Monday's Aesthetic Roundup
Feb. 23rd, 2004 05:02 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
oneirophreniaWell, glory be, I've gotten completely caught-up with all my work and it's not even time for my second class yet! I've actually left a few papers ungraded so I have something to help fill the last empty hours tonight at the newspaper once all the work's done there, but, even counting those out of the equation, I am still well in the green.
An earlier entry today from![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
raincrystal about anime aesthetics has gotten me thinking about my favorite aesthetic: that of the horror movie. Sure, I love a good ol' thoughtless slaughterfest like House of 1000 Corpses just as much as the next sicko, but ultimately, my alltime favorite horror movies inevitably have the following characteristics:
1) Vague, often obscure lighting that leaves a great deal to the imagination by illuminating but scarcely scenes of action, faces of victims and/or murderers or monsters, and so forth. Lighting alone can make an otherwise mediocre film extraordinary. The original Texas Chainsaw Massacre is a perfect example of this. Without the weird, spooky-ass lighting of outdoor scenes (particularly the later, after-dark ones), it would've still been a decent film about psychos and cannibalism, but it wouldn't've had nearly the same visceral impact.
2) Plots that leave Big Questions unanswered. Where, exactly, did the Event Horizon go when it passed through the wormhole? A "universe of madness," sure, but what exactly did that mean? Where did the Thing come from? What, exactly, is or was the Mothman? It's sooooooo much creepier if you just never know.
3) Dreamy, creative cinematography that builds up a strong sense of atmosphere and strange, unearthly music to complement it. Good audiovisuals in a film serve the exact same function as good sensory description in a text, and enforce HPL's dictum that atmosphere is the most important element in weird fiction (see his "Notes on Writing Weird Fiction" for a complete elaboration). What good is a damned horror movie if the sheer atmosphere of it doesn't lend to the creepiness of its plot? Scream is a perfect example of a "horror" film with no atmosphere whatsoever: it's little more than a slipshod mystery in which certain kids have to find out who's been killing them--there isn't anything truly frightening or unnerving about any of it. On the other hand, we have the phenomenal film The Night Stalker, an absolutely chilling film about Richard Ramirez that illustrates with some of the most schizo visuals ever the monstrous state of Ramirez's mind when he was on the prowl...making what would otherwise be a thoroughly conventional "catch the serial killer" flick into High Art. Se7en is another ideal example of this, as is John Carpenter's The Thing and In the Mouth of Madness--probably the only two truly, authentically Lovecraftian movies ever made.
The older I get, the more that I find the old visceral standbys of the horror genre--blood, guts, dismembered bodies, lots of screaming and dying--to be completely secondary to a good, atmospheric plot, to be (in paraphrase of Milton) "no necessary Adjunct or true Ornament of Horror or good Spookiness, in longer Works especially." I prefer films these days that keep all the violence offstage, as in ancient Greek drama, and leave most to the imagination--because, truly, what freaks one out more than the horrors concocted in one's own mind based on a few scads of suggestive evidence? A smear of blood here...a pile of bones there...maybe a scream or some muffled begging for mercy....The shock of a pile of intestines flying across the screen no longer holds any interest for me. One simply becomes used to it, one learns to expect it, and...really, what power to unnerve does it have anymore?
Of course, spiders dropping on people at random will NEVER cease to freak me out royally, because I am so pathetically arachnophobic I nearly shrieked like a ten-year-old girl this morning when I found a thoroughly-dead, long-dessicated, half-smashed remnant of a spider killed weeks ago next to the trashcan in my bathroom. Yeah. Go ahead and call me a sissy, but I'm telling you, those eight-legged fuckers are all in cahoots and they are up to something.
An earlier entry today from
raincrystal about anime aesthetics has gotten me thinking about my favorite aesthetic: that of the horror movie. Sure, I love a good ol' thoughtless slaughterfest like House of 1000 Corpses just as much as the next sicko, but ultimately, my alltime favorite horror movies inevitably have the following characteristics:1) Vague, often obscure lighting that leaves a great deal to the imagination by illuminating but scarcely scenes of action, faces of victims and/or murderers or monsters, and so forth. Lighting alone can make an otherwise mediocre film extraordinary. The original Texas Chainsaw Massacre is a perfect example of this. Without the weird, spooky-ass lighting of outdoor scenes (particularly the later, after-dark ones), it would've still been a decent film about psychos and cannibalism, but it wouldn't've had nearly the same visceral impact.
2) Plots that leave Big Questions unanswered. Where, exactly, did the Event Horizon go when it passed through the wormhole? A "universe of madness," sure, but what exactly did that mean? Where did the Thing come from? What, exactly, is or was the Mothman? It's sooooooo much creepier if you just never know.
3) Dreamy, creative cinematography that builds up a strong sense of atmosphere and strange, unearthly music to complement it. Good audiovisuals in a film serve the exact same function as good sensory description in a text, and enforce HPL's dictum that atmosphere is the most important element in weird fiction (see his "Notes on Writing Weird Fiction" for a complete elaboration). What good is a damned horror movie if the sheer atmosphere of it doesn't lend to the creepiness of its plot? Scream is a perfect example of a "horror" film with no atmosphere whatsoever: it's little more than a slipshod mystery in which certain kids have to find out who's been killing them--there isn't anything truly frightening or unnerving about any of it. On the other hand, we have the phenomenal film The Night Stalker, an absolutely chilling film about Richard Ramirez that illustrates with some of the most schizo visuals ever the monstrous state of Ramirez's mind when he was on the prowl...making what would otherwise be a thoroughly conventional "catch the serial killer" flick into High Art. Se7en is another ideal example of this, as is John Carpenter's The Thing and In the Mouth of Madness--probably the only two truly, authentically Lovecraftian movies ever made.
The older I get, the more that I find the old visceral standbys of the horror genre--blood, guts, dismembered bodies, lots of screaming and dying--to be completely secondary to a good, atmospheric plot, to be (in paraphrase of Milton) "no necessary Adjunct or true Ornament of Horror or good Spookiness, in longer Works especially." I prefer films these days that keep all the violence offstage, as in ancient Greek drama, and leave most to the imagination--because, truly, what freaks one out more than the horrors concocted in one's own mind based on a few scads of suggestive evidence? A smear of blood here...a pile of bones there...maybe a scream or some muffled begging for mercy....The shock of a pile of intestines flying across the screen no longer holds any interest for me. One simply becomes used to it, one learns to expect it, and...really, what power to unnerve does it have anymore?
Of course, spiders dropping on people at random will NEVER cease to freak me out royally, because I am so pathetically arachnophobic I nearly shrieked like a ten-year-old girl this morning when I found a thoroughly-dead, long-dessicated, half-smashed remnant of a spider killed weeks ago next to the trashcan in my bathroom. Yeah. Go ahead and call me a sissy, but I'm telling you, those eight-legged fuckers are all in cahoots and they are up to something.
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That reminds me...
Date: 2004-02-23 10:38 pm (UTC)And also the website for the Call of Cthulhu game just had a big update, too...
no subject
Date: 2004-02-24 02:06 am (UTC)Have you seen "The Astronaut's Wife?"
I'd probably add that one to the short list as well... but that's just me.
SWH
no subject
Date: 2004-02-24 06:05 am (UTC)...and this is why the original Silent Hill scared the Beejeezus out of me. That is just one of those games that makes you want to quit playing almost as soon as you've begun...in a good way.
...I am so pathetically arachnophobic...
*makes mental note never to introduce you to my pet tarantula, Lucille.*
no subject
Date: 2004-02-25 12:25 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-02-25 12:25 pm (UTC)can i go back to sleep now?