Everyone has a foundational horror. It’s the image that seeps under our psyche and won’t let go, transforming the film and the image of horror itself into an avatar for our biggest fear. Take a moment and remember yours. – Anna Bogutskaya, Feeding the Monster
My love of horror stems from two sources. One, you will not be surprised to hear, was Stephen King. I would suspect that at least 70% of horror enthusiasts came to their love of the genre by picking up a Stephen King novel at an inappropriately young age. For me, it was The Dark Half.
My other formative horror experience was Friday the 13th. I didn’t see it in full at the time; I certainly wasn’t allowed to watch it. I was about ten years old, at my friend’s house, getting ready to go out to dinner with her family. But then her sister accidentally slammed her fingers in the car door, and so instead of a trip to a restaurant it was a trip to the hospital, and a hastily-engaged babysitter arriving to the house to look after my friend and me. The babysitter decided to watch Friday the 13th, and so did we, hiding behind the couch and running out of the room every time she caught us.
One of the things I love about horror is how personal it is. Something that terrifies one person can leave another completely unmoved. For years I refused to sleep in a room with a mirror I could look into from my bed, an unnamed fear I could not explain but which mystified my best friend, although she kindly agreed to reposition the furniture to accommodate me.
But equally true, horror is universal. There are certain fears that are found across eras, across cultures, and if there’s something you are afraid of it is certain that there is someone else in the world who shares the same fear.
In Feeding the Monster: Why Horror Has a Hold on Us, Anna Bogutskaya looks at the past decade in horror film, television, and literature, exploring why so many of us love the genre so much. She divides the book into five categories: fear, hunger, anxiety, pain, and power. Some aspects offer examples of our worries, and some explanations for our enjoyment.
The book is less dense than similar deep dives like King’s classic Danse Macabre or the recent American Scary by Jeremy Dauber and instead offers a more conversational take on the subject. But this doesn’t take away from its overall thesis. It’s full of academic and cultural analysis, and rife with examples, augmented with casual, often humorous footnotes:
*Would I eat human flesh if Mads Mikkelsen, clad in a tailored velvet suit, with his sleeves rolled up, served it to me on an elegant, dark porcelain platter, adorned with radishes and romaine lettuce? I don’t know! It’s all very confusing! Don’t look at me. – Anna Bogutskaya, Feeding the Monster
Much has been said about the way vampire stories always seem to experience a renaissance during economic recessions, and there are obvious reasons that there have been a plethora of films about the horror of unwanted pregnancies released over the past few years, but Bogutskaya also makes strong arguments in terms of placing the popularity of other horror tropes into our current cultural context. How cannibalism, for example — from Hannibal to Bones and All to Yellowjackets, often reflects the loneliness and isolation of modern life, as well as the anxieties of capitalism and class struggle. Do we eat the rich? Or do the rich eat us?
Do be warned, as the author makes clear in the introduction, that this book contains copious spoilers for the media she uses as evidence for her arguments. However, I think that she does a solid job of writing about the books, films, and tv shows in a way that does not damper my enthusiasm for reading or watching the the ones I haven’t yet. I didn’t find the amount of spoilers overwhelming, as mostly they teased rather than revealing all.
(I did think it was funny that the only spoiler Bogutskaya redacts is one for Game of Thrones, a show whose cultural cache has sunk so much following its final season that I doubt most people who haven’t seen it yet would care).
While there were a few omissions that I thought deserved a mention (as other reviews have pointed out, for example, it’s surprising not to see Tender is the Flesh by Augustina Bazterrica included in examining the current popularity of cannibalism stories), overall I found this to be a solid exploration of contemporary horror and why we love it. Feeding the Monster is an ideal pick for those looking for a fresh and readable work that still offers a strong academic thesis on our fears and our favorite fearful fictions.
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