Monthly Archives: June 2012

Horror and Humor: Hell is hilarious

Posted by Dorian Dawes on

For those who have played Valve’s previous titles, such as Portal or Left 4 Dead, you would know that the fiercely-independent developer responsible for Steam and the revolutionary First-Person Shooter Half Life series has a proclivity for dark humor that isn’t afraid to cross the line from hilarious to horrifying. Their increasingly morbid “Meet the Team” short animated films featuring characters from the hit free-to-play multiplayer game Team Fortress 2 displays this to perfection in the latest short, “Meet the Pyro.” I won’t spoil the video for those who haven’t seen it yet, but I do recommend heading over to youtube and watching the clip in its entirety. When you’re not laughing, you’ll be delightfully disturbed.

I’m not going to lie, I love black humor. Nothing is funnier to me than casually delivered punchlines involving death and dismemberment, and yet so many horror-comedies completely fall short of being funny and just generally come across as annoying. Many recent titles that have come to cinema spring to mind that I will not mention here, as I’m sure each of us have our own list of awful films that come to mind when bringing to light the dreaded genre of horror comedies. So, where is the balance? How does one manage to walk the thin line between keeping your audience in stitches (literally) and making them squirm with discomfort?

It’s a difficult question, with loads of possible answers, but none that I can say are proof-definite as anyone is capable of making a gross misstep when it comes to these two incredibly difficult genres. I’ve heard it said that it is every bit as difficult to make a man laugh as it is to make him scream. Truer words have never been said.

My thoughts are that it all lies in tone, in the way the subject material is approached. I feel that sometimes horror-comedies, and horror movies and stories in general are typically ruined because the writer or director is constantly winking and nudging the audience. It’s that atmosphere of a work being obnoxiously self-referential and struggling so hard to be “witty” and “clever” without ever managing to be either. You’re watching it and thinking to yourself: “I bet these assholes think that they’re absolutely hilarious.”

Instead of trying to make us laugh, or trying to scare us, they are busy with their own egos.

That’s why I think Valve was so successful in their latest short: there were no pop-culture references, no annoying punch-lines or zombie jokes or internet memes, just a two-minute approach to violence that was so demented it couldn’t help but be hilarious. It did nothing but try to be as entertaining as possible.

I know. In the post-modern age, where everything is a Warholian deconstruct of a deconstruct and there’s seemingly nothing original to speak of, such a concept is completely unheard of. Trying to entertain? Are you mad? Completely.

We have analyzed and deconstructed and picked apart everything that makes horror frightening. We understand it inside and out. We’ve poked fun at ourselves and it multiple times to the point where it’s neither scary nor funny; just a bland and boring medium floating dead in the water.

But it doesn’t have to be.

So whether you’re writing a comedy or a horror story or both, go in it guns blazing and just try to make the funniest/scariest thing you’ve ever created and keep trying until you get it work. There’s no set formula to follow. It’s all gut-instinct and trial and error.

On a final note, the Meet the Pyro short is definitely not a horror short, but sometimes the best horror-related things aren’t even technically horror.

Transwomen are Women

Posted by Dorian Dawes on

I get Cathy Brennan, in the same sense that I get Michelle Bachmann, Mitt Romney, Bill O’Reilly, and the slew of other arrogant, hateful assholes out there in the world, and there will always be people who are unbelievable, un-evolved bigots.

What I don’t get are her fans, the people who actually take her seriously, who admire/want to be like her. No, seriously. How can you legitimately model your behavior after such unsavory characters, who go out and attack others unprovoked, who’s actions threaten the livelihoods and lives of other people for the sake of a political statement.

I understand, everyone has their own belief systems and ideologies, but surely there are better ways to express your opinions than resorting to uncivilized stalking, harassment, and bullying. I disagree with those opinions, and to be honest I find them narrow-minded and reprehensible, but I disagree more with the way you’re trying to shove those opinions down my throat in the same manner that people have tried to do the same with the opinions they inherited from the local pulpit regarding my sexuality.

You know what? You don’t think that a lesbian transwoman is a real lesbian? Fine, that’s your opinion. It’s wrong, and I don’t respect it, but I respect your right to hold it. That’s called tolerance. I don’t have to respect you or your practices, because frankly that’s no fucking way to let your voice be heard and it only damages your cause.

Which case is more compelling: one that speaks of acceptance and being kind and good-natured towards others with a means of furthering education and knowledge, or the one that has the big “FUCK YOU” painted in red letters on a bloody sign? This goes the same for tumblr activists who are smearing “DIE CIS SCUM” on their blogs. Advocating hate and violence is never a good thing.

People remember the cause of the peaceful protests more than the violent ones. Yes, the violent ones get quicker news coverage, but all that’s left of your statement at the end of the day are fires and bloody noses and nothing of what you set out to accomplish ever sees fruition.

The Comforts of Darkness

Posted by Dorian Dawes on

I had a recent conversation with someone dear to me, who expressed concern over what she may have thought was a connection between my anxiety and depression issues and my love for horror and the macabre. It was a well-meaning sentiment, but did raise some interesting thoughts and conversations. I realized as I explained how when surrounded by my skulls and candles and headless dolls that I’m not surrounding myself with things that frighten me, rather they’re comforting. They are the darkness that I can control, that I know and am familiar with. It’s a representation of something that I enjoy, something that has been a safe place for me to escape to for many years, my worlds of nightmare-fantasy.

Anne Rice recently noted that one of the reasons we love horror fiction is because it keeps us away from what’s really terrifying: governments who tyrannize and starve their own people, men who commit murder and then become world leaders smiling and waving at a camera, pain, disease, intolerance, hatred, wicked people who are celebrated when they harm others. The list goes on and on of all the terrible things we see in this world, things that keep me awake at night cold and afraid for the future.

So, when I roll over in bed and I see the leering face of a grinning goblin holding a melted scarlet candle in his clutches, I’m not afraid of it. It can’t hurt me. It’s a monster that I own. It’s a monster I can actually control. I use it as a book-end.

In my head and in my stories, as frightening as they can become, they are escapes. I can create monsters and face them, and I can bring to life the things that scare me the most and then I see their power to terrify stripped bare. Horror causes us to face these demons and gives us a chance to slay them or experience our darkest nightmares brought to life and we emerge safely.

You won’t experience that in the real world. The real world is so much colder and menacing. It is utterly evil in its banality. It’s more likely that you’ll miss paying rent and wind up homeless on the street than a zombie come crashing through your door. In comparison to such things, it’s more preferable to go with the sizzle and bang of the supernatural crashing through your windows, a creature stalking you through the shadows of a ruined Gothic castle.

The demons I create are the ones keeping those that torment me at bay. My personal horde of witches, vampires, alien-monsters and ghouls. It’s good to be scared once in a while.

We’re Not As Progressive As You Think

Posted by Dorian Dawes on

When I was living in Michigan, I was surrounded by a culture consistently patting itself on the back for how supporting and progressive it was when it came to LGBT issues. Everyone was so open-minded and liberal, or at least that was how they wanted to seem. Unfortunately, it doesn’t take a detective to see that LGBT-support is nothing more in these cultures than a fashion-trend, a flavor of the month that they’re trying out. It’s a pet-issue people add to themselves like a merit badge to look socially and politically aware.

“I’m pro-marriage equality! Therefore I am a good person!”

Because obviously the oppression of queer minorities ends with the fact that we can’t even get married. Honey, I wish marriage were the least of the problems I face as a homosexual gay man in North America. Our current president is applauded endlessly for his “public stance” on gay marriage and his administration’s ending of the DADT policy that was being enforced to keep gays out of the military. Glee, a show lauded and praised for its inclusion of gay characters in its roster is often cited as being an example of how the depiction of gays in the media and television is moving forwards.  I wish I could say I was as impressed as everyone else, but I’m not.

For starters, I can’t stand that show. I resent the idea that a show marketed towards young gay men would revolve around the stereotypes of bad pop music, fashion, and musicals. It’s safe to say that any and all mainstream depictions of LGBT people in the media thoroughly piss me off with few exceptions. I hate that gay men are consistently and endlessly depicted as flighty, sassy, bimbos  who serve as a humorous caricature or a fashion accessory to some gross, rich white woman (Sex and the City being a repeat offender on this one). I hate that because of this media depiction, I have to deal with people asking if Burlesque is a favorite movie of mine, with dumb girls wanting to know if I’ll pick out their outfits for them, with well-meaning but completely ignorant people inviting me to Pride-fest as if it actually meant something.

My sexuality is not my identity. I’m a man who is sexually attracted to other men. This does not define my outward appearance, my personality, my taste in music, or my taste in films. No, I will not fix your hair for you. You wouldn’t want me near your head anyway, as I only know how to tease and hairspray, in which case you might end up looking like a pissed-off Disney Villain. I like Industrial/Dark Ambient music, please take Floptina Aguilara and Katy “tooth decay” Perry away. Coil, Current 93, Ah Cama-Sotz, and Atrium Carceri are the noises that I listen to recreationally; songs of melancholy, sex, and despair.

And believe me, if the perpetuating of offensive stereotypes by well-meaning people and the media were the least of my problems, I might be a happier man. But let’s talk about the difficulty of finding work as a 22 year-old gay man. People think that everyone in this country has to hire you, but it’s not necessarily the case. Granted, sexuality should never be an issue when hiring a person and should never come up in an interview, but imagine having to act or behave a certain way in fear that you’re going to give yourself away, to be found out and lose the job because of this person’s personal views only compounding job-anxiety issues. This in itself is probably the worst, the absolute fear that one feels when a certain macho-looking guy walks your way with a foul expression on his face. Yeah, he might be just some stranger passing you on the street, but he could also be the guy that knows who you are and doesn’t like it.

LGBT men and women are still beat, and still murdered just because they exist. I can think of two cases that happened very close to me recently. That fear is undoubtedly the most common sign that I am still a minority, and I am still being oppressed. The “It Gets Better” people are a group of ignorant liars with no clue what they’re talking about. It doesn’t get better, and it hasn’t gotten better. W’e're only pretending like it’s suddenly okay because more people think that they get it.

With all of these things listed, and I still think there are those out there who have it worse then me. Take Cece Mcdonald, a transwoman of color who was attacked by a group of skinheads, and when she used deadly force to protect herself, the courts found her guilty of second-degree murder. This is in Florida by the way, where the same laws of self-defense were used applied to the case of George Zimmerman, who stalked and killed Trayvon Martin and he was found not guilty on his testimony of self-defense.

So, deadly force as a use of self-defense is only reasonable if you’re a white man, but if you’re a person of color, let alone a transwoman then you can’t claim self-defense.

I’m constantly told by happy, idealistic people how great things are getting for LGBT peoples. I think that they are sweet, but truly blind. Things have only improved in the public arena. They’ve only improved politically, and even then those margins are slim. Perhaps there are those who are happy about whatever glimmer of progress can be made, but I only see it as a flickering illusion, and I am constantly in fear of what will happen when the fashion trend fades and public opinion takes a different turn. That’s not an entirely illegitimate fear, when you’re entire existence is decided by others and all you are given are crumbs by those who think they know what’s best for you.

When I can walk my streets without fear, that’s when things will have gotten better. For now, all I can do is be brave enough to live my life in spite of that fear, to take courage and give my enemies true reasons to hate me.

Horror is not dead

Posted by Dorian Dawes on

This article may be a bit late in coming, but for the gamers in my reading audience, you might remember a few months ago when the head of CAPCOM out-and-out dismissed the horror genre as being viable when he was asked about the fans that wanted to return the ever-popular Resident Evil franchise back to its origins in survival horror, as opposed to its more action-oriented gameplay that the series is known for today.

Wasn’t it last year that an indie horror title quickly became the most lauded game of that year? I’m referring of course to the game, Amnesia: The Dark Descent, which I’ve only just now started to play. That same year what film caused the most stir at Sundance festivals? Lucky Mckee and Jack Ketchum’s The Woman, also a horror film. I’ll reserve my opinion for how scary this film and this game is for another time, but that’s not really the point I’m trying to make here. The point I am trying to make is established in the title of this post: horror is not dead.

Mainstream Hollywood execs and big gaming studios like CAPCOM may be bound and determined to kill it, but people have been trying to kill this genre since its inception. Horror has always been panicked over, fought and raged against, stigmatized, regarded as cheap low-brow fiction, but here we are. And from new indie horror titles springing up left and right in the coming year, new books and stories being written, new films being shot by fans sick of seeing PG-13 crap in the theaters, horror is returning to the audience that loves it most.

The past decade of horror has been tragically marred by shitty remakes, pathetic sequels marketed towards younger and younger audiences. It feels like years since a legitimately scary horror film has come out. The foreign market has been a wonderful exception with films like Let the Right One In, and Martyrs, but over on the American shores people somehow think that Insidious was a scary film.

With everything in the box office turning to shit, the horror section in your favorite bookstore lined with bad vampire romance and zombie anthologies, and pathetic offerings from beloved franchises like Silent Hill, one might get the illusion that the genre is fading out. The old icons are dying, or are churning out pitiful work compared to their glory years. Everything seems like a pale imitation of what once was and our favorite monsters are fading into obscurity.

Fear not, or rather, fear still, for this is good. Let them rest in the shadows. The monsters of old have played their part and played it well and long. A new generation of masters is coming. The old gods will die and we will build new ones in their stead.

We’re heading for dark times in our travels. The world transforms itself every day into a more hellish plane of existence, and when dark times come about, people turn to dark tales for comfort. They light their fireplaces and remind themselves with a story that as horrible as things get, they’e still got it pretty damn good. They face their fears using our characters as avatars in their journeys through the dark.

Horror is with us. It is apart of us. To deny it is to deny our own humanity. We leap with glee at the thought of violence and carnage, follow it on the nightly news with a vigilance not seen in any of our other efforts. We engage in war at the slightest provocation. The difference between a horror story and an action story one might say, is that in an action-oriented story this part of ourselves is glorified, and in horror fiction it is something to be wary of. Perhaps that is why this genre, above all others, gets the most hate and revulsion, because it confronts people with the darker parts of themselves and the human race. It shows us those things about ourselves we are to terrified to look upon.

It is needed in this world. I’m constantly asked why I don’t write nice things by well-meaning friends and relatives. I’ll tell you, I write about terrible things because that is what I am compelled to write about. There are plenty of people writing happy stories about love and happiness and mirth. So, there needs to be equally as many people writing about death, sadness, and decay.

Loving the Dead: from Dahmer to Magnotta

Posted by Dorian Dawes on

Late last summer, I wrote a short story about a necrophile who fell in love with a man who’s desire was to be buried alive.  The story was published that October in the Dark Opus Press anthology, In Poe’s Shadow under the title “Loving the Dead”.

The story opens on a macabre note, letting the reader first know of the narrator’s peculiar affinity for death:

I’ve often dreamed of a love like that, a love that is everlasting, going far beyond what is sung in pop songs on the radio, or shown in glittery lights in the cinema or on TV — a love that transcends death eternal — sinking into the foul abysmal pit, going where sorrow and fair-weathered affections, even fear of the unholy and the unnatural dare to tread-a love that speaks only in whispers and silence, and is a fire that can burn even in the coldness of buried earth. To have the ability to love long after the putrid stench of death overtakes the body, that is the love which I have come to crave.

It is not the first time I’ve dabbled into necrophilia as a theme, nor do I doubt it will be the last. There is a certain kind of romanticism that revolves around the subject once the shock factor is eliminated, or perhaps I’ve just read too much gothic-horror in my lifetime. While I can’t bring myself to ever think of such acts with my loved ones as I am selfish and want that special person in my life to be with me always, I can understand why two willing parties would engage in an act of one killing the other or simulating the act in some sort of kinky roleplay fetish, so long of course it was consensual, such as in the case of Armin Meiwes who found a willing victim over the internet. The term “victim” here is of course applied liberally, as the man Meiwes eventually ate had the desire to be killed and eaten. I’m not even sure one could call that murder as much as it was assisted suicide following sex and self-mutilation and cannibalism.

As a gay man, I find it interesting how many murders committed by homosexual men revolve around necrophilia and cannibalism. We have John Wayne Gacy who would sexually assault his victims following their murder, and Jeffrey Dahmer who would not only eat pieces of his victims, but before killing them would drill holes into their heads and try to keep them alive in a corpse-like state for days.  Now another killer has emerged, Luka Magnotta, the infamous individual behind the 1 Lunatic 1 Icepick video where he stabs his bound and gagged boyfriend with an icepick, cuts his body parts off and feeds some of the parts to his dog. One part of the video shows him cutting into the ass of the victim with a knife and fork.

My partner and I both watched 1 Lunatic 1 Icepick, or rather, he watched it and I found myself unable to stomach the majority of the video, turning it off after watching Magnotta display the stab wounds of his now-deceased lover to the tune of New Order’s True Faith. I’ll never hear that song the same way again. I’m not in the habit of watching gore videos, not because I can’t stomach their grotesquery, but because I can’t handle the fact that the person on that screen is actually dead. I feel the vacuum left in the wake of their existence. Perhaps I don’t have as healthy a concept of death as I’d like to believe, but I hate the idea of desensitizing myself to it. I feel death. I feel its horror.

If anything, for the sake of my art, I can never allow myself the dulling of those emotions. I need to feel them so I can recreate them in my work. Because of this, I have a hard time watching these things. I don’t find them entertaining. I don’t think I’m a coward, but I don’t think people who watch them unphased are badasses either. I think that everyone is different, and while some are deeply horrified by 1 Lunatic 1 Icepick, others have been so assaulted by death in their time on this planet that it has ceased to phase them, and then there are those who feel nothing no matter what happens. They are the ones who look at everything as if it was made for them to mock and jeer at, and those are the ones that frighten me the most.

Prior to murdering his boyfriend in Canada, Luka Magnotta had gained internet infamy by killing kittens to Christmas music, throwing them into garbage bags and vacuuming out the air. It was allegedly done for the purpose of giving his modelling and pornography career more prestige and fame. I’m not sure if it was before or after that he tried auditioning for Cover Guy, his statement to the judges sounding like something out of Zoolander. “People tell me I’m really devastatingly good-looking.”

On his main website, the only one still remaining. A wordpress site from the looks of it Luka-Magnotta.com, he has several rants about the treatment he has received on the internet, the judicial system, and media propaganda. They’re all very well put together, though riddled with grammar and spelling errors, and the well-argued though erroneous logic contradicts itself often. It’s very difficult to accept that Magnotta even believes half of the things he is saying.  In fact, one might argue that he doesn’t at all, and these rants are made to make him appear not only sympathetic to the public, but also socially and politically aware. He wants us to think of him as being intelligent, attractive, and kind. He’s creating a portrait of himself he’s trying to sell to the world, very much the way many on the internet operate, under the guise of an appealing persona.

The same kind of behavior continues in a now defunct blog-entry that is screen-captured as a PDF here where he defends and confesses his necrophilia and cannibalistic tendencies.

When I was a young child, I used to spend much of my time alone, either in the woods or in

the local œmetery, where there was the grave ofa 19 year old boy who died in the early

half of last century. I felt close to that boy, and would pick flowers in the woods and take

them to his grave.

In 2003, I discovered a mummified corpse ofa young man in a vault, in a church where I was

doing restoration work for a friend. I fell in love with him, and it broke my heart to seal him in

there. I wanted to take him home and look after him.

I day dream about having him here with me. Silly ordinary things like watching TV together,

listening to music, ta king him out for picnics, watching a DVD late at night before taking him

up to bed with me. All very ordinary things, apart from the fact that I want to do them with a

desiccated or mummified corpse.

Idon’t have a problem attracting living men. I’m just naturally attracted to the dead.

The similarities between this confession, and the thoughts of the narrator from my short story are eerily similar, leading me to believe that Magnotta is no more a necrophile than I am. He’s creative and imaginative and can therefore imagine what it might be like to be a necrophile; more so than I do, as he at least has hands-on experience. My boyfriend, who was able to watch the whole of the video agrees with me as even the more sexual aspects of the snuff film didn’t actually feel like Magnotta was getting off on any of it. It was all another performance, a character he was playing for our benefit.

Based off of his blog entries, the act of him sending the severed torso to the police, the way he conducts himself through online interactions, I think that what Magnotta really gets off on is the attention. He lives for the audience to be watched and analyzed. I wonder if he’ll find this blog entry about himself and jack off to it at night, content with the idea that he is finally a household name, looking at himself in the mirror like Christian Bale in American Psycho.

While it is becoming increasingly difficult to find a site that is still hosting 1 Lunatic 1 Icepick, it’s relatively easy to find a video he put together of his badly photoshopped modelling photos. After briefly glimpsing at his more shocking video footage, I found his “modelling portfolio” as equally chilling for one reason: New Order’s True Faith is used in both videos. This leads me to believe that Magnotta feels nothing, and the same energy invested in creating a poorly-done modelling video is the same in killing his boyfriend and eating him. Anything to get an audience’s attention.

He couldn’t get famous by his good looks. He couldn’t get famous by his words. The only thing that ever got him the attention he craved was when he took the life of small animals for an internet audience. He liked it so much he stepped up his game and did something unspeakable, something monstrous.

It reminded me of an indie game created with the RPK Maker 2003 software called Dungeoneers: Beautiful Escape in which you play as a serial killer filming his murders for the sake of an online audience. Your performance is heavily criticized in reviews dependent upon how much suffering and torment you inflict upon your victim and how entertaining it is to your reviewers. Nothing matters but how many hits you get, right?

Luka has been spotted in Paris, France. He hasn’t been too smart about avoiding the public eye. I don’t think he can. Attention is an addiction for him, and it’s not the blood he craves, it’s the spotlight. I hope that this flaw in his methods will prove to be fatal to him, and that he’s able to be caught before killing again.

He will without a doubt certainly try.

Update: Magnotta has been apprehended