As I noted earlier, horror differs from tragedy in that it appeals to our kinetic emotions (as described by Joyce) rather than leading us to the elevating stillness of terror and pity (catharsis). Joyce described these kinetic emotions as pornographic and didactic. The former is pretty obvious, but for now I wanted to take on what might be meant by "didactic" emotions.
At first I was at a loss. It's a story meant to teach you something? Teach you a lesson? Provide a moral? OK, but that seems pretty tame. Nothing to get to excited about, but then it hit me. What about stuff that's meant to upset you, agitate you, get you marching in the streets. What about the sort of rabble-rousing books and movies that are meant to manipulate its audience? What about propaganda?
That's when I remembered an entire chapter in the Dramatica Theory Book that I had never bothered to read. And there it was:
Propaganda is a wondrous and dangerous story device. Its primary usage in stories is as a method for an author to impact an audience long after they have experienced the story itself. Through the use of propaganda, an author can inspire an audience to think certain ways, think about certain things, behave certain ways, and take specific actions. Like fire and firearms, propaganda can be used constructively and destructively and does not contain an inherent morality. Any morality involved comes from the minds of the author and his audience.In horror you get the one two punch: the sex and violence of pornography with the propaganda of an author trying to "impact an audience."
Here's an even better example:
One tried-and-true method is to control what an audience knows about the story before experiencing the storytelling process so that you can shock them. Within the context of the story itself (as opposed to marketing or word-of-mouth), an author can prepare the audience by establishing certain givens, then purposefully break the storyform (destroy the givens) to shock or jar the audience. This hits the audience at a Preconscious level by soliciting an instantaneous, knee-jerk reaction. This type of propaganda is the most specific and immediately jarring on its audience. Two films that employed this technique to great effect are Psycho and The Crying Game.The twist ending, the shock are "gimmicks", yes, but also theatrical propaganda, a meta-story shared not on the screen but between the audience and the author in an ever escalating battle to outdo the last one. From the now seemingly innocent shocks of Psycho and the Crying Game, to the ever more shocking violence of a "showman" like Eli Roth and the provocations of "unrated director's cuts" on DVD, the point is to lure the audience with the promise of ever more transgressive images. The audience itself answers this call by viewing each film as a test. If you can't endure it, if you can't enjoy it, if you can't laugh at it, then you've failed the test. Worse yet, you're a wimp; you don't pass muster.
Psycho broke the storyform to impact the audience's preconscious by killing the main character twenty minutes or so into the film (the "real" story about the Bates family then takes over). The shock value was enhanced through marketing by having the main character played by big box office draw Janet Leigh (a good storytelling choice at the time) and the marketing gimmick that no one would be allowed into the movie after the first five or ten minutes. This "gimmick" was actually essential for the propaganda to be effective. It takes time for an audience to identify on a personal level with a main character. Coming in late to the film would not allow enough time for the audience member to identify with Janet Leigh's character and her death would have little to no impact.
The Crying Game used a slightly different process to achieve a similar impact. The first twenty minutes or so of the film are used to establish a bias to the main character's (and audience's) view of reality. The "girlfriend" is clearly established except for one important fact. That "fact," because it is not explicitly denoted, is supplied by the mind of the main character (and the minds of the audience members). By taking such a long time to prep the audience, it comes as a shock when we (both main character and audience) find out that she is a he.
That's the point of the exploitation genre. The audience says, you show me the most disgusting thing you can imagine, and I'll prove to you that I don't care. And of course the author is more than happy to oblige in hopes that the audience will freak out. He's not really going to do THAT is he? And then he does.
Either way the author goes out of his way to make sure that the audience goes in with high expectations and talks about it later. It's all about the marketing.
As the Dramatica authors point out, propaganda has many uses and examples can range from Planet of the Apes to The Sixth Sense to The Passion of the Christ to Thelma and Louise to Crash. The danger is when you fail to meet those audience expectations (The Village) or when viewers begin to see propaganda and secret agendas in everything (Happy Feet) or when you cross the bounds of taste (the marketing of Captivity).
But the biggest problem is that we have a culture that on the one hand is eager for outrageous provocation and on the other is ever ready to censor and punish. It's easy to say, "it's just a movie." But that's the distinction between art and propaganda: stillness or action. And if the entire point is to get people riled up, motivated and active isn't that more than a movie? Isn't that a manifesto? A call to arms? Incitement to riot? At what point do we storm the Bastille?
Finally: at what point are we watching and at what point are we participating?
Or are we overestimating the power of propaganda? Does it actually work? It may give us a giggle or a healthy scream, but how does that translate into real life?
Perhaps propaganda is itself one more provocation: Beware! This movie may make you as sick and depraved as the people who made it. Watch it, if you dare!
