Clayton George Wickham - final thesis

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response from a spectator – fear – and it is because of this that horror demands an
analysis incorporating aesthetics, spectatorship and its relationship to perspective.
As shown, any number of different perspectives can be used to drive a film.
Horror, however, displays a heavy reliance upon perspective in order to create the
genre’s intended effect, fear, more often than others. I will use an example from
literature to illustrate. The M. R. James story “The Story of a Disappearance and an
Appearance” (1919) contains an example of perspective used to horrifying effect.
The story is told through a series of letters written regarding the eponymous
disappearance and appearance, centring on a supernatural Punch and Judy show. In
one letter, the character recounts a dream, dreams being a subject which Branigan
repeatedly addresses in the context of extreme character subjectivity. This dream
centres on a fantastical and brutal Punch and Judy show, involving dramatic and
graphic violence climaxing with a cloaked figure appearing in and emerging from
the painted background to give the Punch character his comeuppance. After the
cloaked figure lunges for Punch, James writes:
Everything on the instant grew dark. There was one long, loud,
shuddering scream, and I awoke to find myself looking straight into the
face of – what in all the world do you think? but – a large owl, which was
seated on my window-sill immediately opposite my bed-foot, holding up
its wings like two shrouded arms. I caught the fierce glance of its yellow
eyes, and then it was gone. (1919; 395)
The communication of fear and horror is demonstrated through James’s use of
adjectives and simile. The “long, loud, shuddering scream”, “the fierce glance of its