Paradox Of The Heart Analysis

In his book The Philosophy of Horror: Or, Paradoxes of the Heart, philosopher Noël Carroll formulates a theory of art-horror and creates a hypothesis for the paradox of horror, explaining why audiences are attracted to horror films when they are disgusted by them. Carroll’s argument focuses on the experience of an emotional response aroused by horror, which he systematizes by establishing a set of three conditions necessary for being art-horrified by a monster. While Carroll’s theory of art-horror is compelling, his definition of a monster is unnecessarily precise, as it eliminates slasher-thriller films featuring humans as the antagonists from the horror genre entirely. This paper consists of three parts: first, a summary of Carroll’s

He first discusses the concept that the being or object must be possible by explaining that the term monster “refers to any being not believed to exist now according to contemporary science” (27). Therefore, believing that a monster is possible “does not commit us to a belief in [its] existence” (29); rather, through the monster’s portrayal in the narrative, a viewer becomes convinced that the monster is logically possible and that the viewer’s thoughts about the monster are real. Carroll then expands on his second requirement, the threat component, clarifying that monsters can be physically, morally, or socially threatening. It is essential for a monster to be threatening in one of these three ways – or at least appear to be so – because when these beings “cease to be threatening, they cease to be horrifying” (28). Therefore, the threat component is critical to the experience of art-horror. Finally, Carroll describes that a monster can meet the final requirement of this condition, impurity, in a number of ways, whether by being “categorically interstitial, categorically contradictory, incomplete, or formless” (32). In order to art-horrify, it is necessary that a monster have this impurity in some form, as it arouses disgust in addition to the

Carroll argues that the experience horror appears to be intrinsically revolting and terrifying; however large numbers of viewers seem to find pleasure in horror films in spite of its repulsive nature. Carroll hypothesizes that horror is capable of compelling our interests through “normally aversive events” (161) due to the role of the narrative, which acts as a “the crucial locus of our interest and pleasure” (179). He explains that “what holds our interest and yields – in the horror genre need not be, first and foremost, the simple manifestation of the object of art-horror, but the way that manifestation or disclosure is situated as a functional element in an overall narrative element” (179). This suggests that rather than being interested in horror fictions due to the monster’s presence, viewers find gratification from the narrative as a whole. Particularly, viewers are driven by their curiosity and “desire to know” (182) more about the monster, finding gratification in “proving, disclosing, discovering, and confirming the existence of something that is impossible” (181). Carroll maintains that this cognitive pleasure does not cease once the monster has been revealed to viewers; rather they continue to desire more information