Horror, High and Low (pt. 2)

Read Part 1 of this series, if you missed it!

All right, then, on to Part 2 . . .

What Lies Beneath Genre and Literary Fiction

When most fans try to defend genre fiction, they have an unfortunate tendency to hold up the most atypical examples--those that are most like mainstream or literary fiction. The implication is that genre fiction at its most typical really can't be defended, and has no merit. That will not be my approach. What I offer here is a positive account of genre fiction at its most typical, a defense of it at its most supposedly indefensible.

Critics fault genre fiction for a remarkably consistent set of characteristic flaws:

• emphasis on story
• formulaic
• stock, undeveloped characters
• melodramatic
• unrealistic
• "comforts, satisfies, and reassures audiences' expectations"

By contrast, literary fiction is lauded for a similarly characteristic set of corresponding virtues:

• emphasis on character, idea, and style
• original, eschewing formula
• distinctly individual characters of psychological complexity
• subtle
• realistic
• "challenges and questions audiences' expectations"

(I'd note that in a broader artistic discussion, the low term would also be characterized as more visual--movies, television, comics, illustrated fiction--whereas the high would be characterized as more verbal and conceptual--unillustrated literature, modern and postmodern art.)

I say these sets are "remarkably" consistent because, if you just stop to look at them, they're really quite hodgepodge; it's not immediately clear what they have in common that makes them so likely to occur and recur together as characteristic sets. Why should horror, romances, westerns, and mysteries all be typified by just this same cluster of various flaws, while so much that doesn't fit those categories is typified by just this shared cluster of odd virtues?

It turns out, there is a real basis for these dichotomous groupings. Mature humans in literate modern societies have two fundamentally different modes of
cognitive/emotional/psychological processing available to them. Everything that characterizes genre fiction derives from one, and everything that characterizes literary fiction derives from the other.

Freud called these dual modes of mental processing "primary" and "secondary," because,

the primary processes are present in the [psychic] apparatus from the beginning, while the secondary processes develop gradually in the course of life, inhibiting and covering the primary ones, and gaining complete mastery over them perhaps only at the height of life.

The primary process is thus subordinated but not obliterated through maturation. It continues to operate in the psyche, governing unconscious life. It finds continued expression in dreams, slips of the tongue and other unconscious behavior, and various culturally accepted and designated outlets ranging from humor to religion.

Many of Freud's ideas have been contested or rejected, of course, but this one has found fairly broad acceptance. Richard Lazarus, from the very different perspective of cognitive psychology, affirms the need for some dual-mode account of processing, and explicitly names Freud's theory of primary and secondary process as one helpful account:

The terms primary process and secondary process were used by Freud to refer to primitive, wishful logic in very young children on the one hand, and reality-oriented, ego processes, which develop later in life through maturation and experience with the world, on the other. Rational rules govern secondary process thinking, whereas irrational rules govern the primary process; thus, primary process thinking is fragmented, condensed, and magical--as it is in dreams and psychosis.

Lazarus adds that, "Freud was not the only theorist to think in this way," and mentions Werner and Piaget as others who documented striking differences between developmentally distinct earlier and later modes of cognitive processing.

From yet another perspective, Gisela Labouvie-Vief et al. write,

The expression and regulation of behavior occurs within a duality of two modes of control. On the one hand, biology equips the individual with response systems constrained by homeostatic laws. On the other hand, participation in culture demands that these organismic systems be transformed and integrated with outer cultural demands. The transfer from one set of processes to the other forms the major theme of theories of cognitive and interpersonal development. As the individual's cognitive capacities mature, regulations occur less often in terms of the urgent dictates of individual homeostasis and more often in terms of shared cultural rule and symbol systems.

Theories of cognitive development from childhood to adulthood implicitly assume that this tranfer process is a smooth one. Initial organismic response systems, in being transformed, are absorbed into more complex cognitive ones and eventuate in a mature regulation system that provides equilibrium and integration. Theories concerned with psychodynamic processes have not yielded such a serene picture, however. They suggest that what cognitive psychologists construe as a closed equilibrium system can be, in fact, a conflicted coexistence of two modes of regulation--primary and secondary process. These modes are only precariously integrated and often compete for control.

In short, we've got these two modes of cognitive processing. One is more innate, organismic, and primitive; it's associated with childhood, basically because it's the only one children have to work with, although it remains operative on one level or another for the entire lifespan (ineradicably, since it is, after all, our instinctual "default" system). The other is more learned, cultural, and developed; it's associated with adulthood in literate modern societies, because adults are expected to conduct themselves according to its strictures, at least in public, although the primary mode does also remain available to them.

My claim is that genre fiction tends to be characterized by primary process, and literary fiction tends to be characterized by secondary process. That "tends to" qualification is necessary, because there is some bleed and memetic cross-pollination--for example, in the writers mentioned in the article who draw inspiration from both horror and literary sources. Nevertheless, genre fiction at its most typical exhibits all the earmarks of primary process, and literary fiction at its most typical bears the stamp of secondary process, The clearer we remain about that, the better we'll be able to appreciate what both literary and genre fiction may contribute at any point of intersection.

This might seem like a strange approach to the goal I stated at the outset, of providing a truly positive account of genre fiction. I'm linking genre fiction here to a mode of cognitive processing that is often disparaged as primitive, childish, and irrational--in other words, inferior. How does that help my case? Here's how: once we understand why primary process is looked down upon, we'll see that there is absolutely no good reason for doing so. Quite the contrary, in fact.

That general argument will be the substance of my next post. After that, I'm going to show at length and in detail how the characteristics of genre fiction listed above all derive from primary process thinking. Since I'll have already argued for a more positive understanding of primary process in general, we should be ready by that point to see them in a clearer light, and I'll explain the legitimate aesthetic possibilities inherent in those so-called flaws. And don't worry, folks--after that, I will come specifically to horror! Stay tuned, and stay groovy!