To think of Stephen King when one thinks of horror isn’t a far stretch. I think, however, many do not realize just how much people turn to horror in hard times. 2020 has been a year that many of us would rather never see again. In America, it has forced us back into our homes and in close proximity with our family members so much that some of us cannot wait until we can go out and socialize with other human beings again. This is not to say there is nothing redeemable about this year, but all in all, it can go in the rubbish heap and very few will miss it.
In my own life, 2020 was a year of horror for me. I wrote Shelter during the first wave of home stay in March and published it in April. Then in October, I saw three pieces come out: “Ujima” in SLAY: Stories of the Vampire Noire; “The Black Rock” in Devil’s Due; and my own zombie novel, ALICE. Horror was my jam in 2020 and will continue to be so.
In the lives of others, I know some who have turned to horror in order to have something outside of themselves to fear and the catharsis of good triumphing over evil. That is the true message of horror, good triumphing over evil (even though the evil is never completely defeated).
As many eminent scholars have pointed out previously, horror serves as a morality play for the modern man and those things which man fears are brought to the fore and vanquished. Slasher movies are really about teens getting their comeuppance for bad behavior and the lone ‘good’ child surviving and vanquishing the evil. Serious oversimplification, but you see what I’m getting at. It has never been unusual for horror to flourish when things change or when the society fears. That’s part of its MO. It is the exorcism of society’s ghosts.
These days what do we fear? It is no longer the nuclear age with its giant radioactive bugs. Or even the 70-80’s when teenage rebellion needed to be brought in line. These days we fear both authority and its lack, seemingly in equal measure. The Purge movies show us what could happen if things were allowed to run amuck without anyone to save us. However, it also shows us what can happen when someone stands up to that form of lawlessness.
I enjoy reading King for his non-fiction work nearly as much as his fiction. Danse Macbre is a fantastic work in my opinion and one of my references along with On Writing. What drove me to think today was the opening to Night Shift in which he discusses fear. How base, how primal our fear is. How it informs our actions when we least expect it. And how the desire to escape from it drives us into the arms of the horror writer. “The tale of monstrosity and terror is a basket loosely packed with phobias; when the writer passes by, you take one of his imaginary horrors out of the basket and put one of your real ones in– at least for a time,” (Foreword to Night Shift, xvii).
So what are you afraid of? What do you put in the basket when the writer passes by with his tale of darkness?