Thinking Through Fear in Film and Haunts

My dissertation advances a new methodology for studying horror cinema, which I call “thinking through fear.” This concept designates two mutually reinforcing approaches. First, I contend we can employ fear as an aid to thought or even a mode of thought. Second, we can figure things out about the structure and phenomenology of fear. If we treat the emotion as a meaningful and scrutable response to our environment rather than a crude reaction that is antithetical to higher thinking, we may find in fear a hidden intelligence. Film and haunts (immersive theatrical haunted house attractions) afford safe, aesthetically potent opportunities to experience fear and think through it; because fear is central to human nature, film and haunts are irreplaceable sites for studying emotions and ourselves. In Chapter 1, I define what it means to think through fear, and I challenge the long philosophical history from Aristotle to Bertrand Russell that opposes fear to thought. I examine the intimate connection between various film styles (“high,” “low,” showing, concealing) and the corresponding types of fear generated. Lastly, I demonstrate how thinking through fear charts a path forward in horror studies that does not rely on subsurface interpretations of texts.In Chapter 2, I think through fear with The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974) and argue the film systematically depicts how strong emotion influences perception. I call this technique “emotional POV,” which can operate whether or not we share anyone’s literal or “optical POV.” There are three cases of emotional POV: Sally’s fear, Pam’s horror (as distinct from fear), and Leatherface’s anger. The contrast of fear with horror and anger demonstrates the applicability of the “thinking through fear” methodology to other emotions.In Chapter 3, I dispute the predominant assumption in horror studies that we empathize with characters’ fear. I argue instead, through an analysis of Halloween (1978), that in response to horror films we most often fear non-empathetically, and we only empathize with characters’ fear in non-horror films, such as Saving Private Ryan (1998); we may empathize during horror films, but only with non-fear emotions, like love in The Babadook (2014). Lastly—with reference to M (1931) and Midsommar (2019)—I raise ethical problems with empathy, and in its place I propose compassion.In Chapter 4, I investigate how thinking through fear changes when we move from film to haunts, especially “extreme haunts,” which incorporate aggressive physicality. I offer a brief history of frightening immersive entertainment spaces from the eighteenth century to the present. I consider the phenomenological shifts in fear when our entire bodies and every sense could be engaged. I argue extreme haunts have a different relationship to pleasure than almost any other fear-based art form, since the most extreme elements are categorically displeasurable. I conclude with a discussion of the co-optation of haunts by evangelical Christianity into “Hell Houses,” which frighteningly dramatize sin and damnation. Throughout, I draw on my firsthand experience of dozens of haunts and Hell Houses spanning ten states.In the Conclusion, I argue fear itself can be an expression of freedom, and its dissolution can promote further experiences of freedom