Breaching Reality: the Horror Host and Found Footage Ontology - Article Review

One of the most basic explanations for why audiences enjoy horror is the idea that the genre allows them to experience feelings of fear and terror in a safe, isolated and fictionalized context. I’ve written about this idea in the past, in the context of disability and horror, citing arguments that audiences are made uncomfortable by horror when it suggests a breach of this safe and isolated experience. With disability, this happens when audiences see figures that they associate with movie monsters, such as people with disabilities, in real world contexts. In line with my questions about the level of authenticity and fiction associated with horror hosts, I wanted to explore the ways in which horror films and audiences generally negotiate these themes of reality and fear, by continuing to explore the themes of found footage that I introduced in my last article review of Nelson (2016).

“Mimesis of Media: Found Footage Cinema and the Horror of the Real” by Neil McRobert (2015) discusses the found footage horror genre and how its form creates epistemological and ontological impacts on its audience and meanings. Like Nelson (2016), McRobert (2015) argues that fiction requires suspension of disbelief by the audience, adding that found footage horror allows the ‘unreal’ to breach reality, creating an uneasy boundary between what is real and fake (pp. 137). Because found footage frames the content as being created by the characters within the film, it cements the content squarely in the audience’s world (p. 138). This is reinforced by the film’s usage of ‘codes and aesthetics’ of amateur or documentary films, which lends authenticity to the content’s claimed origins (p. 139). This is also similar to Nelson’s (2016) framing of the ‘trappings of reality’ used by found footage. McRobert (2015) grounds these practices in the traditions of gothic media such as Otranto and Dracula, arguing that negotiating reality and fiction is inherent to the genre (pp. 140-141). He also notes the importance of technology that grounds found footage and gothic media realistically in current times. In Dracula, this is done by alluding to recent inventions such as the typewriter and phonograph, and in modern found footage the same effect is achieved with contemporary consumer grade electronics like a camcorder or smartphone (p. 142). As McRobert states, these texts “foreground the technologies of their own construction whilst simultaneously offering a commentary on the narrative issues that arise from the use of such technology.” (p. 142). In other words, they reference their own form to ground their content in reality but also to account for the gaps in knowledge and perspective that are created. McRobert argues that this lack of omniscience mimics how everyday people experience traumatic news events, grounding this effect in post 9/11 horror specifically (p. 143).  Much like found footage viewers, consumers today often experience the news through imperfect images created by other civilians, learning the facts of the event as they unfold at the same time as professionals (p. 144). This experience was most impactfully modeled by 9/11, creating permanent changes in media production and narratives (p. 145). The horror genre, McRobert argues, responded by creating media that was a “mimicry of the experience of watching terror unfold.” (p. 146), in forms like found footage.

I found this article very interesting in the way that it expanded on the traditional ‘ horror allows audiences to experience feelings of fear and terror in a safe context’ argument. McRobert creates a pretty convincing argument that horror is particularly effective when it breaches the feelings of safety that come from the understanding that we are temporarily suspending our disbelief. As I mentioned, this is consistent with what I’ve found in other framings of the genre, that also examine the strong impact from horror breaching reality. I was curious whether a similar dynamic would exist with horror hosts; they take on a very similar role as they are movie monsters who live in the ‘real world’, in the sense that they are framed as real host figures who interact with the audience in mediated, and sometimes non-mediated contexts. But the idea that this breach threatens audiences seems to contrast the narratives I’ve found thus far on horror hosting, repeated in movies like American Scary and in online forums, where audiences state that watching the movies with the horror hosts made them feel less scared. 

Much like the characters of the found footage films, the horror host is situated in the real world, since they speak directly to the audience while introducing films that we understand to be fiction. There is an interesting dynamic there, since both fiction and reality exist in the context of the horror host’s world. Just like us, the horror host is portrayed as understanding fiction, but not being a part of it. However, at the same time, their characters are based on the very content that they are introducing as fictional. On one hand, this could be seen as legitimizing the roles of the films as fictional and the hosts as real people, if the hosts are fans who model their look and interests off of the films they introduce. On the other hand, the horror hosts could be seen as ‘real’ monsters who jump out of the films to prove horror's legitimacy and threaten the audience by existing in the same world as them. It seems to be some combination of both, as many horror hosts are framed as ‘real’ monsters like vampires or werewolves, who manage to exist in the same world as the audience without threatening them, and also acknowledge the fictionality of other horror content. I imagine that the tone of horror hosting shows is most responsible for this effect. Although horror hosts are ‘real’ monsters, they are kind and fun ones, who aren’t portrayed as threatening at all. Maybe this makes the audience feel either that the films are real but not all monsters are evil, or that films are fiction but the monsters are real and are performing as actors. These distinctions are probably very confusing to read, but these are the reflections that this article brought up for me. What gives horror hosts the ability to exist in the same world as the audience without threatening them, when the opposite seems to be the case for other horror content such as found footage? I think that content analysis could definitely help me understand this dynamic. Additionally, I think I will read next about the idea that communal consumption of horror media softens its effects. This could help me understand why and how horror hosts make kids feel less scared when watching horror on TV. Overall, this article was very helpful for my understanding of how epistemology and ontology (to borrow their big words) frame horror’s effects. This is definitely relevant to my ongoing attempts to understand how ‘real’ horror hosts actually are, and how this quality changes their impact.

This past week I’ve done some more archival research work and work towards framing my documentary and planning the production side. I have also gotten through quite a few sources, watching documentaries and also working on my annotated bibliography for MSP 5114 (rest assured, there is no overlap of sources here). I feel like I am really getting somewhere with my understanding of the topic. I still need to meet with some committee members so I will try to do that this week (this is the part of the semester where time passes too quickly!). I also want to focus more on figuring out the branding for my documentary because I am excited to create social media and a website for the project that I can share and begin gathering videos to contribute to my final project.

References

McRobert, N. (2015). Mimesis of media: Found footage cinema and the horror of the real. Gothic Studies, 17(2), 137–150. https://doi.org/10.7227/gs.17.2.9

Nelson, L. R. (2016). Choosing illusion: Mediated reality and the spectacle of the idol in Kōji Shiraishi’s Shirome. Journal of Japanese and Korean Cinema, 8(2), 140–155. https://doi.org/10.1080/17564905.2016.1222149