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Existentialism and Art-Horror


Author(s): STUART HANSCOMB
Source: Sartre Studies International, Vol. 16, No. 1 (2010), pp. 1-23
Published by: Berghahn Books
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Existentialism and Art-Horror

STUART HANSCOMB

'It doesn't take much for the world to fall apart does it?'
(Ben in Night of the Living Dead)
'I am no one'
(Regan MacNeil's possessing demon in The Exorcist)
'What filth! What filth!'
(Sartre, Nausea)

Introduction

In their bid to disrupt everyday assumptions, writings classed as


'existential' tend to trade in the unusual and the unexpected. Most of
the fictional works (and sometimes the non-fiction as well) evoke an
uncanny atmosphere; many portray extreme situations (Fear and
Trembling, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Crime and Punishment, Heart of
Darkness, Sisyphus, The Plague, The Flies, The Reprieve, Dirty Hands),
and some include elements of surrealism (,Metamorphosis, The Trial,
Nausea, No Exit). This oddness has generated comparisons with
subversive, extreme and nihilistic art forms such as absurdist theatre,1
film noir,2 and beatnik literature,3 but so far very little has been
written on its relationship with the horror genre.4
My aim here is to show that existentialism and horror share some
important features, and that an investigation of this connection can
enrich our understanding of both. More precisely, in the first instance
I want to highlight the close association between some concepts and
imagery of the early Sartre and the horror genre. Then I want to argue
that this association is understandable if we realize that the notion of
the interstitial - that which falls between established categories - is a
central concern in both cases. A development of this point identifies
what might be called a 'narrative of awakening' in existentialism that is
mirrored in horror fictions. This sees protagonists overcoming their

Sartre Studies International Volume 16, Issue 1, 2010: 1-23


doi:10.3167/ssi.2010.160101 ISSN 1357-1559 (Print), ISSN 1558-5476 (Online)

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Stuart Hanscomb

initial rejection of threatening and repelling circumstances and


replacing them with a form of acceptance that, crucially, requires a
shift in their sense of identity in the direction of the monstrous.
Finally, I want to claim that this shared concern helps explain the
appeal of horror, and in so doing contributes a solution to the
'paradox of horror' - the question of why we are drawn to films,
stories and images designed to provoke emotions we would normally
seek to avoid.

The Nature and Paradox of Art-Horror

I take my lead on the nature of the horror genre from Noël Carroll's
seminal work The Philosophy of Horror.5 In this he argues for a particular
definition of horror and then goes on to address some riddles of
aesthetic emotions, including the paradox of horror. There are three
aspects of his theory that are of particular relevance to my aims here.
The first is his analysis of what quality or qualities horror monsters will
typically possess in order to affect the audience in the appropriate ways.
The second is the matter of identifying the particular emotions that are
provoked by these monsters and by the narratives in which they are
situated. Since the elicitation of strong emotions in its audience is a
defining feature of horror, an understanding of what precisely these
responses are and what they mean should expedite a deeper
understanding of the genre. Third is Carroll's discussion of the
'paradox of horror'; the problem of why we seek out stories and images
that provoke these negative feelings. This last aspect will be the focus of
the final section of this article ('Explaining Horror's Appeal'), and in
what follows the first two aspects will be explored.
On the question of what makes a monster horrifying, Carroll's view
is that monsters are 'interstitial' or 'impure'. They are not entirely alien
to us, but rather fall between familiar categories: for example, living
and dead (vampires, zombies, Frankenstein's monster), human and
beast (werewolves, Kurt Neumann's / David Cronenberg's The Fly),
human and supernatural entity (William Peter Blatty's / William
Friedkin's The Exorcist, Richard Donner's The Omen, Alan Parker's
Angel Heart), the intelligent and the inert (Stephen King's Christine,
James Herbert's The Fog), the intelligent and the unintelligent organic
(golems, Hitchcock's birds, Wyndham's triffids, killer tomatoes,
blobs), innocence and corruption/insanity (King's Misery and The
Shining, child possessions and poltergeists), the young and the old

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Existentialism and Art-Horror

(the 'child' vampire in Tomas Alfredson's recent Swedish art-house


horror Let the Right One In).6
It is not hard to find broad support for this kind of position.
Timothy Beal has theorized around a similar 'betwixt and between'
account of the namre of horror monsters and their origins in Judeo
Christian religion,7 and citing among others Nietzsche and Foucault,
Richard Kearney explains how
[cjreatures which hang around borders, and disrespect their integrity
are traditionally described as monsters. They comprise a species of
sinister miscreants exiled from the normative categories of the
established system. A species of non-species, as it were. Alien
monsters represent the 'unthought' of any given point of knowledge
and representation, the unfamiliar spectre which returns to haunt the
secure citadel of consciousness.8

However, since fairytales and science fiction also commonly


involve interstitial entities (dwarves, elves, androids, alien species
etc.) this element becomes a necessary but not sufficient condition.
To complete the definition Carroll claims that a film or book's
membership of the horror genre is also determined by the emotions
it engenders in its audience. They must of course frighten us, but
there is also the 'tendency in horror novels and stories to describe
monsters in terms of and to associate them with filth, decay,
deterioration, slime and so on. This monster in horror fiction ... is
not only lethal but ... also disgusting'.9 'Art-horror' is the name
Carroll gives to this 'compound' emotion.10 Highlighting fear is
uncontroversial, but making disgust so central to the emotionality
associated with this art form requires some justification.
Carroll cites two main sources of evidence for this claim. The first
is simply the appearance and behaviour of the monsters. A quick
survey yields multiple examples of creatures that contain, say, the
corpse-like and insect-like aspects of everyday life that typically
disgust us. Monsters must of course have the power to threaten - to
be strong, violent, deadly, aggressive, malicious, and so on - but also
they are outwardly vile and grotesque. Take, for example, the rotting
bodies of zombies and the decaying visage of Freddy Kruger; the
saliva and slime-smeared eggs of the Alien; the green vomit in The
Exorcist; Cronenberg's hairy vomiting Fly, his slug-like blob in Shivers
and exploding heads in Scanners. Then there is the blood-injection
injury phobia-inducing sight of Clive Barker's Pinhead (in Hellraiser)-,
the multiple blood-baths and gore-fests of the splatter sub-genre; the
common use of worms, maggots, slugs, spiders, snakes and slime in
gentler teenage series and films like the BBC's Dr Who, Tim Burton's

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Stuait Hanscomb

The Nightmare Before Christmas, Joss Whedon's Buffy the Vampire


Slayer and Ivan Reitman's Ghost Busters through to more adult
features like Ron Underwood's Tremors, Stephen King's The Mist,
Sam Raimi's recent Drag Me to Hell and Umberto Lenzi's horror
exploitation film Cannibal Ferox.
Horror monsters, it seems, are disgusting on two counts. On the
one hand they are interstitial, and whether in stories or in real life
that which we find disgusting is typically something that cannot be
located within stable, familiar classifications. Carroll cites a number
of everyday life examples, including certain cultures' avoidance of
'ambiguous' animals like flying squirrels and lobsters, and our dislike
of things like false teeth, spittle, blood, sweat, nail and hair clippings,
that transgress the categories of 'me/not me, inside/outside, and
living/dead'.11 In this respect a threat need only be chimerical to be
potentially monstrous, but it is also the case that animals (and other,
usually organic, objects) we typically find threatening and disgusting
(such as spiders, insects and snakes), but which are not themselves -
or at least not in any obvious sense - category-defying, can enhance
the monstrousness of the fictional entity (hence a giant intelligently
predatory spider is more effective than a giant intelligently predatory
sheep).12
The second piece of evidence is grounded in the observation that
the expressions and feelings of the audience of art-horror tend to
'parallel' those of its characters. This is an unusual feauire of the genre.
As Carroll points out, we do not feel jealous when Othello does, and
'when a comic character takes a pratfall, he hardly feels joyous',13 but
he claims that the aim is for horror audiences to feel a version of what
the victims and witnesses of horror monsters feel. This presents a
'methodological advantage' in that in order to identify the responses
of the audience it is possible to step beyond introspection and seek to
identify the responses of the characters. And through analysing
'expressions and gestures' the emotion Carroll finds 'regularly
recurring', alongside fear, is disgust.14
In the novel Dracula, for instance, Bram Stoker writes,
As the count leaned over me and his hand touched me, I could not
repress a shudder. It may have been that his breath was rank, but a
horrible feeling of nausea came over me, which do what I would, I
could not conceal.15

Disgust has been categorized as a universal emotion by virtue of a


methodology of cross-culturally recognizable facial expressions.16
Like fear, therefore, it ought to be easy to identify on the faces of

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Existentialism and Art-Horror

characters in films. In The Exorcist, for example, the mother of the


possessed girl Regan puts her hand to her mouth and looks sick on
several occasions, perhaps most obviously when, with Regan under
hypnosis, the possessing demon makes its first unambiguous
appearance. Here she backs off, staggering, her hand fixed over her
mouth with a stare of intense fear. But instead of the rounded sockets
of alarm, her eyes are framed by eyebrows that tilt slightly upwards,
indicating distress, curiosity, and essentially disgust.
A further argument (not Carroll's) supporting the view that
disgust is a defining component of art-horror concerns the future
oriented nature of fear. Horror (in its narrative form) is about
build-up and suspense, the fearful anticipation of what is to come.
But what about when it does come? What about when the victims
are confronted by the creature in all its horrific reality? Usually of
course fear remains - much of the time when the victim is alive there
are worse things that can happen (though this is not true of, for
instance, the cocooned people in the Alien's human larder), but there
is also something that is happening. One response can be anger,
others can be despair, pain and loss, but one we do indeed typically
see - and indeed one that is fairly specific to the horror genre - is
disgust. In short, fear and (some forms of) anxiety correspond to
what is to come; disgust corresponds to what is in the present.
Before turning to an examination of horror imagery and themes in
Sartre's existentialism I want to briefly mention another angle on art
horror that is given less space by Carroll - the unknown. 'To make any
thing very terrible,' says Edmund Burke in his Philosophical Enquiry,
obscurity seems in general to be necessary. When we know the full
extent of any danger ... a great deal of the apprehension vanishes.
Every one will be sensible of this, who considers how greatly night
adds to our dread, in all cases of danger, and how much the notions of
ghosts and goblins, of which none can have clear ideas, affect minds,
which give credit to the popular tales concerning such sorts of
beings.17

In a sense, the unknown can be understood as another term for the


interstitial; an entity is unknown (as in not understood and perhaps
not previously encountered) by virtue of not adhering to familiar
categories. As Carroll discusses at length, as far as narrative
construction goes the mystery surrounding a monster prior to its full
exposure is a key ingredient of horror plots, but it is also the case that
some horror texts - albeit possibly fringe members of the genre -
play on adversaries that are so distant and mysterious that they are
unable to disgust us.18 Fear and anxiety are instead predominant, as

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Stuart Hanscomb

are feelings of awe that tie art-horror to religious experience (and


indeed the sublime). Carroll discusses H.P. Lovecraft's ideas on our
fearful yet 'awed listening' to what lies beyond 'the known universe's
utmost rim',19 but most monsters do not invoke such feelings, and at
best he sees this as typifying only a sub-category of the genre.
In this article I am primarily limiting myself to the existentialism
horror themes apparent in Sartre's work, and the mystery and
otherness of 'Being' is not one of them. However, in the work of
other existentialists - particularly of course the Judeo-Christian
variety, but also Heidegger - mysticism does have a place, and thus
affective responses to what is radically other could present another
possibility for an investigation of this type.

Sartre and Art-Horror

I want to argue that at the heart of the connection between


existentialism and horror is the deeply interstitial nature of human
existence. Horror ideas and imagery occur in existentialist writings -
particularly those of Sartre - because both genres deal with
phenomena that disturb us by defying familiar categories. If Carroll is
right and the defining emotions of art-horror are disgust and fear,
then the role of anxiety and nausea, as two central concepts revealing
the self's relationship to itself and the world in Sartre's early
philosophy, is significant.20 It is under these two headings that I will
investigate Sartre and existentialism's connection with horror before
(in the last two sections of this article) discussing, firstly, how this
relationship throws light on the nature of authenticity, and secondly,
how it can help explain the appeal of the horror genre.

Nausea

Carroll discusses how 'objects can raise categorical misgivings by


virtue of being incomplete representatives of their class, such as
rotting and disintegrating things, as well as by virtue of being
formless, for example, dirt'.21 Formless monsters (or monsters that
dwell in or emerge from formless habitats) are surprisingly common:
think of Irwin Yeaworth's The Blob, and the palpably threatening
quality of darkness, fog, and murky water. In frequent association we
find spit, saliva, slime, vomit, wetness and, of course, blood (e.g.
Stanley Kubrick's The Shining, Stuart Rosenberg's Amityville Horror,
Brian De Palma's Carrie),22 and the oozing quality engendered by

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Existentialism and Art-Hotror

swarms of insects or a mass of worms or maggots is effective partly


because it creates the impression of formlessness.
By this measure Roquentin's existential crisis in Sartre's Nausea
resembles a horror story.23 Roquentin experiences episodes in which
the material world threatens to invade and engulf him. Things become
monstrous - rather than merely, say, hazardous or dangerous in the
everyday sense - because they reach beyond the routine and functional
boundaries of everydayness. They are seen in an 'other-worldly' way.
Objects 'stir to a new and ghastly life of mindless, boundless
abundance, shaking off their previous availability'.24 Crawling beneath
its 'thin green film' the 'real sea is cold and black, full of animals'.25
Lurking at the fringes of the town is vegetation that has crept towards
it 'for mile after mile', waiting for its chance to 'grip' the paving stones
and 'burst them open with its long black pincers ... and hang its green
paws everywhere'.26 The object Roquentin is sitting on metamorphoses
into a kind of dead animal, refusing to be normalized by its name -
'seat' - which Roquentin incants in a vain attempt at an 'exorcism' of its
raw existence.27 The individuality of things melts away, 'leaving soft,
monstrous masses ... with a frightening, obscene nakedness'.28
Things have broken free from their names. They are there, grotesque,
stubborn, gigantic, and it seems ridiculous to call them seats or say
anything at all about them: I am in the midst of the Things, which
cannot be given names. Aione, wordless, defenceless, they surround
me, under me, behind me, above me. They demand nothing, they
don't impose themselves, they are there.29

This transformation applies to our bodies as well. Roquentin finds


his hand is 'alive' (a scene that, importantly for my thesis, also
incorporates blood, sweat and finger nails); looking like 'an animal
upside down' - a 'crab' or a 'fish'. 'The fingers are the paws' and he
amuses himself 'by making them move about very quickly'.30 Such
surrealism illuminates the ontological status of the material world,
and in so-doing illuminates the ontological status of consciousness.
Thus viewed, the for-itself is exposed as insubstantial, ungraspable
and fragile; vulnerable all the time that is not creatively engaged with
the world.
Roquentin insists that,
Objects ought not to touch, since they are not alive. You use them,
you put them back in place, you live among them: they are useful,
nothing more. But they touch me, it's unbearable. I am afraid of
entering in contact with them.31

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Stuart Hanscomb

In Nausea this sinister absurdity is vividly signified by viscous,


sticky, sugary substances; substances that are neither liquid nor solid,
that are overflowing, unruly and clingy; existence is 'that huge
presence ... gumming everything up, all thick, a jelly'.32 Things that
'threaten to grow, to spread, to swarm over us', that 'ooze' and are
'like paste',33 are for Sartre the most potent symbol of a trespassing
over the boundary of the for-itself and the in-itself, and it is art
horror's affinity with what oozes that presents one of the strongest
connections with Sartre's existentialism.
The underlying cause of Roquentin's nausea, as he discovers
towards the end of the novel, is the 'superfluity' of objects. They are
ultimately inexplicable; they 'overflow' the categories we must
inevitably impose on them. They are without final purpose, and it
would ultimately make no difference if they did not exist. But exist
they do, unavoidably. The absurdity or senselessness of the material
world is transformed into a kind of horror. We are creatures that

desire sense, and yet this most permanent and nonnegotiable aspect
of the world, when abstracted from everyday functionality, has none.
At bottom existence is unquestionably there, in many ways so
familiar, and yet at the same time unknowable. Things are 'thoughts
which stopped half way'.34
Even more revealing of this aspect of Sartre's philosophy is his
'psychoanalysis of things' in Part Four of Being and Nothingness.35 His
main interest is in the symbolic meaning of 'slime' or 'sliminess';
something he takes seriously enough to describe it as 'a great
ontological region'.36 The reason for its importance is its 'ambiguous',
'metamorphic' nature.
Sartre's phenomenological ontology allows for the 'moral' qualities
of substances to be as primary as their physical ones,37 and the
immediate response 'inspired' by sliminess is one of fear and disgust.38
This immediate, emotional response we can trace to a form of
ambiguity possessed by slime that is powerfully symbolic of the for
itself's peculiar relationship with the in-itself. Firstly it is an 'imitation
of liquidity', an 'aberrant fluid'. Liquid for Sartre is symbolic of the
for-itself (clear, formless etc.), but slime is a 'triumph of the solid over
the liquid';39 in other words of the 'indifferent' in-itself over the for
itself. In contrast with water, '[njothing testifies more clearly to its
ambiguous character as a "substance in between two states" than the
slowness with which the slimy melts into itself'.40 Essential to the
disgust evoked by slime is its 'softness' which is

leech like. If an object which I hold in my hand is solid, I can let go


when I please; its inertia symbolizes for me my total power; I give it

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Existentialism and Art-Honor

its foundation, but it does not furnish any foundation for me. ... Yet
here is the slimy reversing the terms; the for-itself is suddenly
compromised. I open my hand, I want to let go of the slimy and it
sticks to me ... sucks at me.41

It is also seductive, it holds our attention,42 a 'poisonous possession'


that threatens to control or 'compromise' us. At this point Sartre's
description has a particularly strong kinship with a horror narrative:
The slime is a liquid seen in a nightmare, where all its properties are
animated by a sort of life and turn back against me. Slime is the
revenge of the in-itself. A sickly-sweet, feminine revenge which will be
symbolized on another level by quality of'sugary'. ... A sugary
sliminess is the ideal of the slimy; it symbolizes the sugary death of
the for-itself (like that of the wasp which sinks into the jam and
drowns in it.)43

Basic to our feelings about the slimy is its lack of stability. With little
encouragement it is on the move, like quicksand. Quicksand (though
not an example that Sartre himself uses) is indeed insidious. It is only
muddy sand, but it is deceptive; it is deep and shifting, and it sucks.
It is animated in a sense that allows it to easily become a monster in
the imagination. Sartre says,
If I sink in the slimy I feel that I am going to be lost in it; that is, that
I may dissolve in the slime precisely because the slimy is in the process
of solidification. ... In the very apprehension of the slimy there is a
gluey substance, compromising and without equilibrium, like the
haunting memory of a metamorphosis.**

At its heart what it symbolizes for Sartre is 'an ideal being in which
the foundationless in-itself has priority over the for-itself'.45 If
meaning inheres in all intentional objects, this truth must also have a
meaning, and here lie the roots of our nausea. The meaning of a
necessarily meaning-filled world is, firstly, that there is an external
world that exists independently of intentionality and secondly, that
the humanly dependent phenomenological world is subject to radical
alteration. The result is the antithesis of that other ideal being - the
in-itself-for-itself - an antithesis that Sartre calls an iantívalue\46
Just as the for-itself pursues the in-itself-for-itself, so it 'flees'
the possibility of antivalue. We are afraid of and repulsed by slime
because it symbolizes a disturbing ontological polarity. It incorpo
rates the tension between freedom and facticity; a tension that cannot
be overcome or undone, but which nevertheless 'haunts' conscious
ness. And thus, for example, 'the horror of the slimy is ... that
facticity might progress continually and insensibly and absorb the

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Smart Hanscomb

for-itself'.47 For Roquentin an inversion occurs: 'I am the thing.


Existence, liberated' (now a 'nothing') 'surges over me.'48
Such absorption is a fiction - it is as impossible as the realization of
the in-itself-for-itself - and yet it is meaningful. An overwhelming
nausea might be transitional as an authentic response to the in-itself,
but it is not merely irrational. It signifies a host of ontological truths,
one of which - one that is at the heart of Sartre's ontology of the for
itself - is the notion of movement, or instability. Sartre, says Bernd
Jager, 'seeks to empty consciousness of all weight, all opacity, all self
sufficiency, to take from it all possibility of absolute rest, to make it
movement through and through'.49 And this is what the slimy gives
us; it is 'ambiguous', shifty; 'without equilibrium'.50 In terms of its
materiality it is neither one thing nor another, and this symbolizes
something categorically fishy. Only the for-itself should have this fluid
quality, and to find it in the in-itself is threatening and disgusting. In
the next section I further discuss why the for-itself should feel
threatened, but here it is enough to identify this link in Sartre's
philosophy between the ontologically ambiguous and the revolting.

Anxiety
Most who write on the subject agree that, in contrast with fear, we
experience anxiety in the face of something 'indefinite', 'diffuse' or
'uncertain'.51 Its source might be felt or intuited rather than perceived
or understood, or it might be ambiguous. In traditional psychoanalysis
the aim is to discover what eludes us in the form of repressed
memories, and though there is a partial analogue to this structure in
existential philosophy and psychology - anxiety is in part caused by our
avoidance of our condition - the origin of anxiety must in some sense
always remain slippery. There are several reasons why this is the case,
some of which were explored in the previous section, but perhaps most
fundamental is the insubstantial, free and changeable nature of the self.
If in nausea the in-itself reveals by way of contrast the fragility of the
for-itself (unstable, impermanent, intentional), then in anxiety the for
itself is confronted more directly.
Boundaries between one ontological category and another are
fundamental to existentialism as a whole. It might be facticity and
freedom; being and non-being; past, present and future; or, in its
religious forms, the finite and the infinite.52 Broadly understood, we
might say 'we both belong and do not belong in the world'.53
Sometimes dualisms are 'dissolved';54 sometimes we are haunted (and
sometimes tempted) by the ideal of such dissolution; sometimes
(such as in bad faith) we artfully conflate categories; sometimes we

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Existentialism and Art-Horror

'dangle' between commitments;55 sometimes we peer over the edge,


balanced on a 'dizzying crest';56 most commonly we deliberately
choose not to until, thinking we are 'safe on the ground', anxiety
catches up and we 'suddenly ... look down and notice that we are
'standing on a narrow girder a thousand feet above the pavement'.57
Critically though, these boundaries imply fluidity. Being-for-itself is
profoundly interstitial; it is the space, the nothingness, between other
modes of being which it temporarily 'haunts' as they become subject
to its freely chosen intentional gaze.
The result is that we are 'threatened' by our past and its implications;
'disturbed' by our insubstantial self.58 We look for 'reassuring myths'.59
We are a ghostly freedom - essentially homeless but always requiring a
base from which to act in the world. As a being which is 'what it is not,
and which is not what it is',60 the for-itself must avoid two kinds of trap.
One is illustrated by Roquentin's remarks about the people in the café
each of whom has 'his little personal obstinacy which prevents him from
noticing that he exists; there isn't one of them who doesn't think he is
indispensable to somebody or something'.61 We seek refuge in a
fictional self (a 'little god'62); in socially prescribed roles - treat ourselves
as if we were some 'other' or some 'thing'.
The other trap is illustrated when in The Age of Reason Marcelle
says of Mathieu,
You're so absurdly scared of being your own dupe ... that you would
back out of the finest adventure in the world rather than risk telling
yourself a lie. ... [Y]ou are beginning to sterilize yourself a little ... you
want to be nothing.63

The uncontainable quality of the for-itself is its anxiety. It is a self


supporting nothingness that must inhabit intentional stances
(commitments) that it can never wholly identify with. But only
through the lens of these stances can it attempt to understand what
it is.

[I]n what we shall call the world of the immediate, which delivers
itself to our unreflective consciousness, we do not first appear to
ourselves, to be thrown subsequently into enterprises. Our being is
immediately 'in situation'; that is, it arises in enterprises and knows
itself first in so far as it is reflected in those enterprises. We discover
ourselves then in a world peopled with demands, in the heart of
projects 'in the course of realization'.64

Anxiety is the implicit recognition of this state of affairs. It is attuned


to the blurry boundaries and 'comet's tails'65 that signify contingency
amidst the fore-grounded urgency of our commitments. It is anxiety

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that enables the authentic fluidity of thought, action and


responsibility that is the essence of the for-itself; anxiety that is alive
to the paradoxical condition of a being which is 'what it is not' and
'not what it is'. In anxiety we encounter our ontology as one that is
disruptive and sometimes threatening. It tells us that wherever we are
standing is not stable, and, as importantly, not as stable as we usually
take it to be. This instability reveals itself in a number of ways: in
feelings of uncanniness, in a sense of the ineffable, in ambiguity, and
in various forms of alienation.66
Hauntings - usually non-slimy metaphysical monsters - perhaps
provide the most direct parallel between existential anxiety and art
horror. In films like Poltergeist and The Others characters cling on to
an inexplicable between-world inhabited by ambiguous forms. As
with nausea, Sartre's writing on anxiety is replete with this kind of
imagery. Being-for-itself is ghostly. It 'haunts',67 or 'possesses', but
never is, and this quality itself can only be grasped in glimpses, out of
the corner of an anxious eye. Look at it head-on and it slips away
(Mathieu) or solidifies (the people in the café). In the section on
being-for-others he says, in no uncertain terms, that, 'to-be-in-the
world is to haunt the world, not to be ensnared by it'.68
For Sartre anxiety is central to the for-itself's authentic self
awareness - it is consciousness of itself as essentially 'nihilating'.69 It
encounters the world via multiple intentional stances including
questions, feelings and expectations such that 'negation' is woven
into its fabric. Anguish is a recognition of 'being both this past and
this future and ... not being them'.70 The choice of a (very distinctive
kind of) affective state indicates on the one hand the difficulty of
articulating this near-paradoxical condition, and on the other the
importance for Sartre that this is nevertheless a condition of which
we are always aware (because we are it). What we are, essentially, by
virtue of being a nothingness and a locus of freedom, is fluid and
unstable. Anxiety indicates constant flux - I am this, yet I am
nothing; a 'being which is its own Nothingness'.71 Sartre speaks of
'an infinite number of realities ... which in their inner structure are
inhabited by negation'.72 These négatités are constant possibilities. We
do not have to view them as threatening, but they disallow
something we might prefer - stable meanings, greater predictability
and control; shadows of the en-soi-pour-soi.
'I am no one', says Regan MacNeil's possessing demon in The
Exorcist, and a similar neo-tragic (or at least pitiable) metaphor seems
to inhere in certain vampire tales. Neither dead nor alive, explosively
allergic to the contour defining sunlight, this reflection-less, liquid

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feeding creature is in a sense powerful and independent, but also


vulnerable and parasitic. Confined to the shadows, it has no soul, no
substance, is unable to form proper bonds with others, and is defined
overwhelmingly by its actions, which in the final count can amount
to nothing beyond an endless cycle of spontaneous desire and
fulfilment.

Monsters and Authenticity

Existential protagonists like Roquentin usually end up striving to


come to terms with their condition. In other words they look for
ways to answer Nietzsche's call to affirm 'all that is questionable and
terrible in existence'.73 Although forms of nausea and anxiety can
never be absent from our condition, they can in a sense be accepted
rather than denied via a metaphysical honesty and courage that
preserves and stimulates a basic passion for life. Often this takes the
form of an engaged and committed creativity applied to personal
desires and values, but it can take more meditative forms as well.
Considering the categorical gymnastics involved in this process, it is
not surprising that, when our existential hero approaches this state,
he can play the part of the monster. To the extent that our hero has
managed to accommodate life's oddness, he will appear odd, in
particular to those unaware of the nature of the challenge faced.
A graphic representation of this dynamic is found in Kafka's
Metamorphosis. If Gregor's transformation can be understood as a
symbol of self-creation amidst the pressures of an alienating and
'levelled' social existence, then his grotesque and unfathomable
appearance is an analogue of the fear and confusion of those around
him. In his authentic shift he becomes unclassifiable and threatening,
and hence horrifying.
However, it is revealing to consider how these immediate others -
his family in particular - deal with this apparent threat. Whereas
authentic characters like Roquentin and Conrad's Marlow change to
accommodate it, those surrounding Gregor attempt to assimilate him
within their pre-existing schémas. At various points he is seen, for
example, as unwell (chief clerk), as something to be cared for (sister),
as aggressive (father), or as his past self (mother). Through this
process, life's ambiguity as expressed by Gregor's horrifying presence
hardens into contempt as he is made the scapegoat for the family's
ills. Gregor becomes an 'it',74 just a cockroach. In bad faith the
monster is defeated.

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An implication of this is that authenticity involves allowing being


to reveal itself in its uniqueness and peculiarity. Although the other,
or existence, will always retain a degree of mystery, the individual
is required to open up to it, or else remain in an alienated state
of horror or denial. Horror or nausea like Roquentin's as a response
to the world and its inhabitants should be a temporary state; a stage
or a reminder of the possibility, or the forgotten possibility, of
authenticity.
In some of the best horror fictions we find a similar process. The
employment of the usual means of overcoming threats (medicine,
guns) fails, and a categorical shift is required for effective confronta
tion, a shift that can require a change in the protagonists as well. In
The Exorcist, for example, only the religious categories of faith and
sin, rather than science and medicine - Enlightenment thinking if
you like - can make a dent on Regan's condition. Religion aside, the
implication is that there is a category mistake at the heart of our
dealings with the world, and moreover one that is motivated by a
desire to escape our ambiguous condition. The persistence of this
world view causes a nausea that crystallizes and erupts in the form of
Regan's possession. The threat remains all the time people refuse to
see existence for what it is. In Adrian Lyne's Jacob's Ladder, Jacob
Singer is only released from his nightmare when he accepts death's
ultimate 'claim' on life. Buffy (the vampire slayer) is strengthened by
her exposure to the monstrous and morally ambiguous qualities of
herself and those close to her. In the Alien series Ripley develops
characteristics of the monster: firstly its psychology, then its biology.
In Alien Resurrection in particular the 'intimate otherness of Ripley
and the alien' is expressed in Ripley's clone's ambivalent understand
ing of, and response to, her hybrid identity75
In these instances and others we find that an immense amount of
effort, anguish, courage and time is needed to create this
transformation. And even when it is achieved it is never stable; anxiety
remains and (should the plot, especially its ending, allow for this) - as
for Sartre's gambler, Kierkegaard's Abraham and Nietzsche's
Zarathustra - there are constant challenges and temptations, and new
reserves of these energies and virtues are periodically called upon.

Explaining Horror's Appeal

So far the aim of this article has been to establish that the presence of
markedly art-horrifying ideas, metaphors and imagery in the
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Existentialism and Art-Horror

philosophy and literature of existentialism results from their shared


preoccupation with the interstitial. From this point I would like to
consider two hypotheses that can be derived from this shared concern.
The first is that the 'fascination' element of monsters could in part be
explicable by our concern for our own ambiguous ontology. The
second, more contestable, suggestion is that part of art-horror's appeal
is that it allows for a partial expression and exploration of repressed,
undeveloped or forgotten existential sensitivities.
The first argument runs as follows: although our ontology makes
us anxious and nauseous, it remains, at the same time, an issue of
interest and curiosity for us. As such, clear expressions of ambiguous
ness and oddness will serve as a means for exercising these feelings,
and of course this is precisely what is provided by horror stories and
images. However, this raises the question: why horror in particular
instead of science fiction and fantasy? One answer is just to reply that
it has no privileged position over these other genres; they are
appealing for the same reason. A stronger answer is to highlight the
closer association between horror and existential sensitivity that exists
precisely because of the presence of fear and disgust. In terms of our
emotional engagement, horror is closer to the truth of our existence
than are science fiction or fantasy. We often look for truth in art, even
if it makes us uncomfortable.
This raises another question. If existential sensitivity is a reason for
being drawn to horror, why not just read existential literature (or
watch film noir)? Again, one answer is simply to acknowledge this
and point out that the oddness of our ontology is one reason for
liking horror, but not the only one. Many of us might appreciate
horror all the more because of this connection, but we will also read
Dostoyevsky, Sartre, Camus etc. There is a more interesting answer as
well though, and this brings me to my second hypothesis.
I have already mentioned how fear and disgust are emotionally
appropriate for an art form that in certain senses mirrors our
ontology, and this point is aligned with Carroll's solution to the
paradox of horror. His 'co-existential' (as opposed to 'integrated')
theory is that we do not enjoy or seek out these negative feelings for
their own sake, but rather tolerate them because of our fascination
with the monsters themselves, and because of the intensity of the
narratives their unknown and interstitial natures generate.76
I am sympathetic to this view, but would also suggest (although
Carroll would not agree) that there could also be some more
'integrated' existential-psychological benefits to experiencing art
horror.77 I want to propose that art-horror allows us to release and/or

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inchoate or latent existential feelings through their


crystallization in the form of monsters. It has something in common
with the dream theory of Freud79 and the aesthetic theories of
Burke,80 and it corresponds to a point mentioned briefly in the
discussion of Metamorphosis in the previous section.
The crystallization process is epitomized by the tendency to
turn anxiety into fear that has been discussed by, among others,
Heidegger81 and Paul Tillich. Fear, for Tillich, 'as opposed to anxiety[,]
... can be faced, analysed, attacked, endured'.82 Exhausting and
disturbing, the roots and implications of our existential nausea and
anxiety not only motivate us to avoid these forms of attunement to
the world, the nature of these roots and implications makes them in
any case elusive and hard to grasp. And yet at the same time they are
deep, serious (as opposed to lightweight or fian) and unavoidable.83
The result is a kind of build-up of existential pressure that requires
some form of expression, and my suggestion is that art-horror is
especially well suited to this purpose. Freud's theory of dreams is a
useful analogy. For him events in dreams are partially disguised
representations of discomforting ideas. Their 'manifest' meaning
relates only obliquely to their 'latent' meaning in order to protect the
dreamer, whilst at the same time allowing some release for their pent
up energy.84
This analogy implies that art-horror is an inauthentic substitute for
a more transparent existential awareness; a process facilitating flight
from the truth of our condition. Crucially though I do not want to
claim that the channelling of existential strain into art-horror is simply
the result of bad faith. This may well be one reason, but there are
others. One concerns the initial discovery of our condition, an
exploration that is perhaps initiated by a resonance between inchoate
existential feelings and the weirdness of horror. The individual is
searching for something, and the process involves not an escape, or
even a respite from, inexorable existential tension, but rather its
exploration via a medium in which the interstitial is vividly portrayed.
The argument, which corresponds to a feature of Burke's aesthetic
theory,8'1 is this: the awareness of contingency, absurdity, freedom and
death develops in the individual as they become increasingly self
aware. Even for the seasoned and reflective adult these ideas and their
ramifications are hard to acknowledge and express, but in the
emerging individual (typically, a teenager) they are particularly
inchoate. As the person continues to develop they can of course
ignore these feelings (assuming forms of bad faith), or they can build

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Existentialism and Art-Hoiror

towards moments of 'awakening' as Stephen Earnshaw aptly describes


them.86
Another explanation for the substitutive role of art-horror is a
form of non-motivated forgetfulness to which people of more
developed existential awareness are prone. The contingency of what
exists and the nothingness of the self are ideas that are difficult to call
to mind and attain heat for the individual, and thus they readily
become buried under the clutter of the everyday. Not only do they
deal in categorical ambiguity, but unlike the monsters of art-horror
the human condition has no suitable analogue. A vampire or a
zombie is, roughly speaking, a development and fusion of known
types, but only for the self-conscious being does 'existence precede
essence' with all that that entails. The upshot is that existential
awareness is mostly latent, but as Burke says of these 'finer feelings',
they need 'exercise' - to be 'shaken and worked' - to keep them from
becoming 'languid'.87 It is art-horror that offers, albeit often crudely,
this exercise. It is then of course up to the individual as to whether
the roots and implications of what is awakened are pursued and
refined.
Carroll considers Burke's theory and rejects it because it does not
explain why 'horror would be sought out in particular' rather than
'any sort of object of terror'?89 I hope that the addition of latent
existential emotions provides the missing link. The finer feelings that
Burke is discussing here are aligned in particular with horror for all
the reasons previously discussed. The interstitial nature of human
existence is mirrored far more precisely in the impure nature of
horror monsters than it is in, say, fairground rides, traffic accidents or,
for that matter, smelly bins.89 Of course, Burke's exercise theory can
contribute to an explanation of why we seek out these weird thrills as
well, but here we need only combine it with my existential theory in
order to challenge Carroll's 'why horror?' critique.

Conclusion

To conclude this article and summarize the arguments and evidence


for these links between horror and existentialism I will highlight four
points.
First, horror monsters are interstitial, a notion central to many of the
defining concerns of existentialism. As with the 'over-flowing' objects
of Roquentin's nightmarish experience and the ghostly for-itself of

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Being and Nothingness, in many of its most horrific manifestations the


horror monster is likewise present, in some ways familiar, but also
profoundly uncanny and unknowable.
Second, the emotions comprising art-horror are fear (and anxiety)
and disgust. Anxiety is fundamental to many existentialists, and forms
of disgust (such as cynicism and contempt) are also commonly
portrayed and explored. A farther correspondence, mentioned but not
developed in this article, is the presence in horrors of the radically other
or unknown, and forms of religiousness or mysticism identifiable in the
philosophy of Heidegger as well as some monotheistic religious
existentialists.

Overall it can be concluded that the key affective state for both
horror and existentialism is anxiety. It captures the sense of threat
most obviously associated with fear; a situation's inherent unfamiliar
ity (or uncanniness) that has been shown to be linked to disgust and
nausea, and also a kind of curiosity or anticipation in the face of the
unknown and unknowable.
The third point is that besides the recognition of the horror
genre's pronounced suitability for expressing existentialism's
preoccupation with the unstable and interstitial nature of existence, it
can also be hypothesized that this connection can offer a solution to
the paradox of horror. Embedded in a graphic narrative and with
their very particular form of grotesque threat, horror monsters
engage us emotionally, but in a way that serves as a symbol. Like
Sartre's slime, they represent the division between major ontological
categories, and eventually the anxious nature of the for-itself. Horror
not only fascinates with its stories of interstitial life, it releases some
pressure on, and allows us to exercise, our existentially intelligent
emotionality.
Lastly the various responses to the human predicament explored by
existentialists can also be identified in horror fictions. Of particular
interest is the way that an on-going requirement for the authentic
individual to establish terms with, rather than defeat or deny, their
condition is mirrored in the narratives of heroic and aware protag
onists, particularly in some of the more sophisticated examples of
horrors. Lurther research could usefully assess the possibility that
horror plays a transitional role in the Western individual's existential
development, and in particular the movement towards disenchantment.
Let us suppose that teenagers are typically yet to fully understand our
disenchanted world. Let us also suppose that supernatural horrors are
like fairytales with an edge. And let us suppose further that that edge

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Existentialism and Art-Hotror

corresponds to a creeping awareness that life is not what we thought it


was, and certainly not what we would like it to be. Still craving and
enjoying the simplicity and supernatural promise of fairytales, your
wised up teenager can have them only in exchange for discomfort. In
this way, the emotions of art-horror correspond to a developing
cynicism and scepticism about the world. The next step in existential
awareness might then be surreal works like Nausea and Metamorphosis
and the plays of Beckett; then the disillusioned but angry early works
of Dostoyevsky, Camus and Bellow (and perhaps noir-ish films) where
instead of literal nausea in the face of the world there is another variant
of disgust - cynicism or nihilism. Beyond this I can imagine a
predilection for less rebellious, more self-reflective works like Sartre's
Roads to Freedom trilogy, Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness and Milan
Kundera's The Unbearable Lightness of Being that signifies increasing
authenticity.90 Such speculation suggests a potential direction for fiiture
research.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank David Borthwick, Benjamin Franks and Sean


Johnston for their comments on this article.

Notes

1. For example Margot Berthold, The History of World Theatre, London:


Continuum, 1999; Ronan McDonald, The Cambridge Introduction to Samuel
Beckett (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007).
2. For example Mark Conard ed., The Philosophy of Film Noir (Lexington: University
of Kentucky Press, 2006).
3. For example Hazel Barnes, Humanistic Existentialism: The Literature of Possibility
(Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1965); Paul Maher, Kerouac: The
Definitive Biography (Lanham, MD: Taylor Trade Publishing, 2007).
4. Stephen Mulhall's analysis of the Alien series is decidedly existential in its
consideration of embodiment and identity (On Film, [London: Routledge,
2002], 126-136), and there is a passing reference to Nietzsche (47). Also, there
is a discussion of Nietzsche's ethics in James B. South ed., Bufjy the Vampire
Slayer and Philosophy: Fear and Trembling in Sunnydale (Chicago: Open Court,
2003). For the sole existential reference in the main theoretical text on horror
that informs this article (Carroll, 1990, see note 5) see note 22, below.
5. Noel Carroll, The Philosophy of Horror (New York: Routledge, 1990).
6. Notice that some 'monsters' are less obviously interstitial - spiders, crocodile,
sharks, piranhas, octopuses, snakes etc. Often these are oversized or large in

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Stiiíift Hnnscomb

number, but it is pushing it to say that this counts as interstitial. However,


perhaps these are they exception that prove the rule since such books and films
have a different feel to them - they are closer to disaster movies or thrillers (or
comedies) than films that contain truly boundary-disrespecting adversaries.
7. Timothy Beal, Religion and its monsters (London & New York: Routledge,
2002).
8. Richard Kearney, On Stories (London: Routledge, 2002), 119.
9. Carroll, Philosophy ofHoiror, 22.
10. Noël Carroll, 'Enjoying Horror Fictions: A Reply to Gaut', British Journal of
Aesthetics, Vol 35, No.l, January 1995: 67
11. Carroll, Philosophy of Horror, 32; Noël Carroll, Beyond Aesthetics: Philosophical
Essays (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 245.
12. Though the crazed, homicidal sheep of Jonathan King's comedy horror Black
Sheep work well enough.
13. Carroll, Philosophy of Horror, 18.
14. Ibid., 30.
15. Cited in ibid., 17.
16. Paul Ekman, Emotion in the Human Pace (2nd Ed.) (New York: Cambridge
University Press, 1982).
17. Edmund Burke, A Philosophical Enquiry ( Oxford: Oxford University Press,
[1757] 1998), 54.
18. For example James Wong's Final Destination in which the adversary is death
itself.

19. Carroll, Philosophy of Horror, 162.


20. 'An existential grasping of our facticity is Nausea, and the existential
apprehension of our freedom is anxiety' (Sartre, War Diaries [London: Verso,
1985], 133).
21. Carroll, Philosophy of Horror, 32.
22. Horror writer John Halkin wrote a series of books in the 1980s called, in turn,
Slither, Slime and Squelch.
23. Two places where Nausea and art-horror have been juxtaposed are a brief
footnote in Carroll's book (p. 220), and a scene in Bujjy the Vampire Slayer where
the character Angel is seen reading the book (Lover's Walk, Season 3). In this
latter case Nausea is probably used to signify that Angel is a lonely outsider
rather than any connection between this feature of Sartre's philosophy and art
horror.

24. Bernd Jager, 'Sartre's Anthropology: a philosophical Reflection on Sartre's La


Nausee', in The Philosophy of Jean-Paul Sartre, ed. PA. Schilpp (La sale, Illinois:
Open Court, 1981), 485.
Jean-Paul Sartre, Nausea, trans. Robert Baldick (London: Penguin, 1965), 179.
Ibid., 221-222.
Ibid., 179-180.
Ibid., 183.
Ibid., 180.
Ibid., 144. Animated yet disembodied hands are immensely ghoulish, clearly
interstitial, and common in horror narratives (for instance The Evil Dead LI and
Oliver Stone's The Hand).
Ibid., 22.
Ibid., 192.

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Ronald Aronson, Jean-Paul Sartre - Philosophy in the World (London: Verso,


1980), 65.
Sartre, Nausea, 193.
Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, trans. H. Barnes (New York:
Washington Square Press, [1956], 1966), 765-784.
Ibid., 779.
Ibid., 773.
Ibid., 771.
Ibid., 774.
Ibid.
Ibid., 776.
Rather like Kierkegaard's dizziness before the abyss of infinitude. The synthesis
of the finite and the infinite does not just present itself passively, but in the mix
we find that the individual wants to look down. 'Anxiety is the dizziness of
freedom', a freedom in part self-chosen, but also a freedom that the developing
individual balks from, 'laying hold of finiteness to support itself' (The Concept of
Anxiety, trans. Howard V Hong and Edna H. Hong [Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1980], 61) Presumably something similar can happen to cope
with nausea; the individual lays hold of some form of bad faith to steady herself
in the face of the ontological precariousness of freedom.
Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 777. In Nausea he describes 'the sugary taste of the
air at the back of my throat' (35).
Ibid.
Ibid., 778.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Sartre, Nausea, 143.
Jager, Sartre's Anthropology, 478.
Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 777.
For example, Kierkegaard, The Concept of Anxiety, Sigmund Freud, Inhibitions,
Symptoms and Anxiety, trans. Alex Strachy (London: Hogarth Press, [1919],
1961); Martin Heidegger, Being and Nothingness, trans. Robinson and
Macquarrie (Oxford: Blackwell, [1927], 1990); Karen Homey, New Ways in
Psychoanalysis (New York: Norton, 1966); Paul Tillich, The Courage to Be,
(London and Glasgow: Fontana, [1952], 1962).
For example, Kierkegaard, Concept of Anxiety, Tillich, Courage to Be.
Stephen Mulhall, Heidegger and Being and Time (London: Routledge, 1996).
David Cooper, Existentialism (Oxford: Blackwell, 1990), 79-94.
Saul Bellow, Dangling Man (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1963). The central
character Joseph 'suffers from a feeling of strangeness, of not quite belonging to
the world ... he says all human beings share this to some extent. The child feels
that his parents are pretenders; his real father is elsewhere and will someday
come to claim him' (Ibid., 24).
Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus (London: Penguin, 1975).
Thomas Nagel, The View from Nowhere (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986),
228.

Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 81.


Ibid., 83.
Ibid., 100.
Sartre, Nausea, 161.

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Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 81.


Jean-Paul Sartre, The Age of Reason, trans. Eric Sutton (Harmondsworth:
Penguin, [1947], 1961), 12-13.
Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 77.
Nietzsche's expression (from The Birth of Tragedy).
These feelings are related to art-horror, but one writer who understands this
instability in terms of horror is Stanley Cavell. Horror, he says, 'is a response
specifically to being human. To what, specifically, about being human? Horror is
the title I am giving to the perception of the precariousness of human identity, to
the perception that it may be lost or invaded, that we may be, or may become,
something other than we are, or take ourselves for; that our origins as human
beings need accounting for, and are unaccountable' (in Stephen Mulhall, On Film
[London: Routledge, 2002], 17-18).
'A necessary condition for our saying not is that non-being is a perpetual presence
in us and outside of us, that nothingness haunt being' (Sartre, Being and
Nothingness, 43-44).
Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 331.
Ibid., 65.
Ibid.
Ibid., 58.
Ibid., 54.
Friedrich Nietzsche, The Twilight of the Idols (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1968),
39.

Franz Kafka, Metamorphosis and Other Stories (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1961),


56.
Mulhall, On Film, 135.
Carroll, Philosophy of Horror, 178-195.
The completeness of Carroll's 'fascination' theory is challenged quite
convincingly by Berys Gaut's 'enjoyment5 theory 'The Paradox of Horror', British
Journal of Aesthetics, Vol. 33, No. 4 (1993); Noel Carroll, 'Enjoying Horror
Fictions: A Reply to Gaut', British Journal of Aesthetics, Vol. 35, No. 1 (1995);
Berys Gaut, 'The Enjoyment Theory of Horror: A Response to Carroll', British
Journal of Aesthetics, Vol. 35, No. 3 (1995). Gaut claims that there is no inherent
contradiction in our enjoyment of the feeling of fear and disgust, particularly in
an aesthetic context of art-horror.

Burke, Philosophical Enquiry, 123.


Sigmund Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams, trans. James Strachey (London:
Penguin, [1900], 1991).
Burke, Philosophical Enquiry.
Heidegger, Being and Time.
Tillich, Courage to Be, 34.
They are in Heidegger's words 'always latent in Being-in-the-world' (Being and
Time, 234).
Sigmund Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams
Burke, Philosophical Enquiry, 122-123.
Stephen Earnshaw, Existentialism: a Guide for the Perplexed (London: Continuum,
2006), 14-17.
Burke, Philosophical Enquiry, 123.
Carroll, Philosophy of Horror, 241n.
Ibid., 158.

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Existentialism and Art-Honor

90. Clearly more modern equivalents - novels, film and other media - could he
substituted for these existential classics. Possibilities might include Douglas
Coupland (Generation X, Girlfriend in a Coma) and David Fincher's Fight Club.

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