Genre Conventions and Structuralism

The Literacity blog goes way out on a limb in hopes of finding something worthwhile in the horror genre. In this case, the quest for something called a "metastructure:"*

The archetypal mystery plot is not a metastructure; neither is the idea of cosmic horror. The former is too small; it is a genre convention. The latter is too vague, but it gets us closer still.

The concept of magic in high fantasy is a metastructure: most high fantasy novels, from Tolkein to Pullman, treat magic in roughly the same way: not everyone can use magic; one learns a spell, then casts it; it often manifests as some sort of a light show; certain creatures can only be harmed by magic; I'm sure you could contribute to the list. Each of these traits on its own would be a convention, or perhaps part of one; taken together, they form a metastructure for the way high fantasy readers expect magic to work. Elements may be modified, stretched, or shuffled around, but the basic essence of what makes high fantasy magic recognizable remains consistent across decades and continents.

It's good stuff as always, but I don't think "metastructures" exist the way they're described here. Genres have their conventions, and within a genre, authors can create and share fictional universes with internally consistent mythologies (Middle-Earth, The Cthulu Mythos, Star Trek, etc.), but I don't think there is a single mythology that ties them all together.

Tolkien and Pullman may share a few genre conventions but their universes and approach to magic are very different. As any fantasy writer knows, your formula for how magic works (spell book or blood sacrifice, wizards or humans) is every bit as important as a science fiction writer deciding on the rules for FTL space travel.

On the other hand, if Magic truly is the metastructure that links all of the fantasy genre conventions together, then I think for horror you'll have to go for something equally vague like "Death." If there is a single, common element, that's it.

In which case I might argue that this metastructural view of Death gives rise to horror conventions like:

• Death personified: ghosts and monsters, killers and demons
• Death as a place: underworlds, tombs, abattoirs, wastelands, and the beyond
  
• Life after Death: supernatural events, hauntings, and curses
• Death in action: murder, torture, ritual, mayhem and apocalypse
  
• The philosophy of Death: nihilism, the occult, obsession, morbid thoughts, and cosmic dread

From here writers have developed the rules and conventions of a good horror story:

1. The main character is an ordinary every-person who is not necessarily well-equipped to deal with the extreme circumstances in which they find themselves.
   
2. The main character is not an adventurer or hero, but a potential victim.
3. The events of the story are in contrast with every day life. The real world is invaded by the supernatural. A maniac is on the loose.
   
4. The setting and atmosphere of the story highlight the sense of unsettledness, dread, and malevolence. Suspense builds and builds into fear and terror.
   
5. The main character is often psychologically fragile and in danger of not being believed by other characters who are still grounded in reality.
6. The main character is often physically isolated, powerless, and vulnerable.
   
7. The antagonist is unstoppable, single-minded, and indestructible.
8. The antagonist can be delayed, deferred, appeased, or sent back, but never truly defeated.
9. The antagonist always comes back.
10. And so on.
    

Going a step further, you get more conventional representations like ghosts and haunted houses, graveyards and the living dead, the ancient tomb that should not have been opened, the magic words that should not have been spoken, demonic possession, witches and inquisitors, dungeons and iron maidens, broken down cars on lonely country roads, teenagers and psycho killers, etc., etc.

Once you get to the level of Cenobites vs. the Vampire Lestat, or Aliens vs. Predator, you've dipped back down into universe-specific mythologies, or, more interestingly, metafictions like Alan Moore's Black Dossier ("What Ho, Gods of the Abyss"**), and pretty much the whole of postmodern fiction with its mash-ups, camp humor, pastiches, and intertextual shenanigans.

The real issue here is that there are so many stories out there, so many different takes on the material that what's needed is a curator like Alan Moore or Neil Gaiman to help us separate the good stuff from the junk, and provide a single narrative thread that links one work to the next: all the way from European folk-tales and legends, to the early ghost stories and gothic tales, to the modern novel and short story. What writers want is to know that they are part of a community of the like-minded, that they are building on and contributing to a tradition of story-telling that reaches deep into the human past, and will continue long after they've written their last line.

----------------------------
* I know what's meant by the term "metastructure," but it seems like an unnecessary neologism when there is already literary structuralism to contend with. This is from the Wikipedia: "Literary structuralism often follows the lead of Vladimir Propp and Claude Levi-Strauss in seeking out basic deep elements in stories and myths, which are combined in various ways to produce the many versions of the ur-story or ur-myth." I suppose one way of looking at this topic is the search for ur-myths in genre literature rather than shared universes.

----------------------------
** The Black Dossier (part of the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen series) links the whole of fantastic literature into a single mythology (or metastructure): including ancient mythology, fairy tales, Shakespeare, Jules Verne, George Orwell, Virginia Woolf's Orlando, Charlie Chaplin, James Bond, Television, Comic Books, etc., etc. -- even Jack Kerouac gets pulled into the meta-soup. "What Ho, Gods of the Abyss" is a brilliant pastiche of H.P. Lovecraft and P.G. Wodehouse's Jeeves and Wooster (and if you can do that, you can do anything).