——from Handbook of Autoethnography, eds. Jones, Adams, & Ellis: “A Glossary of Haunting” by Eve Tuck & C. Ree. An artist’s statement. An alphabet essay—a form I don’t like. I see the appeal—the alphabet is a fundamental tool, it’s a list… but… it’s easy. & not the best choice for an anti-colonialist essay. Tuck & Ree explain why they chose the form, “Glossaries can help readers pause and make sense of something cramped and tightly worded…” &, they see the glossary—rather, “this glossary”—as, “violating the terms of settler colonial knowledge….” That is to say their glossary is free from “its host.”
Tuck & Ree warn that the story the glossary tells “seethes in its subtlety” & they insist we “Pay close attention…” because, “I am only saying this once.
”
A claim is made about American horror films—all American horror films. All American horror films are “preoccupied with the hero, who is perfectly innocent, but who is assaulted by monstering or haunting just the same.” &, “the hauntings [in ‘US horror films’] are positioned as undeserved, and the innocent hero must destroy the monster to put the world in balance again.” The only American horror films named in the essay are The Shining (1980) & Poltergeist (1982)—two films that obviously upset Tuck & Ree’s claim. Who is innocent in The Shining? The child, by virtue of being a child—& while he evades the monster (his father & the Overlook Hotel), it cannot be claimed that he destroyed either monster (as confirmed in King’s sequel Doctor Sleep). The family in Poltergeist isn’t innocent, either. While ignorant that their house has been built on a graveyard, they are willfully immersed in a culture that keeps people ignorant. Do they destroy the monster & “put the world in balance again”—absolutely not! They become homeless, living in a motel (i.e., they are forced off the land they wrongfully occupied).
But Tuck & Ree’s claim is about all American horror films—two American horror films made within two years of each other hardly qualifies as a representative sample. & when I think of American horror films—even the most mainstream—I am hard-pressed to think of examples in which the hero (if there is an identifiable hero) is entirely innocent or is able to destroy the monster. It’s far more typical for the hero to realize that they are complicit. They’ve trespassed, they’ve lied, they’ve put other people at risk, they’ve stolen, their parents committed a (sometimes horrific) crime in order to protect them. Let’s take a stupid & well-known film as an example: Friday the 13th (1980). The counselors are not punished because they’re sexually active / casual drug users—they’re punished because they’re bad counselors (or, at least it looks to Mrs. Vorhees as if they are bad counselors based on her past experience). They’re punished because of their negligence—negligence that led to the death of Mrs. Vorhees’ son. & while Mrs. Vorhees is beheaded by the “hero,” the monster is not destroyed & balance is not restored. Instead, that act awakens the real monster—who kills the hero.
According to Tuck & Ree, American horror films are naïve, while “horror films from Japan” acknowledge “the depth of injustice that begat the monster or ghost” & “the hero does not think of herself to be innocent….” This might be true, but once again, only two examples are given: Ringu (1998) & Dark Water (2002). Both were remade for American audiences by American studios (& thus, arguably, became American horror films). That Tuck & Ree use these as their representative examples of Japanese horror films raises the suspicion that a.) they know about these movies because of the brief vogue for J-horror in the States & may have first encountered both films as American remakes & b.) they don’t know a whole lot about Japanese horror films.
There are no examples of horror from other countries—not even other English-speaking countries.
As Tuck & Ree’s essay progresses, it becomes apparent that the only movie that’s relevant to their work is Dark Water. The work that spurred this glossary (the host), is “a series of art installations, in response to Hideo Nakata’s popular 2002 Japanese horror film of the same title….” The installations use drop ceilings—generally used to hide pipes, wires, & ducts—as sites of fear. The water stains that form on the tiles of these ceilings & the subsequent leaks are portents of inevitable collapse—& the installations are designed to collapse. Tuck & Ree write, “This anxiety about leaks is what I dwell on” &,
Our ruins are not crumbled Roman columns, or ivy covered [sic] abandoned lots. Our ruins lie within the quick turnover of buildings, disappearing landmarks, and disposable homes, layered upon each other and over again.
Tuck & Ree’s logic behind their installations is compelling. (That they see horror in water-stained ceiling tiles (& mildew & leaky pipes, & decay) is hardly innovative—these are staples of the horror genre—as they are staples of the gothics & folktales that preceded the horror genre.) Are the installations compelling? I can’t say, I didn’t see them. But the logic behind them is compelling. Extending that logic to haunting & specifically to what haunts America is also compelling. The leap they make to “all American horror films” is not.
