Film-Philosophy
Journal | Salon | Portal (ISSN 1466-4615)
Vol. 6 No. 7, April 2002
Aaron Smuts
Haunting the House from Within:
Disbelief Mitigation and Spatial Experience
_The Haunting_ Directed by Robert
Wise MGM/Argyle, 1963 112m, BW In this paper I attempt to
explain the lasting effectiveness and critical success of
_The Haunting_ (Robert Wise, 1963) by roughly sketching the
role that 'belief' might play in a revised version of the
'Thought Theory' of emotional response. I argue that _The
Haunting_ engages the viewer in a process of 'disbelief
mitigation' -- the sheltering of non-trivial, tenuously held
beliefs required for optimal viewer response -- that helps
make the film work as horror, and prevents it from sliding
into comedy. Haunted house films do not have to extend much
effort to keep us from walking away, since viewers come to
the theatre ready to entertain the idea that haunted houses
exist. Using the experiential philosophy of John Dewey, I
propose that this willingness has to do with a fundamental
aspect of our relationship with space. It is common to speak
of places as charged or tense, to get feelings of dread or
nostalgia from certain spots. Some haunted house films
leverage this experiential characteristic to fuel the
horror, and without it the subgenre would probably not
exist. Should We Believe the
'Thought Theory' of Emotional Response? Recent work in cognitive
film theory has produced a compelling resolution to the
'paradox of emotional response to fiction' -- the problem of
why we respond emotionally to fictional characters and
events even though we know that the characters and events
portrayed are not real. Murray Smith and Noel Carroll argue
that we can be moved emotionally by entertaining thoughts
without believing in their truth. The Smith-Carroll thesis
relies on a distinction between thought and belief to help
discount solutions to the paradox that postulate illusionary
viewing experiences, but the distinction is untenable unless
one accepts a limited notion of 'belief' (similar to that of
a 'statement'), meaning 'to entertain a proposition
assertively'. [1] Carroll attempts a strictly
cognitive account, arguing for a 'Thought-Theory of
Emotional Response to Fictions' that states: 'thought
contents we entertain without believing them can genuinely
move us emotionally'. [2] In response to this
theory, one might ask why we are willing to entertain
certain ideas and not others -- why haunted houses, in
particular, are not absurd. Steven Schneider criticizes
Carroll's description of the imagination [3] as
untethered by belief, arguing that the 'mere entertaining in
one's mind of a horror film monster is insufficient to
generate fear; at the very least, it renders the production
of such an emotional response either mysterious or
irrational'. [4] Instead, Schneider differentiates
between beliefs in the *possibility* of something and in its
*actual* existence, arguing that at least a belief in the
possibility of the monster must be present for there to be
fear. [5] Carroll might respond that belief in the
possibility of something is just to 'entertain the
proposition nonassertively', or a thought, and is not,
properly considered, a belief. However, the belief in
possible existence is just as easily entertained
assertively, for example: 'I believe that there may be
ghosts.' If it were merely a thought, then we would have to
explain why some thoughts are more plausible (or better
candidates to be entertained assertively) than others, which
would involve some measure of belief. What we lack is the
criterion of what counts as assertively entertaining a
thought. Carroll's strong definition
of belief undergirds the conclusions of the 'Thought
Theory', but the casting of belief and thought in such sharp
contrast oversimplifies the issue. To merely assume the
definition that proves the 'Thought Theory' is to beg the
question ñ the distinction could be better described
as one of degree, and not kind. Schneider's distinction
between 'belief in actual existence' and 'belief in possible
existence' meshes with Carroll's talk of 'existence beliefs'
and may provide a start for developing a belief-thought
continuum. To simplify, if we consider the difference
between belief and thought as a gradation, then we might be
able to determine the location of any given statement by,
for instance, the willingness of the person to bet on its
truthfulness. Beliefs in possible existences might fall
somewhere between the two extremes. We can accept two parts of
the Smith-Carroll theorem -- viewers (1) need not confuse
film and reality, and (2) need not believe in the *actual*
existence of the referent of the fiction -- and still
attribute an important role to belief in the production of
an emotional response. There are obvious limits to the
thoughts viewers are willing to entertain, and within the
range of acceptable fictional situations there are those
that viewers will less readily consider and ones that
effectively provoke strong responses. Carroll gives an
example of a person standing stably near the edge of a
cliff, in no danger of falling, but able to become
frightened by thinking about dropping off. He argues that it
is not the belief that we are about to fall, since we are
not, but the mere thought of falling that provokes the
response. [6] However, one could argue that the
reaction to this thought scenario is highly influenced by
various beliefs. We do not hold the one particular belief
that Carroll mentions; however we believe, in the strong
sense of the term, a great number of trivial things like:
things fall, I can fall, I could get hurt if I fall from
high up, or my grandfather broke both of his wrists by
falling from a roof. If we believe that we are in danger of
falling, or that someone fell recently, then imagining the
plummet would certainly produce a greater amount of fear.
Thoughts about flying upwards uncontrollably and hitting
your head on the ceiling are more unlikely to scare you than
they are to make you laugh, since the supporting beliefs are
not available. At minimum, the imagination
is both primed and partially constrained by our web of
potentially acceptable beliefs, however minor they may seem.
Some of these are (1) explicit 'occurrent' beliefs; others
may be (2) low-level unexamined beliefs, better described as
'dispensational beliefs,'; and many more might be (3)
variations on surmounted beliefs that still linger with a
sense of possibility and may or may not be candidates for
assertive entertainment. Though viewers do not have to
confuse fiction and reality, the imagination cannot run wild
and still pull the emotions, but serves best when fed by
acceptable scenarios backed by supporting beliefs.
[7] It is common to hear people criticize a film by
saying: 'It just wasn't believable. I couldn't get into it.'
Belief in the *possible* existence of a filmic monster may
be required to avoid imaginative starvation, but belief in
the *actual* real world existence can be energizing.
One could reply that this
discussion of belief may be at an unnecessarily high level
and my 'flying up' example may show that there are
constraints on the emotion-provoking abilities of thoughts,
but this has nothing to do with belief. Recent work in
cognitive neuroscience suggests that the physiological
states of individuals imagining the performance of some
bodily movements like tapping a finger are very similar to
those of the actual performance of the action. [8]
If emotional response is correctly described as a feedback
pattern, where physiological states and awareness of those
states heightens emotion which in turn increases bodily
response, then the physiological effects of visualization
could be key to explaining emotional response in a manner
consistent with the 'Thought Theory'. This is even more
compelling if we consider recent studies on rats which
demonstrate that observation of movements performed by
others, imagination of actions, and actual execution of
motor performances share common neural substrates.
[9] We could propose a make-believe extension to the
visualization experiments where a person is asked to
visualize wagging their tail or flapping their wings.
Without precedents for these patterns of action, we could
imagine that the physiological response would be small and
quite unlike the response of visualizations of performed and
performable activities. If this were the case, then the
thought theorist could argue that the lack of response to
thoughts of flying up and hitting the ceiling is not the
result of missing supporting beliefs; rather it is the
result of a lack of some sort of brain and bodily memory.
In an interview about the
making of his films, Italian horror director Dario Argento
described how he tries to confine displays of pain to common
experiences to evoke visceral reactions. Rarely will he have
a character shot by a gun, since few of us know what it is
the like to be shot, rather, his victims are either stabbed
or, more likely, cut by a broken window. We all know what it
is like to bump our heads against a sharp table-edge or to
hit our teeth on a drinking-glass, so Argento couples these
two common experiences and shows people getting their teeth
rammed against a table corner. One could argue that belief
has nothing to do with Argento's strategy. It is not that we
do not believe that getting shot hurts; rather, we know what
it is like to get cut by broken glass. Instead of belief, it
is some sort of 'physical memory' akin to what Antonio
Damasio describes as 'dispensational representations',
[10] sparked by visualization, that makes these
actions more emotionally provocative. [11]
One might try to
characterize these established brain routines that fuel the
visualization response as some sort of low-level proto
'embodied' beliefs; however, this would require a more
replete description of the underlying phenomena and may
require stretching the concept of belief to meaningless
proportions. At a high level, the 'beliefs' in question can
be considered as unconscious (or barely conscious) cognitive
contributing factors in higher-order consciousness. They
seem to affect the plausibility of emotion provoking
scenarios by somehow lessening higher-order, error-detecting
filters. [12] The liberalization of various
higher-order filters could be a result of multiple factors.
One such factor could be a belief system of sorts where
bodily memory and filter relaxation patterns that develop
from experience could partially account for why certain more
common thought scenarios are more effective. In dealing with examples
like Carroll's 'thoughts of falling' and my 'thoughts of
flying' scenario we may be oversimplifying the phenomena we
are dealing with. The suspense and fear generated by
Argento's films are far more complex than simple composites
of low-level visualization responses, and reducing the
source of suspense and fear provoked by _The Haunting_ into
a composite of low-level visualization responses would prove
to be a difficult, if not impossible, task. Most importantly
for the task at hand, _The Haunting_ heavily employs
higher-order, belief-oriented rhetorical strategies that
must be accounted for in order to explain its effectiveness
and they cannot be dismissed off hand as idle work.
Disbelief mitigation, taken as a technique of maintaining
inroads to emotional response by protecting higher-order
filter liberalization from conscious, rational
conservativism, may provide a gross cognitive explanation
for the rhetorical strategies found in films like _The
Haunting_. Spatial Experience and
Haunted Houses Since haunted house movies
build on a readily acceptable belief ñ the belief
that spaces are emotionally charged -- they have an easier
job of surmounting skeptical blockage to their premise than
many horror films. Rather than reconfirming a 'surmounted
belief', _The Haunting_ is in a special position in relation
to most horror, since it can capitalize on an actual belief:
a real world phenomenon that provides a foundation -- at the
intersection of imagination, experience, and belief -- upon
which _The Haunting_ is built. I will argue that if we
accept the mild notion that space is experienced as
'funded', or rich with meaning, then everyone is primed to
or might already believe that spaces in general are in
themselves intelligent or alive in some way. In this way the
phenomenological importance of spatial experience may
provide the basis upon which to offer a solution to the
particular paradox of emotional response to haunted houses.
We might ask, why are tales of) haunted houses scary if most
of us do not (purport to) believe in them? I once asked a philosophy
class if anyone believed in ghosts. Only one student raised
a hand. Then I asked the class who would be willing to spend
the night in a graveyard, and just as few responded. After
some discussion most of the class adamantly denied believing
in ghosts, but could offer no good explanation why the idea
sounded so frightening. Maybe, in some way and on some
level, most of the students had a belief in ghosts, strong
enough to motivate action or inaction. [13] A better
explanation might be that, rather than ghosts, the students
in my class were more afraid of the idea of spending time in
such a loaded space. They might believe in haunted places
more than _The Haunting_ ghosts. Psychologists refer to our
personification, or funding of space as 'projection' --
where feelings associated with our memories of things and
spaces are attributed to the things themselves. An excellent
account of the phenomenological significance of the matter
is found in the writings of the pragmatist philosopher John
Dewey, who considers the sustaining environment that one
encounters in experience by emphasizing the importance of
embodiment and activity. In 'The Live Creature and Ethereal
Things' Dewey argues that in experience space 'becomes
something more than a void in which to roam about, dotted
here and there with dangerous things and things that satisfy
the appetite. It becomes a comprehensive and enclosed scene
within which are ordered the multiplicity of doings and
undergoing which man engages'. [14] He might be able
to agree with Foucault that space 'is fundamental in any
form of communal life; space is fundamental in any exercise
of power'. [15] But in some ways Dewey has a more
interesting and complete account of space. It is not only a
form of power and control; it is a source of meaning.
[16] Space becomes a source of meaning as the
environment becomes deeply ingrained with memories and
desires, as a unifying element of experience. In 'The Common Substance of
the Arts' in _Art as Experience_, Dewey briefly discusses
the importance of space in structuring and controlling
experience. He argues that movement in space is qualitative,
so that '[n]ear and far, close and distant, are
qualities of pregnant often tragic import -- that is they
are stated not just measured by science'. [17] It is
not the 'homogeneous space' [18] described by Newton
or a scientific [19] account of a spatial grid that
he is concerned with; rather it is lived, qualitative space
that Dewey takes note of. Experienced space is 'infinitely
diversified in qualities'. [20] Qualitatively, space
can be roomy or cramped, stifling or emancipatory. Though it
offers room to live, it is not experienced as a container;
rather 'space and time are also occupancy, filling'.
[21] A different spatial environment has a
substantially different feel as our relations with it vary.
Perhaps the fundamental
element of Dewey's account of space is *place*, or
particular spaces. Dewey explains how 'places, despite
physical limitation and narrow localization, are charged
with accumulations of long-gathering energy'. [22]
Lived space is not encountered as a homogeneous 'container'
[23] in which to move about as if it were nothing
but a life-size map, but as a living site with locales of
personality. Places are experienced as qualitative -- as
fearful, depressing, nostalgic, alienating, and lonely --
because they are invested with accumulated meanings. Toni
Morrison captures this element of lived-place in the
animistic rendering of the house in _Beloved_: 'Shivering,
Denver approached the house, regarding it, as she always
did, as a person rather than a structure. A person that
wept, sighed, trembled and fell into fits'. [24]
This perfectly captures Dewey's insight into how places are
experienced. [25] They are often encountered as
having a temperament of their own; sometimes one so terrible
that all one can do is flee, if one can. Most importantly for haunted
houses, Dewey explores the relationships we have with the
spaces of experience, and how they fund our future
interactions, adding to their meaningfulness. It is not just
the investment of familiar lived-space that Dewey is
concerned with, but with how present experience is 'funded'
in our relations with new space when the 'past is carried
into the present so as to expand and deepen the content of
the latter'. [26] Haunted house films often try hard
to 'fund' the space of the house in an effort to control our
reaction to the idea that a particular place might be
haunted, and they offer evidence so viewers will be willing
to accept the premise. As we shall see, one of the primary
strategies of disbelief mitigation employed in _The
Haunting_ is to predispose us by providing a historical
background for the house, so we will understand how the
characters must feel when approaching it. The willingness to accept
the presence of a haunted house in a film can be partially
explained as a result of a process of associational aversion
that produces barely cognitive beliefs, resulting in
higher-order filter liberalization. The animistic belief in
cursed spaces may not be pronounced, and if it does present
itself to examination we will most likely deny a rational
belief in the matter. There are many beliefs of this kind
that sit in an unexamined state, until something calls them
out and they are cast out in a rational exorcism. The belief
in cursed or haunted places is in a special position among
the unexamined, since it is often seen as acceptable even
when made explicit. For example, the preternaturally popular
Oprah once held a show on the power of place, and recounted
her experiences of a house that emanated the pain of its
past inhabitants. She explicitly expressed a belief in the
supernatural charged quality of the space. No one in the
audience seemed to find this the slightest bit ridiculous,
and the belief remained 'unsurmounted'. Lingering unexamined beliefs
play a crucial role in the course of an emotional reaction.
Greg M. Smith, in his essay 'Local Emotions, Global Moods',
provides an account of the emotions as an 'associational
network', [27] where signals triggering emotional
responses come from various sources, often prior to
cognitive evaluation: 'Emotional evaluation takes
place in parallel to the conscious assessment of stimuli. If
the emotion system's signals become strong enough to reach
consciousness, emotional experience results. Once both
conscious thought and the emotion system are initiated they
tend to interact through a highly interconnected linkage,
allowing thought to influence the course of an emotion and
vice versa.' If we accept something along
the lines of Smith's account of cognitive reassessment of
emotional response as leading to intervention, reduction, or
amplification, the importance of mitigating disbelief is
crucial. Interference with the fear produced by disbelief is
dangerous to the film's success, and building associations
that provoke the reaction is crucial to maintain
higher-order filter liberalization. Rather than stopping at
a purely low level associational emotional reaction, the
unexamined belief in cursed spaces provides a semi-cognitive
amplifier for the viewer's response, or, in Schneider's
terms, something 'for the fear to latch on to'. [28]
Disbelief Mitigation in _The
Haunting_ In fictional worlds we are
less likely to fight supporting beliefs, and rational
examination is less likely to reduce the emotional response
since we are not asked directly to believe, but hold the
belief for the sake of the story. However, when a fanciful
fictional truth meshes with a non-fiction belief, the two
domains interfere and real-world disbelief mitigation
becomes necessary. One side of disbelief mitigation is
holding criticism at bay. This is done in two ways: (1)
often the belief required will not be made explicit by the
film, or (2) a character will present a refutation of the
belief and will suffer from its denial or will be converted.
We will return to the first technique, but the second
deserves immediate elaboration. In _The Haunting_ characters
unreceptive to the premise are put into extreme danger and
are punished for their doubt. Dr Markway's wife is skeptical
about the possibility of a house being haunted and finds her
husband's work a waste of time. She arrives at Hill House
late in the film and, ignoring protest, decides to stay the
night in the haunted hot-seat -- the old nursery. The house
grows angry at her arrogance and, working as an agent of
Nell's jealousy, puts her through an inquisition. The
pounding and thumping grows to an unprecedented intensity,
the passage to her room is blocked, and the entire group of
characters is threatened by the mistake of her skepticism.
When finally discovered running through the grounds, she
recalls trying to escape from the house, explaining that
when fleeing from the evil place she somehow fell from a
trap door in the library and then ended up outside in the
woods in a badly shaken state. The house puts her through
hell as a punishment for her sinful heresy. Luke Sanderson, the
skeptical nephew of the current owners who is sent there to
keep an eye on things, is slightly traumatized by the house
and is eventually converted, but he avoids extreme
punishment since his disbelief was not as firm. When he
arrives the doctor warns him that the doors of his closed
mind could be 'ripped from their hinges' in a traumatic
episode, if he does not at least consider the possibility of
a haunting. In early scenes the heir strongly doubts the
legend surrounding the house and can only think of how much
he stands to gain when he can sell it; however, after the
torment of the doctor's wife he is a believer in _The
Haunting_ and suggests burning the evil place down, partly
so skeptics like him do not endanger anyone else. _The
Haunting_ presents a world where heretics who threaten the
film's premise with disbelief are punished or converted.
This serves as an example to deter any viewer who might be
entertaining similar doubts, letting them see the error of
their ways. To be effective, the haunted
house film needs to do more than present skeptical
characters to rebuff as examples. The mitigation of
disbelief is not only a reaction against raising critical
questions, as the film can try to encourage the belief, or
draw upon the source of an unexamined belief that we may
hold. This is done by personalizing the haunting experience,
personifying the house, and by funding the space through a
history of the location. In the process, the film keeps any
statement of the belief in haunted houses unnecessary and
inexplicit by making the source of the events ambiguous.
_The Haunting_ helps
mitigate disbelief by portraying the space as having a
personal characteristic, partly by tying the horror to the
experiences of a central character. This serves to focus the
intensity of the emotion and to lend to the palatability of
the haunting. The house is mainly concerned with one
character, Nell, whose experiences correspond to supposed
events that took place in the dwelling. The shared history
allows the film to radically personalize _The Haunting_ to
the experiences of its central character. This
personalization enables the film to present a marked victim
that explains _The Haunting_ by serving as a catalyst, and
whose relationship with the place becomes so rich that it is
difficult to imagine that the house would not react to her
presence. Dr Markway finds the situation so troubling that
he would not have invited Nell if he had known about her
mother. Like taste aversion, people seem to have a place
aversion response to locales of traumatic events. _The
Haunting_ draws our understanding of the obvious
associational aversion Nell would have to the house. Knowing
her coincidental relation to the house primes the space as
one she should not be in, a first step in setting up the
haunting. Nell's particular
relationship with the house is emphasized filmically and
situationally. Pam Keesey, in '_The Haunting_ and the Power
of Suggestion', provides an excellent description of how
Wise's camerawork portrays the house as watching Nell. When
Nell first arrives Wise establishes a shot-reverse-shot
pattern between the house and Nell, as if they were looking
at each other. Once inside, Nell's image is reflected in the
floors and mirrors throughout the house, as if her image is
reflecting off the house's eyes. When Nell enters her room
the camera sweeps down from the ceiling around and under
Nell, as if the omniscient house has swallowed her.
[29] One of many direct calls to Nell comes when an
inscription shows up on the foyer wall, telling her to go
home. It is Nell's history that makes the house, in popular
horror slang, 'shine'. We expect space so charged with
individual meaning to be experienced as such. It is no
surprise that the house seeks out Nell throughout the film.
In the end, her relationship with the house makes her unable
to leave and Theodora suggests that Nell has been absorbed
by or joined the house since she was so much a part of it to
begin with. The shared history of Nell
and the previous residents allows the horror to be
experientially located and presented through the perspective
of a character, which opens the possibility for doubting the
veracity of evidence. This is especially effective when the
sanity of the character is constantly questioned.
[30] A fundamental means of mitigating the absurdity
of a haunted house is to present a view of the house through
the experience of a character. The house is rarely portrayed
as terrifying unto itself, without the verification of a
character's fear. Though this is a common horror device, it
is especially pronounced in _The Haunting_, where we are
shown more than reaction shots and screams. Repeatedly we
are allowed to hear Nell's thoughts and reactions to events.
For a large part we experience the film through her
perceptions. The presence of a psychic
character allows the experiences of Nell to be shared,
rather than diluting the house's focus. This keeps the house
directly related to Nell but brings the other characters
into the haunting. In this way the house can continue to be
seen through the coloring of a disturbed character, and
others can share in her experiences. Theodora's ESP gives
her access to Nell's thoughts, such as her desire to change
into her new clothes and her feelings for the doctor. When
exploring the house Theo shares in Nell's feeling that the
house wants her. The initial haunting episode on the first
night is mainly filtered through Nell and her psychic
channel, and only later do the episodes questionably involve
others outside her experience as the evidence mounts and the
premise becomes easier to accept. Our spatial experiences are
largely governed by our historical understanding of
particular locales, especially our personal relationship and
role within that history. _The Haunting_ gives a careful
recounting of the sordid history of Hill House, which is
marked by successive deaths resulting from mysterious
causes. Charging the space by providing it a history is the
primary means of bringing viewers into a ready state where
they will be willing to accept the haunting. The place must
'shine' for the audience as well as the characters in the
story, and it is often necessary to build a historical
understanding of the site for the film to work. In _The
Haunting_ the narrator's opening remarks serve both to
personalize the mansion by associating it with Nell and to
fund the viewer's experience by providing information
supporting the premise. Preconception formation is crucial
for audience acceptance and understanding when dealing with
haunted houses. The concept of 'cursed'
space alluded to above may better help explain what is meant
by a belief in haunted space. It is common to speak of
places as cursed, a familiar expression that highlights how
prevalent the concept of haunted space is. Though not
necessarily rationally believed in, the concept draws out
the associational aversion and historical understanding of
places that fuel the source of our willingness to
participate in haunted house movies. The belief is not a
mere fabrication of my argument but has everyday, although
casual, expression. _The Haunting_ presents
evidence for the house's haunting and punishes those who do
not believe, but it never forces us to accept the reality of
the supernatural. The film is careful never to show us too
much, never to push our belief to the limit where it would
have to be accepted for a scene to work. In Montague
Summers's classificatory scheme, this is an 'equivocal
gothic' [31] -- a fiction that casts the
supernatural origins of events in doubt. Keeping the source
of the horror ambiguous is a central strategy for disbelief
mitigation, since it prevents skeptical thoughts from
interfering with emotional reactions that rely on unexamined
beliefs. This is done by primarily relying on sound as
evidence, never visually presenting a monster, questioning
evidence, and continually disputing whether _The Haunting_
is in Nell or the house. Haunted house films are in a
curious bind concerning the presentation of visual evidence,
since it is not exactly clear what a manifestation of _The
Haunting_ would look like. There seem to be two basic types
of hauntings: those where the house is inhabited by ghosts
that do the haunting, like in _The Others_ (Alejandro
Amenabar, 2001); and those where the house itself is the
source of the haunting, as in the original _The Haunting_.
Those of the second type have both hands tied behind their
backs, since they are unable to throw a ghost at the
audience, but this can work to their advantage, as the
criminally bad remake of _The Haunting_ (Jan De Bont, 1999)
demonstrates with its goofy CGI monsters. In the original
some puzzling visual evidence is presented, mainly the
closing of doors when no one is looking, but it refrains
from other more obvious means of visually presenting the
threat. Furniture never even moves around the house and
plates never fly. Instead the film builds a mood of
confusion and looming danger by portraying the house as a
living maze of doors and a trap of loose staircases. Steven
Schneider points out that the director frequently animates
the house by giving it a perspective through point-of-view
shots, distortion, and pans that take the view of neither
character nor objective camera. In the staircase sequence,
the camera shifts views from Nell's perspective of her feet
on the stairs to the house's view of the climb. Pam Keesey
points out that the house, 'described in the novel as
'diseased' and 'not sane' remains essentially the same
[in the film]. Hill House, we are told, is not
merely haunted. It is the haunt'. [32] Rather than
localizing the horror to a supernatural inhabitant like many
haunted house films, the source of the haunting, and the
point-of-view shots, is the house at large. Again, it is not
ghosts that do the haunting, but place that is the mechanism
of fear. Though primarily relying on
sound to present the source of terror, we are also given
temperature evidence of the evil. As is now a common trope,
when the thumping comes for Nell, the room grows cold and we
can see her breath. The house also has a cold spot in front
of the nursery door that all the characters feel but have no
explanation for. The source is never directly presented as
the house, but this is a conclusion arrived at by the
characters and the viewers through a suggestive manner. We
are never beaten over the head with causes, since that
strategy can backfire; instead, the viewers are asked to
come up with answers supporting the premise prior to or
without their being presented by the film. Providing a
history of the house is crucial to funding our imaginative
experience of the place, so we will actively come to the
conclusion that it is indeed haunted. The film is careful to avoid
showing the source of the horror even when characters are
being hurt by something in the house. On the second night
Nell goes to sleep next to Theodora, but wakes up lying in
bed alone. Nell does not realize that Theo is no longer in
the next bed, and assumes she is holding her hand. The grip
becomes tighter until it is almost crushing but she never
looks over. Wise never shows the other end of the grasp; it
is only suggested through Nell's comments and reaction. This
keeps the source of the haunting ambiguous and allows us to
question whether it is the house or Nell that is mad. After
allying us with Nell, the film now gives us more information
than she has by shifting perspective from Nell to the house
in order to provoke a protective reaction. We know it is the
house squeezing her hand and want her to get out of the
room. Rather than confining our knowledge to what the
characters know and sharing in their skepticism, the film
puts us in a superior but helpless position where we are
incapable of applying what we know. The film is careful not
to present the source of the horror, which might serve to
provoke reactions of disbelief; instead, we are asked to
imagine the source and take the bait. By providing superior
situational knowledge, we are encouraged to apply the belief
in a protective emotional response. Provoking the
application of an encouraged belief -- that might be
questioned in other contexts -- is a clever strategy of
disbelief mitigation. It would be interesting to see how
common this technique is in supernatural horror, especially
in the 1960s' psychological sub-genre where it is employed
most frequently. [33] Until the end, the film
leaves the possibility of doubt as an option. Emotional
response is rather short-lived, a few minutes at the most,
and our belief is both highest and most needed in peak
sequences. In less heightened moments, since we are less
sure about the source of the horror, critical examination of
any loosely held beliefs is not prompted. At the end of the
film Nell tries to leave, but her car seems to be
chauffeured by the house. She ends up driving through the
woods, blinded by darkness and branches, until swerving to
avoid the doctor's wife and crashing into a tree. The cause
of the crash is indeterminate. Nell was in a frantic state
when she drove away, perhaps unable to control a car. The
other characters question whether it was the house or Nell
that caused the crash. Since she died against the same tree
that the original founder's wife crashed against, we are
encouraged to believe that the house is responsible, but the
source is left open. Keeping the cause ambiguous further
mitigates our disbelief in what we are encouraged to
believe. Keesey argues that 'the key to supernatural
storytelling -- whether on-screen or on the page -- is the
power of suggestion', [34] but this only describes
one component of a fundamental three part structure. The
pattern of disbelief mitigation going from belief
encouragement, to suggested application, to reflective
options, allows the film to successfully navigate our
skepticism, minimize higher-order conservative responses,
and leaves behind a sense of uncertainty and a mood of
horror. Disbelief mitigation is a
two front war: films relying on unexamined beliefs to
effectively fuel the imagination must both try to counter
criticism and encourage belief. Techniques for countering
criticism might be generic across horror films, and a
frequently employed strategy is to prevent the belief
required from being made explicit, often by keeping the
source of the horror ambiguous. Another common technique for
countering criticism is to present and punish heretics who
challenge the belief. On the other front, belief
encouragement may be more specific to the type of horror and
the belief we are dealing with. For _The Haunting_, a belief
in the possibility of haunted places is helpful for optimal
response. The film funds the source of this belief by
personalizing the house and providing a history for it,
which makes the events understandable, if not expected. It
draws upon the belief by presenting situations and examples
that encourage us to decide that the source of the horror is
indeed the house. Haunted house films often use the way we
experience space, and an accidental and unexamined animistic
belief resulting from this interaction, as their foundation.
Often, before we even see the house, we have a foot in the
door. New York, USA Footnotes I would like to thank Daniel
Barratt, Heidi Bollich, Cynthia Freeland, Anne Jaap
Jacobson, and Steven Jay Schneider for reading and
commenting on earlier versions of this paper. 1. Carroll, _The Philosophy
of Horror_, p. 80. 2. Ibid., p. 81. 3. Carroll highlights two
uses of the term 'imagination': 1, 'entertaining a thought
non-assertively', and 2, where we 'are the creative and
primarily voluntary source of the contents of our thoughts'
(_The Philosophy of Horror_, p. 88). Carroll finds that the
second notion of the term is misleading since viewers need
not add anything via the imagination to what the fiction
presents. I'm disregarding the distinction and find it
unimportant to the thought theory, but it does point out how
divorced fictional thought is from the viewer's control and
how limitless Carroll finds the range of acceptable
scenarios. 4. Schneider, 'Monsters as
(Uncanny) Metaphors', p. 177. 5. Offering an account of
how horror might plug in to our imagination, Schneider
presents an explanation of our response to monsters as the
metaphorical presentation of suppressed beliefs. He argues
that: 'All horror film monsters metaphorically embody
surmounted beliefs, but not all of them manage to reconfirm
those beliefs by their very presence.' (Schneider, 'Monsters
as (Uncanny) Metaphors', p. 184.) Regardless of whether
horror functions by presenting metaphorical examples
supporting surmounted beliefs, Schneider's argument
emphasizes the necessity of a conceptual foothold to prevent
horror films from becoming pure camp. 6. See Carroll, _The
Philosophy of Horror_, p. 80. 7. The other side of the
coin might be how fear of a new technology or nuclear war or
something poorly understood can broaden the acceptable range
of beliefs by putting beliefs in limits in question.
8. 'Studies of cerebral
metabolic activity have demonstrated that most of the
regions that are active during overt movement execution such
as the parietal and premotor cortices, the basal ganglia,
and the cerebellum are active during mental simulation as
well.' Sirigu, et al., 'The Mental Representation of Hand
Movements after Parietal Cortex Damage', p. 5281. 9. See Leggio, et al.,
'Representation of Actions in Rats'. 10. Damasio, _Descartes'
Error_, pp. 94-105. 11. I explain Argento's
'visceral technique' in more detail in 'The Principles of
Association: Dario Argento's _Profondo Rosso_ (_Deep Red_,
1975)', forthcoming in _Kinoeye_. 12. Building upon the work
of Joseph LeDoux, Daniel Barratt presents something akin to
a mediated shock-response explanation for emotional reaction
to visual horror, where visual stimuli take a fast track to
emotion pre-evaluating brain regions only to be later
refereed by higher order consciousness: 'our biological
makeup and our evolutionary history . . . crosses, say, a
'fast-acting' thalamus-amygdala circuit (an 'early-warning
system' which effectively sacrifices accuracy for speed)
with higher-order consciousness (a late 'error-detection
system' which effectively sacrifices speed for accuracy)'
(Barratt, 'The Paradox of Emotion Revisited', not yet
published, p. 20). 13. Steven Schneider
presented the viability of this option to me. The discussion
of disbelief mitigation was inspired by his thoughts on
belief. 14. Dewey, 'The Live
Creature and Ethereal Things', p. 544. 15. Foucault, 'Space
Knowledge, Power', p. 253. 16. My approach to Dewey has
been influenced by John McDermott, especially his book _The
Culture of Experience_, where he develops similar themes in
his discussions of Dewey. In the introduction to his edited
collection, _The Philosophy of John Dewey_, McDermott points
out several major concerns of Dewey's: the lived body, the
primacy of growth, non-sexual repression, and the affective
dimension of human activity (see p. xxvii). Since these are
major themes in Dewey's writings there is no surprise that
some of my concerns overlap with McDermott's. However, in
this article and elsewhere I developed similar but different
themes in unique ways (especially that of space), through
the intersection of philosophy and literature and film, for
the purpose of arguing that Dewey has developed (or I'm
distilling out of his analyses) a significant social
critical tool that has been unfortunately ignored.
17. Dewey, _Art as
Experience_, p. 207. 18. In _The Quest for
Certainty_ Dewey describes the scientific view of space as
'homogeneous space' (see pp. 75 and 78). 19. In _Art as Experience_
Dewey contrasts the different treatments of space by science
and art: 'As science takes qualitative space and time and
reduces them to relations that enter into equations, so art
makes them abound in their own sense as significant values
of the very substance of all things' (p. 207). 20. Dewey, _Art as
Experience_, p. 210. 21. Dewey, _Art as
Experience_, p. 209. 22. Dewey, 'The Live
Creature and Etherial Things', p. 544. 23. Dewey describes
Newtonian space as 'container space' in the _Quest for
Certainty_ (p. 113). 24. Morrison, _Beloved_, p.
29. 25. Another passage in
_Beloved_ is relevant and rewarding for thinking about
Dewey: 'I was talking about time. It's so hard for me to
believe in it. Some things go. Pass on. Some things just
stay. I used to think it was my rememory. You know. Some
things you forget. Other things you never do. But it's not.
Places, places are still there. If a house burns down, it's
gone, but the place -- the picture of it -- stays, and not
just in my rememory, but out there, in the world' (p. 36).
This highlights the locatedness of experience and the
indelibility of this attribute. 26. Dewey, 'The Live
Creature and Etherial Things', p. 545. 27. Greg Smith, 'Local
Emotions, Global Moods', p. 111. 28. Schneider, 'Monsters as
(Uncanny) Metaphors', p. 177. 29. See Keesey, '_The
Haunting_ and the Power of Suggestion', p. 310. 30. See Schneider, 'Barbara,
Julia, Carol, Myra, and Nell', for a discussion of the
ambiguity of the source of horror in _The Haunting_.
31. See Montague Summers,
_The Gothic Quest_. 32. Keesey, '_The Haunting_
and the Power of Suggestion', p. 308. 33. Noel Carroll identifies
a larger technique he calls 'fantastic hesitation', found
frequently in 'equivocal gothic', where explanations are
disputed and the viewer is asked to puzzle an explanation
with a few pointers. See _The Philosophy of Horror_, pp.
156-157. 34. Keesey, '_The Haunting_
and the Power of Suggestion', p. 306. Bibliography Barratt, Daniel H., 'The
Paradox of Emotion Revisited: Uncovering the Emotional
Foundations of Pictorial Representations' (unpublished).
Carroll, Noel, _The
Philosophy of Horror; or, Paradoxes of the Heart_ (New York:
Routledge, 1990). Damasio, Antonio,
_Descartes' Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain_
(New York: Quill, 2000). Dewey, John, _Art as
Experience_ (New York: Capricorn, 1958). --- 'Does Human
Nature Change', in _Problems of Men: Philosophy of
Education_ (New Jersey: Littlefield, 1958). --- _The Quest
for Certainty_, ed. Jo Ann Boydston (Carbondale: Southern
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Etherial Things', in _The Philosophy of John Dewey_, ed.
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Reader_ (New York: Pantheon Books, 1984). Keesey, Pam, '_The Haunting_
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Continues to 'Deliver the Goods' to Modern Audiences', in
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(New York: Limelight, 2000). LeDoux, Joseph, _The
Emotional Brain: The Mysterious Underpinnings of Emotional
Life_ (New York: Touchstone, 1998). Leggio, Maria B., et al.,
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Grain_ (New York: New York, 1976). Morrison, Toni, _Beloved_
(New York: Plume, 1998). Schneider, Steven Jay,
'Barbara, Julia, Carol, Myra, and Nell: Diagnosing Female
Madness in British Horror Cinema', in Stephen Chibnall and
Julian Petley, eds, _British Horror Cinema_ (London:
Routledge, 2001). --- 'Monsters as (Uncanny) Metaphors:
Freud, Lakoff, and the Representation of Monstrosity in
Cinematic Horror' in _Horror Film Reader_, eds. Alain Silver
and James Ursini. NY: Limelight, 2000. Sirigu, A., et al., 'The
Mental Representation of Hand Movements after Parietal
Cortex Damage', _Science_, no. 273, 1996. Smith, Greg M., 'Local
Emotions, Global Moods', in Carl Plantinga and Greg M.
Smith, eds, _Passionate Views: Film, Cognition, and
Emotions_ (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999).
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Aesthetics and Art Criticsim_, vol. 53 no. 2, Spring 1995.
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Gothic Quest: A History of the Gothic Novel_ (London:
Fortune, 1938). Copyright ©
_Film-Philosophy_ 2002 Aaron Smuts, 'Haunting the
House from Within: Disbelief Mitigation and Spatial
Experience', _Film-Philosophy_, vol. 6 no. 7, April 2002
<http://www.film-philosophy.com/vol6-2002/n7smuts>.
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