The Horror Theory Reader, edited by Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock

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The Horror Theory Reader, edited by Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock

Horror was never accorded due respect in literature, and in Hollywood, it was for a long time the unwanted if profitable orphan. As G. Neil Martin points out in his 2019 essay, collected in The Horror Theory Reader, horror/supernatural films seldom receive Oscar nominations. And yet, as the Regents University psychology professor notes in his “(Why) Do You Like Scary Movies,” horror thrives at box offices despite the relative lack of industry recognition and professional respect.

In choosing the selections for The Horror Theory Reader, editor Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock (English professor, Central Michigan University) searched for answers to the question of how or why horror engages audiences. He circles back to Aristotle for the value of catharsis from tragedies and David Hume who wrote of finding pleasure in fear within “the very structure and incidents” of theater. Edmund Burke weighed in on the terror of the sublime, and Ann Radcliffe on distinctions between horror (mere repulsion) and terror (engaging the imagination).

Sadly, most of the recent academic musings gathered in The Horror Theory Reader are depressingly pedantic litanies of politically correct bromides. The sole exception is Sheri-Marie Harrison’s “New Black Gothic.” Crisscrossing between fiction, hip-hop and film, she cogently explores the resonance of “brutal torture and death” that “spans the history of Black life in America.” The ghosts and ghouls are more material than metaphorical.

Perhaps the most solid and pertinent essay in the collection is an excerpt from H.P. Lovecraft’s “Supernatural Horror in Literature.” More than anyone, the author of “The Call pf Cthulhu” turned earthbound horror into “cosmic fear” with his evocations of a multiverse hostile to humanity. Why does horror command an audience? Lovecraft puts it plainly: “The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown.”

Get The Horror Theory Reader on Amazon here.

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