Horror: Summarising Mark Jancovich’s ideas on genre

One argument Jancovich (2002, pp. 1-18) makes is that “most academic histories include films that were not originally produced or consumed as horror films.” (p. 7). And “[…] classics such as The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1919), or Nosferatu (1922) were rarely seen as horror films in their own day, they are now frequently cited as seminal examples of genre.” (p. 2). What they mean here is that the genre wasn’t necessarily defined at the time of the film’s release, but many years later when the term was starting to be used frequently to describe new films. They further support this argument by saying “Carpenter would not have seen Halloween as a slasher movie because there was no such category at the time. His film became the template for the slasher film only retrospectively.” (p. 8).

When discussing science fiction, Jancovich takes note of Bruce Kawin’s take on aliens in science fiction horror films (p. 13). If the alien is seen as a positive, such as in The Day the Earth Stood Still (Wise, 1951), Close Encounters of the Third Kind (Spielberg, 1977) and E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial (Spielberg, 1982), the film is a science-fiction film, whereas if the alien is depicted negatively (i.e., the enemy of the film), it is a horror film. Examples used are The Thing from Another World (Nyby & Hawks, 1951), Alien (Scott, 1979) and Independence Day (Emmerich, 1996). The alien’s status within the film determines whether the film is within the horror or science fiction genre, however, this does not hold true for Independence Day: The aliens are depicted negatively, as the enemy of the film, but not as a monster and therefore Independence Day cannot be categorised as a horror above science fiction.

However, this take works fine on some films, but not on others, as you wouldn’t consider Independence Day to be a horror film. In most cases, the use of the monster figure is critical to which genre the film can be placed in.
Jancovich concludes (p. 19) that “genre criticism should be about more than texts, or even the changing contexts within which they are produced.” Meaning we cannot just look at a textual analysis and must look at other context or history surrounding the film. For example, production aspects ranging from the script, filming, and marketing. (i.e., how was the film marketed? Were the trailers indicative of a horror film?) Understanding these will help determine whether the film is a Horror or Science Fiction.

Further Reading

Bruce Kawin (2004)

• “Genres are determined not by plot-elements so much as by attitudes toward plot-elements.” (p. 5)
• Kawin doesn’t like the stereotype of “the usual assumption that a film is science fiction if it has scientists in it and horror if it has monsters” and looks further at The Day the Earth Stood Still and The Thing from Another World.
• “It seems to me that we will never fully understand the horror film until we agree on a definition of the genre, and that the genre with which horror is most regularly confused is that of science fiction.” (Kawin, 2020, p. 366). Because films like The Thing from Another World use elements from both genres, it can be difficult to classify them.

Simon Bacon (2019)

• “Interpretative approaches to horror, of which there are many, fall approximately into three categories: psychoanalytic, cognitive and affective”. (p.4).
• Psychoanalytic: Limitations to the approach, but often used to reveal hidden meanings in horror texts.
• Cognitive: Focus on audience interaction.
• Affect: Philosophical; “a way of examining the somatic and emotional responses induced by horror films”, (pp. 4-5).
• Bacon continues by stating that the horror genre is always changing, repeating, and re-inventing itself. (p. 6).