I Read Dark Carnivals and I Still Think Jaws is a Family Movie

Halloween 2018

Dark Carnivals: Modern Horrors and the Origins of American Empire by W. Scott Poole
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I’m not sure how one could rewrite the title of this book to clarify that it’s not really about the history of the horror genre and how it reflects the American empire, but actually about the history of the American empire, explaining and illustrating some of the events via action, sci-fi, horror, and thriller movies that speak to the politics of the day.

But they need to, because I kind of feel snookered.

During some chapters, mind you, we get a little bit more of the former, and Poole’s claims in these chapters are liberally peppered with film mentions and analyses. A discussion of Poltergeist (remember their haunted house is built on a graveyard that was also supposedly built on an “ancient Indian burial ground”?) leads to a discussion of the history of European settlers’ long genocide of the Native American peoples, which leads to mentions of other movies that also use this “ancient Indian burial ground” trope. But even in this chapter, in which there are numerous horror movies that hint at that genocide, these mentions of Pet Sematary, The Amityville Horror, and The Shining really are just mentions, along the lines of “Here are some other movies with the same theme.” I wanted an analysis of each of these movies and how each speaks to this theme separately. What is the significance of the usage of an “ancient Indian burial ground” to now bury only pets? Or the significance of the undead from that burial ground becoming murderous against their guardians? Or in Amityville Horror, the significance of the conflation of demons with the ancient burial ground and the Catholic Church as another force that the horror must stop? Or how about the general opinion that the parents made up the entire original story to get out from under a mortgage they belatedly realized was WAY too big for their finances? Or what is the reasoning for why the Native American genocide had its climax so long ago and we’re only just horroring about it in the 70s and 80s, as well as what it means that these three were all books first?

Dunno, because we don’t get into any extensive semiotic analysis of any cultural artifact within the bounds of this book. The lens through which we’re meant to be studying American imperialism gets forgotten quite a bit in favor of simply laying out and opining on the history of American imperialism.

Throughout his book, Poole implies a dual responsibility that Americans have, in tune with these occasional films that metaphorically present a select atrocity that has been committed by their country. Poole asks, are the movies meant to pacify us Americans, desensitize us to the real horror around us, and we should watch them and be pacified, or are the movies meant to motivate us, to break us out of our shells of ennui, and we should watch them and then revolt?

cupcake sharks circa 2009

Poole illustrates this duality via continued reference to Jaws (which he claims pacifies and desensitizes us) and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (which he claims motivates us to revolt). I think it’s interesting that out of the two, Jaws is a “family” movie that I’ve watched with my kids several times since they were small, once even with an entire themed family dinner that included, among other delicacies, blue Jello studded with Swedish fish and cupcakes with half a Twinkie on top, arranged and frosted to look sort of maybe reminiscent of a shark breaking out of the water if you turned your head and squinted juuuust right. Texas Chainsaw Massacre, on the other hand, I watched exactly once, mostly through my fingers, and do not plan to ever so much as be in the same room with again, much less screen for even my now-adult daughters, much less with themed snack foods. Although I have SO many great ideas--meatloaf and smoked sausage-heavy, but still--about Texas Chainsaw Massacre-themed snack foods!

ocean Jello, complete with whipped cream waves and a graham cracker crumb beach!

I thought the strongest parts of Poole’s book were his discussion of wars and conquests that were so overtly American imperialist that even a child could make the connection, and the films that were made by the filmmakers influenced by those wars. A director (George A. Romero) and a special effects artist (Tom Savini) who brought their experiences explicitly into the visuals they created is strong stuff, and one of the few insights that will make me watch some of these films with new eyes. On a similar note, I was stoked when Poole started writing about The Serpent and the Rainbow, a movie that I watched by myself on the floor of my den WAY too many times as an unwholesomely unsupervised child, and which probably now explains a lot about me, ahem, but I didn’t get a ton more from the discussion than I got from watching the movie a dozen times at the age of 13. It’s racist and sexist, and its depictions of Haiti are fucked up. Also, tangent: that’s a good way to describe JD Vance!

One of the more annoying and obvious flaws in the book, at least to me who loves myself a good recommended list, is the absence of an index that lists the movies and where they’re discussed. You would not believe how long it took me to flip through the book--three times!--to find the Poltergeist discussion that I remembered. And if Poole ever got back to that discussion I’ll never know, because I’d have to re-read the book to find it. And God forbid that he at least included a list of all the cultural artifacts discussed in the book so we can watch them for ourselves. It would also let us see the titles like Independence Day and Fight Club that were included in the book even though they’re not horror titles.

On the whole, I did think that Poole’s thesis question of whether we’re meant to be pacified or inspired is significant and relevant, and it’s something that I’ll continue to think about when I watch horror. Instead of this comprehensive-ish history that offers references to films, though, I’d rather have had deeper discussions of fewer, select moments of American imperialism, with more extensive film references and analyses intertwined. Some of these imperialistic moments are clearly more ingrained in our collective consciousness than others, and I think that the movies that speak to those moments are saying much more than Poole was willing to tell us about here.

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