Adam Charles Hart
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- November 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780190916237
- eISBN:
- 9780190916275
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780190916237.003.0003
- Subject:
- Literature, Film, Media, and Cultural Studies
Chapter 2 looks at jump scares and the fad of “screamers” found across the internet: brief videos or gifs designed to cause an unsuspecting browser to scream and jump. They appeared when jump scares ...
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Chapter 2 looks at jump scares and the fad of “screamers” found across the internet: brief videos or gifs designed to cause an unsuspecting browser to scream and jump. They appeared when jump scares were ascendant within the horror genre thanks to video games; screamers’ online popularity led to importation into the cinema through films such as the Paranormal Activity series. The chapter develops the importance of shock to the horror genre and the similarities between engagement across mediums. Shock is a challenge to viewer/browser/gamer mastery and self-control. Screamers offer the opportunity to reassert one’s own self through repetition and sharing, showing how similar processes are central to the experience of horror film viewing and gameplay. It discusses “elevated horror” and the tendency to disparage sensation in opposition to traditional virtues of narrative cinema. The chapter’s counterpoint for this assumption is with close readings of “elevated” horror films, The Witch (2015) and The Babadook (2014).Less
Chapter 2 looks at jump scares and the fad of “screamers” found across the internet: brief videos or gifs designed to cause an unsuspecting browser to scream and jump. They appeared when jump scares were ascendant within the horror genre thanks to video games; screamers’ online popularity led to importation into the cinema through films such as the Paranormal Activity series. The chapter develops the importance of shock to the horror genre and the similarities between engagement across mediums. Shock is a challenge to viewer/browser/gamer mastery and self-control. Screamers offer the opportunity to reassert one’s own self through repetition and sharing, showing how similar processes are central to the experience of horror film viewing and gameplay. It discusses “elevated horror” and the tendency to disparage sensation in opposition to traditional virtues of narrative cinema. The chapter’s counterpoint for this assumption is with close readings of “elevated” horror films, The Witch (2015) and The Babadook (2014).
Adam Charles Hart
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- November 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780190916237
- eISBN:
- 9780190916275
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780190916237.003.0005
- Subject:
- Literature, Film, Media, and Cultural Studies
This chapter analyzes the recent development in first-person camerawork in horror, in which the killer-aligned camera of Killer POV has been supplanted by the victim- or protagonist-aligned cameras ...
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This chapter analyzes the recent development in first-person camerawork in horror, in which the killer-aligned camera of Killer POV has been supplanted by the victim- or protagonist-aligned cameras of “found footage”—and in the realm of gaming, first-person shooters (FPS). Where Killer POV communicates the owner’s mastery over the objects of their look, this “searching camera” indicates vulnerability and inadequacy, and the chapter looks to a long history of writing about documentary cinematography to theorize the connection between handheld camerawork, and the body of the camera operator. An FPS game like Left 4 Dead (2008), however, pairs that feeling of vulnerability and an always-partial view of its zombie-filled landscape with action and the ability to combat the threats surrounding the players. In [REC] (2007) and [REC] 2 (2009), the camera operator is always placed in a position of impotence, and an inability to act. The chapter closes by examining a recent trend in horror gaming, which equates powerlessness with horror. So games like P.T. (2014), Layers of Fear (2016), and Paranormal Activity: The Lost Soul (2017) pair an FPS-like first-person interface with an inability to directly attack or defend against the threats that populate the diegesis.Less
This chapter analyzes the recent development in first-person camerawork in horror, in which the killer-aligned camera of Killer POV has been supplanted by the victim- or protagonist-aligned cameras of “found footage”—and in the realm of gaming, first-person shooters (FPS). Where Killer POV communicates the owner’s mastery over the objects of their look, this “searching camera” indicates vulnerability and inadequacy, and the chapter looks to a long history of writing about documentary cinematography to theorize the connection between handheld camerawork, and the body of the camera operator. An FPS game like Left 4 Dead (2008), however, pairs that feeling of vulnerability and an always-partial view of its zombie-filled landscape with action and the ability to combat the threats surrounding the players. In [REC] (2007) and [REC] 2 (2009), the camera operator is always placed in a position of impotence, and an inability to act. The chapter closes by examining a recent trend in horror gaming, which equates powerlessness with horror. So games like P.T. (2014), Layers of Fear (2016), and Paranormal Activity: The Lost Soul (2017) pair an FPS-like first-person interface with an inability to directly attack or defend against the threats that populate the diegesis.
Mathias Clasen
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- October 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780190666507
- eISBN:
- 9780190666545
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780190666507.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Film, Media, and Cultural Studies
This book explains the appeals and functions of horror entertainment by drawing on cutting-edge findings in the evolutionary social sciences, showing how the horror genre is a product of human ...
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This book explains the appeals and functions of horror entertainment by drawing on cutting-edge findings in the evolutionary social sciences, showing how the horror genre is a product of human nature. It is the first book to integrate the study of horror with the sciences of human nature and to offer a sustained analysis of the ways in which our evolutionary heritage constrains and directs horror in literature, film, and computer games. The central claim of the book is that horror entertainment works by targeting ancient and deeply conserved neurobiological mechanisms. We are attracted to horrifying entertainment because we have an adaptive tendency to find pleasure in make-believe that allows us to experience negative emotions at high levels of intensity within a safe context. This book offers a detailed theoretical account of the biological underpinnings of the paradoxically and perennially popular genre of horror. The theoretical account is bolstered with original analyses of a range of well-known and popular modern American works of horror literature and horror film to illustrate how these works target evolved cognitive and emotional mechanisms to fulfill their function of absorbing, engaging, and horrifying audiences: I Am Legend (1954), Rosemary’s Baby (1967), Night of the Living Dead (1968), Jaws (1975), The Shining (1977), Halloween (1978), and The Blair Witch Project (1999). The book’s final chapter expands the discussion to include interactive, highly immersive horror experiences offered through horror video games and commercial haunted attractions.Less
This book explains the appeals and functions of horror entertainment by drawing on cutting-edge findings in the evolutionary social sciences, showing how the horror genre is a product of human nature. It is the first book to integrate the study of horror with the sciences of human nature and to offer a sustained analysis of the ways in which our evolutionary heritage constrains and directs horror in literature, film, and computer games. The central claim of the book is that horror entertainment works by targeting ancient and deeply conserved neurobiological mechanisms. We are attracted to horrifying entertainment because we have an adaptive tendency to find pleasure in make-believe that allows us to experience negative emotions at high levels of intensity within a safe context. This book offers a detailed theoretical account of the biological underpinnings of the paradoxically and perennially popular genre of horror. The theoretical account is bolstered with original analyses of a range of well-known and popular modern American works of horror literature and horror film to illustrate how these works target evolved cognitive and emotional mechanisms to fulfill their function of absorbing, engaging, and horrifying audiences: I Am Legend (1954), Rosemary’s Baby (1967), Night of the Living Dead (1968), Jaws (1975), The Shining (1977), Halloween (1978), and The Blair Witch Project (1999). The book’s final chapter expands the discussion to include interactive, highly immersive horror experiences offered through horror video games and commercial haunted attractions.
