Research Project

The most obvious genre that death seems to permeate is horror. The tales we tell in the dark about ghosts and bloodshed seem, on their face, to be a confrontation with our fear of dying. But what is actually going on when we create horror? This paper will analyze an important genre of storytelling through the psychoanalytic framework of Ernest Becker and the philosophical frameworks of Simone de Beauvoir, Jean Paul Sartre and Albert Camus. It will look through horror tropes, specific cases, and different kinds of death-constructions. In examining horror, we’ll find ways that death is approached realistically, but more often how it is manipulated and avoided through bad faith. These poor constructions of mortality have real consequences beyond us simply avoiding the harsh truth of the world: horror, when used as an outlet for aggression and “othering”, can reproduce systemic oppression and needless violence. Based on this analysis, we will then look at the “realest” form of death representation in horror: one of true randomness and unfairness.