Horror and Society

"I recognize terror as the finest emotion and so I will try to terrorize the reader. But if I find that I cannot terrify, I will try to horrify, and if I find that I cannot horrify, I'll go for the gross-out. I'm not proud."
                                                                                                                                                       --Stephen King

Horror itself is a ancient form of art,  humans have been using long before cinema. Long before the 20th century, we as humans have tried to terrify others with  horrific tales which have been passed down from generation to generation to often act as a warning of the consequences of unmoral behaviour and a tool to reinforce the taboos in the respective society. For example, the werewolf. That is belief that when there is a full moon a man that has been bitten by a werewolf will transform into a werewolf and go on a massive killing spree. This myth has been passed down from generation to generation  arguably since the ancient Greeks. However many authors claim the myth at first was only told to people to explain the reasoning behind serial killing. The fact that wolves were the biggest threat to humans in Europe at the time may explain why storytellers may have used wolves to describe the fact that some serial killers of the past acted in a very malicious way. Others believed werewolves were an metamorphose of demons and the devil himself.

an 18th century drawing of a werewolf. 

Moving on to the 1800s, this was the time when horror was constructed into the form of novels which really helped push horror as a art form to more of the masses. However these novels broke away from superstitious horror and formed a new horror sub genre: Monster. Most notably out of this horror sub genre was the creation of Frankenstein by Mary Shelley in the novel Frankenstein or the modern Prometheus. However contrast to popular belief, Frankenstein was an name which was never associated with the monster itself but rather the main human protagonist. The monster itself was referred to as: "monster" , "fiend", "wretch", "daemon" and "it".

a 1831 adaption of Frankenstein

The 1931 adaption of Frankenstein

Another famous iconic novel from the 1800s was the novel 'Strange case of a Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde' which played around the theme of good and evil. The book itself is commonly associated with the mental disease condition called "split personality" or schizophrenia  which is when someone is believed to have two distinct personalities. In Dr Jekylls case, He is good and evil. Such was the impact of the novel, that the title has become a part of language because when people hear the term "Jekyll and Hyde", they are drawn to the image of someone who has a dark side about them in their brain.  Thus horror once again played a part in society because now instead of people passing down stories from generation to generation , people were able to purchase and read stories. However unlike passing down stories, Horror novels were considered to be for the wealthy and those who were educated as the poor were unlikely to afford these novels and and even more unlikely to have the ability to read.  Another notable novels from the 1800s were: The ring and the book, Through a Glass Darkly and Les Fluers du Mal (The Flowers of Evil)

Michael