Horror and Irony: 

A Lecture on Anomalous Structures

We are here to consider the nature of Horror, with a capital H, as that used in stories and movies, and such, for the word is so tossed around by the horror loving community that one must merely assume that we are all talking about the same thing. We are clear somewhat on the “feeling” of horror, that is, fear brought about by monsters both natural and supernatural, real and imagined. Ed Gein, for instance, was a real life monster who not only killed his victims but made furniture out of their skin and skulls. Frankenstein is an imagined monster made up of human body parts reassembled into a humanly shape, and reanimated, a living dead creature that scared the villagers and the readers as well.

Ed Gein & Leatherface (non-fiction vs. fiction)

But are examples of Horror? Why? What makes them so? Can we rely on subjective opinions to determine what Horror is? Nowadays, "critics" tend to examine horror by which metaphor is represents: It's a metaphor for trauma, for child abuse, for spousal abuse, for PTSD, etc. But what of the exceptions? Not everyone would agree that metaphorical readings are critiques. Subjectivity has no universality, that is, one opinion cannot be used as a tool to measure all opinions. Consider Gomez Addams’s reaction to horror, Gomez who lived the macabre life with his family. Horror to the Addams is fun, not scary. Allow me to explain. 

Horror, like Irony, can only be understood (some may say, “appreciated”) by a fraction of readers and movie-goers, our population to be addressed solely for this paper. Thus, we should first examine the possible reactions to Irony, and second, the components that make these reactions happen. And then apply our examinations to Horror.

Consider three friends in a bar observing a very heavy man walk in. One man notes ironically, Look who’s here: Skinny. The second man laughs; the third man says, You need glasses. That man’s not skinny. He’s clearly fat. Yes, the man just arrived is heavy (fat), and the first man used irony to call the man “fat” by using the word “skinny”. The second man heard “fat” through the use of “skinny”. The third man does not hear the irony because what he sees (a fat man) contradicts what he hears (a skinny man). But the second man

hears the contradiction (simultaneously hearing fat/skinny) and it tickles his brain into a laugh response. If a skinny man walked into the bar, and the first man said, Look who’s here: Skinny, the second and third man would have acknowledged the observation as true, and no response needed, with the exception of an agreeable nod. The responses to the irony are dualistic: Laughter versus incredulity.

What, then, are the components that constitute Irony? Well, for starters, two elements that contradict each other, but together create a whole new concept. Sigmund Freud, in “Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious”, Freud categorized one type of joke as “tendentious”, that is, an aggressive verbal use that carried a hidden bias that often targeted certain types of person. In our example above, “skinny” hides “fat”, the target, but does not hide its tendention: that the man arriving at the bar is, in fact, fat. He uses the word “skinny” to call the man “fat”, which elicits laughter to the listener who can hear the intent. To simply call the fat man fat has no hidden agenda (litotes aside). Thus what we have here is our new concept, a conglomeration of opposing ideas that produce a third form, an anomaly of sorts: neither one nor the other but a third form, the ironic construct.

Now, what does this have to do with Horror? you ask. Well, Horror works in the same vein: It contains two opposing elements that, when balanced together, create a whole new form, the horror construct. This anomaly contains both elements from the Grotesque and Beauty in equal measure. Here we get our first two “big” words that have so many meanings that you’d wonder which one I mean for our topic at hand. Thus, I’ll reduce the rich history of both these words to two simple terms: Repulsive and Appealing. In this way we can easily follow the example for Horror.

We start with our three people again at the bar. First person says, Dracula is the scariest movie. The second person shivers and responds, That vampire is the scariest. The third person says, Vampires aren’t real, so how can they be scary? (We will take “suspension of disbelief” as a given at this point). What elicits chills in the second person evokes incredulity in the third person. For the first and second person, there is no question about vampires, or that Dracula is the scariest, but for the third person, vampires are a moot matter and therefore not subject to any response, be it faith or fear. Therefore, the third person can be discounted from further argument as his response is a non-response. The question now can focus on the fear response, (which in the case of Irony was the laughter response).

What makes a vampire scary, and in the second person’s response, “the scariest” of all? To answer that, we must first discuss the elements that create our anomaly, those features that can place it under the umbrella of Horror: Repulsive and Appealing, the grotesque and beautiful side of the coin. (Reminder: the two sides of Irony were Truth and False, which when mixed created ironic intention). On one side, we have an undead creature who feeds on human blood; on the other side, we have a suave and well-dressed gentleman who attracts beautiful women. When the sides are combined, we have Dracula. He (or It) is neither creature or gentleman alone, but both at the same time. Separately, neither elicits true Horror, for the bloodsucker evokes fear, while the gentile gent appeals to our sensibilities, but together, in equal measure, a response of Horror can be achieved. There are vampire movies where the undead creature is mostly monster without any appealing allure (say, 30 Days of Night) or mostly allure without the fear inducing element of monstrosity (Twilight). To achieve pure Horror, the balance between alluring appeal and frightening repulsiveness must be equal when combined. We are drawn to and fear Dracula for that reason. That is what make him (It) scary.


In this sense, our definition of Horror is a tool best used for the critique of horror (with a small “h”) books and movies. With such a tool, we can gage the balance of elements that produce good Horror, keeping an eye out for those imbalances that give us gore for the sake of gore, or supernatural romance without fear. I mean, it’s all good, right? Monsters, gore, zombies, cosmic dread, et al. But true Horror fans should always strive for perfectly proportioned Horror books and movies. As Critics, then, we have something to measure the rest of the genre against, right? Right?! 

While there are those who would rather discuss the meaning of the book or movie, I feel we should take a step back away from metaphor and theme to first see objectively the movie or book for what it is in and of itself before even assigning a label of Horror. Is the structure balanced between Grotesques and Beauty, or does it lean one way or the the other? As critics, we must measure the elements, not just deconstruct them, in order to determine where on the scale of Horror the work falls. If it qualifies as Horror, then we can proceed to inspect our subjective opinions. And not the reverse.