Fear as a Game
July 11, 2024 1:25 PM Subscribe
'Fear is an oddly attractive force. Horror movies, haunted houses, bungee jumping—these are fear experiences we actually pay for. (My favorite tweet: “If I pay $40 for a haunted house I better die.”) Why do we do that—why do we crave small doses of terror?' Elisa Gabbert talks striving, play, and broken roller-coasters, in "Fear as a Game," in The Believer.
Not directly 100% related, but ff anyone's interested in a deep dive into "why do we enjoy horror fiction", this is discussed at length in philosopher/film scholar Noël Carroll's excellent "The Philosophy of Horror, or, Paradoxes of the Heart", which is a pretty accessible academic work where he starts by asking exactly that question and reviewing its possible answers, before meticulously constructing a theory of what exactly horror fiction is and what kind of stories it typically tells.
If you're at all interested in horror as a genre and what makes defines it and makes it work, I highly, highly recommend it.
posted by Joakim Ziegler at 1:36 PM on July 11 [7 favorites]
If you're at all interested in horror as a genre and what makes defines it and makes it work, I highly, highly recommend it.
posted by Joakim Ziegler at 1:36 PM on July 11 [7 favorites]
Ok, most of the article is interesting, but what?
"As (evolutionary anthropologist Herman) Pontzer explains it, your body finds other ways to use the calories. And they are not necessarily beneficial: Your immune system gets overactive, leading to allergies and general inflammation. Your stress responses spike much higher. "
posted by The_Vegetables at 2:07 PM on July 11
"As (evolutionary anthropologist Herman) Pontzer explains it, your body finds other ways to use the calories. And they are not necessarily beneficial: Your immune system gets overactive, leading to allergies and general inflammation. Your stress responses spike much higher. "
posted by The_Vegetables at 2:07 PM on July 11
what?
'To understand how the body can fuel intense exercise or fight off disease without busting energy limits, Pontzer and his students are exploring how the body tamps down other activities. “I think we’re going to find these adjustments lower inflammation, lower our stress reaction. We do it to make the energy books balance.”' [duke]
posted by HearHere at 2:30 PM on July 11
'To understand how the body can fuel intense exercise or fight off disease without busting energy limits, Pontzer and his students are exploring how the body tamps down other activities. “I think we’re going to find these adjustments lower inflammation, lower our stress reaction. We do it to make the energy books balance.”' [duke]
posted by HearHere at 2:30 PM on July 11
this is why I avoid swallowing bumblebees
posted by clavdivs at 2:38 PM on July 11 [7 favorites]
posted by clavdivs at 2:38 PM on July 11 [7 favorites]
Fear as a Game
I'm afraid I've never been much of a gamer.
posted by Greg_Ace at 2:43 PM on July 11 [2 favorites]
I'm afraid I've never been much of a gamer.
posted by Greg_Ace at 2:43 PM on July 11 [2 favorites]
Man, it's been a hot minute but I think fear as a game was basically just The Ring but as an FPS.
posted by howbigisthistextfield at 3:59 PM on July 11 [1 favorite]
posted by howbigisthistextfield at 3:59 PM on July 11 [1 favorite]
Joakim Ziegler, thank you for the recommendation. i wondered if this was a book i'd read before. it appears that it was not. there's another book with the title Philosophy of Horror [gbooks]. it's more recent, so references the earlier work. you may also enjoy this. it even connects:
horror "plays with" philosophy—bending or twisting our notions of rationality & "nature"
posted by HearHere at 4:44 PM on July 11
horror "plays with" philosophy—bending or twisting our notions of rationality & "nature"
posted by HearHere at 4:44 PM on July 11
what was most interesting in what i'd read, what i remembered, was the idea that the genre (however awesome) is ultimately hopeful, as it presupposes another world
posted by HearHere at 5:14 PM on July 11
posted by HearHere at 5:14 PM on July 11
For some reason, I thought that the print Believer was defunct! Maybe because I stopped seeing it in bookstores and the like. This is great news for me. They're such beautiful, interesting things. Cute little art objects filled with brilliant ideas. Not unlike how I'd imagine MEFI in physical form, actually.
posted by es_de_bah at 6:17 PM on July 11 [1 favorite]
posted by es_de_bah at 6:17 PM on July 11 [1 favorite]
i wondered if this was a book i'd read before. it appears that it was not. there's another book with the title Philosophy of Horror. it's more recent, so references the earlier work. you may also enjoy this.
This looks like it might be interesting, and there's even some direct quotes from Carroll in the introduction (the term "art-horror" is a coining of Carroll's from The Philosophy of Horror). It's it's a collection of essays, though, which I generally find less interesting than a book written by a single author presenting a coherent thesis, and it's in a series called "The Philosophy of Popular Culture", where I've read the Film Noir one, and it's not that great, being more concerned with how various philosophical concepts are expressed in Film Noir than with a philosophy of Film Noir as such. But this one looks more promising in that regard, I might check it out.
posted by Joakim Ziegler at 6:41 PM on July 11 [1 favorite]
This looks like it might be interesting, and there's even some direct quotes from Carroll in the introduction (the term "art-horror" is a coining of Carroll's from The Philosophy of Horror). It's it's a collection of essays, though, which I generally find less interesting than a book written by a single author presenting a coherent thesis, and it's in a series called "The Philosophy of Popular Culture", where I've read the Film Noir one, and it's not that great, being more concerned with how various philosophical concepts are expressed in Film Noir than with a philosophy of Film Noir as such. But this one looks more promising in that regard, I might check it out.
posted by Joakim Ziegler at 6:41 PM on July 11 [1 favorite]
“Horror films don't create fear. They release it.” - Wes Craven.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 10:02 PM on July 11 [2 favorites]
posted by DirtyOldTown at 10:02 PM on July 11 [2 favorites]
The “game” portion of this essay expresses a few fundamental insights into one of the ways methamphetamine hijacked my brain and let me trick myself into continuing to use meth long after it had stopped doing things for me and was only doing things to me. My substance use eventually gave rise to “fun” challenges I would set up for myself. How many semi-anonymous women could I cheat with before my wife found out? How many hours could I stay awake before I passed out with. I warning or began to dream while awake? How many true, rational and useful conclusions could I jump to before I started to jump to false, irrational and hurtful conclusions? How much meth could I smoke every day before my colleagues, friends and family began suspecting that I was on drugs? How recklessly could I drive before being arrested? How recklessly could I live before irreversibly damaging myself and others, or worse?
I fucked around and found out all these answers over the course of five years and had “fun” doing so in the moment. My behavior and my rationale for it are both appalling and a solemn warning to me now, for which I’m grateful. But I find I no longer play games of any sort, or seek thrills like ziplining or rock-climbing, or even watch horror films much, because these activities can put me back in that risk-taking mindset.
posted by infinitewindow at 12:31 AM on July 12 [4 favorites]
I fucked around and found out all these answers over the course of five years and had “fun” doing so in the moment. My behavior and my rationale for it are both appalling and a solemn warning to me now, for which I’m grateful. But I find I no longer play games of any sort, or seek thrills like ziplining or rock-climbing, or even watch horror films much, because these activities can put me back in that risk-taking mindset.
posted by infinitewindow at 12:31 AM on July 12 [4 favorites]
In rehab I met a very hipster looking 35 yo guy who talked about his addictions to extreme sports and drugs such as heroine and meth. He loved being afraid and close to death, had been given many times. I wondered if dopamine disregulation has anything to do with these activities.
posted by waving at 3:45 AM on July 12 [1 favorite]
posted by waving at 3:45 AM on July 12 [1 favorite]
When Joakim Ziegler recommended the Carroll book, I was not expecting the hit of sheer nostalgia I felt reading the introduction. The moment I got to "a new collection by Clive Barker, entitled Cabal, has just arrived in the mail," it was as though someone had just put a plate of blood-soaked madeleines on the table. I longed for Cabal with a need not unlike all my hopeless high-school crushes (although this longing, once fulfilled, begat a new kind of disappointment). And look, he mentions TED Klein, and who even talks about Klein anymore, but for a minute there he was very important to me (I just re-read "The Events at Poroth Farm" the other day).
Horror! I've been returning to it lately. Mostly older stuff I already know--flipping through the big two-volume collection Peter Straub put out, for example. I don't really know what's going on anymore with horror novels, it has been too long. I follow some current authors, but when I poke around at the new books, they don't feel the way that books felt in the 80s and 90s--probably because I am not a kid or a teen anymore, but I think it's best if we blame the books for getting worse, rather than ourselves for getting old. Too many found-families, too many power-tropes, too much "I am the monster." (Let's blame Thomas Harris for that--or, no, let's blame Robert Bloch-- Let's blame the whole addiction to psychiatry that tried to explain evil by casting it as a mindset rather than as a basic elemental force in our lives, a force that we survive by being afraid of it, avoiding it even while it calls to us.) (I saw The First Omen the other night and it really didn't work for me, and I think the reason why was, it failed to establish a real claustrophobia--it failed to walk you around the boundaries of its world, the fences, the rules. It's not that it broke its own spell--but rather it didn't put in the effort to create the spell in the first place.)
I liked Gabbert's essay because it talks about the boundaries around, and uses of, horror, and I'm always thinking about those things. Horror has always been a sort of lifeboat for me. (I always tell this story about how, in my 20s, I was struck by a paralyzing panic disorder that would stay with me for decades, and still defines my life in a lot of ways, and that this was during a period where I'd given up on horror for several years--and then I picked up a book by Karl Edward Wagner, and found myself overcome by...relief?...at the horrors in the stories. However, while writing this comment, I looked up his books and realized, I think the story I'm thinking of is not in the collection I'm thinking of, so I have apparently confabulated a core memory, where a horror story saved my life, which is...well. Anyway.) But--getting back to my point prior to my parenthetical--those boundaries around the game are so important, and really create the game. I grew up in a heavily, heavily religious place and time, and there was always this criticism, why would you read this stuff, why would you taint yourself with such obvious Satanism, do you want these terrible things to happen, you sicko, which really was backwards. One of the functions of horror is to compartmentalize the terrible things that have already happened to you, to put a The End after them. (And yes, I can believe the metabolic theory--it's like how aerobic exercise is probably a better idea than being chased by a tiger, but in the absence of either, the body wants to do something with its calories and its instincts.)
Certain people in my life who shall remain unnamed, do not believe quite so strongly in boundaries around horror. Er, that is not to say they're going around eating people, but rather, they don't respect the sacrosanct dark room for watching movies, the silence necessary, the lack of interruption needed for a true horror experience. I've never quite understood that. It's like playing chess and having someone pick up the little dog out of Monopoly and march it across the board. I can't really explain it to anyone who doesn't already understand it. But you need the spell!
posted by mittens at 7:07 AM on July 12 [4 favorites]
Horror! I've been returning to it lately. Mostly older stuff I already know--flipping through the big two-volume collection Peter Straub put out, for example. I don't really know what's going on anymore with horror novels, it has been too long. I follow some current authors, but when I poke around at the new books, they don't feel the way that books felt in the 80s and 90s--probably because I am not a kid or a teen anymore, but I think it's best if we blame the books for getting worse, rather than ourselves for getting old. Too many found-families, too many power-tropes, too much "I am the monster." (Let's blame Thomas Harris for that--or, no, let's blame Robert Bloch-- Let's blame the whole addiction to psychiatry that tried to explain evil by casting it as a mindset rather than as a basic elemental force in our lives, a force that we survive by being afraid of it, avoiding it even while it calls to us.) (I saw The First Omen the other night and it really didn't work for me, and I think the reason why was, it failed to establish a real claustrophobia--it failed to walk you around the boundaries of its world, the fences, the rules. It's not that it broke its own spell--but rather it didn't put in the effort to create the spell in the first place.)
I liked Gabbert's essay because it talks about the boundaries around, and uses of, horror, and I'm always thinking about those things. Horror has always been a sort of lifeboat for me. (I always tell this story about how, in my 20s, I was struck by a paralyzing panic disorder that would stay with me for decades, and still defines my life in a lot of ways, and that this was during a period where I'd given up on horror for several years--and then I picked up a book by Karl Edward Wagner, and found myself overcome by...relief?...at the horrors in the stories. However, while writing this comment, I looked up his books and realized, I think the story I'm thinking of is not in the collection I'm thinking of, so I have apparently confabulated a core memory, where a horror story saved my life, which is...well. Anyway.) But--getting back to my point prior to my parenthetical--those boundaries around the game are so important, and really create the game. I grew up in a heavily, heavily religious place and time, and there was always this criticism, why would you read this stuff, why would you taint yourself with such obvious Satanism, do you want these terrible things to happen, you sicko, which really was backwards. One of the functions of horror is to compartmentalize the terrible things that have already happened to you, to put a The End after them. (And yes, I can believe the metabolic theory--it's like how aerobic exercise is probably a better idea than being chased by a tiger, but in the absence of either, the body wants to do something with its calories and its instincts.)
Certain people in my life who shall remain unnamed, do not believe quite so strongly in boundaries around horror. Er, that is not to say they're going around eating people, but rather, they don't respect the sacrosanct dark room for watching movies, the silence necessary, the lack of interruption needed for a true horror experience. I've never quite understood that. It's like playing chess and having someone pick up the little dog out of Monopoly and march it across the board. I can't really explain it to anyone who doesn't already understand it. But you need the spell!
posted by mittens at 7:07 AM on July 12 [4 favorites]
Why do we do that—why do we crave small doses of terror
This is by no means universal. My brain generates enough fear and terror, thank you - I don't need to go out and seek it. (I don't go to horror movies, visit haunted houses, or ride roller coasters, and there's no way I would consider bungee jumping.)
posted by tallmiddleagedgeek at 7:07 AM on July 12 [1 favorite]
This is by no means universal. My brain generates enough fear and terror, thank you - I don't need to go out and seek it. (I don't go to horror movies, visit haunted houses, or ride roller coasters, and there's no way I would consider bungee jumping.)
posted by tallmiddleagedgeek at 7:07 AM on July 12 [1 favorite]
Horror is my favourite genre, and has been most of my life, and in another life I would've pursued writing about horror as a living, so I thoroughly enjoyed this post!
Even after decades of being a fan I'm not really in it for the jump scares and I don't actually enjoy the sensation of being scared (nor am I desensitised to being scared). I like the themes and ideas that are often explored in horror, even if they are often handled clumsily. I prefer lingering existential dread that last for days after the experience, over the quick adrenaline hit of a rollercoaster ride, but I can appreciate both.
Similar to comedy there's a lot of fun to be had with subverting expectations, and it's equally difficult to explain to someone else why something is funny or scary.
(And since we're sharing recommendations on horror analysis: Men, Women, and Chain Saws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film by Carol Clover is worth your time.)
posted by slimepuppy at 7:55 AM on July 12 [1 favorite]
Even after decades of being a fan I'm not really in it for the jump scares and I don't actually enjoy the sensation of being scared (nor am I desensitised to being scared). I like the themes and ideas that are often explored in horror, even if they are often handled clumsily. I prefer lingering existential dread that last for days after the experience, over the quick adrenaline hit of a rollercoaster ride, but I can appreciate both.
Similar to comedy there's a lot of fun to be had with subverting expectations, and it's equally difficult to explain to someone else why something is funny or scary.
(And since we're sharing recommendations on horror analysis: Men, Women, and Chain Saws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film by Carol Clover is worth your time.)
posted by slimepuppy at 7:55 AM on July 12 [1 favorite]
I've been binging on Star Trek: Prodigy season 2, and in the arc where Zero gets a body, one of the inhabitants of the planet mentions a sense beyond the normal 5, and Dal asks what it is. The answer was "Terror," IIRC.
posted by Spike Glee at 8:05 AM on July 12
posted by Spike Glee at 8:05 AM on July 12
I don't know man- IMO I don't much like these overarching historical/biological trace-backs because they all seem to make just wild sweeping generalizations about our past lives that don't really seem true, and they always take their tiny special case study and try to apply it dramatically across all species, all while conveniently ignoring the reality and process and circumstance around them.
Making case studies that 'modern people crave fear because we used to experience it naturally' - IDK man, I like wild animals - I don't see many that spend their lives constantly in a state of fear - so why make that presumption for humans? I mean, how far back do you have to go to when that was our reality? Literally millions of years? How the heck did 'life' give us a 9 month gestational period if that's true? Fearful animals breed multiple times a year!
Also, we already know what we do with all those extra calories that we don't burn athletically: We invented art, science and airplanes. What did the Hazda do for all those years? We know that most fears are culturally instilled and biased towards 'novel' experiences - I guess the Hazda are too afraid to make a jet engine. They probably need more calories.
I think it's far more likely that we spend most of our time (and most animals do) in that vaguely 'bored' quadrant if calories aren't going to matter, and therefore we search for things to make life more exciting. Like a dog barking at a bike. IMO, sorry to Billy Bragg, but excitement is not tied to fear, they are completely separate emotions.
To that culturally instilled extent, I don't find rollercoasters or diving activities to be scary at all. They are fun. It's a completely different category. I find jump scares in horror movies to be scary, but mostly the modern ones are just kind of sad and gross. Those are also emotions that can be fun to experience as well, vicariously, I mean instead of doing an actual gross or sad activity like unclogging a drain or taking candy from a baby.
Finally, I also think the 'rules' of horror movie and the naming of emotions points the author brings up both apply to what I'm going to call the "monday morning quarterbacking" emotion - it's two separate emotions I'm going to combine, the first being that the rules the maker of the game applied are just real dumb according to me, and the actions taken by the protagonists are also less than optimal, and I totally would have done better. That's yet another reason to enjoy horror movies and horrific games. And they are exactly like games-controlled fear: in reality I could not do better. If I could, just like the Hazda I would have invented the jet engine myself.
posted by The_Vegetables at 9:08 AM on July 12 [1 favorite]
Making case studies that 'modern people crave fear because we used to experience it naturally' - IDK man, I like wild animals - I don't see many that spend their lives constantly in a state of fear - so why make that presumption for humans? I mean, how far back do you have to go to when that was our reality? Literally millions of years? How the heck did 'life' give us a 9 month gestational period if that's true? Fearful animals breed multiple times a year!
Also, we already know what we do with all those extra calories that we don't burn athletically: We invented art, science and airplanes. What did the Hazda do for all those years? We know that most fears are culturally instilled and biased towards 'novel' experiences - I guess the Hazda are too afraid to make a jet engine. They probably need more calories.
I think it's far more likely that we spend most of our time (and most animals do) in that vaguely 'bored' quadrant if calories aren't going to matter, and therefore we search for things to make life more exciting. Like a dog barking at a bike. IMO, sorry to Billy Bragg, but excitement is not tied to fear, they are completely separate emotions.
To that culturally instilled extent, I don't find rollercoasters or diving activities to be scary at all. They are fun. It's a completely different category. I find jump scares in horror movies to be scary, but mostly the modern ones are just kind of sad and gross. Those are also emotions that can be fun to experience as well, vicariously, I mean instead of doing an actual gross or sad activity like unclogging a drain or taking candy from a baby.
Finally, I also think the 'rules' of horror movie and the naming of emotions points the author brings up both apply to what I'm going to call the "monday morning quarterbacking" emotion - it's two separate emotions I'm going to combine, the first being that the rules the maker of the game applied are just real dumb according to me, and the actions taken by the protagonists are also less than optimal, and I totally would have done better. That's yet another reason to enjoy horror movies and horrific games. And they are exactly like games-controlled fear: in reality I could not do better. If I could, just like the Hazda I would have invented the jet engine myself.
posted by The_Vegetables at 9:08 AM on July 12 [1 favorite]
I have become more attached to horror as a film genre as the years have gone by, as I have come to appreciate the way it lets me deal with anxiety in a closed environment and how that is a relief.
But honestly, I got into it because it's the one genre that consistently allows filmmakers with a great idea and a good pitch to take a swing.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 9:17 AM on July 12 [1 favorite]
But honestly, I got into it because it's the one genre that consistently allows filmmakers with a great idea and a good pitch to take a swing.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 9:17 AM on July 12 [1 favorite]
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posted by HearHere at 1:28 PM on July 11