Monuments and Primal Scenes: The Uses of Stillness and Violence in Horror

Stillness Incarnate: the blind seeress Emily and her dog, from Lucio Fulci's The Beyond

In his essay, "The Things That Should Not Be: The Monumental Horror-Image and Its Relation to the Contemporary Horror Film," Sean Collins (of ADDTF) tries to address what he sees as "a gap in existing horror scholarship and theory." Specifically, he notes slasher-centric theories that focus on "violence and gore as the defining characteristics of the horror film," and monster-centric theories with their focus on the "frightening and revolting 'stars' of the movies and their relation to gender and social concerns," but then he goes on to identify a certain kind of image that looms very large (sometimes literally!) in horror films, which none of these theories can account for. This he calls the "monumental horror-image." What defines it most broadly are its static nature and a certain style of presentation designed to maximize its impact as a visual object (i.e. centering it on the screen, lighting it very clearly and even harshly, contextualizing the image as a POV shot from a horrified spectator, etc.). What makes this kind of image particularly intriguing--and confounding for so much horror film theory--is its effectiveness in inspiring horror, despite the fact that it poses seemingly no threat of physical violence or harm.

Sean breaks this down into two categories:

The first is the sudden—yet curiously static—appearance of a being in a place where no one ought to be, in defiance of what character and audience know to be "possible" [for example, the ghostly twin little girls in Kubrick's Shining]; the second is the sight of a monumental, monolithic, or literally statuesque object, serving as a testament to the presence of evil, madness, sickness, or irrationality [for example, the Wicker Man]. Taken together, these two distinct yet related image types—call them the monumental horror-image, in that their subjects are horrifying more for what they represent than what they actually do—comprise some of contemporary horror cinema’s most definitively frightening moments.

Sean goes on to explore, examine, and argue on behalf of the monumental horror-image in light of a number of theories of horror and film, and actually concludes that it is The Definitive image of horror! Which leaves quite a lot dangling. Sean mounts some plausible arguments against the view that gory violence should be definitive of horror, but surely it's not dispensable, and Sean offers no suggestion of where it might fit in the scheme of things if the monumental horror-image were taken as definitive. He would seem to have filled one gap at the expense of creating another.

It turns out, however, that there may just be a way for us to have it all--the monuments, the violence, and even the monsters.

Sean begins his exploration of the monumental horror-image by considering it in light of Freud's classic essay, "The Uncanny," which does indeed give him a lot of persuasive ammunition. Ironically, though, had he only flipped back a few pages in that very same volume (XVII) of the Standard Edition, he'd have found Freud's direct analysis of an image from the nightmare of a patient, which certainly looks to me like a paradigm example of the first category of monumental horror-image:

'"I dreamt that it was night and that I was lying in my bed. (My bed stood with its foot towards the window; in front of the window there was a row of old walnut trees. I know it was winter when I had the dream, and night-time.) Suddenly the window opened of its own accord, and I was terrified to see that some white wolves were sitting on the big walnut tree in front of the window. There were six or seven of them. The wolves were quite white, and looked more like foxes or sheep-dogs, for they had big tails like foxes and they had their ears pricked like dogs when they pay attention to something. In great terror, evidently of being eaten up by the wolves, I screamed and woke up. My nurse hurried to my bed, to see what had happened to me. It took quite a long while before I was convinced that it had only been a dream; I had had such a clear and life-like picture of the window opening and the wolves sitting on the tree. At last I grew quieter, felt as though I had escaped some danger, and went to sleep again.

'"The only piece of action in the dream was the opening of the window; for the wolves sat quite still and without making any movement on the branches of the tree, to the right and left of the trunk, and looked at me. It seemed as though they had riveted their whole attention upon me."[']

. . .

He [the patient] had always emphasized the fact that two factors in the dream had made the greatest impression on him: first, the perfect stillness and immobility of the wolves, and secondly, the strained attention with which they looked at him.

Naturally, Freud interrogates and aims to interpret every detail of this image, but it so happens that the two aspects that most concerned the patient are also the two aspects most relevant for this discussion.

First, there's that heightened sense of looking. According to Freud,

He thought that the part of the dream which said that 'suddenly the window opened of its own accord' was not completely explained by its connection with the window [in a story the patient recalled from childhood]. 'It must mean: "My eyes suddenly opened." I was asleep, therefore, and suddenly woke up, and as I woke I saw something: the tree with the wolves.' No objection could be made to this; but the point could be developed further. He had woken up and had seen something. The attentive looking, which in the dream was ascribed to the wolves, should rather be shifted on to him. At a decisive point, therefore, a transposition had taken place.

This emphasis on looking strikes me as quite reminiscent of the cinematic techniques mentioned by Sean in connection with the monumental horror-image, calculated to elicit in the viewer an exaggerated sense that she is looking at something. The window element which frames the tree in the dream seems highly analogous to the isolation and centering of an object toward the rear of a shot.

Now, where things get really interesting is when we see how Freud interprets the surreal stillness of the wolves:

What, then, if the other factor emphasized by the dreamer were also distorted by means of a transposition or reversal? In that case instead of immobility (the wolves sat there motionless; they looked at him, but did not move) the meaning would have to be: the most violent motion. That is to say, he suddenly woke up, and saw in front of him a scene of violent movement at which he looked with strained attention. In the one case the distortion would consist in an interchange of subject and object, of activity and passivity: being looked at instead of looking. In the other case it would consist in a transformation into the opposite; rest instead of motion.

What follows is nothing less than Freud's unleashing on the world of his notion of the primal scene. Here's a great definition:

The expression "primal scene" refers to the sight of sexual relations between the parents, as observed, constructed, and/or fantasized by the child and interpreted by the child as a scene of violence. The scene is not understood by the child, remaining enigmatic but at same time provoking sexual excitement. [my italics]

This concept lends itself so well to the psychosexual interpretation of voyeuristically-staged, outrageously violent and bloody slasher set-pieces that it's practically a cliche of horror criticism. What's fascinating, though, is the suggestion that the stillness of Sean's monumental horror-image and the violence of the horror-murder set-piece are simply two sides of the same coin, doubles of each other, extremes that may bizarrely stand for each other precisely through the unconscious logic of transposition and the binding associative power of their polar opposition.

The Other Side of Stillness: horrific violence erupts when Emily's dog attacks, savaging her throat under the influence of malevolent otherworldly forces

Dario Argento, in the opening set-piece to his debut film, Bird with the Crystal Plumage, actually fuses these apparent opposites into a single vision. Adam Knee, in his essay, "Gender, Genre, Argento," describes it as "a veritable primal scene . . . characterized by unclarity, blood, violence, and a fascinating sexual ambiguity." It also happens to be set in a brightly-lit gallery among statuary that is aggressively grotesque and primitive.

As the curious protagonist catches a first uncertain glimpse of the figures, they are simultaneously struggling violently and locked together in an embrace that arrests their motion to the point of making them appear almost as still as the surrounding sculptures. When the figures wrench suddenly apart, the woman is left bleeding, and the protagonist is as horrified as he is helpless to assist her, trapped as he is in the glass vestibule. Here we have the primal scene as monumental horror-image, and vice-versa. Perhaps it's not so far-fetched to hope they could be brought together in a unified theory of horror.

There's plenty more to be said, but I'm going to yield the floor here and give Sean a chance to respond.

P.S.--As an aside, I would like to suggest also where monsters might fit in such a scheme. Wonderfully, monsters can serve both as monumental horror-images (i.e. that iconic still-shot of Karloff as the Frankenstein Monster) and as parties to a primal scene (i.e. the climactic werewolf vs. vampire woman battle in Naschy's Night of the Werewolf).

FORTRESS OF SOLITUDE by Kenneth Robeson (Bantam 1968)

• Originally published in Doc Savage Magazine, October 1938
• Reprinted by Bantam as DS # 23
• Lester Dent writing as Kenneth Robeson

Doc Savage vs. John Sunlight, Round 1.

It’s surprising that over the course of 180 adventures (spanning 16 years) the Man of Bronze never faced a recurring archnemesis in the vein of a Blofeld, Moriarty or Fu Manchu. Street & Smith editors were adamant that all the stories be self-contained, with no cliffhanger endings, yet such an edict would not have automatically precluded the use of a long-running supervillain. (To me this represents a significant lost opportunity.) The closest the series ever comes to such a character is the mysterious John Sunlight, the only opponent to survive a battle with Doc and challenge him a second time.

Sunlight — not his real name, which is never given — certainly fits the supervillain mold. Nationality unknown, he is very tall and gaunt, possessed of the high forehead and contemplative face of a poet or scholar. Burning, piercing eyes and freakishly long fingers (almost as long as the average man’s whole hand) lend him a decidedly sinister, inhuman quality. He habitually wears clothing all of a single matching color: one day it’s purple, the next day gray, and so on. While stronger than he appears, Sunlight has no special abilities beyond an incredible physical endurance (he can survive where other men would perish), and an uncanny hypnotic stare that reduces lesser beings to quivering jelly. His true power lies in his indomitable will — practically a tangible force, others bend to it much like victims in mesmeric thrall to a vampire. (Twice in the story his presence is compared to that of Dracula.) But to what purpose is this great willpower applied? Sunlight’s ultimate goal is as enigmatic as his persona, only truly revealed in the follow-up tale, The Devil Genghis.

As for Fortress of Solitude, the story begins with John Sunlight in Soviet Russia, tried and convicted for crimes against the state. Condemned to the harshest, most isolated gulag in Siberia, he leads the other prisoners in a revolt, destroying the camp and hijacking a navy icebreaker. Sailing into Arctic waters, the ship becomes hopelessly trapped in the icepack; Sunlight and his followers seem doomed, resorting to cannibalism as their supplies dwindle away. But Sunlight makes an astonishing discovery out on the ice — an immense dome-shaped structure with no visible means of ingress, watched over by a small tribe of tight-lipped Eskimos. He becomes obsessed with getting inside the dome and learning what it might contain, even at the expense of his and his comrades’ survival…

Weeks later, the bizarre murder of a Soviet diplomat in New York City draws the special attention of Doc Savage. As witnessed by his servants, the victim was literally disintegrated in a puff of black smoke! Then, while investigating the slaying, Savage assistants Ham Brooks and Monk Mayfair are subjected to a “blinding ray” which temporarily short-circuits the optic nerves. To the astonishment of his aides, Doc — who has heretofore displayed total mastery of his emotions under any and all circumstances — is visibly shaken, gripped by an anxiety of which he refuses to speak. He realizes that someone has violated his private sanctuary, the “Fortress of Solitude” to which he periodically retreats for intense study and experimentation.* Not even his most trusted associates, The Amazing Five, know its location.

Within the dome Doc safeguards the incredible superweapons he and his men captured during their many exploits. Also stored there are devices of Doc’s own invention, futuristic apparatus which would simply be too dangerous, given their potential for misuse, to reveal to the public at large. (Just such a device was the one Doc knows was used to kill the diplomat.) Whoever found and broke into the Fortress is obviously of high mental ability and criminal intent — and now has access to all of Doc’s technological secrets. If not stopped, they could throw the entire world into chaos…

Because it introduces the greatest villain of the series, and Doc’s secret Arctic sanctum (previously mentioned only in passing) is finally revealed and described, Fortress of Solitude is an absolutely essential title in the Doc Savage canon… making it all the more unfortunate that, prose-wise, the book is not one of Lester Dent’s better efforts. At times clunky and awkward, reading more like a first draft than a finished manuscript, it was apparently written in a hurry as Dent prepared to go on a lengthy overseas vacation. I really wish he’d spent more time tweaking it.

Grade: B

* Yep… DC Comics totally ripped off Doc Savage. The copycat "Fortress of Solitude" first appeared in a 1942 issue of Superman, four years after the publication of Dent’s story.

LILITH'S CAVE by Howard Schwartz (Oxford University Press 1991)

This superb collection of "Jewish Tales of the Supernatural" is surprisingly macabre, and startlingly frank in its sexuality. It's chock full of demons, ghosts, reanimated corpses, werewolves, evil sorcerers, etc., and often as not, they're seducing, raping, marrying, or otherwise mating with humans in non-graphic but undisguised scenes that are by turns dreadful and alluring. In one jaw-dropping tale, a nightmarish horse turns out to be the ghost of a pedophile who desperately doesn't want to be banished back to his punishment in the afterlife--a hellish "pit of boiling semen"!!! An air of the uncanny and darkly supernatural hangs heavy in these tales. Some of them end happily ever after, but enough end horribly to keep things unpredictable. Some of the narratives are quite sophisticated, and yet come across with a deceptive, disarming simplicity.

The Introduction is excellent, though it contains so many spoilers, I'd recommend starting with the tales and then coming back to it. Schwartz also provides a helpful section with details on the sources, variants, and classifications of these tales, and even some commentary.

I'd highly recommend this to any horror fan with even the slightest interest in the folkloric roots of the genre.

Zip N. 20

During the late eighties the cover art of erotic fumetti started getting crappier, and in some sad cases the publishers just put generic nude photos on the covers. Zip anthology is an example of that trend, which luckily didn't turn out to be too popular. Zip's other distinguishing features were that it had larger pages than normal pocket-sized fumetti, and more panels per page, so format-wise it was actually pretty close to American comics. The stories were pure fumetti, though: always sexy and often violent and/or humoristic. But there's one totally insane story that stands above all the rest, and it's Mario Janni's masterpiece Hitler contro L'ebreo Errante (Hitler versus The Wandering Jew). This unbelievable nugget of purest gold starts with the baby Hitler declaring that he doesn't want to be born.



When the doctor finally forcibly pulls him out of the womb, little Adolf swears he will make mankind pay for it.



After some youthful sexcapades Hitler grows up and starts the real action.



Then there's a strange surprise twist: German spies report that The Wandering Jew is in town! Our horny nazi hero immediately goes to hide in his bunker with a thirteen year old Jewish virgin girl, but when he later opens his chest of whips to have some fun with her...



...the Wandering Jew pops out and castrates him!



Hitler dies, but is quickly replaced by a look-a-like from a mental hospital (that sure explains a lot).



And finally we get to see a picture of The Wandering Jew's penis collection. The End.

SLAYERS AND THEIR VAMPIRES by Bruce A. McClelland (University of Michigan Press 2006)

I'm currently revising the "Fearless Vampire Slayer" chapter of my novel. This book was published since I wrote the previous draft, so I had to check it out, in case it could suggest or inspire any improvements. I'm afraid I found it disappointing not only in that respect, but in just about every other as well.

What I hoped for was probably what any horror or vampire fan would hope for--a fairly comprehensive survey of the figure of the vampire slayer from its furthest roots in antiquity right up to the present, with commentary that's genuinely insightful and illuminating without being academically pretentious. What McClelland offers is pretty much the opposite of that. This is no survey, but the grinding of several axes--some of them aimed at the readers most likely to take an interest in this book.

First, though it bears no relation that I can discern to his main argument, there's his pet peeve that so many scholars assume the vampire originated as a folkloric supernatural creature, despite a possibility that there may be a pre-folkloric and non-supernatural use of the term. McClelland devotes some early chapters and the Appendix to his argument that the term "vampire" originated as an epithet for pagans and heretics who allegedly took part in rituals of sacrifice and feasting that were anathematized by the Eastern Orthodox church. He actually draws some quite interesting parallels between very early vampire lore and pagan ritual, but as he admits, the source material he's working from is scant, obscure, apocryphal, and ambiguous, so his conclusions turn out to be fairly speculative.

With the transition to the more familiar and better-established folkloric phase of the vampire, McClelland notes the emergence of the vampire slayer archetype, and also begins to make his "political" point. His point is that the vampire is a scapegoat--the projection of a community's anxieties, fears, malice, or guilt onto a corpse that can't plead its own case. However, the community wishes to remain blind and therefore "innocent" to this scapegoating dynamic, so it designates a kind of meta-scapegoat to identify the corpse that is the vampire-scapegoat, and this meta-scapegoat is the vampire slayer. The vampire slayer is a community's attempt to interpose a double-blind between itself and the injustice it perpetrates; the community selects and celebrates as purely good a certain kind of outcast who designates and annihilates another certain kind of outcast as the purely evil repository of all the community's injustice and misfortune. This, according to McClelland, is the essence of the vampire/slayer dyad--and anyone who enjoys vampire fiction or movies is complicit in that corrupt dynamic.

Even the annoyingly scolding tone McClelland often falls into on this point might be forgivable if he actually tried to illuminate the vampire slayer in some context broader than the narrow interests of his harangue, but he doesn't even try. The shamanic strain of influence fits his argument, so he explores it to some extent--very intriguingly, I must admit. But there's also a heroic strain of influence--for example, clearly, St. George in Stoker's Dracula, and arguably Beowulf and other ancient monster-slaying heroes--but we hear nothing of those. Nor do we find anything about the Abbe Serapion in Theophile Gautier's pre-Dracula vampire story Clarimonde, nor, as we move into the present, are Solomon Kane, I Am Legend, or Vampire Hunter D even mentioned, let alone discussed. I could name more, but the point is that McClelland doesn't.

I'm sorry to say there isn't enough here to warrant your money or even just your time unless you're a hardcore vampire enthusiast. Casual fans can certainly live without it, and I'd caution anyone who feels they must read it to approach it with very modest expectations.

New Doc Savage Reprints

Well, perhaps not quite exactly "new"... Since late 2006 Nostalgia Ventures has been publishing titles in the classic Doc Savage series. Although I've got the old Bantam paperbacks I was curious to check these editions out. They're absolutely terrific, y'all. I can recommend them highly, regardless of whether you're a diehard fan or merely a dabbler.

The NV editions use the original cover art/interior illustrations from Street & Smith's Doc Savage Magazine (1933-49), with variant covers, for select titles, featuring the marvelous paintings from the Bantam paperback series. 17 volumes have been issued to date, which for the most part represent some of the best stories in the Doc canon. All but one of the books is a "double" containing two complete adventures; #15 features a trio of shorter tales from the late-'40s Cold War period. Doc Savage scholar/author Will Murray, among others, provides informative and entertaining "liner notes" — introductions, articles, essays, and photographs — for each book.

Printings are limited; some are already unavailable except on eBay and the like. Most can be found in certain brick and mortar stores and at various e-merchant sites. (Bud's Art Books is a good place to see all the NV Doc titles.) Further volumes are in the pipeline for release this summer and fall.

Apparently these books are selling well. As a fan, it's nice to know that in his 75th anniversary year, Doc Savage — the ultimate "Man of Tomorrow" — is still thrilling readers in the 21st Century. (Note: Nostaligia Ventures also publishes reprints of '30s pulp hero The Shadow.)

Gone Writin'

If it looks like I'm slacking here (and all my other usual online haunts), I'm working my ass off to finish the next chapter of my novel, Night Falls on a Fairy Tale. Since I've started posting new chapters again, it looks like a fair number of you have started to read through them; in my sitemeter "Entry Page" stats, I'm seeing a steady progression from early chapters through the middle and into the most recent. Believe me, I appreciate it, and I hope you're finding it well worth your time. I'm doing everything I can to repay that attention with a timely update that's the best it can be. Thanks for your patience, and stay groovy!

THE SARGASSO OGRE by Kenneth Robeson (Bantam 1967)

• Originally published in Doc Savage Magazine, October 1933
• Reprinted by Bantam as DS # 18
• Lester Dent writing as Kenneth Robeson

You want asskickin’ Golden Age pulp action? Well, here it is.

Reprinted out of order, this is a direct sequel to The Lost Oasis (Bantam # 6); the story picks up immediately at the conclusion of that terrific adventure. Doc and crew are in Egypt, preparing to depart for America via the ocean liner Cameronic. The hoard of uncut diamonds they recovered from the secret slave mine of Sol Yuttal and Hadi-Mot is securely stored in the ship’s cargo hold. (Doc plans to use the diamonds to build charity hospitals and fund various philanthropic organizations.) Before the ship sails, Savage aide Long Tom Roberts is lured away from their hotel and kidnapped by Arab assassins. Trailing Long Tom’s captors to the ancient catacombs beneath Alexandria, Doc is able to rescue his friend in the nick of time — but his efforts to learn who hired the killers prove fruitless. The bronze man and his assistants embark on the Cameronic as scheduled for the voyage home.

Gradually our heroes realize that something fishy is going on aboard the New York-bound liner, culminating in a clever murder-by-poison-chemical plot against them that almost succeeds. (Monk and Ham are actually clinically dead before being revived by Doc’s medical skills.) The Cameronic’s officers and crew start behaving oddly once the ship passes Gibraltar into the Atlantic, where a week-long spell of exceptionally bad weather is encountered. Although alert for trouble, it isn’t until the weather starts to clear that Doc realizes the vessel is seriously off course and that a meticulously planned hijacking is well underway! A sophisticated gang of heavily-armed pirates is onboard, posing as passengers and threatening the crew. Where are they steering the ship?

Straight for the Sargasso Sea, it turns out… only in Dent’s tale it’s the Sargasso Sea of myth and legend — a floating, seaweed-entangled cemetery of lost ships. Over the centuries the Sargasso has trapped unlucky mariners from all nations, but for the past 6 years it has served as base of operations for Jacob Black Bruze and his ruthless pirate army. Hijacking ships at sea, Bruze and his men entomb the vessels in the Sargasso, stripping them of everything valuable after slaughtering their passengers and crews. The Cameronic is a particularly rich prize, targeted specifically for its cargo of diamonds. Bruze — known as “The Sargasso Ogre” for his cruelty and insatiable greed — had hoped to delay famous crimefighter Doc Savage in Alexandria, investigating the murder of his aide. Things didn’t go as planned, though, and now the Bruze Gang has a hell of a fight on its hands. Doc and the Amazing Five unpack for action, kitting up and breaking out their superfirer machine pistols...

The Sargasso Ogre is easily one of my favorite Doc Savage novels. Doc must call upon every reserve of his great mental and physical powers to defeat Bruze, one of the series’ most striking villains. Matching Doc in size and strength (“The strongest man I’ve ever encountered” Doc admits), the pirate chief’s cleverness and animal cunning almost prove a match for Doc’s logical, scientific brain. Their battlefield is truly a fantasical one, and while Dent doesn’t go overboard with it — there are no monsters, as in the 1968 Hammer sci-fi film The Lost Continent — he truly conjures a spooky atmosphere with his evocative descriptions of the graveyard of ships. (Many of the key scenes take place at night.) The book also features one of the series’ more notable “dames” — Kina la Forge, the redheaded “Amazon queen” who allies with Doc and the boys. Bruze has never gained complete control of the Sargasso, defied by a band of warrior women holed up in a derelict WWI battlecruiser. (Their men were all killed in an ambush.) Some of these women are decendants of people who have lived all their lives aboard the floating hulks, generation after generation. Thus simply defeating the Ogre is not enough… The secret of how Bruze is able to leave the Sargasso must be learned if Doc and his companions are to have any hope of escape.

Grade: A