Session 5: The Political Nexus II

Session 5: The Political Nexus 2
Chair: Simone do Vale

The Dreadful Space: Horror and the Politics of Fear
Mikko Canini
Department of Art, Goldsmiths College, University of London, United Kingdom

In a world destabilized by proliferating globalization and international terrorism, and in the face of a future made profoundly uncertain by the impending ecological crisis, and rapid biotechnological invention, it has become commonplace to observe that the contemporary subject is marked by anxiety.  In the popular usage the term ‘anxiety’ is treated as synonymous with stress or fear, emotive states which have recently come to be theorized as the tools of state-sanctioned media manipulation and social control.  However, this understanding is at odds with the existentialist articulation formulated by Kierkegaard, Sartre and Heidegger, for whom anxiety (angst) paradoxically opens the fundamental space of freedom.  Both determinations fail to describe the specificity of the condition which I would like to term ‘dread’.
Like anxiety, dread is not reducible to fear insofar as it is produced through accretion and not as a response to a particular object, but unlike anxiety, the ‘nothing’ that is the source of its affective power cannot be ‘filled-in’ and transformed into the collectivizing experience of fear used for political advantage.  However, neither does dread posit a fundamental freedom, for the dread provoked by the future possibilities described above does not posit the existential free will of the subject, but rather, a fundamental lack of agency.  In order to elucidate these terms, the paper will rely on a genre distinction that I recognize in horror cinema between what I term ‘terror’ and ‘horror’.  Whereas a terror film is concerned with fear, generally produced through a narrative that posits a normative social structure which is then disrupted by an antagonistic element, the reality presented in the horror film is disturbed a priori, that is, the antagonistic element is written into the very fabric of the world and emerges from its folds.  This distinction between terror as fear and anxiety, and horror as dread, is critical as they denote opposing ideological positions, and the specificities of these positions require elucidation for a complete definition of dread to emerge.

In December 2006 North and South published a feature article by former right-wing politician, Deborah Coddington.  Her article was entitled ‘Asian Angst’.  It claimed that New Zealand’s recent increase in Asian (predominantly Chinese) immigrants had brought violent crime, economic threats and disease to New Zealand shores.  While the mis-use of statistics and factual inaccuracies created a sensational article, what I focus on in this paper, is how this article repeats a previous script of fear levelled against most immigrant groups.  For example, not only were these charges levelled at the early wave of Chinese immigrants in the late 1800s, but also at Croatians, Indians and Polynesian immigrants at various times in history.  This repetition of the same fear but with a new object contributes to what Altheide (2002) claims has become a way of life in the contemporary age.  He states that the news and entertainment media use a lens of fear to portray new objects, so that in time the object is forgotten, but the fear remains.  In this way Coddington’s claims can be treated as new ‘evidence’, no matter how inaccurate.  In this way previous objects of fear become obscured.  This paper examines how the repetition of this script of fear has implications for social cohesion policies.

Fear, Horror, Terror: Violent Movies for Violent Times
Thomas Riegler
Vienna, Austria

There is a coincidence between violent times and a particular violent pop culture. Since 2001 a new brand of explicit, violent horror movies like “Hostel”, “Saw”, “The Hills have Eyes”, and “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre” has scored major box office hits. Also, “shoot ’em up”-scenarios (“300”, “Transformers”, “Hitman”), revenge thrillers (“Man on Fire”, “The Brave One”) feature prominently, as well as conspiracy- and paranoia motives. The popular TV-series “24” champions the counterterrorism approach of agent Jack Bauer, who frequently tortures suspects to obtain “vital” information. All those scenarios of horror and terror echo a new “age of fear” – shaped by the constant threat of terrorism, wars, recession, demographic and environmental problems.
This violence has “system”: In the ongoing “war on terror” the US military and intelligence agencies have used methods of “harsh interrogation”. Videos and pictures detailing this abuse spread through the Internet and platforms like Youtube. And there is also an aspect of imitation: interrogators looked up to “24” as a training manual, whereas jihadist terrorists turned out to be inspired by western pop culture “directing” their “shock”-video messages. Violence and its aspects of maintaining domination, control and cohesion are also found prominently in civil debate – for example in the notion of committing “lesser evils” to win the war on terror. And there is also a dimension of low level violence through the rapid expansion and privatisation of security, the strict regulation of immigration and enforcement of hegemonic “values”.
Pop culture reflects that fearful and violent zeitgeist: One can compare the current state of mind with the 1970s, when splatter movies and dark thrillers referred to the Vietnam War, political scandals and economic problems. Now again, cultural products tell us: There is something profoundly wrong with our world. They express anger and frustration about forces out of control, real violence in current events and estrangement between public and elites. This contribution explores this renewed conjuncture of fear, horror and terror in popular culture and what that means for the post-modern state of mind.
Assuming a connection between violent periods and a violent pop culture, this article explores the present conjuncture of fear, horror and terror in American films and TV through comparison with matching themes in 1970s Hollywood cinema. Both the 1970s and 2000s can be categorized as “ages of fear”, shaped by political, social and economic crisis: Since 9/11 and the beginning of the War on Terror a new brand of explicitly violent horror movies has scored major box office hits. “Shoot ’em up”-scenarios and revenge thrillers feature prominently, as well as conspiracy and paranoia motives. In a similar way splatter horror and dark thrillers referred to the Vietnam War, political scandals and economic problems of the 1970s. Just as then cultural products tell us: ‘There is something profoundly wrong with our world.’ Dark and nightmarish fantasies express anger and frustration about forces out of control, warlike events and estrangement between public and elites. The conclusion is that real/reel violence and horror overlap/mirror each other.

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