Explor­ing the post-mod­ern pop cul­ture hor­rors at the heart of British identity

Most of us asso­ciate the word ​‘hor­ror’ with a cin­e­mat­ic genre: The Exor­cist, The Ring, Para­nor­mal Activ­i­ty, Hal­loween, Fri­day the 13^th andThe Texas Chain­saw Mas­sacre are a few names that might spring to mind. Some might even recall the voice of Vin­cent Price, or Michael Jackson’s pio­neer­ing Thriller music video.

If you think of movies as a house, a sto­ry moves along and devel­ops from the ground up to oth­er floors, branch­ing out along cor­ri­dors and up stair­cas­es. In hor­ror, ter­ror hap­pens on a sin­gle floor, always in the present. Even the fear of some­thing super­nat­ur­al is a present haunt­ing – regard­less of what the threat is, hor­ror is per­va­sive and per­me­at­ing. Invis­i­ble or pal­pa­ble, creep­ing up behind you or hid­ing in the shad­ows, it has a life of its own and can be almost impos­si­ble to fight. A sense of help­less­ness can eas­i­ly creep in.

Hor­ror in cin­e­ma works the same way as it does in social, cul­tur­al, famil­ial or polit­i­cal struc­tures. This is The Hor­ror Show! approach at Som­er­set House, which posi­tions hor­ror as a reac­tion to very real issues in mod­ern Britain. And ​“Show” is the right word for it – the exhi­bi­tion aims to deliv­er expla­na­tions as to how the youth and its artists have dealt with soci­etal and polit­i­cal issues, using hor­ror as a tool to digest forms of injus­tice. As John Car­pen­ter says, hor­ror is not a genre, it’s a reaction.

The Hor­ror Show! is a very British take on how some react to the patri­archy. The accom­pa­ny­ing book con­tains graph­ics rem­i­nis­cent of Mar­i­lyn Manson’s auto­bi­og­ra­phy ​‘Long Hard Road Out of Hell’, while the exhi­bi­tion is set in dark­ened rooms dis­play­ing art­works from Gareth Pugh, Gavin Turk, Juno Calyp­so and David Shrigley amongst many oth­ers. Divid­ed into three main seg­ments, the cura­tors dis­tin­guish between Mon­sters, Ghosts and Witch­es to make sense out of Thatch­er, CCTV and oth­er per­ti­nent soci­etal and polit­i­cal themes

The idea of con­jur­ing up hor­ror imagery to deal with life itself is not new. Lyri­cism dur­ing the time of Ger­man Expres­sion­ism was born out of the deep trau­ma that an entire nation was fac­ing after WW1. The shock of those events evoked images of a rag­ing can­cer, vis­i­ble and alive, eat­ing at the hearts and minds and turn­ing them inside out.

All of this was sup­port­ed by errat­ic out­cries, absurd gram­mar and decon­struct­ed, made up words that act­ed as metaphors for a per­vert­ed soci­ety that gave in to evil. There is a sense of dis­be­lief and ter­ror, not being able to make any sense out of the shock a whole coun­try just expe­ri­enced: in oth­er words, pure hor­ror. ​“The horror….the hor­ror…” were Cap­tain Kurtz’s last words in Fran­cis Ford Coppola’s Apoc­a­lypse Now, the words of a man dri­ven mad as a result of the war he wit­nessed and took part in.

These mes­sages were repli­cat­ed in paint­ings and films such as The Cab­i­net of Dr. Cali­gari with its night­mar­ish visions of a haunt­ing som­nam­bu­list. Lat­er on and in more com­mer­cial terms, Ger­many even recog­nised the suc­cess of hor­ror with the word Angstlust, mean­ing a lust for fear.

Mon­sters in post­mod­ern Britain are not quite like Mary Shelley’s Dr. Franken­stein, with the exhi­bi­tion instead nod­ding to how Thatch­erism influ­enced the punk move­ment. Decon­struct­ed clothes and faces with heavy make up were an inter­pre­ta­tion of a dis­turb­ing real­i­ty. Eddie Cham­bers’ ​‘The Nation­al Flag’ is a clear image of a coun­try in pieces.

While Siouxsie Sioux, David Bowie and A Clock­work Orange dom­i­nat­ed as ​‘Mon­sters’ of the 70s and 80s, ​‘Ghosts’ then took cen­tre stage with the arrival of the inter­net. Roman­ti­cism in lit­er­a­ture intro­duced ghosts before in a dif­fer­ent man­ner, some­times even close to necrophil­ia. In the work of Edgar Allen Poe, Bram Stok­er and Baude­laire, the ​‘ghost’ was a beloved, beau­ti­ful woman. In Shake­speare, ghosts often sym­bol­ised kar­ma and reini­ti­at­ed a state of jus­tice – where the nat­ur­al order was dis­turbed, ghosts would appear to haunt until the right­ful order was re-estab­lished, such as in Mac­beth and Hamlet.

Since the dawn of home inter­net in the 90s, the world has been plagued with invis­i­ble E‑viruses, bugs, mass data sur­veil­lance, ini­ti­at­ing a new age of anx­i­ety, homo­pho­bia and racism, and enabling a new way to anony­mous­ly judge and bul­ly strangers. In Britain, Aphex Twin and Chris Cun­ning­ham gave this new eeri­ness a face and shows like Ghost­watch emerged on BBC.

Big Broth­er embod­ied the sur­veil­lance cul­ture on TV like no oth­er – peo­ple cho­sen for their race and social sta­tus enticed view­ers to watch the inevitable dra­ma unfold, suc­cess­ful­ly jus­ti­fy­ing its threat­en­ing slo­gan ​“Big Broth­er is Watch­ing You” bor­rowed from George Orwell’s 1984, in which the sur­veil­lance state was dystopi­an rather than enter­tain­ing. Gavin Turk’s ​‘Ghost Pop’ which pos­es Sid Vicious as Warhol’s Elvis Pres­ley with­out the pop art colour­ing, sig­ni­fies the chang­ing times, and that ulti­mate­ly there’s no return from death.

Witch­craft – as well as being a pop­u­lar trend among the hip­sters of East Lon­don – has deep cen­turies old roots in Britain through Druids, Pagans and Tarot. Orig­i­nal­ly, witch­es were asso­ci­at­ed with hav­ing a close rela­tion­ship with nature, using its plants and ener­gies to cre­ate med­i­cine and mag­ic. In the 70s British clas­sic The Wick­er Man shows an uncom­pro­mis­ing image of Scot­tish island peo­ple believ­ing in the gods of the ele­ments. Now itch­es are the new god­dess­es in human form, a force of nature with mil­lions of hash­tags and fol­low­ers on the ​‘gram. They embody resis­tance and recre­ation, embrac­ing all of human­i­ty and the earth. A new age of lib­er­at­ed fem­i­nism that is rebel­lious­ly loud and most of all ris­ing up against the patriarchy.

Whether you have a pas­sion for hor­ror as a genre or not, The Hor­ror Show! deliv­ers an eclec­tic dis­play of art­works and instal­la­tions, show­cas­ing how fright­en­ing cir­cum­stances can be a source of artis­tic inspi­ra­tion and pro­vide some tem­po­rary relief. Inter­est­ing­ly it also points out how hor­ror rarely affects the upper class­es – the haunt­ing and restric­tive mech­a­nisms of soci­ety seem to be reserved for the young and the broad­er pub­lic, unless you choose to be affect­ed by it. But if you want to see rich peo­ple shiv­er and suf­fer, there’s the cin­e­ma for that.

The Hor­ror Show! runs from 27 Octo­ber 2022 – 19 Feb­ru­ary 2023 at Som­er­set House.