The Appeal Of Horror

If fear is an emotion that feels threatening or alarming, why would someone want to have it stirred within them as they consume entertainment, something that is a source of respite from the trials of daily life?  While it is not impossible whatsoever for people to have highly nuanced or even conflicting desires, feelings, and worldviews, this would be an example of the former: of nuance rather than contradictory goals.  As it undergoes a major renaissance that started years ago, the horror genre thrives because it is possible to enjoy fear, or to enjoy things that can inspire fear even if one is not ever frightened by these stories.

The appeal of horror might seem even more unrelatable for some people if they consider subgenres like cosmic horror, erotic horror, body horror, and more.  Cosmic horror is about how physically and metaphysically small, vulnerable, and fragile humans are when faced with grand details about the nature of reality, as well as whether there is such a thing as human rights and moral significance at all.  Erotic horror is about how sexual imagery or acts can be repulsive, nonconsensual, or abnormal in ways that show how something pleasurable can also be linked with terror, or it could be about the uniqueness and paradox of how horror and sexual pleasure, curiosity, or themes themselves could be integrated together.  Body horror is about bizarre, often graphic distortions of the human body or about the strange combinations of physical forms that are indeed logically possible.

To a certain kind of person, these things would truly be horrifying, or at least hold on appeal.  What, then, is the appeal of horror?  First of all, enjoyment is subjective, even if there are things that have objective significance or value.  The desires of a person ultimately reduce down to a desire or set of desires that hold up the others, so there is at the foundation of longing, whatever desire might have this status for a given person, something that an individual wants because they want it.  There is no desire below this.  It is possible for someone to simply enjoy and desire horror because they want it, and this would be subjective.  However, there are many intellectual and artistic reasons why someone might appreciate or adore the horror genre.

Some of these reasons are very similar to why people might enjoy other genres.  They might hope to think about unusual situations, to encounter deep themes and characters, and to savor the artistic executing stories (especially with the greater potential of visual media like films and video games).  More specifically to horror, as opposed to the reasons that could apply to any genre, someone might even find pleasure in the complexity of loving that which is frightening or that is meant to be somewhat darkly atmospheric.  Horror is, like other kinds of art, able to stimulate emotion, prompt thought, and, most importantly, explore logical truths and possibilities in a specific metaphysical and epistemological context.

Even though it might not be alluring to everyone, horror is uniquely able to explore everything from general supernaturalism to epistemology to ethics to mortality to the deeply personal nature of perception and fear.  This is something that any kind of philosophically inclined person, even if they are not rationalistic and have not discovered that everything is inherently, thoroughly philosophical as it is, can understand and appreciate even if they do not personally like the horror genre.  They can all still realize that horror shares some similarities with other genres simply because each one is art, though they do not seek or crave the same kind of experiences in art that someone else does.