Recently, I stumbled unto a music piece (it was a dark dubstep piece) that I could tell was inspired by a horror movie. The interesting thing was that it didn’t scare me at all, but on the opposite, the music piece was designed for the listener to identify with the villain. Instead feeling like I was being followed by a shadow figure through dark streets, I felt that I was the predator on the prowl. This (to me) is a completely different (and immoral?) way of presenting the subject of fear/horror/darkness. I found that rather curious because you almost never sees a horror movie that makes you identify with the villain (unless it is morally justified, as in ‘Seven’.). The norm in horror movies is to cause the audience the feeling of fear and powerlessness, but not the other side - not the exhilaration of causing that fear, or the feeling of empowerment over making another feel powerless (which of course would be taboo and immoral).
I found it rather curious how audience in horror movies is almost always left to experience only one side, that of a victim. I wonder if the popularity of horror movies is because of need (do people enjoy the feeling of being victimized?).
It is a good point. I’ve been thinking of a reason why this perspective is not exploited - its absence in popular art seems indeed to be an expression of how powerfully the morality of passivity is ingrained in us.
But what comes to mind now is that there is such a field of exploitation: video games and the first person antagonist. Also, the Grand Theft Auto series offers the possibility to enact horrific crimes on innocent people, and this is cheerfully exploited by many players.
Why is this not utilized in film? A reason might be that a cinema audience is physically passive.
It might be unbearable to partake in the perspective of an offender wile one does not have control over it.
I dunno. It is pretty typical in the gorno subgenre for the audience to somewhat identify with the villain. You mentioned Se7en, which was a forerunner in the genre but both the Saw and Hostel series involves a fair amount of catharsis through audience sympathy/affiliation with/for the villains.
I can’t say I find Seven a very good example, good follower of Xunzi! The story starts and ends with the perspective of Morgan Freemans old hardened man, and in between it’s about Brad Pitts innocent boy.
As I said, it was a forerunner so you can’t expect it to fully match up; however, I would argue that we are able to relate to the motivation of the killer in Se7en, even view it as morally justified in a way that, say, we cannot with Jason, Freddy Krueger, Pumpkinhead or any slasher star. Going back even further, you have things like Rosemary’s Baby where, again, the villains are Satanists and essentially alien. To say nothing of classic horror movies where the villains were inhuman in some manner.
Perhaps you have a point. I watched it some ten times in the theatre, the last five or so strictly to see the audience recoil in fright at the stir in the sloth-scene. This may have been my identification with the villain rather than with either of the detecrives.
A movie which makes the viewer feel fear and paranoia by seeing violence through the eyes of the victim is what a Horror/suspense movie is.
A movie which makes the viewer feel the power and rush of perpetuating violence on others is an action movie. The end result is completely different.
Consider the horror/comedy genre. It’s very, very VERY hard to pull off a movie that pulls of horror elements AND comedic elements without the later spoiling the further. The vast majority of such films are just comedies about vampires (or whatever).
If you had a horror movie that was also trying to make you feel empowered by experiencing through the perspective of the antagonist, I think it would be even more difficult to pull off than the horror/comedy. About the closest thing I can think of that works is movies like “I Spit on Your Grave” where the audience is allowed to share the empowerment that comes from the victim turning the tables on the antagonist in the end. Many monster movies do this- play like a horror movie for the first hour, play like an action movie for the last half hour once the Hero starts taking the fight to the giant crabs or whatever. If you’ll notice, any sense of horror is usually obliterated when that second phase of the film takes over.
One thing you could do is have a movie where you experience violence through the eyes of the aggressor, sympathize with them early on, but the horror comes from the movie trying to evoke feelings of shame and disgust by playing on your earlier sympathies for the antagonist through revealing just how pathetic/vile he truly is. Anybody know an example of this?
The Human Centipede series seems to be going in that direction.
I am convinced that in HC3 they will sew the opening sequence of the first movie onto the conclusion, to better complete the cycle.
Hmm, I don’t remember the first one ever trying to make me sympathize/empathize with Dr. Heiter.
Many horror movies from the beginning of cinematography have had us empathise with the villain… take the lonely vampire or the forlorn frankenstein’s monster for instance, to your current day villains in Saw etc. - a film I never get tired of seeing whenever it’s on TV is Dog Soldiers: it has no sympathy with the baddies what-so-ever, and the confrontation scenes are actually funny in their tragedy.
The news does this as does our lives. Traffic jams caused by rubbernecking an accident , people wanting to hear the daily tragic stories. Its in us to do this, to want to see the view of the victim, we actually use it to remind us that we are better off than others around us. It also keeps us a tad more moral and ethical in an immoral and unethical world. We live the point view of the villian in our daily lives. We make tough decisions, we try to get ahead by using others gnetly or harshly, we do mild villianous things every day in order to have us and our families survive and thrive. We daily are the villians, we kill bugs that irritate us, Have they harmed us? Nope but we kill them anyway. Just because they might cause a problem for us. Is that good? Nope, its villianous, somewhere in our brains in the ethics and moral parts, we know this to be true but, to survive and thrive is an instinct that goes deeper and stronger than morals and ethics. We will gravitate to the victim’s view because we already know the villian’s view, we live in small seemingly insignificant ways everyday. Yes there is the victim in us too, What do victims want? retribution, The bad guy getting punished… I love being human, we are so full of interesting contradictions. Sanity is not possible in an insane world like ours, just degrees of insanity. 