horror movies, part two

living with contingency*

This is a continuation of the previous discussion of horror movies.

The Thing
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0084787/
directed by John Carpenter
1982

In this movie, a group of Antarctic scientists is attacked by a shape-shifting alien life-form that is progressively taking over members of the group. After the climactic battle, our hero MacReady lies in the snow outside the burning base. It's winter in Antarctica, and all means of transportation and shelter have been destroyed; he knows that as soon as the fires burn out, he'll freeze to death. Suddenly, Childs, another survivor, appears; it's unknown whether he's been taken over by the alien. Instead of fighting, they both settle down in the snow, and wait. The movie ends.

Hostel
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0450278/
directed by Eli Roth
2005

A group of young male tourists is kidnapped in Eastern Europe by a group that sells the opportunity to torture and kill young tourists. One of them, Paxton, escapes after struggling with and killing his captor; he evades the group (by disguising himself as a customer), and rescues a fellow prisoner in the process of being tortured. She later kills herself after seeing her horribly mutilated reflection. Later, Paxton notices the man who initiated his kidnapping, follows him into a deserted restroom, and kills him.

Hostel: Part Two
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0498353/
directed by Eli Roth
2007

The movie opens with Paxton hiding out at his girlfriend's relative's isolated house; he's very paranoid. The next day, she wakes up to find his headless corpse. Then, a group of young female tourists is kidnapped in Eastern Europe... you get the idea. One of them, Beth, escapes after struggling with her captor (both grit and intelligence are involved). Beth's companion, on the other hand, just screams and begs and dies a horrible death (she's a “screaming blonde”). Instead of fighting or sneaking her way out, Beth bargains with the kidnappers (it turns out she's fantastically wealthy), and becomes one of the customers; she later gets medieval on the woman who initiated her kidnapping.

I want to say that horror movies come in two flavors: those with affirmative and those with negative endings – that is, movies that give affirmative answers and movies that give negative answers to the question they pose: can we go on in the face of skepticism (see previous post)?
Here's an example: at one point in The Thing, MacReady has cornered the rest of the group with a flamethrower, and is testing which ones are aliens. The first man is human and gets cut loose and armed with another flame thrower. Unfortunately, the second individual is an alien; as soon as it is revealed, it sprouts a giant mouth and lots of teeth and goes on the attack. MacReady's flamethrower is on the fritz, and the second man just stands there terrified until he gets his head bitten off. I want to say that what happened here is that the new man was unable to adapt himself to a world radically different than the one he knew (it turned out that your best friend might sprout a giant mouth and try to eat you and you would be required to burn him alive). He was paralyzed because his old ways of going on were just not applicable, but he also couldn't develop new ones. He failed to be able to live with skepticism.

On the one hand, living with skepticism is an intellectual matter. All three heroes (MacReady, Paxton, and Beth) all use a quick wit to respond to new circumstances (MacReady develops a test for Thinghood; Paxton successfully disguises himself as a customer – even to the point of chatting with another customer; Beth figures out how to escape from a prison she can't fight her way out of). (It is worth noting that this is a constant process: Paxton ultimately succumbs to irrational fear by hiding out with a known associate, rather than just going totally off the grid). (A really clear example of this aspect of living with skepticism is the actions of Nancy in A Nightmare on Elm Street).

On the other hand, there's more to it than just figuring out how to achieve one's ends (or adapting those ends to meet new circumstances, perhaps). It's also a matter of maintaining those ends (“grit”). MacReady is a good example of someone who ultimately fails to do so. After the climactic battle, if he really wanted to definitively destroy the alien, he would have attacked Childs on sight – since he may very well be an alien creature. Instead, he just settles in to freeze to death; it as if he has no fight left in him – he is world-weary at this point.

On the other hand (I love that phrase), all these movies make it clear that, in order to survive, you have to become a truly different person – and by some standards (one might call them peacetime standards) a much worse person. Beth and Paxton are great examples; in order to survive her kidnapping, they both become just like their captors: murderers. (The development of the character Jim in The Hitcher is a really clear example of this kind of response to skepticism).

To put the point another way, Bernard Williams once wrote that we would be a little leery of a businessman who said, “Well, I could always just kidnap your daughter and threaten to kill her in order to force you to sign, but I won't, because that would be wrong,” [citation forthcoming]. In order to survive these situations, our heroes have to become harder people; they have to be willing to entertain possibilities and possible courses of action that are, in normal circumstances, totally horrific and perhaps even wrong. (It is of course the contention of horror movies that you never know when you're in totally abnormal circumstances, which makes it important to be like this all the time. But few horror movies (by definition) really explore what that would be like. The one brief example that comes to mind is Scream 3; the story starts with Sidney, the heroine, living totally isolated, her location unknown to all of her associates. She even works from home. This is because of her experiences from Scream and Scream 2. (Indeed, at the end of Scream 3, Sidney is the one who gets shot – and her body subsequently disappears – a classic horror-villain trope).

* I tend to slide back and forth between talking about contingency and talking about skepticism. This is because I think the point of skepticism is to reveal the contingency of its subject matter. (That is, we become subject to skepticism, through various means, which makes us aware that certain aspects of our lives are contingent in ways we hadn't expected; we must then figure out how to deal with this.)