Rawhead Rex

Hm. That word fairly accurately represents my thoughts as I was reading Rawhead Rex by Clive Barker. This graphic novel certainly takes the word "graphic" to the maximum- what followed in the events of Rawhead Rex were bloody, gory, and ultimately just gross. Barker spares no details, in both content and visuals when it comes to characterizing the main subject for which the novel is named. There's slight humor in the appearance alone of Rawhead, but beyond that, the novel is pure carnography, a very applicable term I found when trying to search for a word that might encapsulate the sheer amount of gore within.

Even for a graphic novel about an ancient and terrifying monster, something described as entirely unhuman and behaves entirely unhuman, I was honestly more disgusted by the "human" qualities the creature possessed. The book includes urination and masturbation, the latter of which I found very unnecessary, and rather explicitly talks about Rawhead's desire or past inclination for raping women. Given the graphic qualities in all other facets of the novel, I fully expected to be given an explicit scene in which Rawhead does assault a woman in this way. Thankfully (and I say that with as much sincerity as possible) Barker does not include this type of scene, though honestly the results of the novel are not much better.

We're given an incredibly powerful monster who is older than pretty much everything else on Earth. He's been subdued for centuries, trapped and waiting, and has motivations of being seen as a god. Yet his weakness (because of course there has to be one, since everything has something) is... a Venus statue? Or rather, more specifically, a menstruating, birth-giving woman. The choice for this to be the weakness, at its core value, is odd. As Tim points out in his own blog post, this almost just doesn't make sense. Tim explains it as being a never-ending food source for Rawhead, because of the ability to give birth, and I have to agree. There is a slight spin that's nice, given that a fertile woman is given power instead of being seen as a weakness (to our side at least), but I feel it just creates another narrative in which horror equates "female = scary and bad". 

It's a common trope within horror- I've seen multiple discussions on especially the film Jennifer's Body. Men were horrified at the film at an unprecedented rate, despite enjoying other films that might be deemed as similar, because the attacker or "monster" was a woman- and beyond that, a woman who attacked others with her own sex. We see the same narrative paralleled in Rawhead, as he describes brutally assaulting women and being the one in power. He's a power trip gone extremely ancient and deadly. 

The narrative itself I wouldn't describe as having been scary to me, though it certainly hit "horrific." Or gorrific. Whichever you prefer.

To continue my tally even though the answer is obvious, would I feel safe (even though I'm not sure I would consider Rawhead as a "main character"- however the other male characters in the book certainly have an interesting way of dealing with things when they have families anyway)?

No.

That's it, that's all the explanation needed.

Breeding Ground

Breeding Ground, written by Sarah Pinborough, did start out as a good contender for one of my favorites in this class. It was creepy, unsettling, and touched more on making me feel scared as opposed to the previous readings we've done so far (and some of the readings I've done ahead). It also touched on a rather terrifying topic- birthing something that you have no idea what's inside of you. The narrative does start out in an interesting way too, since the Matt's (the main character) wife, Chloe, is revealed to be pregnant. Given the title, the reader already finds themself questioning what exactly Chloe is giving birth to.

The suspense builds. Women become aggressive and fat; they eat raw meat and telepathically communicate with one another; Matt finds out it's not just happening to Chloe but supposedly everywhere in the world. It isn't too much longer that the women give "birth" to the giant, white spider-like creatures dubbed 'widows'. 

This, unfortunately, is where I started to become a little less scared and a little more curious. I wanted answers as to what these spider creatures were. Thankfully one of my questions was answered- had Chloe ever been pregnant, or were women everywhere receiving pregnancy scares? That answer was revealed in the form of the half eaten corpse of a baby birthed alongside the spider creature. At least Chloe was pregnant. But what of the other women? What happened to them? Was it just sexually active women or women with partners? Why was the temperature increasing so drastically? Why did the men keep getting headaches when the spiders were growing, yet they disappeared when the widows were birthed? What did the webs inside their victims, such as when someone was bit, mean? Why are they averse and vulnerable to a deaf person's blood?

We know from the prologue that Matt escapes, since he's writing 15 months in the "future" and recounting the events from when everything began. Thus, I felt confident that we would receive a lot more answers as the narrative continued. Where did these widows come from? What exactly were these widows? Why, when we're introduced to Katie, was she not affected? Why was her younger sister Jane not affected? Was it age restrictive?

Likewise, I ran into a problem, conceptually, with the base idea that this only affected women. As a result, most of the book was dominated by male characters- and when there were women, they were 1. a child or 2. sexual interests. 

When we did come across "answers" they were vague, and undescriptive. "Genetically modified foods" is the explanation we're given. For everything. I understand a part of horror relies on the unknown, but I wanted more answers than that- a lot more. In addition, the ending we're given is open, vague, and only represents even more of a threat, with the black widows now coming out of men- also with no explanation. 

The book was enjoyable for it's creep factor, moreso than the other books we've read so far in terms of "scary" but overall I think there were far too many unanswered questions for me to really appreciate it.

Following my discussion of Neville in I Am Legend I've also elected to start a tally of "Would I feel safe near this main character?" and the answer for this book is -8/10 for how many times Matt described a woman as "slim." 

Funeral

I've commented before in other discussions about the relationship between horror and the absurd, and I think this piece, Funeral by Richard Matheson, can really be encompassed by the word absurd. However, the beginning of the short story starts out as more in line with a stereotypical "horror" narrative-- someone comes into a funeral home, asking for a funeral to be prepared for their own death, because their first death didn't have a "tasty" sending off.

However, the story quickly (as quickly as a five paged story can be paced) turns into one of hilarity and absurdity-- and indeed enough so it became hard for me to follow. Five more characters are introduced in quick succession in a way I found difficult to grasp, one right after the other. It took several times of rereading to parse out that each of them was representative of some of the more popular monsters within media, namely Ygor, Dracula, and a stereotypical witch. It took a Google search to figure out Ludwig was though the name was familiar, and I found out he was related to Frankenstein.

The story itself I found to be a little too chaotic and jumpy to really enjoy-- I spent too long trying to figure out what was going on rather than being able to enjoy what I was reading. However, I did appreciate the character of Morton Silkline, the narrator for the short story. Silkline is confronted with this rather horrific situation--a man has just declared his own funeral to take place the following Tuesday. Then, he meets creatures and monsters he's surely only heard of in fantasy or jest.

Yet at the end, the reader is able to see him come full circle with the arrival of a strange entity under recommendation of "a friend." At first he's petrified... then he touches the sack of gold he was just paid with and immediately overcomes his fears to start out a new line of work for the supernatural. Honestly, I kind of respect that decision. He realizes that maybe these things aren't so bad-- after all, he survived, nothing happened to him personally, and he got paid, as well as a recommendation already. Maybe it's shallow, but I think it's very real to be able to overcome certain fears or concerns especially when confronted with adequate compensation--more than adequate, honestly. And hey, there's always going to be a market for funerals, and I can't imagine monsters having been able to go very many places before Silkline's funeral home.

I Am Legend

Perhaps it's a result of living within a current pandemic, but having come directly out of reading World War Z straight to I Am Legend, I was struck by the similarities regarding specific themes- themes of survival, of perseverance, and, beneath it all, the cause of a disease run rampant. It was strange reading a book written in the 1950s that has such a strong parallel to the world today- or at least what the world could be in a near future.

However, one thing that I do want to call attention to specifically was the intriguing and unique take on vampires, in terms of what causes them. Going into the book, having watched the movie a few years back but honestly not remembering much of it, I had expected the book to be about zombies, based off of the little I could recall from the movie. I was definitely surprised to find it about vampires instead- but not the vampires that current trends have made them to be. These vampires are not dangerously seductive (though the constant references to the "lewd poses" of the women that the main character, Richard Neville, makes might suggest otherwise); they aren't living in a Victorian mansion with a penchant for the dramatic and in actuality centuries old, and no, they don't sparkle (in which I should mention that I'm coincidentally in the middle of watching the Twilight movies for the first time. Blame the friend who got me to do it). Instead, the vampires are created by a bacteria that Richard names "vampiris."

At this point the novel becomes a post apocalyptic horror story mixed with science fiction elements. Richard becomes obsessed with trying to figure out the mysteries of the vampiris bacteria- what causes it, how it spreads, and why the stereotypes of vampires that hold true really effect it, especially when in relation to the wooden stakes, being exposed to sunlight, and, in particular, why garlic repels the vampires. Certain things made sense to him, and how the bacteria reacted to these things became evident: the wooden stakes exposed the bacteria to air, where it shriveled and attacked the body, and same with sunlight. Eventually Richard even deduces that it's the smell that repulses the vampires, even if the chemical composition of it has no effect. There are other mysteries of course, such as why running water, mirrors, and crosses (or other religious symbols) effect them, but primarily Richard is obsessed with why and how they die.

As a character, however, I largely found myself disliking Richard. He's a man driven to the brink of madness, yes- that I understood. He smokes. He drinks excessively- more than excessively. He's desperate, and hasn't been around truly living people in months and years. He had to kill his own wife when she came back as a vampire. He has to listen to the vampires prowl outside his house every night. However, it was the comments that he made that had me wary of who he was as a person (though this might just as much be a fault against the author). The references Richard makes to women, and how they are portrayed in the book- how the vampiric women are constantly "posing like lewd puppets in the night on the possibility that he'd see them and come out." When he's shooting one of the more notable vampires, a "woman block[s] his view of Cortman and start[s] jerking up her dress"- this scene in particular struck me as off, namely because of the choice (inherently from the author) to, instead of doing something more active, a woman instead decides that stripping and seducing is more effective. 

There is, of course, the references later to how Richard within the first year of his isolation would not have had any qualms about violating a woman, and in fact how "no normal man could dedicate himself to any life that excluded sex." Maybe this book was more of a product of its time, and evidently some of the standards haven't lived up to today's world- yet ultimately I felt I wouldn't be able to trust myself around Richard, especially as the book progressed.

However, this does call attention to the title of the book itself. Richard, perhaps the last surviving person that is fully human, finds himself captured by the living vampires- all of whom are terrified of him because he has made himself into a monster to their standards, going out and killing them while they slept. He is no longer what is considered "normal"- he has become the monster, the abnormal, and the legend.