Frank Horror:

Hey there, I'm Frank Horror.

Elliott Rotman:

And I'm Elliott Rotman.

Frank Horror:

And we are here at the very first episode of the horror analysis, right, Elliott?

Elliott Rotman:

Yes we are, and I'm looking forward to it.

Frank Horror:

So tell the listeners a little bit about who we are, because they're probably wondering that, and also why we're doing what we're doing.

Elliott Rotman:

Well, I'm a critical psychologist, but aside from that, I've been a fan of horror since I've been a little kid. And Frank?

Frank Horror:

Yeah. I've got a background in psychology. I have a master's degree and I'm a hypnotherapist. And so I've worked in the field of psychology, but my real passion and interest lies in writing and horror and creating horror content.

Elliott Rotman:

So we decided, wouldn't it be a great idea to examine the psychological aspects of horror in all its forms?

Frank Horror:

I'm excited to see what kind of insights we come up with that we can share with our listeners.

Elliott Rotman:

I'll be interested too.

Frank Horror:

You ready to roll credits for our first show?

Elliott Rotman:

Absolutely, hope everyone enjoys.

Frank Horror:

All right, let's do it.

Christine Mattschei:

Welcome to The Horror Analysis, a podcast that takes a psychological deep dive into all things horror and macabre. Here are your hosts, Frank Horror, writer, director, filmmaker, and podcaster with a background in counseling psychology, and Dr. Elliott Rotman, a clinical psychologist with a background in acting and the arts.

Frank Horror:

Welcome to our maiden voyage. This is the first episode in the first season of The Horror Analysis. Not only do we have Elliott and myself here, both of us with psychology backgrounds, but we have our producer and our audio technician, William Rizzo, who has a doctorate in psychology. Actually the voice that you hear at the beginning of every episode that introduces us is Christine Mattschei. She's a mental health counselor. So William, our producer, you may hear him from time to time.

William Rizzo:

Yeah. How you doing?

Frank Horror:

If you hear that voice, that's him adding his opinions, and which we allow him so generously to have, and to speak up to speak his mind.

William Rizzo:

Help me, please.

Frank Horror:

That's enough. You go back in your box. But yeah, I think in terms of being surrounded by mental health professionals, the listeners are in good hands as we head down these dark paths and topics. So Elliot, why don't we talk a little bit about the show? Let's let's set the stage for what we're going to do here.

Elliott Rotman:

Sure. Our mission for the show is to look at the psychology of horror and the macabre. We'll be looking at it from an individual, from a societal perspective, from a cultural perspective. Why are we attracted to it? What repels us? What keeps us coming back? We will be examining the appeal of specific genres.

Frank Horror:

Yeah, I think that's a good way to put it. We're going to have the first season specifically, we're going to look at horror as entertainment. We'll set the stage by talking today and next episode about, well, what is horror? What is the appeal? Then from that point on, for the rest of this season, there are a lot of different sub genres so we can really drill down and look at each one of those individually. But yeah, let's start with the basics. What is horror? I mean, that is an easy, easy question, but I feel like if you were to ask most people, their answer would be, they're going to respond and tell you, "Oh, it's this type of movie." I think there's something much more to it than that.

Frank Horror:

I think it's very telling that when we talk about with your average person, what do you think of horror, or do you like horror, the response typically is about entertainment. It's about movies or Stephen King or things like that. But horror goes deeper than that. Let's talk about what it is, what it's origins are and what it has meant differently to our society over time.

Elliott Rotman:

Okay. Well, I think if we go to the basics, let's go to Miriam Webster, the dictionary, who describes horror as an intense feeling of shock or fear and/or disgusted. Horror comes from the Latin word, [inaudible 00:04:31]. I hope I'm pronouncing it correctly, which means to stand on end or bristle. What we do when our nervous system is highly aroused and not necessarily in a good way, and we are on guard. It basically, horror as a genre, whether it's painting or literature or movies, all of these are designed to evoke that kind of reaction in us, that fear of shock and disgust. I think in terms of just talking about what horror is, and it takes lots of different forms, but that's what it would be.

Frank Horror:

You're right. It does invoke a reaction, just like any art form. Again, if we're talking about the entertainment side of things, art is designed to evoke an emotional response. Horror, of course, provokes dread, fear, horror. What is the difference between, we've talked about fear and horror before in our private conversations, but what is the difference between horror and fear? Because those two aren't necessarily the exact same thing, are they?

Elliott Rotman:

No, they're not. Fear is a component of horror, but fear itself is basically an aspect of self-preservation. It goes to the fight or flight notion that there's something that is threatening us in some way. It could be something very natural. I know you're walking down the street and you encounter a big dog that's growling in it. There's no person attached to it. You fear for your safety, but you still know it's a dog. You don't think it's something supernatural or something that doesn't belong there. Same thing if you are caught in bad weather. If you're on a golf course during a severe sun thunderstorm, you're going to be afraid. You hear tornadoes are landing nearby. Those are all reasons to preserve yourself, but there isn't a sense of disgust or reality to it. You can take action and hopefully protect yourself.

Elliott Rotman:

So that's fear. Fear is fight or flight, it's that your autonomic nervous system starts to secrete adrenaline, and you're either going to stand and fight or you're going to try to get away. You could be fearful just crossing the street and a car comes out of nowhere, and you're going to either try to bolt across or jump back.

Frank Horror:

So there's a basic biological adaptive function for fear. It serves a purpose.

Elliott Rotman:

Absolutely. It keeps us alive. Now, if that same car that was hurtling up the street starts to follow you and you think that you're being stalked, and you don't know who or what or why, that can relate to horror because you can't make sense out of it. It doesn't fit into a normal category. It really goes to, there's a concept called category jamming, which is the idea that our earliest experiences involve internalizing classes of thought in terms of what's normal, what's not normal. So you know that at a rock concert, things are supposed to be loud, noisy. You're yelling. There might be a little bit of shoving if it's a heavy metal mosh pit kind of thing, but you're pretty much expecting people to act a certain way. It's predictable.

Elliott Rotman:

What happens is, if things shift to something that shouldn't be occurring there, we don't have a category for it. There's a difference between a headless horseman, like Nathaniel Hawthorne. We don't have a category for a headless horseman, but we don't get upset even if most people wear mustaches or beards and looking at someone who doesn't have a mustache. We're rarely horrified by that. So because it fits into our category of what normal, typical behavior is like..

Frank Horror:

So it's more than just defies expectations. So like you said, if we're in a certain group where it's expected that people are clean shaven and you see someone with a beard, that defies the expectation. It might be a bit unusual to you, but it's not alarming to the point that that's horror. So horror is really something that is, it sounds like it's transgressive, though. It pushes...

Elliott Rotman:

Yeah, it's transgressive in terms of our expectations. It's not just a cultural expectation. If you belong to a religious group where everyone is expected to be bearded and someone shaves their beard, you might be upset. You might be offended, but you wouldn't go, "Oh my God, what has happened to him?" You would just know it's somebody without a beard.

Frank Horror:

Yeah.

Elliott Rotman:

So that's the difference. Horror takes it to a sense where we can't quite reconcile what it is.

Frank Horror:

Okay. So horror really doesn't just defy expectations in the moment. It incorporates this feeling of dread or fear with it. So, an example might be, let's say I come home, my girlfriend is there, and she's got another guy in the bed and I walk in on them. That's shocking. That's not expected, but that's very different than if I come home, she's got a guy in the bed and she's sawing him into small body parts. That's horror, and so I guess the distinction is, it really comes down to the threat of fear and the unknown, right? What's unnatural. What's unexpected. What's...

Elliott Rotman:

Well, you might be horrified by both of those, because in the first case, there's a, expectations being defied. There's a sense of betrayal, but then she's doing something extreme. So again, you might be horrified. I would think the horror might come from, if she looked up at you with a really strange look and you were wondering if you were next.

Frank Horror:

Yeah. Now we're getting into some good script ideas here.

Elliott Rotman:

Okay, there you go. Okay, somebody taking notes. I think there's, it's like getting into semantics. There's something that is horrific that you might see the effects of something, particularly when physical body is defiled in some way. But it also, there's an element there of yes, expectations being defied, but then there is an element of fear.

Frank Horror:

Going back to that element of fear, again, this serves an adaptive function for us throughout the course of our evolution. Fear tells us when to fight for our lives or to run right, when to get the hell out, right? So why, when people are drawn to horror, when you ask them, "Why do you like horror?" People have asked me many times, "Why do you write horror? Why are you into horror?" And I can tell you, but everybody has their own reason. I can tell you exactly why. Most people aren't that introspective to stop and think about it, but they just say, "Oh, I like to be scared." Why is that though? Why would people value being scared?

Elliott Rotman:

I think there's a certain element there, and it really varies from person to person because there's some people who do not like being scared, and people who don't like being scared are those who have actually been frightened or terrified in real life, who have been traumatized in real life sense of safety and integrity or sense of self has been challenged, because then they don't want to be scared because that results in flashbacks. They are re-experiencing the event in real life in real time.

Elliott Rotman:

We like being scared because there's a certain element of, well, it goes back to, I think, to the fight or flight thing. What happens when we get scared, but we have the safety of knowing it's just a movie? Again, we start to generate adrenaline. We get ready for that fight or flight thing, but we are able to say, what's going to happen next? What's going to occur, and oh my God, that's gross. But we have the safety of our seat in our living room, in a theater, wherever. So we like that, our brains like that kind of stimulation at times. There are people who like to be scared and they do it by taking risks, doing extreme sports.

Frank Horror:

Going on roller coasters.

Elliott Rotman:

Going on roller coasters.

Frank Horror:

Which are not necessarily risky, but that's the same sort of response, right? The adrenaline, the endorphins.

Elliott Rotman:

And it's scary in that what's happening to your body. On the metal ones, the G forces, where you actually achieve a state of weightlessness, but what keeps it from being horrific is you know you're secure in your seat. You're not going to go flying anywhere.

Frank Horror:

Well, I don't know. I'm not a rollercoaster fan, so that's always in the back of my mind, that I'm going to go fly in right out of this thing. So for me, and that's unpleasant, right? I don't like roller coasters. For the people who, let's go back to the people who don't like horror as a form of entertainment, literature or movies. If they're disturbed by this, obviously trauma is one of the reasons, right? They don't want to relive that trauma, but is it always the case?

Elliott Rotman:

No, I don't think that's always the case. We all have different sensibilities of what we tolerate, what we like. If someone doesn't like any demonstration of violence or harm, they're not going to like not just horror, they're not going to like any kind of action film where people are getting shot, where there's any kind of suffering. We all have different tolerances. We all have different tastes, the same way there are people who love romance novels, and they get lost in that. That makes them feel good. Other people look at certain romance novels and go, "Ah, it's icky. I don't need to do that. I want something that's going to challenge me. Part of what horror does, or the macabre does, it challenges us to see what we can tolerate, what's stimulating, what stimulates our imagination. For most of us, it's very safe, because you can watch something, you can look at a slasher film or something with an alien of some sort, and you don't confuse that with real life.

Frank Horror:

I think you hit on something there when you said we watch horror, we experience horror as an art form in order to see what we can tolerate. In science fiction, the mechanism for science fiction is really, it is a pilot for other technology that can be developed. It's a what if, like what if we had this technology? What are the moral, the societal ethical implications of all this, the practical implications. How would this change our lives? It becomes a dry run for what would things be like with X, Y, or Z, if we had interstellar travel, or if we had, what was it? The original Star Trek, they had those flip transponders that became flip phones. Now we carry our transponders with us and our cell phones in our pocket.

Frank Horror:

The way that science fiction drives technological advance and society's reaction to it, I think horror certainly drives our, it's like a test drive for when we're faced with a situation like this, when we're faced with this fear and it's real. It's almost like a rehearsal. It's a dry run for it, right?

Elliott Rotman:

Yeah, I would agree. If you're going back into history, there's a painting. I think it was painted in 1780. I think it was a Dutch painter, but don't quote me, of this woman spread out over, on a bed and sleeping and her arms are spread out. There is this very frightening looking demon sitting on her chest. This was painted in 1780. So the question is, what was that about? Well, it's been interpreted that there are lessons there about lust, because her pose is very sensual. Is the demon doing something to her? Is he taking something from her?

Elliott Rotman:

But he's scary, and what it implies is that maybe he's part of her dream. Because another element of horror is that there is an element there that you can't control. We know that we all have dreams. Dreams sometimes are frightening. Sometimes they're reflective of something going on in our life. Other times it's our neurons inspiring and creating these stories that we can't make any sense out of. But the notion of someone or something being able to get into our heads and control our dreams, such as Nightmare on Elm street, Freddy Krueger, that's terrifying. That's the notion of horror, because it's not supposed to happen.

Frank Horror:

Again, a loss of control.

Elliott Rotman:

It's a loss of control, and a fear of our own sense of integrity.

Frank Horror:

So again, not just unpredictable, it's unnatural. There's a lack of control. These are the things that we find uncomfortable, that we find terrifying. But you also, I want to go back to what you said when you talked about that painting. I am familiar with that. It's a gorgeous painting and it's very unsettling, but there is sensual side, too. Look at some of the legends and the mythology back at that time that there were demons that could visit you at night, like succubus and they would tempt you.

Frank Horror:

So horror has deep roots all the way back through history and society. I'm curious what role it's played, because I think it in the past may have played more of a role of, when people didn't understand something, it was more of an explanation, but a cautionary tale for something. For instance, fairy tales, right? Fairy tales were moral stories for children, and the German fairy tales, they didn't pull any punches. They didn't end very well for the kids. You go into the woods, you're going to get eaten by this witch. You're going to... a number of horrible things will happen to you. It was all about teaching children the right behaviors. It was used as a cudgel.

Elliott Rotman:

Also as a bit instructive. You go back to Bruno Bettelheim, who was a psychoanalyst and worked with children, and talking about how fairy tales are also very helpful for children because it gives them instruction. It gives them a sense of mastery over something looking to harm them. So Hansel and Gretel do go out into the woods, and they shouldn't go out into the woods, but then they do defeat the witch.

Frank Horror:

Do they in the original version, or is that just the Americanized happy ending version?

Elliott Rotman:

I can't say. What's in the original version?

Frank Horror:

I thought they got eaten in the original version. I could be wrong there. But regardless, if that were the case, someone changed it at some point, and why? It's probably getting to what you're saying, is that there's a lesson there as well.

Elliott Rotman:

Well, there's a lesson, but it also, most likely if it's been changed, because the notion of children being killed and eaten, if you let yourself sit with that, that's horrific. That's not supposed to happen. That goes against every norm, every taboo, particularly when it involves children. Even if you remove it one step by saying, well, this is an evil witch, that's not supposed to happen to kids.

Frank Horror:

That's certainly tough to deal with in our current society, but I wonder if that's changed and that norm has changed, too.

Elliott Rotman:

That it's okay to eat kids?

Frank Horror:

Well, I mean, not that it's okay to eat kids, but it's okay to tell stories where the kids get eaten. I don't think we'll ever get to a point where we're like, yeah, cannibalism. That's all right. The kids, they're just the slow moving ones, we'll take them first.

Elliott Rotman:

But I think, and you may have some points of reference around this, but that's still taboo. If a child is killed in a story in a movie, and if it happens as collateral damage, or as, well, it could even be... if it's result of abuse, that's considered horrific. Because then we think about our own children and what that would be like if that happened. But it's interesting, the notion of something really awful happening to a child. I think most productions, I mean, there may be some, but they don't go there.

Frank Horror:

There are some, and I think that people, they go there because of the shock value. I think of some of the Stephen King stories, and he takes it to some places where kids get killed, like IT or Pet Sematary. It's a main lever in the story. It's a powerful one, and it's controversial, too. Those kind of stories tend to elicit a very strong reaction from people. I've known people that said, "I've got to the point in the story where the kid gets killed in Pet Sematary, and that's it." They're out. They don't want to know the rest of the story, and other people, that continues to draw them in to see how does this resolve? It shows a button point issue.

Elliott Rotman:

In Pet Sematary, the kid is killed by a truck.

Frank Horror:

Yes.

Elliott Rotman:

Okay. In IT, children are killed by this clown, this supernatural being that's familiar and yet really malevolent. That still provides a certain degree of separation, as opposed to someone who is, who presumably normal who might do something. The clown in IT needs the children to feed itself in some way.

Frank Horror:

I think that's hitting on something else that horror often is a metaphor for something. The clown, that's a metaphor. There's no killer clowns lurking in the sewers. I think that's probably what softens it. You're right. There aren't a lot of shows or books or things where it's just straight up abuse and a child gets killed in the process. It's always something that is fantastic, which makes it a metaphor, but softens it.

Elliott Rotman:

What makes a book or movie like IT really powerful is that, it's going to, again, the concept of the uncanny, Freud's concept, and that's something, it's familiar and yet foreign. There's a clown. There are a lot of people who don't like clowns, simply because they are uncanny. They look human, but they're not. The clown in IT, one, lives in a sewer, but also if I'm remembering, offers balloons, so he's kind of benign. But the kids know there's something wrong here. You shouldn't go to a clown living in the sewer. The power of that is it threatens our sense of security. In IT though, the kids also fight the clown.

Frank Horror:

Yes.

Elliott Rotman:

So they're not just victims. They're also learning to face their own fears and to defeat this creature.

Frank Horror:

That horror, let's take the example of IT, and where there's something slightly off with the clown. He's got these balloons. In some ways he appears like he's benign. That's a subtle portrayal of horror. Then it becomes something that's more overt when you see the teeth and the monster that is and some of the horrific unnatural actions. I think that is also something to look at when we look at horror is, what is subtle, what's slightly off, and what's like really in your face overt. There's a whole gamut there when it comes to horror.

Elliott Rotman:

A lot of it is going to be a matter of, in terms of the effect that it has on somebody, it's going to be a matter of what's your own history, what's your own experience. Because the other thing that horror can do is it offers a kind of catharsis, because if it's different enough from your day to day life, it just lets you, it lets you be transgressive for a little while in a safe way.

Frank Horror:

So it is a way to, for you, to explore your comfort level with taboos, things that we see as unacceptable in our society. I don't mean you as in you, Elliot, like you as in the audience.

Elliott Rotman:

Right. Now, I remember when I went to see Halloween. I still remember this. This is years ago when it first came out, and coming back to my apartment afterwards and looking in the closet. I'm doing it and thinking, I know there's nobody here. No, nobody's here in my closet, but let me just check, because there was such an impact in that movie. I'm sure if I looked at it now, I watched it now, it'd have a very different effect because it's been done so many times and once you see it, but what was so effective was they created this sense of dread of this creature that is going to kill people randomly and you can't control him. I took it to the next step. Then let me just check under my bed. You check under your bed. It was going back to childhood fears of, let me check for masters.

Frank Horror:

I think it makes a lot of sense when we're talking about fear and what we find to be horrific, to look back at childhood, look back at that time in our lives where we were vulnerable and imaginative. I think a that's the starting point for a lot of what we find to be scary or experiences, or things that we've seen in childhood. Actually I think that's a good stopping point for us now, but I'd like to resume this discussion in episode two. We'll start off discussing childhood fears.

Frank Horror:

Want to thank the audience for tuning in, for listening to us for our very first episode of the Horror Analysis, and hopefully you'll come back and join us for our next discussion. Thank you.

Frank Horror:

The Horror Analysis is a Frank Horror production, and is brought to you by Frank Juchniewicz, Elliott Rotman, and William Rizzo. Audio engineering and the original theme music to the Horror Analysis were provided by William Rizzo. Audio editing provided by Frank Juchniewicz. Sound mastering was provided by David Parsons. The opening credits introduction was voiced by Christine Mattschei. To learn more about our show, visit us online at frankhorror.com