Gore, Guts, and Greeks
On the first page of Noel Carroll’s book “Philosophy of Horror”, he notes that horror has flourished over the years as a “major source of mass aesthetic stimulation”. The term mass aesthetic stimulation is not just applicable to the bloodthirsty viewers of modern horror. Horror has had spectators for hundreds of years. Whereas the Romans catered to a form of spectacle that was indeed horrific and violent, the Greeks also provided the masses with an aesthetic stimulation that could stand toe to toe with the desired effect of many directors and writers within the horror genre today. Carroll centers much of his philosophical base on what he refers to as art-horror in his successful attempt to explain the nature of horror. The core of this principle of art-horror is the idea of something being both threatening and impure. They are both unnatural and dangerous. Greek tragedies are filled with monstrous characters and even creatures who would, by all means, be considered horrific monsters.
When referring to art-horror, Carroll is distinctly separating the notion of an event simply being horrific. That is, he is not referring to the idea of one thinking a tornado flattening a town in the Midwest as horrifying, but rather the emotional response one feels upon viewing something within the specific genre. The term art-horror is really meant for the likes of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and Bram Stoker’s Dracula in that Carroll mostly references classic monsters as a way to gauge horror and the emotional responses it elicits from its audience. But, the horror genre is unique in that the material is classified not by setting, much like westerns, or romantic entanglements such as romance stories, but by “their intended capacity to provoke a certain affective response” (Carroll 52). The emotional state that comes from the effect viewing the material has on a person is “the emotion we call art-horror” (52). Carroll goes on:
“Thus, one can expect to locate the genre of horror, in part by a specification of art-horror, the emotion that works of this type are designed to engender. Such analysis, of course, is not a priori; it is an attempt, in the tradition of the Poetics, to provide clarificatory generalizations about a body of work that we antecedently accept as constituting a family.” (52)
This separates mere “tales of terror” from actual horror stories that would find themselves in the genre of art-horror. A fantastical beast does not always equate to the emotion of fear or horror.
Greek tragedies were written for performance under the Athenian democracy between the 5th and 6th centuries. Performances took place during the daytime with oftentimes between fourteen and thirty thousand spectators. This image should always be kept in mind when reading Greek tragedy today. Since these plays are re-created on a regular basis with large creative licenses to do what the director pleases, it is easy to forget the original setting they were meant for. Classics scholar Edith Hall often describes these tragedies as suffering plus the ‘why”. This implies a sort of explanation or inquisition. The audience must stay in order to find out why bad things are happening to these characters.
In Greek drama, “No blood, not even the blood of an animal, was spilled on-stage” and “the kind of tragic violence that results in corpses never takes place within the physical confines of the theatrical space or in the presence of the audience. The most extreme forms of tragic violence are presented as off-stage events, out of sight but very much within the emotional reach of the audience” (Henrichs 178). This could be seen as a signal separating Greek tragedies from the horror genre, however, this notion would be a mistake. Many modern horror directors in film take more delight in framing horrifying, disgusting, or appalling images outside of the frame. This allows the audience to create their own mental image of the circumstance, which can sometimes be even more horrifying than the intended event in the story. This also allows for a greater personal connection. A spectator can picture his or her own greatest fear in that moment as opposed to the one the director has chosen. This is not the case for all directors of course.
Wes Craven is known for including controversial scenes in his films that put graphic violence on full display, saying, “that was the only way to get that message about the demeaning nature of violence across. I deliberately dragged out some of the most frightening skeletons I could find out of my closet” (Woodley 59). This debate is still alive and well. Do directors like to keep certain violent images off-screen (or off stage) or do they like to make the violence front and center with no escape? Both are effective tools for creating disgust, terror, and shock. The Greek’s prohibition of violence on the stage is not far away from the mentality of many modern horror film directors and screenwriters, therefore, the lack of bloodshed on the ancient Greek stage does not negate its entry into the horror genre.
In Hecuba, the opening sequence very quickly presents to the audience a source of horror. The ghost of Polydorus, Hecuba’s young son, appears “back from the depths of death” (77 Slvaitt and Bovie). He begins to speak about his state “between Hades and the gods and goddesses of Life” and as well as the condition of his physical body which de describes as “unsprayed for, unburied” (78). This sets the stage for an unsettling atmosphere and most likely shocked or mystified the audience. Polydorus’s body, on the other hand, was treated properly:
“The death of Polyxena is debated in open assembly, then formally announced to Hecuba. The execution takes place in public and is justified on religious grounds; the corpse is treated with care and respect. In contrast, Polydorus death takes place in secret and is concealed as long as possible. The boy is clumsily butchered and his corpse tossed into the sea.” (93)
Ghosts were not something that showed up in many Greek plays at this time. In Greek culture, “ghosts retained emotions of living persons and were assumed to feel the same way about the emotion of living persons and were assumed to feel the same way about good and bad treatment as they have felt alive; the real difference lay in what the dead were able to do about their feelings” (Johnston 38). According to Sarah Iles Johnston, some ghosts were predisposed to be “unhappy and vindictive” as a form of revenge on something that happened in their previous life.
These creatures were seen as not yet integrated into the world of the dead. They are both living and dead which classifies them, according to Carroll’s definitions, a fusion monster and makes them a potentially dangerous threat to the characters in the play and to the audience. During the time this was written, the Anthestteria festival took place in the spring and celebrated Dionysus. The third day of this festival, known as Chytroi, was a festival of the dead where offerings of seeds were given to the dead. Here, souls of the dead came up from the underworld and walked the earth with the living. The people in the town would smear their doors with tar in order to protect themselves from the walking dead. Mistreatment of the dead posed a threat to the living. So the opening speech by Polydrous becomes all the more threatening when he mentions improper burial, a practice that was taken very seriously in ancient Greece.
Hecuba herself also serves as a fixture of something that is not fully one thing. For instance, she is both royal and servile, both a queen and a slave. She contradicts social and cultural categories and values. This is a common feature in horror. Slaughtering social conventions is oftentimes as horrifying as the killing of a character. Hecuba attacks written laws and democratic values, which shows her potential threat and undercuts the audience’s cultural framework. Hecuba says, “Your crimes have brought you face to face with justice,” to which Polymestor responds, “Does mocking me make you feel better” Hecuba then says, “Better? What is better? I have my revenge.”
Hecuba’s revenge is not laden with remorse, “As described by the victim himself, the blinding of Polymestor and the murder of his children is horrific- as repugnant aesthetically as Polyxena’s self-sacrifice was aesthetically attractive” (Gregory 109). The turning of a victim into a monster is common amongst horror films and is an element that will be discussed further later on in this paper. However, a key component to Hecuba’s defiance of cultural conventions is not a simple lesson in morality or mortality, but an idea that violence happens to innocent people. Innocent blood will always be shed and the conventions and social codes familiar to the audience cannot prevent this from happening.
Therefore, Hecuba features the necessary qualities to classify it as art-horror. The presence of ghosts and Hecuba’s revenge clearly violates nature. The sheer acts of mutilation and violence shown within the play exhibit perverse qualities of nature. The other characters in the play sympathize with the pain Hecuba has gone through in losing all of her children in such a brutal way. The audience reaction to watching a victim seek her revenge in such a ruthless way can easily cause a cognitive agitation and a physical reaction to the idea of the mutilation, “The bad faith of Odysseus and Polydorus encourages the audience to trace the deaths of Hecuba’s youngest children to an ananke that has little to do with fate and everything to do with arbitrary violence (93). Gregory dives deeper into Euripides intentions here:
“For such aristocrat types, the sense of self is vested in ancestry and position. Death is deemed preferable to any diminution in happiness or-what is almost equivalent- any reduction in status. In none of these plays does Euripides make a direct attack on these traditional assumptions, but in each, he obliquely puts them into question.” (96)
The attack on traditional cultural conventions combined with the threat of Poydorus and even Hecuba is what sets the tone for the play and creates an unsettling, unnatural, and impure atmosphere. The modern horror film may have more in common with Greek tragedies than one would expect. Besides the human suffering, the violent depictions, and the bloodthirsty characters, they allow the audience to experience a state of emotion that is unique to the genre of horror. Looking at these Greek plays, specifically The Bacchae and Hecuba, through the lens of a horror film, allows for a new interpretation; an interpretation that gives credit where credit is due.
Euripides is rarely, if ever, in the mix of conversations about horror. Most scholars only go back as far as Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein in any discussion about horror and monsters. Euripides created monsters just as horrifying as Hitchcock. This is even more apparent as the genre moves toward the direction of exploring the humanistic side of monsters and the dehumanization of man. The horrifying picture that even the best of us can turn into a monster, like Hecuba.
Revenge films, a subgenre of exploitations films of the 1970s, created an entire movement out of watching victims turn into vengeful monsters. Like Hecuba who turns from victim to ruthless killer, these films mostly centered on women. Most revenge film plots were about women who were terribly abused emotionally, sexually or physically before plotting and executing their revenge against their wrongdoers. This is the same basic structure of Hecuba. Films such as Carrie, The Craft, and even The Last House on the Left exemplified this same structure. Carrie is a girl who is mercilessly bullied by her peers at school and her mother at home.
Although she does not necessarily spend the second act of the film plotting her revenge, she does spend it working on a way for her to overcome her obstacles. By the end of the film, after pig blood has been poured on her head and the laughs of her fellow classmates ring in her ear, she snaps and uses her powers to take vengeance. She traps them inside the gym and burns them alive. She then goes home and kills her mother. Carrie started out as a scared girl and ends the film as a threat. She has unnatural telekinetic powers and uses them to cause harm. The Craft has a similar storyline where a group of unpopular girls use their powers as witches to torment their enemies.
The Last House on the Left (1972, 2009) features a crew of ex-criminals who kidnap two girls. They rape and torture the girls before killing them. Unknown to them, one of the girls survives. As they approach a house to seek refuge from the rain the audience sees the house belongs to the surviving girl they kidnapped. She painfully makes her way to the house revealing to her parents who these people are. The parents brutally and unapologetically murder every member of the crew with a chainsaw, mutilation, and the slitting of throats. This brutal display of violence earned this film much criticism but showed the lengths two parents were willing to go to in order to fulfill their revenge and retribution for the harm that was done to their child. Revenge stories within the horror genre did not originate in the 1970s, but have been around longer than people realize.
As Justina Gregory notes, “Euripides takes note of the effect of power on human conduct, catalogs the resources available to strong and weak, and finally affirms the tenacity of the human quest for justice,” (89 Gregory). Retribution “was an essential component of justice” and “Hecuba takes matters into her own hands only after she has appealed in vain to Agamemnon for the protection of nomos, appealed in vain for the external arbitration whose invention had been chronicled in an earlier drama of justice and revenge, Aeschylus’ Oresteia” (107). Therefore remnants of Greek tragedy can be found in modern horror films that frequently showcase revenge plots, be it from a hero or a monster.
The ancient Greeks created plots filled with revenge and horror and in many ways, horror films replicate Greek tragedy. The presence of unnatural creatures that threaten not only the characters in the story, but the audience’s ideas of certain cultural conventions, is what makes something art- horrific. It is interesting to think about how the structure and intention of modern and classic horror films mirror that of stories written thousands of years ago. A monster is not simply an ugly creature from the black lagoon. Present-day horror stories often feature flesh and blood monsters whose behavior is what makes them impure and unnatural, not their physical appearance.
To reiterate Noel Carroll, “their intended capacity to provoke a certain affective response” is what separates an art-horrific monster from any other monster (52). Giving the audience a reason to squirm, feel disgusted, or be emotionally or physically agitated just by the presence of what is happening on the stage or on the screen is what separates art-horror from just witnessing violence. So why is Euripides not given more credit within the horror genre? Why do conversations about monsters start with Gothic novels and not ancient Greek tragedy? I would argue that Euripides should be a part of the conversation about the horror genre, monsters, and art-horror.
