Rhetorical Analysis of Stephen King's Essay, "Why We Crave Horror Movies"--Please Critique
EnderLocke
criticism would be helpful and very much appreciated. The full text
of
King's essay is available at the end of the article for reference.
An Excuse for Horror: Stephen King’s “Why We Crave Horror Movies”
The first Stephen King novel I read, Christine, was chilling,
weird, creepy, and strange. But I loved it. The second, Carrie, was
even less normal, and I was enthralled by it, too. How could these
horror stories of a possessed, homicidal car and a supernatural,
misunderstood, vengefully murderous teen be a story for anyone other
than pre-pubescent boys?
That is exactly what Stephen King sets out to explain through
humor and metaphor—in a startlingly ironic way—in his essay, “Why We
Crave Horror Movies.”
Stephen King approaches the subject of why people want to
read
such freaky absurdity from the angle of horror movies. From this
position, he jumps right into his thesis: “When we pay our four or
five bucks and seat ourselves at tenth-row center in a theater
showing
a horror movie, we are daring the nightmare.” In other words, Mr.
King
says that horror movies are humankind’s method for touching on the
baser side of its collective soul.
He illustrates this point most effectively with the gruesome
metaphor,
which seems to become central to his argument of the thesis:
The horror film has become the modern version of the public lynching.
(…) The potential lyncher is in all of us (excluding saints, past and
present; but then, most saints have been crazy in their own ways),
and
every now and then, he has to be let loose to scream and roll around
in the grass.
In other words, according to Mr. King, the viewers of horror
movies
are delighting in the pain and agony depicted in the characters—with
buttered popcorn, no less—in much the same way that the French
proletariat watched the beheadings of the aristocracy during the
French Revolution. This disturbing allegory is an attention-grabber;
it ironically rivets the reader’s attention in exactly the same way
Mr. King describes the pull of horror stories.
This irony shows up again when he sardonically quotes the dead
baby
joke: “‘What’s the difference between a truckload of bowling balls
and
a truckload of dead babies’ (You can’t unload the truckload of
bowling
balls with a pitchfork.)” This macabre joke serves two purposes: it
provides an example of human nature’s desire to laugh at the pain of
others, while simultaneously reiterating the same point by actually
entertaining the reader!
Of course, Mr. King is a horror writer himself, so there does seem to
be some bias in his argument; that is, he is defending his own art.
Staying away from facts, Mr. King gathers his main points from his
own
opinions and theories. This tactic is very effective, however, for
Mr.
King’s acute mind seems to pick out logical—and frighteningly accurate
—
observations of human nature. For example, he says people go to
horror
flicks to prove “that we are not afraid”, “to establish our feelings
of essential normality”, “to have fun”, and to vent our insane side.
Mr. King’s bias because of experience has another side to
it;
the sizeable talent for being creative he has honed through decades
of
writing makes every point interesting. Each idea is able to hit home
in the mind and heart in a way that traditional commentary would not.
Mr. King says that everyone has an insane side, just in
differing amounts—or as he termed, “sanity becomes a matter of
degree.” He reinforces this statement with the modern-day examples of
the extremely insane Jack the Ripper and the Cleveland Torso
Murderer,
saying that if you are that insane, then society will “clap you away
in the funny farm.” These real life examples are well known; and even
those who have not heard about these psychopaths understand Mr.
King’s
allusion to very insane people. Next, he provides a contrast to the
extreme lunatic with the everyday insane—and quite comical—examples
of
relatively normal idiosyncrasies: nose-pickers and those who talk to
themselves.
These real life examples are well known or—in the case of
the
more normal nose-picker—commonplace; even those who have not heard
about the two psychopaths understand Mr. King’s allusion to very
insane people. This use of routine examples makes his audience
comfortable with the text—and, in turn, the theme of the essay—by
giving them something to relate to.
Mr. King again takes the opportunity to throw a mite of
humor
in when he mentions that “neither of those two amateur-night
surgeons,” Jack the Ripper and the Cleveland Torso Murderer, “were
ever caught, heh-heh-heh.”
Mr. King begins his conclusion with a few sentences that
very
nearly restate his thesis: “The mythic horror movie, like the sick
joke, has a dirty job to do. It deliberately appeals to all that is
worst in us. It is morbidity unchained, or most base instincts let
fee, our nastiest fantasies realized.” This restatement adequately
summarizes the main points of the whole essay, and also provides a
good connection to the beginning of the essay. This connection
facilitates the flow from the thesis through the essay by providing a
destination for the transitory paragraphs in the middle.
Metaphorically, if the main body of the essay is a bridge, then the
thesis and its ultimate echo are the riverbanks on either side—
without
both banks, the bridge would not go anywhere. Without Mr. King’s apt
conclusion, his arguments for why people love horror would seem to
wander.
The end of Mr. King’s conclusion contains examples of all the
persuasive tactics he used in his essay; indeed, it is a conclusion
of
rhetorical pattern as much as opinion.
To wrap up the essay, Mr. King again uses his most-often used
idiom—metaphor:
"For myself, I like to see the most aggressive of
[horror movies and stories] (…) as lifting a trapdoor in the
civilized
forebrain and throwing a basket of raw meat to the hungry alligators
swimming around in that subterranean river beneath."
Finally, Mr. King ties the alligator metaphor to an allusion
to The Beatles’ classic song “All You Need Is Love”, providing a
final
reference to pop-culture.
"It was Lennon and McCartney who said that all you
need is love, and I would agree with that. As long as you keep the
gators fed."
Mr. King’s essay, “Why We Crave Horror Movies,” is a relief
to
read; for while before I read the essay I felt guilty about reading
such gory literature—not to mention immature, now I have an excuse.
Full Text of "Why We Crave Horror Movies" by Stephen King:
Why We Crave Horror Movies
By Stephen King
I think that we’re all mentally ill; those of us outside the asylums
only hide it a little better – and
maybe not all that much better, after all. We’ve all known people
who
talk to themselves, people who
sometimes squinch their faces into horrible grimaces when they
believe
no one is watching, people who
have some hysterical fear – of snakes, the dark, the tight place, the
long drop . . . and, of course, those
final worms and grubs that are waiting so patiently underground.
When we pay our four or five bucks and seat ourselves at tenth-row
center in a theater showing a
horror movie, we are daring the nightmare.
Why? Some of the reasons are simple and obvious. To show that we can,
that we are not afraid,
that we can ride this roller coaster. Which is not to say that a
really good horror movie may not surprise a
scream out of us at some point, the way we may scream when the roller
coaster twists through a complete
360 or plows through a lake at the bottom of the drop. And horror
movies, like roller coasters, have
always been the special province of the young; by the time one turns
40 or 50, one’s appetite for double
twists or 360-degree loops may be considerably depleted.
We also go to re-establish our feelings of essential normality; the
horror movie is innately
conservative, even reactionary. Freda Jackson as the horrible
melting
woman in Die, Monster, Die!
confirms for us that no matter how far we may be removed from the
beauty of a Robert Redford or a
Diana Ross, we are still light-years from true ugliness.
And we go to have fun.
Ah, but this is where the ground starts to slope away, isn’t it?
Because this is a very peculiar sort
of fun, indeed. The fun comes from seeing others menaced – sometimes
killed. One critic has suggested
that if pro football has become the voyeur’s version of combat, then
the horror film has become the
modern version of the public lynching.
It is true that the mythic “fairy-tale” horror film intends to take
away the shades of grey . . . . It
urges us to put away our more civilized and adult penchant for
analysis and to become children again,
seeing things in pure blacks and whites. It may be that horror
movies
provide psychic relief on this level
because this invitation to lapse into simplicity, irrationality and
even outright madness is extended so
rarely. We are told we may allow our emotions a free rein . . . or
no
rein at all.
If we are all insane, then sanity becomes a matter of degree. If
your
insanity leads you to carve
up women like Jack the Ripper or the Cleveland Torso Murderer, we
clap
you away in the funny farm
(but neither of those two amateur-night surgeons was ever caught,
heh-
heh-heh); if, on the other hand,
your insanity leads you only to talk to yourself when you’re under
stress or to pick your nose on your
morning bus, then you are left alone to go about your business . . .
though it is doubtful that you will ever
be invited to the best parties.
The potential lyncher is in almost all of us (excluding saints, past
and present; but then, most
saints have been crazy in their own ways), and every now and then, he
has to be let loose to scream and
roll around in the grass. Our emotions and our fears form their own
body, and we recognize that it
demands its own exercise to maintain proper muscle tone. Certain of
these emotional muscles are
accepted – even exalted – in civilized society; they are, of course,
the emotions that tend to maintain the
status quo of civilization itself. Love, friendship, loyalty,
kindness -- these are all the emotions that we
applaud, emotions that have been immortalized in the couplets of
Hallmark cards and in the verses (I
don’t dare call it poetry) of Leonard Nimoy.
When we exhibit these emotions, society showers us with positive
reinforcement; we learn this
even before we get out of diapers. When, as children, we hug our
rotten little puke of a sister and give her
a kiss, all the aunts and uncles smile and twit and cry, “Isn’t he
the
sweetest little thing?” Such coveted
treats as chocolate-covered graham crackers often follow. But if we
deliberately slam the rotten little
puke of a sister’s fingers in the door, sanctions follow – angry
remonstrance from parents, aunts and
uncles; instead of a chocolate-covered graham cracker, a spanking.
But anticivilization emotions don’t go away, and they demand periodic
exercise. We have such
“sick” jokes as, “What’s the difference between a truckload of
bowling
balls and a truckload of dead
babies?” (You can’t unload a truckload of bowling balls with a
pitchfork . . . a joke, by the way, that I
heard originally from a ten-year-old.) Such a joke may surprise a
laugh or a grin out of us even as we
recoil, a possibility that confirms the thesis: If we share a
brotherhood of man, then we also share an
insanity of man. None of which is intended as a defense of either
the
sick joke or insanity but merely as
an explanation of why the best horror films, like the best fairy
tales, manage to be reactionary, anarchistic,
and revolutionary all at the same time.
The mythic horror movie, like the sick joke, has a dirty job to do.
It deliberately appeals to all
that is worst in us. It is morbidity unchained, our most base
instincts let free, our nastiest fantasies
realized . . . and it all happens, fittingly enough, in the dark.
For those reasons, good liberals often shy
away from horror films. For myself, I like to see the most
aggressive
of them – Dawn of the Dead, for
instance – as lifting a trap door in the civilized forebrain and
throwing a basket of raw meat to the hungry
alligators swimming around in that subterranean river beneath.
Why bother? Because it keeps them from getting out, man. It keeps
them down there and me up
here. It was Lennon and McCartney who said that all you need is
love,
and I would agree with that.
As long as you keep the gators fed.