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Harrison Stypula
Dr. Nicole Peeler
SEL 155
3/15/23
Beyond the Blood and Guts: Exploring the Symbolic or Subtextual Meaning in Contemporary

Horror

It could be said by some that horror is filled with unnecessary amounts of gore or

violence just as a means to give the audience a fright, and many would be satisfied to leave the

story there with horror being a flat genre meant only for those looking for gratification from

gore. Despite that common association that horror is without deeper meaning and is a low form

of literature, as a genre it has provided deep insights into human fear and how we deal with these

fears. There is the struggle, as Gelder mentions, that “popular fiction is often accused, by literary

critics in particular, of being merely a matter of formula,” and though horror like any genre of

popular fiction is susceptible to being formulaic, this is not the case (43). Rather than being low-

brow material for those below Literary standards, horror is just as capable of including

symbolism or underlying meanings, just as much as any other genre. It is true too, that

sometimes these deep, complex stories also come wrapped in a gory or frightful package, but this

does not mean that is all there to it.

Horror is above all, the genre of fear. Of course, this invites a natural aversion among

some audiences that it does not appeal to. Fear is uncomfortable, which brings up the idea that

horror is an ideal medium for discussing other topics which are also uncomfortable to different

audiences. Topics like racism, sexism, and homophobia can be just as easily discussed and put in

the audience’s view in horror as in other genres. Horror has a rough history not only with being

thought of as mindlessly violent, but also tragically portraying those in marginalized or

oppressed communities negatively, or even villainous, such as the lesbian vampire or Indian

burial ground tropes (Waggoner). Because of this, it opens the door for modern authors to do

away with or reinvent the kind of negative or harmful tropes that have been a part of the genre’s

history. It can be seen in the realm of horror with authors like Silvia Moreno-Garcia, Clive

Barker, and Stephen Graham Jones who have and continue to create works that go beyond the

horror standards.

Many of these stories, which involve uncomfortable or overlooked topics, use these

elements of fear to provoke new thoughts in the audience much like other genres, just with more

extreme circumstances than most. The methods which bring the audience there too, can be

divided up beyond just fear as well. A particular method of division from Stephen King states

that “Terror is the ‘finest emotion’, connected to anticipation and suspense, and is followed by

horror, which he equates with shock. Revulsion, or the ‘gross-out’, comes last, and he only

resorts to it when the other two fail,” which divides up this fear into categories that help to better

understand the emotional impact that comes from the genre (Aldana 3). This revulsion, “gross-

out” as it is also termed, becomes an aspect that offers the most negative conceptualization of the

genre. When a story contains scenes with gratuitous violence it’s natural that many readers will

put a book down in disgust that someone could write such a thing, and often is where people

derive a poor outlook into what horror is. It is through a lack of understanding, in part, that

horror faces criticism for utilizing revulsion and disgust as a means to progress a story.

Though contemporary horror is often attributed with being this kind of transgressive

literature that isn’t of the same class as older works or gothic standards like Frankenstein or

Castle of Otranto (Britannica), there are in fact cases of texts that contain imagery just as violent

or provocative as contemporary works. Matthew Lewis’s novel The Monk contained very harsh
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themes for its publication in 1796, including “the trampling of the living body of a nun, the

rotting corpse of a baby” and the violent death of the protagonist at the end of the novel (Aldana

3). The scenes in this novel could be considered excessive even by today’s horror reader, and

certainly would have been at its time. More so than just the sum of its disturbing sequences, this

early example of the genre is no stranger to subtext and underlying themes. Naturally based on

its origin, and this scene involving a nun, it could be inferred that it takes a negative stance on

Catholic morality, and by extension gives it a transgressive nature. Of course, later texts like

Dracula and the works of Poe still contain a substantial amount of content that would have been

considered disturbing for the time. At the same time however, these classics provide deep stories

and complex ideas that are explored at length today. This leaves the question of why it is

possible for these early examples to be viewed as containing both the necessary unsettling

content as well as a deeper plot structure than the surface level horror.

Overall, the likes of Castle of Otranto certainly opened the way for the gothic style of

storytelling. However, it is not possible to say that these classics were all the same tame variety,

by their contemporary stands or by today’s. The style of gothic, often portrayed by these more

“classic” texts, is not lost today either. In Body Gothic, Xavier Aldana Reyes speaks to this idea

that not only did the gothic influence the origins of horror, but its core concepts are still

incorporated even in the most extreme of modern horror. With the origins of horror being rooted

in gothic tradition with such works that have been previously mentioned, it is important to note

that just as older gothic tales like The Monk can contain transgressive qualities, so too can the

modern horror novel contain the “Literary” aspects seen in gothic narratives. By exploring this

idea of “body gothic” as a kind of coming together of the visceral horror within the focus of the

human body, and experience with gothic themes, Aldana Reyes brings to light how even
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subgenres such as splatterpunk can contain valuable aspects (Aldana 10-11). They can become

more than the low-brow exploitation they are often equated to by “push[ing] the boundaries of

the body” in a style similar to the “classic” gothic works like Castle of Otranto or The Monk

(Aldana 11). Even these harsher forms of horror can unfold important or difficult topics, with

general examples like critical discussion of political or social issues, to very specific ones, such

as how Clive Barker’s Cabal “attempts to prod the genre by presenting a community of refugee

monsters sympathetically,” in a way that becomes deeply metaphorical while also containing

large amounts of sex and violence (Aldana 43). By this reasoning, the expectation that horror is a

low-brow genre simply for containing a large volume of transgressive content fails as the stories

themselves, while utilizing such violence, blend it with ideas that are sometimes as hard to

stomach as the gore surrounding them.

These stories too, all include a key feature beyond their use of fear. This feature exists as

the fact that typically they revolve around the human experience with their surroundings

(Waggoner). Horror is a deeply human experience that displays the behavior and reactions of

others in the most extreme or dire circumstances. The evils of humanity itself, while sometimes

displayed by a human villain, are often displayed symbolically through the monsters that the

protagonists face. This can be a confusing aspect, as whole subgenres exist that make the

monsters the foreground, though it should not be mistaken that underlying this horror is about the

human relation to the monstrous (Waggoner). This is a case that remains true even with works

like Cabal, in which the monstrous beings are the victims and heroes, not villains.

Though it is important to consider these ideas of how transgressive or gory literature can

still hold massive value, simply pouring into the excess for the sake of excess only gives

naysayer’s a reason for negativity and a bad name for the genre. As Tim Waggoner describes it,
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it becomes like “child waving a dead lizard in another kid’s face just to make them recoil in

disgust,” which is not something that anyone should want to be accused of. Examples exist

throughout history, from originating examples like The Monk to the present-day horror many are

familiar with whether they like it or not, it can be seen how the genre brings deep storylines and

concepts that both challenge and excite the readers. Regardless of stylization of the content, be it

a traditional gothic narrative with low gore or one dripping with blood throughout, a horror story

does not need to contain itself to one side or the other of the spectrum. The key aspect is that

these stories are just as thought provoking as they are spine chilling and should not be

disregarded without further looking behind the bloody shroud.

Works Cited

Aldana, Reyes, Xavier. Body Gothic: Corporeal Transgression in Contemporary Literature and

Horror Film, University of Wales Press, 2014.  ProQuest Ebook Central,

https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/setonhill-ebooks/detail.action?docID=1889173.

Gelder, Ken. Popular Fiction: The Logics and Practices of a Literary Field, Taylor & Francis

Group, 2004. ProQuest Ebook Central, https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/setonhill-

ebooks/detail.action?docID=214818.

The Editors of the Encyclopeadia Britannica. "Horror Story." Britannica, 27 Jan. 2023,

www.britannica.com/art/horror-story.

Waggoner, Tim. "All the things I wish I'd known as a beginner horror writer." The Writer, 2 Mar.

2022, www.writermag.com/improve-your-writing/fiction/beginner-horror-writer