Wow. There's nothing like 101 degree weather two days into October to make you wonder if Halloween has been cancelled. Traditionally this is my favorite time of year, but I have to admit I'm not feeling it right now. There's hope, this third consecutive month of August is in its infancy, so we'll see how I'm doing closer to Grinch Night. For now I'm just kind of zombie-ing my way through my own lineup of monsters.
What monsters are those, you didn't ask? Well, multiple credit cards for one. That's a monster. I think I'll personify it as the horror of the Taxman, the predator who won't kill you but keeps leaving you worse off than you were before. Then there's ongoing car issues, my favorite. Let's make that the disobeying Android that has its own agenda now and you gradually realize you're fully dependent on it but no longer among its priorities. And lastly, but certainly not lastly to the party, my mental health has sprung a new leak. I've been taking poor care of myself, as most of my energy has gone towards pretending that I'm not taking poor care of myself, and as such I didn't realize I was having a breakdown until I curiously looked up the signs of a breakdown and checked off six of the seven symptoms (Seroquel, you're a good friend but you need to be cheaper).
I don't have a decent mimesis for chronic depression in monster form; I'm sure I'll have plenty of time to bat it around over the next recovery period. I will say I started a new therapist yesterday, and I feel good about the direction I'm going. I mentioned that I had a blog and she asked if I write about what I'm going through mentally. No I don't. I write about anything BUT that. I don't know if you've been reading the past 255 posts, but I've only occasionally slipped in actual personal information. Genuinity has never been my jam. But as I'm finding myself at the front door of Halloween season without a costume, I thought I might try being myself for a couple of paragraphs. Just to see.
Well, that was fun, wasn't it? Thanks to whoever you are out there; including my one recent visitor from the Philippines, I hope you enjoyed whatever the thing was you stumbled across.
But I'm not here to focus on me, I'm here to welcome Halloween. And this year I'm going to do that by bringing in some of the common, but less revered figures of spookiness and try to figure out how they got cast in the holiday's ensemble among more obvious presences like vampires and witches. Besides, my Taxman and Android need some company until depression finds its costume. So here we go, the B-Team of ghoulies and what it is that's scary about them.
1. The Scarecrow
I'm not talking about the Batman character, just a standard pumpkin-headed strawman that invariably causes birds to wonder just how effing stupid the human race thinks they really are. The Scarecrow has 'scare' in its name, so you wouldn't think there'd be a whole lot to deconstruct, but let's explore it a little bit.
No matter what kind of face you give it, the Scarecrow isn't inherently frightening. Barring supernatural influence, it just hangs there. In fact, it's whole utility is about trying to convince small animals that it's something it isn't. In fact, there's something oddly comforting about the sight of a Scarecrow. Maybe it's the hat? Or maybe it's the marker of civilization among acres upon acres of the same cornstalks.
Imagine you're lost in an unfamiliar countryside, pushing your way through wheat, thinking "Dear God, don't let me run into something with claws!". You step into a clearing and stand face to face with old vegetable head himself. Your first thought is not to run away, but to feel momentarily secure in your new options. It means there's a structure nearby. It could be a family of cannibals, but at least you've made progress towards something. The Scarecrow has a strangely opposite effect of its original purpose; it bestows hope.
So what makes a Scarecrow scary then? Certainly not because it does anything, but because it doesn't have to do anything. Whatever happens in that field (chainsaw maniac, aliens, or Kevin Costner's dad) the Scarecrow is just a spectator. It's not in any danger. But you might be. Nobody is out to get the Scarecrow, and even if a loose machete swing decapitates it, that head is replaceable. Yours isn't.
The real potential for fear with a Scarecrow is that you've suddenly stepped into a spotlight that you don't necessarily want to be in. And the Scarecrow isn't going to help you. It's just going to watch, and wait. With that said, I think at some point I'm going to storyboard a horror music video, and I'm going to have one moment where the lead realizes that they're a character in a movie, by accidentally seeing the audience. A whole theater full of Scarecrows. [copyright me]
2. The Clown
Again, let me stress I'm not referring to a specific clown with a fully crafted backstory. As unintentional horror master Jim Henson once demonstrated, furniture can be traumatizing in the right context. But out of these characters the Clown is the only one to regularly show up on the lists of common phobias.
If the multiple bus stops throughout the uncanny valley aren't enough of a giveaway, let's take a moment to explore why someone becomes a Clown. Presumably to make people laugh, or (on a more basic level) to connect. No harm there, and I'd expect most hopeful Clowns go into this field of performance with a heart of gold; and only slightly fewer leave it with their hearts untarnished. But I'd argue the best nightmares start with purity, which makes the Clown a prime candidate for corruption.
I recently had an online debate about Todd Phillips, who has given us a Joker movie that I never wanted. My takeaway, in the interest of brevity, is that Phillips left comedy because he feels the world has gotten too PC. This is untrue. The world has been PC since at least the early nineties and has not changed. In my opinion, Phillips is a limited comedian who can't handle honest feedback about his limitations and he'd rather blame the audience.
I bring this up because it illustrates a fundamental truth about comedy. It's a wild animal. If you approach it correctly it will let you pet it, feed it, even ride it, but it doesn't tolerate your bullshit. The moment you forget to respect it, comedy will bite your head off. You may not feel you deserve it, but too damn bad, you knew it had teeth when you stepped into its den.
When the Clown is scary, it's because of that sense of desperation. This Clown knows the motions, be loud and intrusive, but doesn't have the intuition to actually be funny. Most Clowns of this type are not the actual threat themselves, but catalysts for invoking comedy's wrath. And you're right in the blast radius because Beepo just won't get the f**k away from you. That's the horror of the Clown; an awareness of their own demise and a determination to take someone down with them. You.
3. The Captain
And by extension pirates, but that archetype more often leads to dark adventure than real horror, regardless of skeleton count. The Captain is a bit of an oddity among these characters, in that his fright factor isn't immediately obvious. I mean, dude just drives the boat right? So why does he show up so much in ghost stories and Scooby-Doo mysteries?
Ultimately the Captain is a symbol of control. Whether you're on safari or traveling through space, the Captain is the one calling the shots. At his most benevolent, he recognizes his responsibility in keeping you safe from the unknown elements surrounding you. But with great power comes great corruption, and the Captain of horror doesn't give a leaky lifeboat about you and the other peons' well-being.
It's hard to make him scary without any sort of context, otherwise he just comes off as a grump. A Captain willing to sacrifice his crew for a greater (self) reward opens the ship's hatch to some of the aforementioned elements of the deep. Likewise, there's a psychological horror of a Captain who orders an obedient crew to do something clearly immoral. There are lots of possibilities here, but as we're doing deconstructions what's left over when there's no scenario?
The ship. The creaky, echoey ship. Those never thick enough walls separating oxygen from frigid salt water and tentacles. It's not the place you want to be, but it IS where the Captain wants to be. Why? Because it's his world. He's the boss. He's attuned to every bolt and railing on this imposing vessel. In fact, he might be so in sync with the rhythmic bobbing of metal that he's stopped being purely human and become a sort of avatar for the ship itself. The line between his personality and the ship's becomes nonexistent.
There's a reason the Captain goes down with the ship, it's where he belongs. Land is for lubbers; the helm, come hell or high water, is his place. When you look into the eyes of the ghost Captain, you're looking into the heart of the whole ship. And if you meet him on land he's there for a purpose, and it's probably not one that's going to work out in your favor.
4. The Knight
Suits of armor are a permanent staple of any gothic architecture, and with good reason. They're shaped like a human, but there's no indication as to who or what is inside. And unlike the Scarecrow, these things were designed to move. But they don't, because nobody's in them. Right?
If you're doing a haunted castle story, the easiest way to convey that all hell is about to break loose is by having one of these bastards turn his helmet. As a predator, the Knight is a perfect blend of concreteness and abstraction. You know what the shell looks like, but there's no telling what knave, phantom, or magician is controlling it. And unlike Michael Myers's repeated stretch of credibility, there's no doubt this zombie is going to survive a ballista to the chest.
Have you ever heard of the trope 'What you are in the dark'? In fiction it refers to a moment where a character reveals exactly who they are to an audience they're unaware of because in-universe they're completely alone. It's a chance to break a promise for personal gain with no evident consequences. It's kind of like the Groundhog Day thought experiment; who are you when there's no tomorrow?
The Knight is a kind of variation on this idea. He's anonymous. He may not even have an identity behind the visor, and if he doesn't have to look himself in the eyes, what does that make him capable of? Moreover, what is it we imagine he's capable of. Smarter people than me have pointed out, in all of our folklore we're truly afraid of ourselves. Our Draculas and Jasons are frightening, not because they're so far removed from who we are but because they're too close to who we think we might be.
It's possible that it's just Mr. Wickles in the suit of armor being a dick again, but our nightmares demand that we don't give ourselves that as an easy out. We know, with every intuition that something intangible is under the bed, that the Knight is hollow. And if we dare seize the opportunity to peer inside his metallic figure we'll be left with the ultimate horror that there's nothing inside. And the sight of it may very well displace our souls so there's nothing inside of us either. And that's worse than whatever he was going to do when he got his gauntlets on us.
5. The Bride
I saved her for last because I find her the most fascinating. I'm sure Brides sprung up in horror long before Edgar Allen Poe started killing his female characters, but this is the guise in which she's most observed. It's the day of her wedding, obviously because she's wearing the dress and veil and holding the flowers. But a sadness has struck on this day that has been reserved to be her happiest. She's dead, or the groom's dead, or the cat ate the cake, the details typically don't matter. The point is her wedding day has become tragic.
One of the most famous Brides resided in the attic in Disney's Haunted Mansion ride. Her multiple choice histories are actually quite fascinating. At one point the story of the Haunted Mansion centered around her (and still does in Paris). That didn't exactly come together, but her placement on the ride is at the center point where the ghosts transition from eerie to fun. Currently she's a black widow Bride named Constance Hatchaway, and despite the visual effects she's a lot less interesting now.
So back it up to the previous Bride who's just...there. The Wedding March plays in a minor key and the Bride waits. That's all she does. What the hell happened? We don't know, but the feeling of loss stays with you long after you're back in the relentless sunlight.
Weddings are a lot of things, and all of them carry an emotional charge. Change, hope, joy, loss, endings, beginnings; it's an overload. And right in the middle of it all is the Bride. It's her day, for better or worse. And when some event happens which causes the day to unfold in a direction opposite where it was expected to go, it may very well transform the Bride permanently. Her day is ruined, which means she is ruined. What happens to her then? Does she keep waiting for the resolution that she was expecting? Maybe. And that's a story with a sad ending. Or does she fight back?
I recently watched the movie Ready or Not, which told the story of a Bride who married into an extremely wealthy family, only to find herself on the short end of a sacrificial ritual. I wanted to love this movie, because it had all of the elements in exactly the right places; and to be fair it did so many wonderful things with those elements. But it dropped the ball on the only one that truly mattered. Going into the third act the Bride deserves to become the monster.
It's rare I can say I find myself rooting for the monster; Maleficent comes to mind, and Jigsaw on an inconsistent basis. This kind of Bride is such a monster who has earned her blurred line between villain and anti-heroine. The world of horror tends to be amoral. But when those amoral forces screw with the wrong woman on the wrong day, the retaliation is strangely comforting. Almost like a roundabout way of suggesting that justice can still be special ordered.
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