Several weeks ago, in late August and early September, a series of posts featured the PYF or Primal Yuck Factor, and described a procedure for calculating it—an actual formula was proposed. The idea was to formally quantify physically revolting or repellent features in a horror story. This in turn would provide a way to analyze and compare stories, either within a given author’s body of work, or across the work of other authors in the horror genre.
The
Primal Yuck Factor was not intended to be an absolute figure. Nor was it
considered the only source of a story’s effectiveness. Rather, it was proposed as a means to compare
relative magnitudes of revulsion
across scenes in a story, or to compare these values across stories. Though not the most important element in a
work of horror, it was hoped that the PYF may augment more traditional analyses
of plot, characterization, setting, and theme.
Insofar
as the enjoyment of a horror entertainment is a whole body experience, the PYF may offer a means to a deeper
understanding and appreciation of the work of horror writers like Lovecraft and
his colleagues.
So it
was a delight—mixed with some repugnance—to discover there are
specialists far more qualified than me who are doing research in the area of revulsion. Dr. Valerie Curtis is an anthropologist and
expert on cross-cultural hygiene practices. She directs the London School of
Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. She and
her colleagues are developing a new branch of scholarship called the ‘science
of revulsion’. That this research should
be based in England seems somehow appropriate.
Curtis
has coined an acronym for her underlying theory of why some materials and
situations are disgusting: "parasite avoidance theory" or PAT. The basic idea behind PAT is that revulsion
was critical to the early survival and evolution of our species. As the ‘forgotten emotion of psychiatry’, the
instinctual feeling of revulsion helped people avoid disease, deformity and
death, and so pass on the trait of “healthy squeamishness” to their posterity. This makes a certain practical sense when one
considers all the various noxious human and animal effluvia—and Curtis and her colleagues
do—that could be infectious.
To paraphrase
Lovecraft, it may be that the ‘oldest and strongest emotion of mankind’ is not fear,
not even fear of being eaten.
Biologically speaking, it may simply be disgust.
Curtis
likens parasite avoidance to the more dramatic fight or flight response, and
finds it even more critical for survival over time. She feels that disgust is an emotion that
controls our lives on many levels, determining our choice of food, clothing,
shelter, and relationships—often without our conscious awareness. Feelings of revulsion are the biological
precursors of social habits. From these,
morals, manners, personal hygiene and other more advanced social behaviors evolve. These habits allow us to feel safe and comfortable
with each other and not—well, revolted.
It
seems there must be countless examples of horror entertainments that include
some violation of these biologically based hygienic and moral principles. Just consider all the stories, games and
movies that feature infection by disease or parasite. The previous post discussed Lovecraft’s The Shunned House, where the author
perseverates on bad smells, mould, fungus, disease and exsanguination—a word that
sounds as disgusting as the process it refers to. Surely it would be fruitful, even purgative to apply the findings of
Curtis and her colleagues to the study of revulsion in horror.
Dr.
Curtis will be presenting her findings in a book called Don’t Look, Don’t Touch, The
Science Behind Revulsion due out next month (in the USA) from the University
of Chicago Press.
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