the illusion of
solemnity, not to mention the fact the plot didn't make a lick
of sense. The only thing of note about the show was the
reversal of the usual family dynamic of US cable dramas, with
Dylan McDermott's husband being far more unlikeable
than Connie Britton's wife.

I found the widespread critical praise the first
season of AHS received genuinely puzzling.

Reply
Matt Mc
10/12/2014 12:46:57 pm

The first season (the one you are referring to) was by far the weakest entry into the series. The second season had some great moments but the whole alien thing kind of ruined it for me. I thought the third season was pretty strong.

I look at AHS as almost a parody of horror, it seems they want to take the generic horror situations and make them as absurd and deliberately over the top as possible including trying to be disturbing and upset the audience by bringing up sub plots that are only there to offset the viewer. I watch every new episode with a what kind of thing are they going to do this time.

Reply
Clint Knapp
10/12/2014 05:57:46 pm

While I'd agree, as most seem to, that the first season was certainly the weakest. I have to disagree with the Columbine remark. School shootings are a very real thing and have been before and since Columbine. Had the details of the show's school shooter directly paralleled those of the Columbine massacre, there might be call for some condemnation, but they don't.

As a concept, we can find little more horrifying than the death of our children at the hands of other children. It's something that as a society we've been experiencing with rather upsetting regularity, and it's only natural that our fiction has grown to include the theme as a way to explore other ways of coping with such tragedy. School shootings are, quite simply, a true American horror story. In this, the season actually got something right.

Of course, that isn't to diminish your own reaction in any way. There will always be people who react in such a way to any fictional portrayal of a school shooting; as is one's prerogative. I only mean to shed a little light on one of the main purposes of horror fiction; to cause us to face our fears in a safe manner and explore the emotion more fully to understand it and why we react in such ways.

If you'd like to see school shooting treated in a much more deplorable manner, I refer you to the season six premier of Sons of Anarchy; in which the entire scenario of a school shooting is used solely as a vehicle to perpetuate the show's gang violence under the thin guise of giving the main character a reason to get out of the illegal firearms trade.

As to the rest of the Murder House season's plot (and Matt touches on this eloquently), it isn't suppose to make sense. Haunted house stories, even the "real" ones like Amityville, are stories of the psychological breakdown of the family unit into irrationality and paranoia. The producers seem to have been aiming to draw the viewers themselves into that break down to expose it in a tongue-in-cheek manner. Whether it was successful at doing so, however, is up to the viewer.

Certainly they did a better job of it with the second season's Asylum theme focusing on the madness of the individuals involved in the alien abduction plot and the loss of their grip on reality. That the aliens turned out to be objectively real seems more of the show's general leaning toward inversion parody.

Reply
JaredMithrandir link
10/13/2014 09:27:42 pm

I happen some of the best TV out there to be fictionalizations of school Shootings. Degrassi and One Tree Hill both did brilliant storylines.

Coridan
10/12/2014 01:58:22 pm

What, no nod to Doctor Who's horror episode this week?

Reply
Jason Colavito link
10/13/2014 08:00:04 am

Honestly? I was busy this weekend. This post was written before the episode aired.

Reply
Mark L
10/13/2014 12:56:20 am

Re: Supernatural

I'm British, and from the beginning "Supernatural" was marketed more at admirers of the male form. The hookline for adverts was "Scary Just Got Sexy". I think the stories have been consistently good enough to keep me around, but since the main story was told and finished (5 years ago!) it's been entertaining more than essential.

Having stories about them taking on creatures other than angels or demons seems like a distant memory, but they'll presumably pop a few in every season from now to when it ends.

Reply
Jason Colavito link
10/13/2014 08:01:39 am

That very interesting about the different ways that the show was marketed in the UK and here. On this side of the Pond, the (now-defunct) WB marketed it as an attempt to lure in more male viewers for an action-oriented genre show, part of its final push to broaden its audience beyond teen girls.

Reply
Kal
10/13/2014 02:08:43 pm

The irony of Twilight and 50 shades of Gray is that 50 shades was originally a slash fan fiction of Twilight with the vampire turned into a rich man and the mopey teenager turned into a vampy sexualized character. 50 shades is torture porn for soap opera watching mommies. Twilight is for their kids.

Reply
JaredMithrandir link
10/13/2014 09:20:14 pm

FreakShow had me thinking of Tim Burton in general and specially Batman begins quite a bit.

I wish the Killer Clown was less Slasher Killer and more like The Joker or Kefka.

Reply
Matt Mc
10/16/2014 01:48:58 am

Jason thought you might be interested in this article about how clowns are upset at AHS

http://www.avclub.com/article/professional-scary-clowns-upset-american-horror-st-210532

Reply



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