- AASHAYA

WE ARE THE HORROR STORY

I remember the first time I watched The Haunting of Hill House. I was prepared for it to shake me up (and it did), but I didn’t anticipate that I’d be sobbing in my bedroom, devastated, by the end.

Themes of mental illness, exploitation of power, queerness, classism, and more were explored in an imaginative yet disturbingly lifelike manner. And for once, I didn’t think any of these themes were misrepresented. Moreover, because the show had such an uncanny realism to it, I saw myself in all the characters. The element of horror in the show is brought by individual manifestations of each of the characters’ fears and it showed me that horror could serve as a brilliantly done allegory. 

I’ve found that most horror and dystopian media are allegories, intentionally or not. Often, these allegories tell stories of oppression and suffering that either very closely resemble or outright mimic stories of (primarily) people of colour. Ironically, horror and dystopian films are notorious for killing off the only minority characters early on and completely removing them from the narratives of their own stories. And these are the same stories that don’t make it into history textbooks. They’re about the same people that are forgotten, neglected and shadowbanned. Whose names we never learnt to say. Whose names were overwritten and replaced with Western, White names. And somehow, that gives these stories some form of validity, so much so that they sell out in theaters and bookstores.

A friend of mine who lives in the US was talking to me about their history curriculum. They explained that their textbooks tend to glorify American and British colonisers and conveniently leave out information about countries that were hurt systemically during these times. Naturally, people who live in countries like the US grow up with more knowledge about zombie apocalypse movies than the colonial mindset and the xenophobia that clearly inspires these movies. A ton of films with a ‘they’re-trying-to-take-us-over’ storyline seem to share a fundamental trait, which is a fear of the other; the same fear between White people and POC. Zombies were originally characters in Haitian lore, and when Haiti was colonised, they were appropriated into the American media we see today, like The Walking Dead. Here, though, White people are seen as the victims, having their livelihoods taken away from them.

It’s astonishing how much of a sway White people have in the narrative. Think about all the horror you’ve watched, and then think about how much of it is told through a Western perspective. I’ve read a lot of horror, more than I’ve watched. And admittedly, most of it has been by older, White male authors such as Stephen King. And you can tell when something’s been written by an older White man by the values the piece expresses. For example, in the beginning of It: Chapter Two, a gay couple gets thrown off a bridge, like, right off the bat, really making it blatant how dangerous public displays of queer affection can be. When I first watched that, the only thing I learnt was that I had to be careful.

Another example of a questionable allegory is Squid Game (although one could argue it’s more dystopian than horror). It’s been applauded for its clever social commentary but the irony there is blatant once you do a background check. Despite the massive investment the show had for filming, it was intentionally filmed in certain parts of South Korea where workers’ rights weren’t rigid, so they wouldn’t have to pay as much for things like set-building, extras, props, etc. The cost of filming Squid Game was a lot lower than the investment; and unsurprisingly, the main cast and production crew got paid much more than everyone else involved. This becomes all the more baffling when we consider that the show in question is about the effects of capitalism on workers.

The reason I bring up Squid Game is to emphasise how the lives of real people are retold and dramatised into the genre of horror, while the people themselves remain unrecognised. Most such apocalyptic horror works on the same principle: the rich and powerful have an imbalance of control over the last of the remaining resources, while everyone else has to compete for the little that they are left with as the world ends. My friends and I joke about the world ending because of climate change and depleting resources, but this could be a reality for our generation, and horror movies that represent this are all the more terrifying for us to watch. 

Most of these concepts - the zombie apocalypse, the doomsday trope, or the world invasion - were either invented or appropriated into film by Hollywood. But horror is an entirely different experience when watching it is like looking into a mirror. When you realise you are the horror story.