okay something a little bit different
than good afternoon like Clive has just
said my name’s Nia Edwards baekjae and
among other things I’m a film scholar
and co-director of the abattoir horror
festival and under a week ago that this
year’s edition of the festival came to a
close and arguably it was one of our
most successful I think we had around
100 people join us for six days of
horror films old and new brand new and
as well as talks music and events so
every year people from all over the UK
and sometimes even beyond would you
believe come to Aberystwyth to watch
horror films together this year we
screen films from Brazil Argentina India
Japan Switzerland Scotland and beyond
ranging from big-budget films you might
see in a multiplex – bizarre esoteric
chamber dramas that you’re never likely
to see anywhere else again now our
attendees include people from all walks
of life from students to retirees from
senior staff at you cast and archivists
to experts in historical combat and
video game designers during the week our
attendees will bring us coffee and
snacks ask to buy his drinks and in the
case of one couple annually makers a
cake to celebrate the end of the
festival and I think we’re fairly safe
and claiming they were quite unique in
that regard amongst all the other horror
festivals that happen in the UK and the
reason I’m telling you a little bit
about the people who come to our
festival is for context because I think
there are sort of conceptions of who
horror fans are and sometimes I think
when you actually meet them they kind of
challenge those perceptions a little bit
if you look that you might have seen
some of our decoration work even what
was taken some of it’s still up outside
we always set the tone for the
festival’s overarching theme which is
normally drawn from our programming of
the classic films that we show so our
theme for this year was the slasher film
which was that much a reviled genre
which had its heyday in the 80s and we
decked decked out the cinema like a
campsite and that was due to our very
special guest this year being Sean s
Cunningham director of Friday the 13th
if you can believe that he came all the
way to Aberystwyth for our festival now
it’s very hard to miss Sadiq
raishin when it’s in full flow outside
and frequently people passing by and
using the art center will stop by and go
out what’s what’s going on here now when
they’re told it’s a horror festival you
sort of see an immediate change of
expression in most cases which goes from
I’m curious to know some people even
become apologetic actually I always sort
of tickles me because they’ll go oh I’m
really sorry I don’t like horror myself
and which I don’t know why they’re
apologizing because it doesn’t bother me
if you don’t like horror films you
weren’t coming to the festival anyway so
it’s fine now when people find out that
horror is my preferred genre both sort
of personally unprofessionally I suppose
their response will be usually to wonder
why now it’s actually a question I
struggle to answer which maybe doesn’t
bode well for this presentation given
the subject but I’ll usually say I’m a
fan because of all the different types
of weird and wonderful things and films
that you can include under this very
broad umbrella of horror for others
though horizontal and it’s often people
who don’t like horror films that have
more definite ideas of what it is horror
might signify only gory films of only
films that have some sort of
supernatural element or films only
teenagers and the depraved will enjoy
chances are each of you listening to me
now have a different idea of horror
every time I’m saying it so for the next
10 ish minutes or so I’m going to talk
about horror films not specific films
but about the genre as a whole what is
it about horror that brings people to a
Welsh seaside town in the middle of
November and why is horror one of the
most profitable genres of film around
and yet so frequently still dismissed as
something we grow out of or something
that’s inconsequential if your fan or
not a fan or entirely indifferent to
horror I’m hoping that in thinking about
it for just a little while and why we
all like or why some of us like it will
tell us just a little bit about
ourselves and I’m certainly not the
first to suggest that so ordinarily if
I’m doing something like this I might
like to try and define what is I’m
talking about first I’m going to kind of
flip things around a little bit I’m
going to start with the why and end with
the what is hora hora is something
that’s long been theorized by film
critics and scholars and to close my
presentation I’m going to try and bring
things up to date as
so when I was preparing for this
presentation I thought I’d to do a quick
search of other TEDx talks on the
subject and there are quite a few on the
question of why horror and why we like
being scared and there is many of those
presentations by scientists including a
professor of psychiatry and a sociology
as there are from cultural researchers
now film scholars have theorized the why
of horror for a very long time
they’ve taken many different approaches
from psychoanalysis to direct audience
research so when I say what I say today
I want to be quite clear that I’m not
necessarily being particularly original
of my own thinking I’m presenting a lot
of other people’s ideas now I’d like to
highlight specifically one of the
answers to the why though I particularly
like from writer and critic Robin wood
so in the American Nightmare would wrote
of American horror of the 1970s which
was a period of change in cinemas a
whole and engines in horror as well
woods film examples are taken as much
from the Classical period of horror that
is to say your Universal horror
yahaa mahara your monster movies and
your gothics but there came a major
change in 1968 so horror came home the
threat was no longer safely hidden in a
desolate castle or in the form of a lone
creature on the attack horror was now
nearer more familiar and much more
embedded in our own society so for would
the pleasure of horror lies in the
audience’s identification with the other
just to get a little bit
psychoanalytical now I really like woods
concise definition of other Ness in this
particular piece of writing so I’m just
going to read that out for you so for
wood other misrepresents that witch
boudoir ideology cannot recognize or
accept but must deal with in one of two
ways either by rejecting it and if
possible annihilating it or by rendering
it safe and assimilating it converting
it as far as possible into a replica of
itself so for wood horror films
classical modern postmodern or otherwise
always feature this idea of the other
and more often than not this is in the
form of whatever the monster or the
threat might be other scholars of course
offer different answers nor Carol for
example suggested that narrative
structure
is the key to Harrah’s appeal which he
himself admits is a I’m quoting him a
long-winded exercise and common sense
rather than a theory there’s no bad
thing in the 1990s researcher Bridget
cherry conducted a vital audience study
into female fans of horror
offering something of a more real-world
approach to the question her studly
study aptly demonstrates the vastness of
horror by measuring what types of horror
films her respondents enjoyed ranging
from the 92% who enjoyed vampire films
to the mere 25% who enjoyed the slasher
film now this is key an Android shooter
in 1997 rephrased the why question most
appropriately and I’m quoting Teeter
again here for the question should not
be why horror at all it should be rather
why do these people like this horror in
this place at this particular time
I think answering that question would
result in a much longer talk I’m afraid
the acknowledgment of the many different
types of horror film is of course
acknowledgment that there are many
different reasons for enjoying horror
for example my enjoyment of a film like
martyrs one of the most grueling and
fatalistic films ever made is wildly
different to my enjoyment of say vampire
girl vs. Frankenstein girl a grossly
offensive and cartoonishly violent and
ridiculous bastardization of to literary
horror classics on a personal level as I
said I prefer horror genre because of
how broad it is the types of experiences
that one can have watching a horror film
and are varied and they will themselves
vary from person to person as well of
course I can watch a horror film I’d be
scared
sure but I can also watch a horror film
and laugh or be moved be disturbed or be
inspired the best films of course are
those which can elicit a number of these
reactions if not necessarily at the same
time then throughout the runtime of the
film but if hora is really so broad can
we ever be sure of what it actually is
there certainly isn’t one true
definition of horror for me but
something that’s fundamental for many is
that horror film has to scare us whether
it’s a ghost mournfully haunting a
mansion or a serial killer on a spree
the narrative drive of the horror film
should feature something
designed to scare us or at least that
it’s something that tries to scare us
for me it’s the potential to be
frightened that’s more important than
the fear itself fear of course being a
thoroughly subjective sensation for me I
don’t need to be scared by a horror film
now one of the reasons I don’t
particularly like being soo definite in
my conception of Horrors that quite
crucially shun restrained this is true
of any kind of genre but I think it it
rings particularly true of horror some
of the earliest films in cinema history
that we might now consider horror films
were not horror films at the time that
they were made horrid didn’t really even
exist as a genre when they were made
so at the turn of the century people
like Segundo the showman and George
Melly a were making trick films and
fantasy films not horror films and
German Expressionists of course we’re
making art but everyone knows that
Nosferatu is a bonafide horror classic
I’m going to move on to think a little
bit about value judgments in relation to
horror and one key distinction that’s
frequently invoked to this day is the
difference between terror and horror in
short I think you could be quite concise
in making this difference Tara is
everything that sort of leads up to the
point of horror the big reveal that
jump-scare the monster so on Tara is the
tension and horror than is the release
at the end of it
this distinction was often used to
denote when a film was ineffective or
had gone too far
the Hammer horror films for example if
you can believe it were often accused of
being too horrific whereas their
Universal Pictures predecessors were
supposedly more reliant on terror and
therefore more effective and better
films it’s the same distinction that’s
made by those who dismiss the use of
gore in a film Gore normally being
associated with a moment of horror or a
moment of disgust most recently this
value judgment has emerged in a
particularly persuasive way in the hands
of primarily film critics phrases have
been coined in relation to a particular
group of critically acclaimed and
financially successful horror films
phrases such as the psychological
thriller the social thriller elevated
genre and in particular most recently
post horror and these have all been used
to describe films such as the which it
comes
Night Raw gets out and perhaps most
recently most famously hereditary these
films are singled out as being more than
just horror as though horror isn’t
already one of them as rich and diverse
genres in cinema there’s a good chance
you may have even heard of some of these
films always seen them or read about
them in papers such as The Guardian and
so on you know this is all a case of
cultural gatekeeping and dress it up
however we like it’s ultimately sort of
sanctioned snobbery I suppose ultimately
all these categorizations seek to do is
offer the writer a way to say that
they’ve enjoyed a horror film without
actually having admitting their –
enjoying a horror film now considering
the rich and varied history of the genre
both in the past and currently I think
that’s quite a silly thing to be
embarrassed about myself but there we go
now I said I’d bring things bang up to
date if I can and just two days ago
The Guardian published an article on
this very subject by film critic and
Bilson I did actually ask her whether I
could just read out her article so close
was it kind of some of the things I was
planning on saying but I thought I’ll be
good and actually just choose a few
quotes instead so is Bill some notes
rather than pitching Gore against
restraint or whatever take other taste
distinctions critics wish to make a
coating bill so now here is the tension
between these two extremes of nice and
nasty that keeps the genre alive and
kicking she notes the genres appealed to
the gut can’t always be spelled out and
that like fairy stories of folk tales
the genre draws on a well of primal
fears and desires now I realize what
I’ve essentially done in this
presentation is pose a couple of
questions and not really answer either
of them but I just want to sort of join
together my non-answers to close things
so I’ve outlined some of the reasons for
enjoying horror such as our primal
recognition of the other also maybe some
of the broad appeals that lie within the
genre and I’ve also talked about the
distancing that occurs when film critics
want to praise horror without actually
praising it now as a horror fan I get
quite annoyed when this happens because
obviously I’ll stand here and shout from
the roots rooftops I like horror but
actually in some ways it’s quite
heartening because it means that there
are high-profile and successful horror
films
getting under people’s skin enough that
they want to rationalize it and pretend
that they didn’t like horror film
they’ve liked something else and when
there are a handful of successful films
you bet that there are dozens of others
that are just as good but just don’t
have that same mainstream attention so
the article that coined the phrase post
horror makes moves to suggest that it’s
still talking about something dark and
frightening and different but everything
it sets out to define and sets out to
define post horror is already things
that are happening in just plain horror
because transcultural gatekeepers might
to reclassify some of the most acclaimed
and modern examples of the genre horror
film is still a horror film and yet even
so perhaps the ultimate peel of horror
is in its inscrutability thank you [Applause]
than good afternoon like Clive has just
said my name’s Nia Edwards baekjae and
among other things I’m a film scholar
and co-director of the abattoir horror
festival and under a week ago that this
year’s edition of the festival came to a
close and arguably it was one of our
most successful I think we had around
100 people join us for six days of
horror films old and new brand new and
as well as talks music and events so
every year people from all over the UK
and sometimes even beyond would you
believe come to Aberystwyth to watch
horror films together this year we
screen films from Brazil Argentina India
Japan Switzerland Scotland and beyond
ranging from big-budget films you might
see in a multiplex – bizarre esoteric
chamber dramas that you’re never likely
to see anywhere else again now our
attendees include people from all walks
of life from students to retirees from
senior staff at you cast and archivists
to experts in historical combat and
video game designers during the week our
attendees will bring us coffee and
snacks ask to buy his drinks and in the
case of one couple annually makers a
cake to celebrate the end of the
festival and I think we’re fairly safe
and claiming they were quite unique in
that regard amongst all the other horror
festivals that happen in the UK and the
reason I’m telling you a little bit
about the people who come to our
festival is for context because I think
there are sort of conceptions of who
horror fans are and sometimes I think
when you actually meet them they kind of
challenge those perceptions a little bit
if you look that you might have seen
some of our decoration work even what
was taken some of it’s still up outside
we always set the tone for the
festival’s overarching theme which is
normally drawn from our programming of
the classic films that we show so our
theme for this year was the slasher film
which was that much a reviled genre
which had its heyday in the 80s and we
decked decked out the cinema like a
campsite and that was due to our very
special guest this year being Sean s
Cunningham director of Friday the 13th
if you can believe that he came all the
way to Aberystwyth for our festival now
it’s very hard to miss Sadiq
raishin when it’s in full flow outside
and frequently people passing by and
using the art center will stop by and go
out what’s what’s going on here now when
they’re told it’s a horror festival you
sort of see an immediate change of
expression in most cases which goes from
I’m curious to know some people even
become apologetic actually I always sort
of tickles me because they’ll go oh I’m
really sorry I don’t like horror myself
and which I don’t know why they’re
apologizing because it doesn’t bother me
if you don’t like horror films you
weren’t coming to the festival anyway so
it’s fine now when people find out that
horror is my preferred genre both sort
of personally unprofessionally I suppose
their response will be usually to wonder
why now it’s actually a question I
struggle to answer which maybe doesn’t
bode well for this presentation given
the subject but I’ll usually say I’m a
fan because of all the different types
of weird and wonderful things and films
that you can include under this very
broad umbrella of horror for others
though horizontal and it’s often people
who don’t like horror films that have
more definite ideas of what it is horror
might signify only gory films of only
films that have some sort of
supernatural element or films only
teenagers and the depraved will enjoy
chances are each of you listening to me
now have a different idea of horror
every time I’m saying it so for the next
10 ish minutes or so I’m going to talk
about horror films not specific films
but about the genre as a whole what is
it about horror that brings people to a
Welsh seaside town in the middle of
November and why is horror one of the
most profitable genres of film around
and yet so frequently still dismissed as
something we grow out of or something
that’s inconsequential if your fan or
not a fan or entirely indifferent to
horror I’m hoping that in thinking about
it for just a little while and why we
all like or why some of us like it will
tell us just a little bit about
ourselves and I’m certainly not the
first to suggest that so ordinarily if
I’m doing something like this I might
like to try and define what is I’m
talking about first I’m going to kind of
flip things around a little bit I’m
going to start with the why and end with
the what is hora hora is something
that’s long been theorized by film
critics and scholars and to close my
presentation I’m going to try and bring
things up to date as
so when I was preparing for this
presentation I thought I’d to do a quick
search of other TEDx talks on the
subject and there are quite a few on the
question of why horror and why we like
being scared and there is many of those
presentations by scientists including a
professor of psychiatry and a sociology
as there are from cultural researchers
now film scholars have theorized the why
of horror for a very long time
they’ve taken many different approaches
from psychoanalysis to direct audience
research so when I say what I say today
I want to be quite clear that I’m not
necessarily being particularly original
of my own thinking I’m presenting a lot
of other people’s ideas now I’d like to
highlight specifically one of the
answers to the why though I particularly
like from writer and critic Robin wood
so in the American Nightmare would wrote
of American horror of the 1970s which
was a period of change in cinemas a
whole and engines in horror as well
woods film examples are taken as much
from the Classical period of horror that
is to say your Universal horror
yahaa mahara your monster movies and
your gothics but there came a major
change in 1968 so horror came home the
threat was no longer safely hidden in a
desolate castle or in the form of a lone
creature on the attack horror was now
nearer more familiar and much more
embedded in our own society so for would
the pleasure of horror lies in the
audience’s identification with the other
just to get a little bit
psychoanalytical now I really like woods
concise definition of other Ness in this
particular piece of writing so I’m just
going to read that out for you so for
wood other misrepresents that witch
boudoir ideology cannot recognize or
accept but must deal with in one of two
ways either by rejecting it and if
possible annihilating it or by rendering
it safe and assimilating it converting
it as far as possible into a replica of
itself so for wood horror films
classical modern postmodern or otherwise
always feature this idea of the other
and more often than not this is in the
form of whatever the monster or the
threat might be other scholars of course
offer different answers nor Carol for
example suggested that narrative
structure
is the key to Harrah’s appeal which he
himself admits is a I’m quoting him a
long-winded exercise and common sense
rather than a theory there’s no bad
thing in the 1990s researcher Bridget
cherry conducted a vital audience study
into female fans of horror
offering something of a more real-world
approach to the question her studly
study aptly demonstrates the vastness of
horror by measuring what types of horror
films her respondents enjoyed ranging
from the 92% who enjoyed vampire films
to the mere 25% who enjoyed the slasher
film now this is key an Android shooter
in 1997 rephrased the why question most
appropriately and I’m quoting Teeter
again here for the question should not
be why horror at all it should be rather
why do these people like this horror in
this place at this particular time
I think answering that question would
result in a much longer talk I’m afraid
the acknowledgment of the many different
types of horror film is of course
acknowledgment that there are many
different reasons for enjoying horror
for example my enjoyment of a film like
martyrs one of the most grueling and
fatalistic films ever made is wildly
different to my enjoyment of say vampire
girl vs. Frankenstein girl a grossly
offensive and cartoonishly violent and
ridiculous bastardization of to literary
horror classics on a personal level as I
said I prefer horror genre because of
how broad it is the types of experiences
that one can have watching a horror film
and are varied and they will themselves
vary from person to person as well of
course I can watch a horror film I’d be
scared
sure but I can also watch a horror film
and laugh or be moved be disturbed or be
inspired the best films of course are
those which can elicit a number of these
reactions if not necessarily at the same
time then throughout the runtime of the
film but if hora is really so broad can
we ever be sure of what it actually is
there certainly isn’t one true
definition of horror for me but
something that’s fundamental for many is
that horror film has to scare us whether
it’s a ghost mournfully haunting a
mansion or a serial killer on a spree
the narrative drive of the horror film
should feature something
designed to scare us or at least that
it’s something that tries to scare us
for me it’s the potential to be
frightened that’s more important than
the fear itself fear of course being a
thoroughly subjective sensation for me I
don’t need to be scared by a horror film
now one of the reasons I don’t
particularly like being soo definite in
my conception of Horrors that quite
crucially shun restrained this is true
of any kind of genre but I think it it
rings particularly true of horror some
of the earliest films in cinema history
that we might now consider horror films
were not horror films at the time that
they were made horrid didn’t really even
exist as a genre when they were made
so at the turn of the century people
like Segundo the showman and George
Melly a were making trick films and
fantasy films not horror films and
German Expressionists of course we’re
making art but everyone knows that
Nosferatu is a bonafide horror classic
I’m going to move on to think a little
bit about value judgments in relation to
horror and one key distinction that’s
frequently invoked to this day is the
difference between terror and horror in
short I think you could be quite concise
in making this difference Tara is
everything that sort of leads up to the
point of horror the big reveal that
jump-scare the monster so on Tara is the
tension and horror than is the release
at the end of it
this distinction was often used to
denote when a film was ineffective or
had gone too far
the Hammer horror films for example if
you can believe it were often accused of
being too horrific whereas their
Universal Pictures predecessors were
supposedly more reliant on terror and
therefore more effective and better
films it’s the same distinction that’s
made by those who dismiss the use of
gore in a film Gore normally being
associated with a moment of horror or a
moment of disgust most recently this
value judgment has emerged in a
particularly persuasive way in the hands
of primarily film critics phrases have
been coined in relation to a particular
group of critically acclaimed and
financially successful horror films
phrases such as the psychological
thriller the social thriller elevated
genre and in particular most recently
post horror and these have all been used
to describe films such as the which it
comes
Night Raw gets out and perhaps most
recently most famously hereditary these
films are singled out as being more than
just horror as though horror isn’t
already one of them as rich and diverse
genres in cinema there’s a good chance
you may have even heard of some of these
films always seen them or read about
them in papers such as The Guardian and
so on you know this is all a case of
cultural gatekeeping and dress it up
however we like it’s ultimately sort of
sanctioned snobbery I suppose ultimately
all these categorizations seek to do is
offer the writer a way to say that
they’ve enjoyed a horror film without
actually having admitting their –
enjoying a horror film now considering
the rich and varied history of the genre
both in the past and currently I think
that’s quite a silly thing to be
embarrassed about myself but there we go
now I said I’d bring things bang up to
date if I can and just two days ago
The Guardian published an article on
this very subject by film critic and
Bilson I did actually ask her whether I
could just read out her article so close
was it kind of some of the things I was
planning on saying but I thought I’ll be
good and actually just choose a few
quotes instead so is Bill some notes
rather than pitching Gore against
restraint or whatever take other taste
distinctions critics wish to make a
coating bill so now here is the tension
between these two extremes of nice and
nasty that keeps the genre alive and
kicking she notes the genres appealed to
the gut can’t always be spelled out and
that like fairy stories of folk tales
the genre draws on a well of primal
fears and desires now I realize what
I’ve essentially done in this
presentation is pose a couple of
questions and not really answer either
of them but I just want to sort of join
together my non-answers to close things
so I’ve outlined some of the reasons for
enjoying horror such as our primal
recognition of the other also maybe some
of the broad appeals that lie within the
genre and I’ve also talked about the
distancing that occurs when film critics
want to praise horror without actually
praising it now as a horror fan I get
quite annoyed when this happens because
obviously I’ll stand here and shout from
the roots rooftops I like horror but
actually in some ways it’s quite
heartening because it means that there
are high-profile and successful horror
films
getting under people’s skin enough that
they want to rationalize it and pretend
that they didn’t like horror film
they’ve liked something else and when
there are a handful of successful films
you bet that there are dozens of others
that are just as good but just don’t
have that same mainstream attention so
the article that coined the phrase post
horror makes moves to suggest that it’s
still talking about something dark and
frightening and different but everything
it sets out to define and sets out to
define post horror is already things
that are happening in just plain horror
because transcultural gatekeepers might
to reclassify some of the most acclaimed
and modern examples of the genre horror
film is still a horror film and yet even
so perhaps the ultimate peel of horror
is in its inscrutability thank you [Applause]
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