DARK CARNIVALS

How terrifying narratives reflect the grisly realities of the American past and present.

In this follow-up to Wasteland: The Great War and the Origins of Modern Horror, history professor Poole surveys imaginative connections between the horror genre and the most brutal aspects of modern American history. The author argues that the appeal of these narratives can tell us a great deal about how the nation has struggled to make sense of its implication in imperial violence. “So much of the truth of the last one hundred years survives not in museum exhibitions or patriotic celebrations or lengthy documentary treatments but in horror films,” he writes. Focusing on a broad selection of representative films, TV shows, and fiction, Poole links particular works with events such as the Vietnam and Iraq wars, drawing out the allegorical significance of monstrous antagonists and their gory misadventures. The author ably demonstrates that horror narratives commonly serve two coexisting yet opposing functions: promoting fantasies about the nation’s ultimate innocence by displacing responsibility for domestic injustices or military aggression abroad onto some other party and insinuating, in often subtle but always unsettling ways, that one cannot evade guilt for misdeeds done in one’s name. The author makes it clear that paying close attention to works routinely dismissed as mere mindless escapism can be uncannily revealing about how unpleasant truths are publicly and privately repressed. Poole’s style shares a spirit with the sensationalism of the works he explores, and his emphasis on blunt (and sometimes reductive) assessments of complex historical phenomena and their representation in horror narratives can prove distracting. Nevertheless, the author provides persuasive commentary on the political inflections and emotional appeal of both well-known and obscure works. He is particularly insightful in probing such cultural touchstones as The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, Jaws, and The Twilight Zone.

A lurid overview of some of the darkest dimensions of American history through the lens of the horror genre.