'A Terrible Dislocation of Souls'

Narrative and The Supernatural in

The Fictional Document

by

Richard Fox

A dissertation submitted to the University of Bristol

in accordance with the requirements of the degree of European Literatures

in the Faculty of Arts

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Introduction

In 1848, the Fox family of Hydesville, New York, were reported in the national press of being

able to communicate with the spirit world. Dubbed “the Rochester Knockings” during the ensuing

public attention, Kate Fox and her sisters allegedly channelled information from the afterlife by asking

questions to which spirits would reply by rapping and knocking on the Fox home walls. Almost

simultaneously, the first mass telecommunication cables were successfully installed across America,

including a Transatlantic deep-sea cable which linked the United States with Europe. Where science

revolutionised telecommunications, making previously time-consuming processes now instantaneous,

the Rochester Knockings precipitated modern Western fascination with seances, telepathy, and other

paranormal discourse.1 Both of these “founding mediums” supposedly offered answers to previously

impossible questions - the question of contact with the afterlife, and the question of instantaneous

mass communication. The effect on the public consciousness was an inseparable interaction of both

the supernatural and the scientific. Telecommunications gained an air of supernaturalism, where

geographical and temporal boundaries were overcome, giving communication the ability to “separate

the consciousness from the body”, whereas Spiritualism gained a modern scientific 'authenticity'

through mediums such as the Fox sisters: a group of ordinary woman with extraordinary skills,

embodying the domestication of a once-mythical phenomenon.2

During the twentieth-century and beyond, the expansion of communications media such as

radio, television, also mass accessibility information. For some, such advances might have signified a

new era of scientific rationalism. For others, objective or scientific technologies reflected, and in effect

quantified, the fantastic and the supernatural. Since then, artists have taken opportunities offered by

increasing dependency on mass media to highlight the disorienting effect of complete trust in the

incompletely knowable. This paper will discuss the genre of the fictional document, and how it exists

astride the dual realms of realism at first, and then the fantastic when the supernatural is 'reported', and

how unnatural phenomena provide a commentary on reliance on mass media and the interactivity it

allows. The supernatural in the fictional document also confronts the risks of the domestic and

personal infiltration from mass media, and the paradoxically alienating effect of random access to

1

Sconce, Jeffrey, Haunted Media: Electronic Presence from Telegraphy to Television (2000), p.242 Ibid., p.25

2

masses of potential knowledge.

In simple terms, the fictional document is usually created of literary or audio-visual origin. It

simulates an authentic document, and contains a narrative within the parameters of its format. In

literary history, the fictional document has two logical precursors: the epistolary and the frame tale. In the

tradition of epistolary fiction, narratorial voices often tend to be overtly and equally literary, with any

realism of indiscriminately-arranged or missing letters seeming a secondary concern. Conversely, the

fictional document instead tends to feature a naturalistic, demotic narrative (dependent on whether it

embodies an 'official' or 'personal' account, or variations thereof) and often reaches the reader or viewer

without the cohesion of context, sometimes with pages or sections missing. Where the traditional

frame tale tends to feature a primary extradiegetic narrator (i.e. previously part of, but now outside of,

the secondary narratives they are currently reporting) there exists no 'artefact' (no letter, no diary, no

photograph) as the basis of these multiplied narratives - only the narrator's vocalising of events. 3 The

fictional document instead tends to embody the artefact first, allowing any discernible narrative to stem

from and become affected by any formal inconsistencies.

The fictional document has been a particularly popular stylistic vehicle for Supernatural and

Horror fiction. Writers like Edgar Allen Poe, Bram Stoker, and H.P. Lovecraft, have produced many

texts shaped as first-hand 'accounts' of supernatural events, often chronicled with conspicuous detail.

Stoker's Dracula (1897), whilst inhabiting an intricate bricolage of several document formats (including

a ship's log, professional journals, and newspaper clippings) is ultimately a consummately Gothic text

where consistently rich, sensual description makes the fragmented projection of its myriad

“pseudodocuments” seem of secondary concern.4 In a similar capacity, H. P. Lovecraft's Dagon (1917),

whilst elaborately presenting the mythos of some ancient horror, is pointedly scholarly in its

description of an imminent threat, even though the narrator claims to be “writing this under an

appreciable mental strain”, and who at the end of the text finds time to comment on a noise at the

door, “as of some huge slippery body lumbering against it.” 5 According to Scott Brewster (in Punter,

2001), “Gothic does not merely transcribe disturbed, perverse of horrifying worlds: its narrative

structures and voices are interwoven with and intensify the madness they represent.” 6 In essence,

Gothic fiction allows the madness of reporting to become the poetics of reporting, where a potentially

objective narrative form becomes literary rather than realistic. Over time, the fictional document has

evolved into something more authentic, and arguably more uncanny in effect. As media in itself, the

genre parallels contemporary media experiences of everyday life - identifiable, interactive modes of

3 Genette, Gérard , Narrative Discourse: An Essay in Method, trans. by Jane E. Lewin (1980), p.2284 Miller, J. Hillis, Reading Narrative (1998), p.1105 Lovecraft, H. P., 'Dagon', in Necronomicon: The Best Weird Tales of H. P. Lovecraft, ed. by Stephen Jones (2008), p.96 Brewster, Scott, 'Seeing Things: Gothic and the Madness of Interpretation', A Companion to The Gothic, ed. by David Punter(2001), p.281

3

documentation such as pages from private journals discovered in media res and without formal

conclusion, or sets of objectively-worded meeting minutes along with accompanying photographs, or

(to give the fictional document its most prescient form) the video diary - an amateurishly-shot narrative

concerning one thing which involuntarily becomes evidential of supernatural phenomena, destabilising

any narrative familiarity whilst the viewer watches.

During the latter-half of the twentieth-century, writers began to elaborate further utilise the

effect of the supernatural within the fictional document. Theodor Sturgeon's Some of Your Blood (1961),

ostensibly a 'vampire story', reads as sets of professional medical correspondence about the disturbing

tendencies of a US soldier under psychiatric observation. By foregrounding the limits of subjectivity

within such an objective register, any 'horror' has to be envisaged by the reader independently of the

text. Some of Your Blood re-establishes a traditionally fictional phenomenon within a scientific spectrum:

through this particularly modern context (twentieth-century American advances in psychology,

medicine and the effects of military life) the fantastic becomes domesticated, and the once-abstract

becomes uncanny in its new-found intimate occupation of reality due to the reader's comprehension of

what has occurred beyond the document's sparse, objective narrative form.

When commenting of the efficiency yet frustration of communication through letters, Franz

Kafka said that, “The easy possibility of letter-writing must – seen theoretically – have brought into the

world a terrible dislocation of souls.”7 Kafka here decries the disruption of meaning, continuity, and

time which occurs during such an imperfect form of discourse. Due to the communicative

inconsistencies caused by potential ambiguity within a letter (or the time between letters, or even a

change of heart regarding contents after a letter has been sent) Kafka claims that this adds up to

nothing more than a “discourse with ghosts”, where what is received is never derived from the original

sender but rather a phantom bidden forth by the form's unavoidable ambiguities. It is through this

terrible dislocation of souls that the contemporary fictional document achieves prescience. In a time of

mass communication, which should entail mass distribution of knowledge, understanding should

theoretically be more easily attained than ever before. Yet through the metaphorical narrative disruption

of the supernatural, the fictional document instead foregrounds the alienating effects of digital mass

media, and how we often unwittingly beckon the uncanny into our own domestic environments by our

own means.

Critical framework

Although the primary texts for this paper consist of literature and film, there are areas where

critical analysis crosses over. In The Fantastic: A Structural Approach to A Literary Genre (1970) Tzvetan

Todorov describes genre as being “a structure, a configuration of literary properties, an inventory of

7 Kafka, Franz, Letter to Milena, trans. T. and J. Stern (New York: Schocken, 1954), p.259

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options.”8 If the fictional document is to be considered a genre, this framework will consider both

literary and film critical analysis predominantly, but also allow for cross-pollination between what could

otherwise be deemed specifically 'literary' and 'film' theory. Because this paper is an attempt to analyse

narrative, it is logical to suggest that separate media forms contain separate narrative structuring.

Therefore, although film is implicitly visual compared to literature, it will be film narrative that will gain

specific attention. Nonetheless, because factors such as the historical context and the evolution of

'documentary' media, and the manner by which each of the texts achieves a state of metamorphosing

into an 'account' of the supernatural, each text will also be analysed using specific frameworks as

befitting.

A significant theoretical text regarding the epistolary, but also applicable to the fictional

document in general, is Epistolarity: Approaches to a Form (Janet Altman, 1982). Altman proposes a

comprehensive framework analysing “the use of the letter's formal properties to create meaning.” 9 The

fictional document, like any genuine document, is ostensibly an account: on one hand, it can be a self-

consciously objective text which purports to offer a direct line of communication from one party (the

documenter/narrator) to another (the reader/viewer) coded within a specific register. On the other

hand, it may take the form of a personal diary or journal, not necessarily for the eyes of an intended

other, but a form of documentation nonetheless, and again within a befitting register. Like any narrative

text, a document will inevitably contain certain human characteristics such as reliance on memory,

description, and context (with varying degrees of subjectivity, unconscious or deliberate). Altman

perceives format as a “narrative instrument”, allowing the writer to focus on memory and reporting as

a “bridge between sender and receiver”, where the author can “emphasise either the distance or the

bridge.”10 In the case of documents which do not have (or never reach) their intended recipient, the

temporal and contextual bridge becomes significant in other ways. The eventual reader has to cohere a

text which exists context-less, encouraging notions of incompleteness and narrative disorientation.

Regarding the 'present tense' of a narrative when recorded, there is also the signification

between other time periods to consider. Regarding the “time of writing”, the narrator “is anchored in a

present time from which he looks toward both past and future events.”11 As well as the eventual

'present day' reception of the document, Altman suggests we also consider the Erzählzeit (or temporal

point of documentation) and the Erzählzeit Zeit (or temporal point of whatever 'past event' is being

documented.)12

Since the evolution of mass media in the latter-half of the twentieth-century, including reality

8 Todorov, trans. by Richard Howard (2008), p.149 Altman (1982), p.410 Ibid., p.1311 Ibid., p.117-11812 Ibid., p.123

5

television, cinematic special effects, and the self-editing capabilities of social media, demarcations

between fantasy and reality are seen to have softened. In many ways the simulation is indistinguishable

from the authentic, where the simulation has gained its own 'authenticity'. Jean Baudrillard in Simulacra

and Simulation (1981) states that “simulation threatens the difference between “true” and “false”, the

“real” and the “imaginary””.13 For example, a fictional documentary with the imperfect “actuality

footage” of a film student's inexperience can be as believable as any mainstream production, providing

it retains authenticity.14 Yet even when such a film becomes an unexpected account of supernatural

phenomena, its 'reality' can be retained - any fear or horror felt by the viewer will still be 'real'. Of

course, it is not solely through explicitly showing supernatural phenomena that the fictional document

achieves narrative destabilisation. Rather than simply presenting horror, the narrative itself often

becomes fantastic, to use Todorov's term (1970). The fantastic is the hesitation between which a

character, or the reader (or both) considers seemingly inexplicable events to be either a result of human

machination or the supernatural.15 The term is closely-linked to Sigmund Freud's psychoanalytical

notion of the uncanny, which, according to Anneleen Masschelein in The Unconcept: The Freudian

Uncanny in Late-Twentieth-Century Theory (2011), can be summarized “as a blend of psychological and

aesthetic estrangement”, and a “disturbing unhomeliness that characterises human existence in the

world, but tempered by mild, surrealist undertones and the guise of familiarity.”16 Todorov claims that

this hesitation is overcome by either entering the uncanny (with its relatable yet simultaneously

alienating effect), or the marvelous (which can remain “unexplained, unrationalized”, or suggests the

literal existence of the supernatural.)17 The texts presented here at times occupy both the realms of

both the uncanny and the marvelous, as will be elaborated.

Regarding to the idea of the fictional document's evolution, later examples of media simulation

prove effective by satirising the forms of they simulate. Ghostwatch (dir. Lesley Manning, UK 1992), a

fictional live television broadcast by the BBC from a 'haunted house' in suburban London. The

programme begins as a standard live television production, but gradually the narrative collapses as

disorientating events occur within the house and then in the television studio itself, culminating in a

disturbing irresolution. Ghostwatch is considered a successful “fake documentary.” According to

Alexandra Juhasz and Jesse Lerner, in F is for Phony: Documentary and Truth's Undoing (2006), “Fake

documentaries imply, sometimes state, and often critique the crucial relations between documentary

and the textual and actual authority it assumes, reflects and constructs.” 18 Ghostwatch feels mimetically

authentic (even down to the use of several then-recognisable British 'household name' personalities,

13 Baudrillard, trans. by Shelia Faria Glaser (1981), p.414 Wells, Paul, The Horror Genre: From Beelzebub to Blair Witch (2004), p.10915 Todorov (2008), p.2516 Masschelein (2011), p.14717 Todorov (2008), p.5218 Juhasz and Lerner, eds. (2006), p.9-10

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such as Michael Parkinson and Sarah Greene) and it is from this crucible of authenticity that the

supernatural events gain a firm, unexpected grounding. Through the resulting disorientation, Ghostwatch

is a satire on public trust in television, and how expectation and reliance on the medium is a precarious,

unfounded discourse.

In comparison, two primary filmic texts used in this paper, REC ([●REC], dir. Jaume

Balagueró, Spain 2007) and Troll Hunter (Trolljegeren, dir. André Øvredal, Norway 2009) share certain

tropes of the fake documentary, such as the fact the viewer understands that these are “in part not

documentaries,” therefore, “both reception systems (the imaginary and the informational) are

operational.”19 However, unlike the fake documentary, the films metamorphose into something beyond

what appears to be their 'original remit'. Any narrative the viewer initially comprehends is gradually

altered. Ghostwatch – initially identifiably by its name – is a programme about the supernatural: however,

Troll Hunter (the name given to the actual Norwegian motion picture, not the 'original' student

documentary footage it consists of) does not begin with any supernatural pretext, and neither does

REC. The supernatural fictional documentary (rather than the conspicuously-named 'fake'

documentary) replicates authentic documentary tropes such as ones which Stella Bruzzi in New

Documentary: A Critical Introduction (2006) calls the “journey film” an account of a subject's progress,

which is invariably “structured around encounters and meetings.”20 Such organic progression inevitably

leads to unpredictability – this is another strength of the film's narrative alteration. Regarding

unpredictability, Bruzzi claims “non-fiction films are now more likely to be constructed around such

instabilities as memory, subjectivity and uncertainty.”21

The fictional document, rather than the diegetic motion picture or novel, is usually presented

through an imperfect viewpoint. When discussing the differences between focalisation and ocularisation in

A Companion to Literature and Film (2004), François Jost presents focalisation as designating “the

cognitive point of view adopted by the narrative, with the equalities or inequalities of knowledge

expressed at their full strength.”22 Alternatively, ocularisation is “the relation between what the camera

shows and what the characters are presumed to be seeing.”23 This presumption regarding a difference

between a what a character 'sees' and what the camera 'captures' adds a level of inconsistency,

compounding viewer disorientation. At points like this, narratives can take independent paths,

differentiating perhaps entirely from what the viewer believes they are watching.

At other times, contemporary media encourages an independently experienced 'expansion' of

narratives, such as with paratextual media. The advent of the Internet has meant that, as well as the

19 Juhasz and Lerner, eds. (2006), p.16, parenthesis in original20 Bruzzi, New Documentary: A Critical Approach (2006), p.8121 Ibid., p.8522 Jost, François, 'The Look: From Film to Novel, an Essay in Comparative Narratology' in A Companion to Literature and Film, ed. by Alessandra Raegno and Robert Stam (2004), p.7423 Ibid., p.74

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conventional paratext of films trailers or press reviews to encourage the film-watching public's

anticipation, filmmakers can now produce countless paratextual works which can compliment, extend,

or confuse the film's principle narrative. In Reinventing Cinema: Movies in the Age of Media Convergence

(2009), Chuck Tryon refers to this “process of incompleteness” as a way of encouraging audiences to

“extend their consumption into other outlets beyond the initial theatrical screening.” 24 For example, for

The Blair Witch Project (dir. Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sánchez, USA 1999) the filmmakers also

produced fictional documentaries and textbooks which contained interviews with relatives and

colleagues of the 'missing students', and expanded on the Blair Witch mythos. The advent of the

audience's deviation from relying solely on cinema-screened narrative has made film-watching an

interactive experience. This is of course not a new phenomena. According to Lev Manovich in The

Language of New Media (2001), “All classical, and even moreso modern, art is “interactive” in a number

of ways. Ellipses in literary narration, missing details of objects in visual art, and other representational

“shortcuts” require the user to fill in the missing information.”25 Where the contemporary film might

have trailers, websites or other media for the viewer to independently access, in actual fact the presence

of such paratext makes the viewing process much more open to interpretation or disorientation.

Paratext is a deliberately contrived media strategy, which, although often appearing random and organic

in accessibility, still requires us to “identify with someone else's mental structure.”26

In an era of “transmedia storytelling”, where mass media and mass forms of media have allowed

for the random access of fragmented narrative, interpretation of text can rely as much on cultural

context and personal experience as it does media format or interactivity. The fictional document, as

analysed here, is a genre which can simultaneously occupy the liminal spaces between technology and

history, the homely (heimlich) and the unhomely (unheimlich), and ultimately the corporeal and the

incorporeal, whilst all the time looking for that small, perhaps imperceptible, window of hesitation,

then acceptance, from the reader.2728

24 Tryon (2009), p.3025 Manovich, quoting Ernst Gombrich from 'Art and Illusion: A Study in Psychology of Pictorial Representation', 1960 (2001), p.5626 Ibid., (2001), p.6127 Tryon (2009), p.3028 Smith, Andrew, discussing Sigmund Freud's psychoanalytical terms in The Ghost Story 1840-1920: a Cultural History (2010), p.175

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1

The Literary Document

The principle texts addressed in this chapter will be Robert Aickman's Pages From a Young Girl's

Journal (from Cold Hand in Mine, 2008 edition) and China Miéville's Reports of Certain Events in London

(from Looking For Jake & Other Stories, 2005 edition). Robert Aickman's fiction is often loosely classified

as Horror, although Aickman himself preferred the term “strange stories.”29 Aickman's fiction is noted

for generally avoiding traditional Horror tropes such as “monsters, werewolves, worms, rats, bats and

things in bandages.”30 Instead, his works tended to address senses of “reticence, allusiveness, and

mystery”: psychological and sensitive tales, often culminating in “ambiguous or indefinite

implications.”3132 Many of Aickman's protagonists become affected by the events described, whether

due to psychological or external forces, and which often instigates a form of equally estranged empathy

in the reader. Pages From a Young Girl's Journal (1975), although ostensibly carrying Aickman's signature

techniques of a psychologically-complex narrator and inexplicit malevolent forces, is a stylistic

departure. Presented as its prosaic title claims, the story is one complete artefact - a set of chronological

entries, purportedly extracted from a teenage girl's personal journal, with no framing narrative or

context. It is also Aickman's only literary acknowledgement to vampires (although the term itself never

appears.) The result is a narrative which is authentic in form, but through a calculated graduation begins

to alienate the reader by deviating from the innocence of the mundane to the incoherence of horror.

Aickman's tale is partly a satire of the perpetuated mythos surrounding nineteenth-century Gothic

literary hierarchy: through the literary domestication of the vampire via the mimetic authenticity of a

teenager's journal, Pages harnesses the supernatural using the technique of the personal narrative rather

than the distancing abstraction often found in third-person narratives.33 In another capacity, Pages

provides a commentary on the early- to mid-twentieth-century literary preoccupation with the

'monstrous personal chronicle', and the fallibility of assumed authenticity.34 This chapter will examine

29 Straub, Peter, 'Introduction', The Wine-Dark Sea (2008), p.7 30 Ibid., p-7-831 Fonseca, Anthony J., 'Alone With The (Archetypal) Horrors: Monstrous Women in Robert Aickman's Strange Stories', Aickman Studies, ed. by Gary William Crawford, vol. 1 : 1 (2014), p.1032 Valentine, Marcus, 'Studies of Sad Beauty: Robert Aickman, Philip Steegan and Arthington Worsley', in Crawford (2014), p.933 Gordon, Joan and Veronica Hollinger, Blood Read: The Vampire as Metaphor in Contemporary Culture (1997), p.234 Scholes, Robert, The Crafty Reader (2001), p.109

9

how Aickman's text operates by oscillating between the realistic and the fantastic, and how this

instigates narrative disorientation which demands, but purposefully eludes, readerly comprehension.

China Miéville's fiction, like Aickman's, is also loosely categorised as Horror, but is more

intimately associated with Weird fiction. Miéville claims one of the principle tenets of Weird is

description, “with an excess of specificity, an accursed share of impossible somatic precision.” 35

Miéville's style often plumbs depths of intense, near-anatomical description of character, place and

situation: mimetic realisations which ensure little detail is lost in readerly visualisation of the fantastic or

horrific. Considered a writer at the forefront of a New Wave of Weird fiction (with roots of influence

stemming from H. P. Lovecraft, the 'Scientific Romances' of Jules Verne, and sometimes with

contemporary political Socialist allegory), Miéville considers the fantastic as refraction rather than

reflection of the real world, with the aim that, through the fantastic, “you can pick at the skin of the real

world better on some level”,36 compared to literary realism. This intimate picking at the skin exemplifies

Miéville's attempts to bring both fantasy and reality as close together as possible, encouraging discursive

friction. Reports of Certain Events in London emphasises such a liminal cognitive plane. Like Aickman's

Pages, Miéville's story consists of a document. Although where Pages is a complete artefact, Reports

instead discusses and presents the artefact via a narrator who has it in their possession. Rather than

adhering to the frame tale format, Miéville's text explicitly presents the artefact as a physical object present

at the time of narration. The artefact is an envelope containing purportedly secret meeting minutes,

memos, photographs and notes regarding supernatural phenomena called “Viae Ferae” - a series of

purportedly sentient thoroughfares which can appear and disappear anywhere at will. Instead of being

situated solely outside the artefact's narratives, Miéville's narrator seemingly becomes part of the

complex history of the phenomena. In Reports, Miéville offers on one level a commentary on the

objective rigidity of bureaucracy (the reader will be of course familiar with the interminable routine of

professional memorandums and other forms of fast-tracked information.) But as the documents are

presented in individual detail, the artefact becomes teratological: between these objective accounts of

the supernatural there are interwoven subjective, opinionated secondary-narratives. Such elements only

confound and dismantle any narrative cohesion.

In a way, Miéville's story becomes a commentary on the disorientation of contemporary

hyperreality. Baudrillard (1981) describes hyperreality as “the generation of models of a real without

origin or reality', the seemingly unchallenged legitimisation of simulation, and the 'resurrection of the

figurative where the object and substance have disappeared.”37 The supernatural phenomena disclosed

in Reports are cognitively dissonant – it is extremely difficult for the reader to conceive of “Rouge

35 Miéville, China, 'M. R. James and The Quantum Vampire: Weird; Hauntological: Versus and/or and/or or?', Collapse IV: Concept Horror, ed. by Robin Mackay (2008), p.10536 Naimon, David, 'A Conversation with China Miéville', The Missouri Review, vol. 34 : 4 (2011), p.63 37 Baudrillard, trans. by Shelia Faria Glaser (1981), p.3

10

Streets” – yet the objective form of the document implies the possibility of conception (even if

conceived by the unseen others who 'report' it.) This chapter will examine how, through this gulf of

dissonance between narrator, documenter(s) and reader, Miéville satirises the debilitating effect of the

hyperreality of contemporary multimedia, and the uncanny effect of how 'random access' to seemingly

fathomless information, rather than informing or nurturing comprehension, in fact, paralyses it.

Pages From a Young Girl's Journal (1975)

The text is a set of personal journal entries, chronologically penned by an unnamed English girl

in her early teens, whilst she and her family travel through Europe. The events reported occur in media

res in Ravenna, Italy, sometime during 1819. As expected from illicitly reading someone's personal

writings, Pages begins ostensibly as a surreptitious collection of opinions (“I don't like my room. It's

much too big...”, “Sometimes I really hate being a girl”), and of longings (“before we set out from my

dear, dear Derbyshire”), as well as general reporting of the day's events as experienced. 38. According to

Altman's epistolarity framework (1982), Pages resembles aspects of the lettre-confidence, where the fictional

document “merely reports events and the writer and receiver play a passive role.”39 The narrator here

may not offer accounts in order to encourage 'action' in the reader, but in actual fact, due to the journal

being private, the reader's role is not entirely passive: it is voyeuristic. The result is that the reader comes

to the text unbidden, finding themselves responsible for identifying narrative or contextual cohesion as

there is no epistolary discourse to engage with.40 What are deemed to be the narrator's purest accounts

and opinions (as far as written language permits) are exposed. The reader simply has to decipher the

linguistic register to access the narrative.

Pages is stylistically authentic, adhering to recognisable journal tropes, including near-stream of

consciousness reporting, modality, self-correction, and parenthetical asides. In one particular entry, the

narrator examines the act of keeping a journal itself:

I write down words on the page, but what do I say? Before we started, everyone told me that, whatever

else I did, I must keep a journal, a travel journal. I do not think that this is a travel journal at all. I find

that when I am travelling with Papa and Mamma, I seem hardly to look at the outside world.

(Pages, 65)

Aickman's metacommentary on the journal's lack of objective purpose serves the reader by

38 Aickman (2008) p.6339 Altman (1982), p.840 Ibid., p.120

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providing a warning preceding inconsistency. The narrator, on the one hand, clearly writes out of some

sense of duty. Yet it is through writing that they realise they can 'admit' how they actually feel, including

their detachment to travelling with their parents. When discussing the abundance of actual personal

journals which were being published between the World Wars and beyond by modernist writers, Robert

Scholes describes the narrative of many of them as constituting “formal monstrosity”, where the

reader needs to “expect a looseness of structure, a lack of final closure in many circumstances.” 4142

Through the encapsulating term “monstrous personal chronicle”, Scholes does not necessarily mean

subject matter, but rather monstrous in the text's overall “lack of shape”, and “lack of formal

necessity.”43 Regardless of the actual subject matter during the initial entries of Pages, the reader is

schematically prepared for any prosodic turbulence, so to speak, which forms part of what Chuck

Tryon (2009), when discussing the context of fiction prior to twenty-first century mass media, calls the

“process of incompleteness”: the motifs of ellipses, unreliable narration, assumption and other literary

devices which in contemporary terms encourage readerly “interactivity” with the text. 44 By pooling

together schematic expectations regarding form, the reader could potentially percept character traits in

the narrator and identify narrative.

It is when the narrator begins to report conflicting, seemingly inexplicable events that schematic

coherence is challenged. During one entry, the narrator claims to have seen 'something unexpected', as

they were “going upstairs to bed” one night.45 They discover the contessina (their host's young

daughter) being “hugged by a man”, whom they assume “could only have been one of the servants,

though I was not really able to tell.” The contessina and the man are reported as occupying “complete

darkness”, and “never moved a muscle” as the narrator comes upstairs. Several entries later, the

narrator reports engaging with a male figure at a social event, who appears “quite as if he had emerged

from between the faded tapestries that covered the wall or even from the tapestries themselves.” 46 The

narrator soon becomes infatuated with this anonymous figure, claiming that, during the party,

“Everything he said (at least after that first conventional compliment) spoke to something deep within

me, and everything I said in reply was what I really wanted to say.”47 Yet during the party, and each

subsequent time he is reported to appear, no other character seems to acknowledge the figure. The

narrator unconsciously attempts to rationalise the figure's lack of presence around the others as being

down to his bashfulness towards “showing himself in his full years by the bright lights of the supper

tables”, and that his ability to return to the invisibility of shadows being simply out of social politeness.

41 Altman (1982), p.12442 Scholes (2001), p.11043 Ibid., p.10944 Tryon, Chuck, Reinventing Cinema: Movies in The Age of Media Convergence (2009), p.3045 Aickman (2008), p.7346 Ibid., p.7847 Ibid., p.79, parentheses in original

12

Christie Berthin (2010) examines states of the “supernatural Real” in Gothic fiction, and how the

vampire remains “singular and unique” by not being reflected in a mirror, or by having no earthly

double, therefore remaining one of a kind.48 Because Aickman's supposedly supernatural figure is

acknowledged solely by the narrator, he remains Real, not dissipated by the multitudes of excuses

brought about by language.

The rationalisations utilised by the narrator soon shift towards purer encapsulations of the

figure's supernatural form. At night, the figure regularly visits the narrator's private chambers, and is

accounted doing so in the following days' entries. The encounters apparently begin to have an

intoxicating effect on the narrator, who consciously exclaims that, “As well as being torn by emotion, I

am worn to a silken thread.”49 Unspoken themes of vampirism – a vulnerable female being preyed

upon, seduced by, and gradually 'sapped of life' by a mesmeric predator – become foregrounded. Even

the narrator's semantics of description become progressively more Gothic. The metamorphosis

towards vampirism is at first represented corporeally when the narrator's mother pricks her finger

during needle-work: the narrator pounces and sucks the finger ravenously, later reporting how “The

strangest part was that it tasted delightful; almost like an exceptionally delicious sweetmeat!” 50 When the

narrator is shocked by her own “positively irreverent thoughts” whilst she finds herself “wondering how

efficacious God's Word could be for Salvation when droned and stumbled over by a mere uncanonized

layman such as Papa”, the metamorphosis from the humanity of accepted belief to the inhumanity of

blasphemy foregrounds psychological effects also. The narrator's increasingly-abstract thinking also

begins to exemplify traditionally Gothic imagery, with themes of blood, nocturnal activity, and sexual

undertones:

The old moon is drenching my sheets and my night-gown in brightest crimson. In Italy, the moon is

always full and always so red. Oh, when next shall I see my friend, my paragon, my genius!

(88)

Although Aickman clearly adopts recognisable genre tropes, the intention is to frame the

psychological transformation of the narrator. The externalities of the 'real world' appears to remain

mimetically authentic, and in fact satirise the “writing of excess” of the Gothic. 51 Throughout previous

entries, the narrator professes admiration (and adoration) of Percy Shelley and Lord Byron, whom she

excitedly knows currently live in a nearby property. She longs to meet them, wishing privately that they

48 Berthin, Christine, Gothic Hauntings: Melancholy Crypts and Textual Ghosts (2010), p.3649 Aickman, p.8350 Ibid., p8551 Botting, Fred, 1966, quoted in Punter (2001), p.283

13

had been invited to social events she attends. Yet when the narrator unexpectedly encounters Byron

and Shelley out riding one afternoon, her reports are more anatomical than poetic:

I fear that my main impression was of both giaours looking considerably older than I had expected and

Lord Byron considerably more corpulent (as well as being quite greyheaded, though I believe only at the

start of his life's fourth decade). Mr Shelley was remarkably untidy in his dress and Lord Byron most

comical.

(87)

Aickman's caricaturisation of the writers subverts not only the expectation of idolatry, but also

the ever-pervasive draw of eighteenth-century Gothic literature itself, especially when reliant on its own

superficial tropes. Through their underwhelming corporeality, Aickman attempts to expose the

mythologising of literary figures, framing their works according to hitherto unspoken human limitations.

In this way, Aickman's appropriation of Gothic tropes offers, as Mieke Bal (2006) deems it, a

“reframing” of the Gothic, opposite to historical interpretation.52 Instead of reconstituting the

semantics of vampirism to write a traditional Horror story, and instead of utilising the appropriate

registers of the fictional document for solely a journal-shaped narrative, Aickman interlaces the effects

of both genres in order to create a singular narrative.

The final entries see what was a gradual narrative disintegration become more swift. Readerly

empathy towards the narrator's experiences lessens as she explicitly differentiates between the familiar

narrative of the corporal world and the unclear narrative of her seducer's nocturnal realm. Although

written throughout as a personal journal, the final few entries feel censoriously private as the narrative

retracts further from reality (as if the narrator is gradually starved of it.) She begins to find less reason to

write, claiming, after three days of no entries, that “Nothing to relate but him, and of him nothing that

can be related.”53 The fragmentation of time during the final entries emphasises, and distorts, the space

between the Erzählzeit (time of narration), and the Erzählzeit Zeit (time of narrated action).54 Although

written in present-tense at this stage, the immediacy of the few events reported, and how soon or after

the reader eventually reads them, is impossible to tell, meaning the text exists in temporal polyvalence,

where it is relative to innumerable moments, yet none can be accounted for or contextualised.55

Ultimately, Pages becomes an uncanny text due to the same “distortion, fragmentation and

52 Bal, Mieke, A Mieke Bal Reader (2006), p.29253 Aickman (2008), p.9254 Ibid., p.12355 Ibid., p.118

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layering of space and time”, which gave it a sense of mimetic authenticity in the first place. 56 As the

narrator's humanity supposedly becomes diminished, so to does the relatability of events. She begins to

adopt an atavistic point of view, commenting of the wolves, which now encircle the grounds below her

balcony at night, as being “prominent among my new people. My blood will be theirs, and theirs

mine.”57 According to Zanger (1997), an important effect of diminishing the “role of the human” in

Vampire fiction is that “the sympathies of the reader or viewer no longer have a human locus to which

they can attach themselves, no human character with whom to identify.”58 In the final entry, the

narrator is alone, seemingly abandoned by the other characters, but content with solitariness. She

becomes closed-off from other people: a form of “Spectralisation”, as Smith calls it (2010), whereby

she now effectively haunts her own narrative.59 The text ends abruptly in a once-occupied property,

which is now as destitute as the narrator herself:

Somehow I have found my way back to bed. It has become exceedingly cold, almost icy. For some

reason I think of all the empty rooms in this battered old palazzo (as I am sure it once was), so fallen

from their former stateliness. I doubt if I shall write any more. I do not think I shall have any more to

say.

(95)

This final entry emphasises the narrator's “spectral-doubling”: this transformed narrator uses the

conduit of the original narrator one last time, and finds it wanting.60 They have fully entered the realm

of the Supernatural Real, which cannot be represented through traditional narrative. “To speak the

Real”, claims Berthin once again, “is to avoid the Real by turning its unrepresentability into an image, a

concept or an approximation.”61 In this final sentence, readerly voyeurism is foregrounded more than

previously. The reader witnesses the moment when the narrator decides to abandon the narrative, and

the exposed reader is left desiring answers or a continuation. Here, Aickman indicates not only

discursive limitations of that most 'human' of forms of documentation, but also the limitations of

human comprehension regarding the absolutely alien. Steven J. Mariconda (2007), when discussing

horror writing, comments on how Aickman's own take on Horror is “free-floating”, and “seems to

have no locus.”62 In Pages, Aickman comments on the 'free-floating' reality of comprehension: how the

56 Masschelein (2011), p.14957 Aickman (2008), p.9558 Zanger, Jules, 'Metaphor in Metonymy: The Vampire Next Door', in Gordon and Hillinger (1997), p.2159 Smith, Andrew, The Ghost Story 1840-1920: A Cultural History (2010), p.460 Ibid., p.461 Berthin (2010), p.3662 Mariconda, Steven J., 'The Haunted House', in Icons of Horror and The Supernatural, ed. by S. T. Joshi (2007), p.293

15

well-worn tropes of the Gothic and modern Journal genres can create something that is, ultimately,

more myth than reality, and how idolatry and expectation often means the actuality of something being

inevitably disappointing. Yet, used outside of eighteenth-century literary methods, and instead narrated

with contemporary psychological authenticity, the use of the literary vampire, as Aickman has here used

“at the end of an unprecedented secular century”, can achieve a much more intimate effect, brought on

by the simulated realism of the artefact but which, as Aickman himself claims, exposes “the void

behind the face of order.”63 64

Reports of Certain Events in London (2005)

In a 2011 interview for The Missouri Review, when discussing the uses and effects of the fictional

back-story, China Miéville claims, “I very much like and have always liked books in which I felt like I

just got off the wrong airplane. I didn’t know what was going on, and I trusted the writer to slowly

unfold not even necessarily everything, but enough where I could stumble my way through the streets

of wherever I was.”65 The metaphor of topographical disorientation is not only a key component of

Miéville's Weird fiction, but also relevant to the establishment the supernatural within the fictional

document. Miéville goes on to claim that, paradoxically, such incompleteness creates more of a “sense

of totality”, and a more “vivid world”, than if context or narrative were explicit. Such linearity can

often result in absence of readerly intrigue or engagement.66 If Aickman's Pages exists in a contextual

vacuum, whereby any narrative 'sense' must be acquired solely through readerly effort, Miéville's Reports

of Certain Events in London (2004) instead offers contextual fragments, but which ultimately equate to a

similarly disarming conclusion as Aickman's text - the main difference being that Miéville initially

purports to form a dialogue with the reader, before ultimately revealing the alienation caused by

searching for answers to the inexplicable.

In what begins with homodiegetic authenticity, the narrator of Reports claims to be called

“China Miéville”, who is “a professional writer”, living on “—ley Road”, London.67 Although the text

explicitly identifies the narrator, the omission of a full address foregrounds narrative instability. Such

elision implies censorship (which, although understandable because the author may not want personal

details published, nonetheless already leaves the reader external to any complete narrative.) Introducing

the artefact, the narrator describes it as a 'large package' containing many documents, which has “found

its way, slowly” to them, and which apparently should have been delivered to one “Charles Melville”

63 Aickman, Robert, from the introduction to 'Dark Forces: New Stories of Suspense and Supernatural Horror', 1977, as quoted in Joshi (2007), p.240 64 Gordon, Joan and Veronica Hollinger (1997), p.365 Naimon, David, 'A Conversation with China Miéville', The Missouri Review, vol.34 : 4 (2001), p.5666 Ibid., p.5867 Miéville, China, Looking for Jake & Other Stories (2005), p.55

16

instead, but it takes them “a good few minutes”, of examination before they realise the error.68

The narrator then begins to 'present' the document to the reader, but not before contextualising

it by explaining that most of the documents are photocopied, “many with pages missing” (again

reiterating narrative inconsistency: photocopying would obscure any censorship just as well as simply

omitting pages.)69 They also claim they were “casual” about how they laid the documents down after

initially handling them, therefore cannot confirm “that this was how they were originally organised.” 70

The documents are then presented individually, each containing individual textual layouts, typefaces and

linguistic registers (some are official meeting minutes - some are hand-written, subjective notes - others

are printed or typed texts featuring hand-written marginalia.) In epistolarity terms, Miéville's text is a

lettre-drame, whereby “the action” progresses through the documents themselves, provoking reaction or

functioning as an agent in the plot.71 Where Aickman's lettre-confidence passively reported events, Reports

instead encourages direct interactivity between the narrator with the document, and, in the manner by

the which the narrator consciously 'shows' us it, interactivity between the narrator, the document and

the reader. As well as engaging with the text via identifying semantic tropes such as unreliable narrative,

the reader is also forced to equally engage with the supernatural elements, which, after accumulating

various pieces of information throughout the papers, seems to consist of sightings of “Viae Ferae”, or

“Rogue Streets” - a group of sentient thoroughfares which have the ability to appear (or “occur”, to

use the artefact's own terminology) or disappear (“unoccur”), seemingly at will. 72 When occurring, the

phenomena 'attach' themselves to other thoroughfares in the area, or sometimes appear between two

normally terraced homes, before unoccuring again, with the homes re-terracing. The effect of the

supernatural in Reports is cognitively dissonant. Due to the mimetic authenticity of the narrative form,

conceptualisation of something immobile like actual streets which are able to travel has no precedent.

Like Aickman's vampire, Miéville's phenomena occupies the Reality of having no 'double' - no fixed

reference or figuration. (Indeed, some witnesses in Reports even fail to fully acknowledge Viae Ferae, in

a similar capacity to the characters in Pages.)73 Reports is therefore ultimately an uncanny text, and in a

particularly prescient capacity due to the manner by which the reader has to navigate the document to

attain any cohesion. Masschelein, when discussing the late twentieth- and early twenty-first century

interpretations of the uncanny, claims that it can be “summarized as a blend of psychological and

aesthetic estrangement, political and social alienation', tempered by 'mild, surrealist undertones and the

guise of familiarity.”74

68 Miéville (2005), p.5569 Ibid., p.5670 Ibid., p.5671 Altman (1982), p.872 Miéville (2005), p.6873 Ibid., p.6474 Masschelein (2011), p.147

17

From a technological perspective, through its interactive structure with information randomly

placed throughout, Reports can be seen as a commentary on hypertextuality. The document apes the

bureaucratic formalism of particularly Western modes of informational bureaucracy, especially within

business or government. Such registers will be identifiable to the reader, therefore the random accessing

of fragmented information in order to identify narrative cohesion feels applicable.75 As a narrative,

Reports exists in what Manovich, in discussing contemporary media forms, calls “semi-abstraction”,

which requires the reader to “reconstruct represented objects from a bare minimum.” 76 In the thirty

years since Aickman's Pages, the fictional document, like the mass media it is intrinsically linked to, has

evolved to adopt a bricolage of stylistic registers which in many ways reflect mental processes more so

than literary narrative. Aickman's text re-appropriated the Gothic genre of the vampire into the realm

of the psychologically mimetic (with its subjective narrative, random parenthetical asides, and

emotionally-lead states of deterioration and alienation). Miéville's text instead exhibits how, like mental

processes such as “reflection, problem solving, recall”, contemporary media, and access to it, is based

around intuitive actions such as “following a link, moving to a new page, choosing a new image, or a

new scene.”77 Although Manovich focusses predominantly on visual and digital media, the language of

hypertext is logically applicable to Miéville. In fact, towards the end of Reports, the document adopts

visual form also. The narrator presents “several photographs in an envelope, stuffed in among the

pages.” The images, which are “dreadful shots, taken with a flash too close or too far”, are only just

comprehensible. They show sequential stages of a carefully organised “Walk” along one of the Viae

Ferae, where one person holds a rope at the far end, and another (attached to the rope) walks the length

of the thoroughfare. The final photograph shows only a snapped end of rope with nobody attached.

They are assumed to have disappeared when the Viae Ferae spontaneously 'unoccurred'. In this brief

pictographic narrative, Miéville simulates the effect of transmedia storytelling, with the reader

recognising signs (as previously established in the written documents) in order to piece together, or

further, the narrative.78 Due to the mental processes involved in deciphering the photographic register

(the horrific documentation of someone presumably disappearing, perhaps dying) the text gains a

discomforting intimacy, or to us Freud's terms closely associated with the uncanny, the text becomes

unheimlich (or unhomely) due to the realisation that the Viae Ferae can harm us.79 Any sense of physical

or rational abstraction the phenomena may have previously occupied is now gone. The transmedia of

fictional documents, photography, and the genres of the Supernatural and Horror creates a narrative

chimera, which the reader must fully engage with whilst simultaneously becoming alienated by it.

75 Manovich, Lev, The Language of New Media (2001), p.4976 Ibid., p.5677 Ibid., p.6178 Jenkins, Henry, 2006, as quoted in Tryon (2009), p.3079 Smith (2010), p.170

18

Reports culminates in the narrator's final thoughts concerning the document. Because of the

agent-like function of the lettre-drame, the narrator finds themselves affected by what they have read:

“Either the Royal Mail is showing unprecedented consistency in misdirection, or I am being targeted”,

they claim, attempting to rationalise the situation. The narrator, like the reader, is left with numerous

narratives to attempt to comprehend and contextualise (not only a primary narrative concerning the

existence and the implications of the Viae Ferae – some of which have been reported regularly enough

to have been given names like “Varmin Way” and “Chup Shawpno Lane” - but also the numerous

hand-written notes, letters and marginalia, written by persons associated with the phenomena, and also

the fate of the missing “walker”.)

The result of the narrator's conclusions are two-fold. Firstly, they emphasise the temporal

ambiguity of not only the artefact (some documents are dated, others not) but also the space between

the narrator reading it and the time they decided to publish theirs views. 80 Altman describes the

function of literary correspondence as “a connector between two distant points”, where the author has

the power to close or extend the bridge between.81 Miéville effectively achieves both: the impression left

is that the narrator wants the information released immediately, but the presumably present-tense of

the Erzählzeit becomes unclear due to the narrator's fixation on future-orientation,82 where they suspend

the reader “in a present time where the future is uncertain and yet the characters have attempted to

control the future with threats or vows.” The final paragraph contains the following declaration:

We are in new times. Perhaps the Viae Ferae have grown clever, and stealthy. Maybe this is how they will

occur now, sneaking in plain sight, arriving not suddenly but so slowly, ushered in by us, armoured in

girders, pelted in new cement and paving. I think on the idea that Charles Melville is sending Varmin

Way to come for me, and that it will creep up on me with a growl of mixers and drills.

(Reports, 77)

Although dramatic and disturbing, the narrator's words remain unfixed in time. We are left

never knowing what happens next for the narrator or anything reported in the document. Secondly, the

narrator's voice constitutes a paratext - to be accessed parallel to or in some ways separate from the

document. Usually associated with cinema, paratextual media offers “a potentially vast expansion” of

what constitutes the text.83 For Miéville, the 'meaning' to be derived in Reports can be read on one hand

as a satire on censorship, and on the other hand the irony of the disorientating effects of exposure to

80 Miéville (2005), p.7681 Altman (1981), p.1382 Ibid., p.12683 Tryon (2009), p.3

19

multitudinous, but seemingly random, sources of information (a prescient commentary on the

accessibility of contemporary mass media). 'China Miéville', the narrator, like China Miéville the author,

has been publicly involved with left-wing political groups, so when the narrator claims to find to their

'continued outrage' that their mail often arrives pre-opened by persons unknown, the reader is left

assuming that the author himself has been victim such an invasion of privacy, and possible untraceable

censorship.84 The reader therefore, like 'China Miéville', is left reading something that they are aware has

firstly been read by others who may have altered it in some way, but how will never be clarified. All we

can know is that the document, like the Viae Ferae, might be fantastical. This sense of uncertainty

forms the basis of what Miéville claims is the 'refraction' of the real world found in Fantastic literature.

This chapter has examined the supernatural in the fictional document from a literary

perspective. Firstly, a close analysis of Robert Aickman's Pages From a Young Girl's Journal reveals how the

document achieves mimetic psychological depth, creating narrative instability and a sense of

disorientation in the reader. Through the readerly voyeurism of accessing a private journal,

contemporary critical awareness will identify once-considered subconscious Gothic themes of sexual

latency and desire. Yet this does not retract the sense of voyeurism of reading such a text, and in fact

enhances its formal authenticity. Aickman brings the Gothic into a contemporary arena, emphasising

the uncanny psychological effects brought about by the reappropriation of Gothic tropes, arriving

unbidden during the reader's progress. In one way a satire of the Modernist preoccupation with

publishing multitudinous explicit personal chronicles, Pages is also a commentary on the effects of the

attempting to document the unknowable, and how not everything can be understood or

communicated. Where the narrative ends with the narrator's decision to no longer write, the reader is

deprived of interactivity, supposing that the 'alien' narrative continues in unseen perpetuation. The

second text, China Miéville's Reports of Certain Events in London, like Aickman's tale is prosaically-titled,

but utilises the supernatural to gradually fragment and confuse the narrative, whilst also simulating

contemporary forms of mass media to create a text that purports to be randomly accessed in order to

achieve narrative cohesion, but ultimately acts a commentary on the uncanny effect of alienation and

disconnection often brought on by today's unrelenting, seemingly incoherent, mass media society. Both

texts exemplify the significance of the fictional document's diverse ability as not only a fiction of

simulation, but fictions of equal effect as the authentic forms they imitate, demanding immersive,

personal interaction with the reader. The following chapter will analyse the effects of the genre from a

contemporary cinematic perspective, where technological opportunities offered by visual media has

made the 'video dairy', the 'live television broadcast', and the 'found footage film' the natural

descendants to the literary fictional document.

84 Miéville (2005), p.55

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2

The Cinematic Document

Since the mid-twentieth century, television had been established as a profoundly influential

medium for information, entertainment and communication. According to Jeffrey Sconce (2000) live

television in particular was considered a “trusted” medium, encouraging the viewing public to buy into

its “ideology of livenes”, which took advantage of the “ambiguity between space and indeterminacy of

time, citing the intersections of the real and the virtual as the medium's strongest feature.” 85 Live

television had to engender trust in the viewer because, unlike cinema at the time, television was brought

into and experienced within the domestic realm. Television had successfully 'colonised' the private and

public simultaneously, occupying a limbo-like “elsewhere”, relying on viewer acceptance of this other,

intermediate context.86 Although shown as part of the BBC's Screen One drama series, the fictional

'haunted house' documentary, Ghostwatch (1992) simulated a live broadcast format rather than a drama.

Due to the viewer alienation caused by the programme's gradual narrative collapse to unknown

supernatural forces, the BBC allegedly received more than five-hundred thousand complaints. 87 In

hindsight, any public reaction was clearly intended as part of its message: Ghostwatch is an intricate

satire, firstly, of unquestioning trust towards television (especially the assumed trustworthiness of live

broadcast.) The programme provides a “critique of the media through the vehicle of the ghost story.” 88

It suggests that the trusted realm of technology, if misused or misunderstood, could itself become a

conduit for 'haunting' as much as the inexplicable vulnerability of abstract individuals on the show

(which, by the end of Ghostwatch, much of the viewing public related to, realising their own domestic

vulnerability.) Secondly, Ghostwatch can be read as a prescient forewarning of television's weakening

position within screen culture – the fictional 'unknown forces' which control the programme by the end

reflect the sometimes unnerving pervasiveness and diversity of digital media to come.

Live television in the late twentieth-century was still considered technology reflecting the

“virtuality of communication”: the liminal point between fiction and reality. According to Masschelein

(2011) the rise of “new media” (namely the Internet, social media, digital production technologies, and

computer games, amongst others) has perpetuated this virtuality. Digital media's evolution has meant85 Sconce, Jeffrey, Haunted Media: Electronic Presence from Telegraphy to Television (2000), p.13086 Ibid., p.17087 Leeder, Murray, 'Ghostwatch and the Huanting of Media', Horror Studies vol. 4 : 2 (2013), p.17488 Ibid., p.175

21

not only more efficient distribution of information and communications, but also a capturing of the

“immaterial yet very strong” in-substantial presences in society, such as “spectrality, haunting, and

animism.”89 Through supernatural intervention, fictions borne of new media become uncanny - the

paradoxical effect of the familiar and interactive, and the alien and de-familiarising, existing

simultaneously. The transformative effects of digital media on everything from communications, to the

arts, to academia, has multiplied opportunities for artists to expand on the fictional document,

particularly from an audio-visual perspective.

After Ghostwatch, the genre's next evolutionary shift is arguably found in The Blair Witch Project

(1999). Paul Wells (2004) describes Blair Witch as a reaction to cinema's now-routine Horror “codes and

conventions.”90 It instead carries a “heightened naturalism”, which coherently underpins the instability

of the supernatural environment, incorporating not only a hitherto unseen level of special effects-free

horror, but is also one of the first films to utilise paratextual media (such as documentaries, textbooks

and websites) to 'extend' narrative mythos.91 The intermedia relation between the television

documentaries and the film contributes to the anxious uncanny of the Blair Witch narrative. In recent

years, filmmaking courses have become an increasingly popular choice for young students. Blair Witch

subverts the notion of academic attainability and the desirability of 'becoming a filmmaker', associating

it with possibilities of exposure to unforeseen, perhaps uncontrollable events, making the interactivity

and opportunities offered by new media appear to ultimately guarantee no contextual control, but

rather defamiliarisation.

The primary texts examined in this chapter are the motion pictures REC (stylised as [●REC] in

the film, directed by Jaume Balagueró, Spain: 2007) and Troll Hunter (Trolljegeren, directed by André

Øvredal, Norway: 2010). REC is considered a particularly effective example of the 'found footage'

Horror film sub-genre, a form widely appropriated since Blair Witch. Horror cinema has adopted and

reshaped the fictional document almost exponentially. Notable variations include the 'objective' footage

of Paranormal Activity (directed by Oren Peli, USA: 2007), where the entire film consists of static CCTV

footage installed in a domestic setting to 'capture' the unexplained phenomena effecting the lives of a

young couple, to the 'subjectivity' of Cloverfield (directed by Matt Reeves, USA: 2008), where a single

hand-held camera, initially used to casually record a social gathering, becomes a narrative document of

the destruction of New York by unknown alien creatures, and to the multiple narratives of The Curse

(Noroi, directed by Kōji Shiraishi, Japan: 2005), a documentary-turned-“travel film”, featuring the last

known footage of a filmmaker who disappears whilst researching Japanese supernatural phenomena.92

Filmmaking has been transformed by the opportunities of new media. This has simultaneously

89 Masschelein (2011), p.14790 Wells, Paul, The Horror Genre: From Beelzebub to Blair Witch (2004), p.10891 Ibid., p.11092 Bruzzi (2006), p.82

22

allowed the fictional document to embrace not only new audio-visual opportunities, but also the ability

to invert expectations of the visual as well as expectations regarding accompanying narrative cohesion.

REC (like Aickman's Pages: a complete artefact, devoid of context) begins as unedited footage for a

late-night Spanish television programme called While You're Asleep, where interviewer Ángela (along

with cameraman, Pablo) chronicle the activities of a local fire service for a night. 93 The film crew –

expecting to document a fire or some equally relevant emergency - follow the fire fighters to an

apartment building where a series of disorienting and horrific events transforms footage into a

document of survival. According to screenwriter Paco Plaza, REC takes the form of the fictional

document incorporating the supernatural because “Genre is the best way to talk about the world

around you”: supernatural conventions help “separate” reality, and allow the filmmaker to “get deeper

into the soul” of what they are attempting to convey.94 What begins as pedestrian documentary-making

swiftly becomes visually and aurally arresting, taking the voyeuristic fetishization of Reality Television

filmmaking to the extreme. The contemporary phenomena of television shows effectively turning law

enforcement and life-threatening emergencies into forms of entertainment occupies an ambiguous

confusion of fact and pseudo-fact: a hyperreal chimera of authenticity (the original event) and possible

inauthenticity (the manipulation of editing, post-production, etc.) The supernatural phenomena in

REC, whilst realistic and unsettling, can be seen as satirising the sometimes inarticulate fear of the

unknown stemming from the near-claustrophobic proximity of inner-city life, as well as prejudice

regarding those we live nearest to, yet may know or understand the least.

Like REC, Troll Hunter begins as one film before metamorphosing into another. Troll Hunter

however includes introductory text, contextualising the film as “an anonymous shipment containing

two hard drives with 283 minutes of footage”, edited into a chronological “rough cut”.95 Concluding

texts claims that 'the filmmakers vanished without a trace', and urges anyone with information to

contact Filmkameratene A/S (Troll Hunter's actual production company) and the police. Another

difference is that, rather than simulating professional filmmaking as the first act of REC does (e.g.

sound-checks, multiple takes, attaining optimum camera angle, etc), Troll Hunter begins as an amateur

documentary akin to what Wells calls the spontaneous “actuality footage” of Blair Witch, and which,

due to being “seemingly shot with inexperienced eyes”, ironically possesses “greater veracity in its verité

approach.”96 Through the way various interviewees and other transient agents either avoid or obfuscate

the students' inquiries, there exists, as Gaudreault and Marion explain (2004) a “transparency” within

the footage, where “the material image is effaced in favour of what it evokes beyond itself.” 97 It is

93 All quotes from REC as according to English DVD subtitles94 Plaza, Paco, interviewed by Matt Barone (2014) <http://www.complex.com/pop-culture/2012/09/interview-rec-3-genesis-director-paco-plaza> [Accessed 21.06.2014]95 All quotes from Troll Hunter as according to DVD English subtitles96 Wells (2004), p.10997 Gaudreault, André, and Philippe Marion, 'Transécriture and Narrative Mediatics', in Raegno and Stam (2004), p.60

23

unsurprising for the viewer (and by default, the greater public the documentary is presumably eventually

being produced for) to assume that these agents are lying or deflecting some truth. However, such an

awareness of an unseen narrative is not supposed to necessarily prepare the viewer for the actuality of

events - real trolls being hunted by a real troll hunter. Instead, the narrative of conspiracy is supplanted

(or intermingled) with a narrative of fantasy, and one directly occupying the cultural knowledge of the

Norwegian public.

Director André Øvredal claims that he wanted to give the film's creatures a captivating

authenticity which had not been replicated since eighteenth-century folk tales and artworks. He claims

that trolls had been reduced to “tourist things”, instead of being positioned as a “set piece of

Norwegian culture”, but that recent advancements in filmmaking technology meant new heights in

graphic authenticity can finally be achieved.98 The special effects in Troll Hunter are highly realistic,

standing alongside (and thereby acknowledging) the quality of visual effects expected of contemporary

Hollywood cinema. Yet this is not necessarily at odds with the authentically imperfect student

documentary-making. According to Juhasz and Lerner (2006) a fake documentary, must be “at least

part fiction” but the viewer receives it “as in part like a documentary.” 99 Troll Hunter replicates the

believability inherent in amateur filmmaking, not least because of its limited point-of-view camera

work, which, as a cinematic device, “offers no objective place for the viewer to watch their experiences

from.”100 In another way, the unfolding narrative of the documentary also subverts viewer engagement

with secondary narratives, such as the hitherto fantastical narrative of trolls in Norwegian cultural

history, the unseen but alluded-to narratives of censorship and state secrecy, and the metanarrative of

immersive special effects and viewer expectations of the contemporary cinema experience.

REC (2007)

The film's two main characters, Ángela and Pablo, are experienced filmmakers. For a

programme like While You're Asleep the pair understand what is required to create professional quality

television. REC features no opening credits, and begins immediately with Ángela introducing herself,

before stopping and re-taking the scene, without cutting. From this first shot, REC sidesteps fluid

cinematic narrative and imitates rhetorical documentary-making set-pieces. Juhasz and Lerner comment

on filmic consciousness in the fake documentary genre, and how for the most part they are “self-

reflexive films about the making of (this one) documentary.”101 Part of the pair's choice to retake and

rehearse scenes is due to aesthetic refinement. The chief purpose of any documentary is epistephilic: to

98 Øvredal, André, interviewed by Christina Radish (2011) <http://collider.com/andre-ovredal-interview-troll-hunter/> [Accessed 12.06.2014] 99 Juhasz, Alexandra and Jesse Lerner (2006), p.15100 Wells (2004), p.109101 Juhasz and Lerner (2006), p.18

24

fulfil a desire for knowledge. According to Alisa Lebow (2006), “Documentary is a culturally sanctioned

performance, wielding an authority built up through what genre critics have called “intertextual relay”

(i.e., promotion and context of exhibition) that create “horizons of expectations” for the spectator.”102

The viewer's horizons of expectations include registers to help engage with the documentary: chief

amongst these are information, and clarity of context (which is achieved in-part through professional

production values.) The pair know to attempt both. Although a fire station must be prepared for the

unpredictable, they constantly seek to refine the “onscreen space”: the part of the film that exists

“inside the frame.”103 In documentary, that which is captured within the onscreen space is comparable

to focalisation (or literary naturalistic first-person narration) but which, in equivalent film terminology,

becomes ocularisation or relation between a character's viewpoint and the camera's.104 The documentary

camera cannot of course convey the exact focalisation as an actual person (in the same way dramatic

cinema can, if the onscreen space represents actual eyesight) therefore what the camera records can

only ever be within the visual proximity of the camera operator. This can lead to moments of audio-

visual ambiguity - and viewer hesitation regarding what they are watching.

During the second act, the fire fighters are called to an emergency in an inner-city apartment

building. The filmmakers follow closely, industriously documenting what they can. Events unfold

quickly. As the footage exists as edited, by the 00:11:43 minute mark the crew are outside an old

woman's apartment because the neighbours report screaming. At 00:13:26, a woman violently bites and

seriously injures a police officer. By 00:15:48, “health authorities” outside the building announce that

they have “decided to seal-off the building for safety reasons”, quarantining everybody inside. At

00:17:56, a fire fighter, presumably falling or having been pushed over upper-floor railings, is caught on

camera falling and hitting the lobby floor. The disorientating pace at which these events are captured

helps the document evade opportunities for narrative cohesion: it becomes more of a sensory

experience than narrative adherence. In this way, the document simulates traits or expectations of

reality television, and also the receptive first-person immersion of contemporary computer games. This

metamorphosis from the objectively-executed footage (let us say up until first entering the woman's

apartment) to impulsive recording is not all frantic, however. When the crew enter the apartment, the

camera is held relatively still, seemingly, but not explicitly, capturing the strange, irregular movements of

the woman inside. According to Allen S. Weiss, “Cinema is the art of animation”, hence why the

“immobility of a frozen moment is particularly unsettling.”105 Many Horror films utilise static shots –

often in suitably dimly-lit settings, sometimes accompanied by incidental music - to emphasise menace

102 Lebow, Alisa, 'Faking What? Making a Mockery of Documentary', quoting Steve Neale, in Juhasz and Lerner (2006), p.234, parentheses and quotations in original103 Manovich (2001), p.80104 Jost, François, 'The Look: From Film to Novel, an Essay in Comparative Narratology', in Raegno and Stam (2004), p.74105 Weiss, Allen S., 'The Rhetoric of Interruption', in Raegno and Stam (2004), p.164

25

or anxiety. However, in REC, such motionlessness arrives unexpected. The result is an disquieting

oscillation between documentary-inspired epistephilia (what is wrong with the woman?) and seemingly

unfounded anxiety (why is this is discomforting?)

This poised scene before the woman attacks the officer corrupts the documentary context of

the film. From then on it abandons professional documentary-making and instead continues with a

sense of fluidity, now unrestrained by (or deprived of the luxury of) technical preparation. At random

intervals, Ángela attempts to contextualise events – pausing to report directly to the camera and filming

a few short interviews. According to Stella Bruzzi (2006), “structural fluidity can be liberating and

positive” during documentary-making, and that the “relative formlessness” of certain genres (such as

the City documentary, which is often created within anticipated environmental unpredictability) is

preferable to “a rigidly enforced completeness.”106 This fluidity, as well as simply allowing events to be

filmed as they occur, also gives the film a sense of free-fall: the viewer has no conception of what is

coming next, disrupting recognisability of the urban situation, even under the protection of emergency

services.

Unlike reality television, where actual situations are abstracted by the sanitation of post-

production such as editing, censorship, or some overriding moral narrative, the camera of REC retains

an unflinching gaze at the supernatural, at times becoming visually and aurally arresting in the extreme.

The building begins to feel claustrophobic: the actions of other 'survivors' become unaccountable,

untrustworthy. The film shifts from the non-committal abstraction of high-production television to the

intimate fear invoked by the unpredictable and unexplainable. Jenny Diski (1992) when discussing the

optional state of watching horror films, comments that “Civilisation may be the art of looking away, but

there have always been some who choose to look directly at the darkness simply because the truth is

that monsters are always with us, very near.”107 The principle supernatural phenomena in REC are

'zombies' – reanimated dead who kill the living, creating more of their kind. But rather than the post-

apocalyptic context of many zombie films, REC is positioned in a meticulously contemporary world,

with the immediate now existing inside and outside the quarantined building. Firstly (as previously

discussed) Ángela and Pablo make television with modern digital equipment, enabling portable, high-

quality recording. Secondly, the families living in the building are of various cultural and generational

backgrounds - another modern context, the metropolitan European city. Thirdly, the zombies turn out

to be a combination of “the genuinely supernatural in with the idea of a viral infection.” 108 The notion

of a virus, which is easily transmitted from person to person, even in the assumed 'safety' of private

property, gives the supernatural a scientific grounding, which is both explanatory but also as unsettling

106 Bruzzi, Stella (2006), p.85107 Diski, Jenny, 'A Horrified, Lidless Stare', Sight & Sound vol 2 : 6 (1992), p.35108 Plaza, Paco, interviewed by James Drew (2009) <http://www.picturenose.com/interview-paco-plaza.html> [Accessed 12.06.2014]

26

as if the phenomena were a complete mystery. A viral epidemic is perhaps the ultimate fear of any

highly populated environment. In one scene, the survivors gather in order to discuss what the health

authorities outside need them to do to contain the virus. An Asian woman with her husband and son

explain that her father is upstairs, ill in his bed.109 Other non-Asian residents vocally accuse her absent

father of presumably being the cause of the infection, rather than showing concern. In an earlier one-

to-one interview, a middle-aged Spanish resident confidingly claims that it is this “Chinese” or

“Japanese” family who have caused the infection, because they eat raw fish, and “they always leave the

door open.”110 Such scenes emphasise the fragility of social equilibrium in urban living situations: at

times of heightened anxiety, people might look to castigate ones who are different, claiming they are

wrong for leaving their door open rather than closing their unfamiliar lives away from the rest of the

world. Wilful ignorance exhumes the inner-horrors of prejudice and unwillingness to seek more

information concerning habitat, culture, and background, even in contemporary Spain. This mindset

exemplifies the benefits of “the art of looking away”, as Diski calls it, and how it is about more than

just turning away from the outer-horrors which supposedly dwell beyond our walls but also the inner-

horrors of fear and ignorance. Throughout the apparent disintegration of relations between the

residents, the filmmakers attempt to remain neutral, documenting events as they find them.

During the final act, all chances of resolution or escape seem to have disappeared. Ángela and

Pablo are trapped in the supposedly unoccupied penthouse apartment. After previously gathering

fragments of information and supposition regarding the virus, the pair now slowly move around dark

rooms (lit solely by the camera's spotlight.) It gradually becomes apparent that the apartment itself is a

'document' - full of what appear to be thousands of pieces of individual information, possibly

associated with virus (newspaper articles, birth certificates, medical journals, photographs, a tape

recorder, and scientific paraphernalia), which combined together embody a 'document' of the absent

person who owns it all. Within the unsettling quiet of the rooms, Ángela begins to frantically read

through random pages of information. She also activates a reel-to-reel recorder, where a male voice

reveals that he has “finally isolated the enzyme, but the problem is it is unstable.”111 He explains that the

enzyme acts “much like the flu”, hence its contagiousness.

Further revelations occur through Ángela's desire for information, including that the man is an

agent of the Vatican, and that the contagion is something to do with harnessing demonic possession.

When discussing the role of the zombies in REC, Paco Plaza says that “in effect, our zombies are

demons as well.”112 Combined with Catholic iconography scattered around the rooms, the film now

conveys religious connotations, in particular the clandestine powers of mainstream Catholicism.

109 REC DVD, 00:36:20110 Ibid., 00:34:00111 Ibid., 01:03:01112 Plaza, Paco (2009) <http://www.picturenose.com/interview-paco-plaza.html> [Accessed 12.06.2014]

27

Through this foregrounding of religious themes, the fictional document now achieves an ambiguity of

time: earlier scenes had a logically contemporaneous context (as discussed: the living situations, the

quality of the documentation technology and other signifiers), but in this final act the filmmaker's

epistephilic desire causes a “temporal polyvalence” where the document, rather that being situated in

the immediate contemporary, is fragmented and “relative to innumerable moments.” 113 To begin with,

on the tape recording there is the difference between the Erzählzeit (time of recording) and the

Erzählzeit Zeit (time of the experiments): it is never revealed exactly how long ago the experiments

began and how many were conducted, and therefore the scale of any subsequent repercussions. As well

as the recorded time of the tape, explicit references to the Vatican and Rome give the actual scene as it

unfolds an archaic relativism, paradoxical to supposedly current scientific concerns of viral epidemics

(such as AIDS, or avian flu.) In this intertextual oscillation between religion and science, religion

achieves a hitherto unseen contemporaneous narrative and the viral infection achieves a narrative

ancientness. The penthouse apartment, rather than seeming to contain 'answers' (as the filmmaker's

searching hopes to find) instead becomes alienating and almost outside of time. During the last shot,

when the unmanned camera captures a screaming Ángela being dragged into the darkness by a zombie

living in the apartment (the supposed 'patient zero' of the virus experiments) the potential for narrative

resolution disappears along with them. Once it had captured time, the supernatural had captured the

narrative absolutely.

Ultimately, REC is a commentary firstly on how contemporary documentary has in some ways

been turned into a form of entertainment: a fetishized hyppereality of the real-life subjects it captures

and presents. REC, existing as an artefact devoid of any framing context, deprives any reliance the

viewer may express on context, and the sense of cognitive disruption brought on without. Secondly, it

is a warning over (as Masschelein puts it) how a “desire for knowledge also entails a desire for mastery.

It is tainted by aggression, by the urge to control, domesticate, and neutralize the force emanating from

the uncanny.”114 The Vatican agent's attempts to domesticate the demonic virus is reflected in the

filmmaker's attempts to domesticate events through documentation, and which ultimately only

highlights that what might be harnessed aesthetically (i.e., recorded, documented, edited) is not the

same as representing or understanding through actual knowledge and experience.

Troll Hunter (2010)

Troll Hunter, as with REC, is presented through the efforts of documentary filmmakers, albeit

amateur student efforts. Rather than situated within an urban environment, the footage in Troll Hunter

covers miles of natural Norwegian landscape, where the filmmakers embark on an odyssey to discover

113 Altman (1982), p.118114 Masschelein (2011), p.105

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the truth behind rumours of illegal bear-hunting. The footage begins by combining both the cinematic

and the traditional: the visual panorama of the Norwegian landscape and the focalised world of

poaching. It is these two polarised viewpoints which provide a centralising theme during the unfolding

footage. Although filmed using recognisable documentary tropes, Troll Hunter is, on the surface, an

idiosyncratically Norwegian film. As well as being filmed in Norway, the film also references Norwegian

history and folklore, particularly literary culture, environmental issues and religion. The film is also

notably humorous at times, which, according to director André Øvredal, stems in part from the

authenticity of the amateur filmmaking. “I think the humour of the film comes from the camera”,

Øvredal claims: “The style of shooting it is very real while the monsters are very unreal, but they had to

look real.”115 Humour also arises from the casting of Otto Jespersen in the title role, one of Norway's

most renowned comedians, whose decision to portray the troll hunter as professional but jaded gives

the (sometimes frightening) scenes with the trolls an absurd sense of levity, yet one which does not

threaten the believability required of the footage. As well as the footage's technical realism Troll Hunter

also carries internationally associable subtexts regarding the film industry (particularly computer-

generated special effects and cinema-going public expectations incurring as a result) and also the

position of Norway in the modern world, including contemporaneous dialogues on religious diversity

and cultural integration.

To contextualise Troll Hunter as an artefact, the text at the beginning and end of the footage

contextualises the entire film as 'found footage', or rather footage anonymously sent to Filmkameratene

A/S, in 2008. It claims that “a team of investigators studied the film for over a year” and could not

conclude if the material was real or not.116 The ambiguity of two digital hard drives of footage being

anonymously received then analysed by “a team of investigators” foregrounds themes of elision,

censorship and narrative incompleteness (as initially discussed in Miéville's Reports, ch. 1). Although the

viewer is informed this is how the artefact came to light, there is no proof, and although the footage is

edited to around 94 minutes, the viewer is consciously aware they are not able to access the remaining

footage. Such 'censorship' (whether clandestine or otherwise) forms part of the interactivity between

the viewer and the text. According to Manovich, “missing details of objects in visual art”, and other

representational “shortcuts” require the viewer to “fill in the missing information”: although there is no

further information available, the viewer instead becomes conscious of a narrative of censorship or

third-party intervention.117

The footage begins with abstract shots of the Norwegian landscape from a car window, along

with radio news covering illegal bear-hunting. The next scenes feature the students interviewing

115 Øvredal, André, interviewed by Christina Radish (2011) <http://collider.com/andre-ovredal-interview-troll-hunter/> [Accessed 12.06.2014]116 Troll Hunter DVD, 00:00:23, all quotes from Troll Hunter as according to English DVD subtitles117 Manovich (2001), p.56

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licensed poachers, whose discuss an anonymous 'illegal poacher' called Hans. This first few minutes of

interviews consists of conflicting information: the poachers claim that an illegally-killed bear which has

been found in an open field has tracks near it which do not match with the bear's, leading to the theory

that the bear was planted to hide something.118 In another interview, Finn Haugan, a spokesperson for

“the Wildlife Advisory Board” dismisses the poacher's theories as ridiculous. Enduring the stalemate of

conflicting views, the students attempt to track Hans down firstly at a camp-site, and then later that

night in the forests nearby.

In a scene aesthetically reminiscent of Blair Witch, the students document a series of strange

sounds, where they can hear something of an indeterminable distance away, but with virtually nothing

visual to accompany. Where Blair Witch never features visual accompaniment to the strange sounds

documented, Troll Hunter suddenly breaks the suspenseful atmosphere with the part-serious, part-

comical image of Hans running toward the camera, shouting “Troll!”119 As Hans and the students

return to the camp-site, they come across the students' car which has been destroyed and is coated in a

strange slime, which Thomas (the documentary interviewer) also has on him after he is 'bitten' by

something. Neither event is seen on camera, but the slime seemingly links the two with some as-yet

unseen phenomena. Eventually, Hans reluctantly admits his 'profession' as a troll hunter and allows the

students to document his efforts, including the various methods of subterfuge he employs to suppress

the existence of trolls from public consciousness, whilst also deciding to share with the students huge

amounts of accompanying information (from different species names, feeding and mating practices,

locations and habitats, and methods of containment by the authorities.)

When the first troll appears onscreen (specifically of the Tusseladd genus, according to Hans)

any scepticism the students retain - and by association the viewer - is challenged. Visually, the gigantic

three-headed Tusseladd is highly realistic in detail, and is intimidating. Yet within the visual believability

of the creatures, there is also something fantastical and humorous. Ellen Rees (2011) when discussing

the film's aesthetics claims that the trolls are “a peculiarly domesticated type of monster, rehearsing as

they do the folk tales of Asbjørnsen and Moe and in particular the drawings of the late nineteenth-

century artist and illustrator Theodor Kittelsen.”120 (See appendix i for illustration, p.42.) Through the

intertextual design of the trolls, as well as the familiar iconography of their behaviour (such as one that

lives under a bridge and eats goats, and the fact that they cannot come out in the daytime) they

seemingly exist on two plateaus of cognition. What was once deemed a Norwegian cultural narrative

(the literary troll story) is now deemed to be completely true, and with a hitherto-unknown narrative of

its own, supposedly consisting of a combination the fantastic and scientific fact. The realism of the

118 Troll Hunter DVD, 00:06:16119 Ibid., 00:13:53120 Rees, Ellen, 'Trolls, Monster Masts, and National Neurosis: André Øvrelid’s “The Troll Hunter”', Scandinavica vol. 50 : 2 (2011), p.53

30

trolls, as well as being as caricature-like as the eighteenth-century art works they drawn upon (the

heimlich of the familiarity), simultaneously creates an unheimlich state of defamiliarisation, due to the

unexpected interweaving of fiction and reality. Up until this point, the abstraction of any fictional

'knowledge' meant trolls remained innocuous cultural artefacts. The revelation of their reality changes

this. According to Susan Bernstein (2003), “The quality of "unheimlich" results from the movement of

the ground or principle; that is, the principle is not itself uncanny until it has violated its own nature

by stepping forth into actuality, into the ontic. The uncanny principle, then, really describes a dynamic

structure of coming forth unbidden and being covered over again.” 121 Whatever the students

document now is different to what they were documenting before the revelation. For the viewer, the

narrative is completely disrupted and, along with the students, they can only hope to gather information

and 'learn' as events continue.

The students' efforts move beyond a singular journey film chronicle of one of Norway's

“greatest heroes” (as Thomas refers to Hans as during their first interview after the troll revelation),

and towards an unfolding discourse on contemporary Norwegian society.122 According to Kathryn

Hume (1984), when discussing the pedagogic element of traditional folk literature we can see that a

significant proportion of it, “describes mortals either living up to a set ideal, or failing to do so. This

ideal may be the overall excellence of areté, or a more limited virtue such as chastity or obedience.” 123

Troll Hunter features direct literary references not only for aesthetic significance, but also so that the

footage itself contains its own 'moral questions' akin to the tales it draws upon. One of the principle

themes addressed is religion in contemporary Norway. The trolls can 'smell the blood' of Christians (as

they can in children's stories.) Hans becomes deeply concerned that a students is concealing the fact

they are Christian, even though the students ridicule his claims.124 Hans' persistence at attempting to get

the students to 'admit' their religious beliefs becomes invasive: as a fictional trope in folk tales,

identifying Christians is, in-part, a literary device for characterising a troll's prey. In the 'reality' the

students and Hans occupy, religion is clearly a sensitive issue and raises ethical questions regarding

prejudice and privacy. In a later scene – following the death of Kalle, the students' original cameraman,

whom eventually confesses to being a Christian before being killed by cave-dwelling trolls – Malica,

another film student who happens to be Muslim, joins the crew. Thomas asks Hans if being a Muslim

will also attract trolls: Hans pauses before saying, “I don't know. We'll have to see what happens.”125 The

scene is humorous not least because it exposes the hitherto authoritative and knowledgable Hans with

something he cannot answer. Yet the scene is also a poignant commentary on racial integration. Rees

121 Bernstein, Susan, 'It Walks: The Ambulatory Uncanny', MLN, vol. 118 : 5 (2003), pp. 1118 122 Bruzzi (2006), p.81123 Hume (1984), p.31124 Troll Hunter DVD, 00:32:20125 Ibid., 01:14:46

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(2011) claims that “These references to religion reflect widespread debate and concern over the

integration of non-Christians into Norwegian society”, but in a “humorous way” that diffuses religious

tension.126 Whilst the scene is humorous, the manner by which the film essentially trivialises religion (it

is plainly more risk-free to be atheist in this reality) appears to reduce the differences between belief

systems down to basic and identifiable forms, which, in-turn, raises questions regarding how

perception still might resort to stereotypes for definitions, even in a contemporary supposedly tolerant

society.

Another method of sustained public ignorance is revealed as stemming from the activities of

Finn Haugan, who is eventually revealed as working for the state on the 'censorship' of troll existence.

Haughan's clandestine methods, including using bears as explanations for nearby dead cattle keeps

public awareness of trolls based firmly within the fictional realm. Haughan's methods reveal the extent

of state intervention to withhold information. When, at one point, the filmmakers document a power

station engineer being unable to explain why certain pylons are arranged to form huge circular

enclosures (within which the state secretly attempts to 'contain' the trolls), the engineer assumes that

this is simply because this avoids covering a scenic area.127 The extent of state censorship and deflection

is fully exposed, where even national pride in the country's environmental beauty helps deflect the

truth.

The domestication of public ignorance concerning the existence of the supernatural is reflected

in Hans' attitude toward his profession. Although Thomas dubs him to be a national hero, Hans carries

no such illusions. He sees his job as pedestrian and thankless, bemoaning the fact that he never “gets

nights in”, as well as “no overtime, and shitty pay.”128 The viewer can relate with Hans in this respect,

and in a way Hans' naturalism also brings the viewer closer to a reality of the supernatural.

The film further reframes the supernatural in an even more personal context through Thomas'

contraction of rabies. During the discovery of the first troll, Thomas is heard screaming and then

appears on camera with a torn jacket and injured shoulder. Later, it is revealed that he may well have

contracted rabies from a troll bite. The significance of the infection is two-fold. Firstly, the notion that

trolls – usually fantastical creatures – are susceptible to a genuine contagious disease emphasises the

“elastic reality” of contemporary cinematic special effects, both visually and in terms of genre

expectation.129 Rather than simply reconfiguring the abstract stimulation of much Hollywood special

effects-laden cinema, Troll Hunter instead features just as authentic-looking phenomena, but phenomena

that feel discomfortingly near. Secondly, through Thomas, the supernatural element, having

systematically conquered the narratives of disbelief, recognition, and acceptance, now passes the final

126 Rees (2011), p.56127 Troll Hunter DVD, 01:18:22128 Ibid., 00:33:01129 Manovich (2001), p.301

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barrier: that of the personal and individual narrative. The Norwegian landscape as captured in the

footage is effortlessly cinematic and panoramic, but this naturalism is altered by the revelations that

supernatural phenomena exist within its mountains and forests. Once Thomas is known to be

'contaminated' by the supernatural element, it controls the narrative of the internal completely, just as it

did the external of the landscape. Rather than the uncanny hesitation caused by the occupation of the

liminal states of real and unreal (which is formally based within perception or witnessing of the

supernatural or disturbing) Thomas actually embodies, as David Pavón-Cuéllar (2014) explains, the

extimate. His condition “indicates the non-distinction and essential identity between the dual terms of

the outside and the deepest inside.”130 Thomas becomes the narrative of extimacy, a new dialogue formed

of the supernatural and reality which exemplifies “explicitly the interpenetration and mutual

transformation of both spheres.”131 By the time the footage abruptly ends, the viewer is left alienated,

and, as with Robert Aickman's Pages, with the supernatural having taken any personal narrative away,

even before the possible ultimate censorship efforts of the state.

In conclusion, the fictional document has evolved beyond the televisual form, and embraced

the oscillating personal/public interaction of screen culture offered by new media such as digital

filmmaking. Television, although offering limited interactivity with the viewer, is essentially a one-way

discourse, where programmes are broadcast and passively received by the viewer. REC satirises such

passivity, commenting on the abstraction of the public (i.e. the engagements of the emergency services)

being offered to the personal, domestic environment as equal in entertainment value to fiction. The

unpredictability of making such programmes is taken to its extreme in REC, where viewer expectations

regarding televisual conventions are disrupted, making the viewing process now a hostile learning

experience. The pursuit of narrative cohesion and understanding within such hyperreal sensory

experience lends REC a sense of transmedia interaction, where the viewer is entertained (whilst also

frightened) and where they can comprehend some cultural markers, but others are mysterious and

alienating. Troll Hunter also relies initially on cultural recognition in order to engage with the viewer.

Norwegian cultural markers, from the reality of poaching and the fictions of folk lore and children's

literature, offer a supposedly stable context for viewer narrative. As the narrative shifts, so to does the

perceptions of reality and truth, as well as raising questions about social prejudices and identity in

contemporary Norwegian society, and what it means to be isolated within ignorance and lack of

understanding. The metacommentary of the self-aware student filmmaking offers a warning regarding

blind ambition regarding the 'importance' of a finished film (at one point Thomas even asks if Oscar-

winning filmmaker Michael Moore would give up so easily), but also, through accidental

documentation, a commentary on forces that work on higher narratives than the ones we see, and the

130 Pavón-Cuéllar, David, ‘Extimacy’, in Encyclopedia of Critical Psychology, ed. by Thomas Teo (2014), p.661131 Ibid., p.661

33

effects of state censorship and the suppression of information. Through Troll Hunter, the fictional

document is used to bring national concerns of one nation into the realm of the universal, where the

supernatural phenomena recorded emphasise the hitherto hidden powers of neuroses,

misunderstanding and blind assumption.

34

35

Conclusion

The history of the fictional document runs parallel with the history of communication. During

the technological advances of the late nineteenth-century, what began as the “rationalist realm of

science and engineering that revolutionised society and laid the foundations for the modern

information age” coincided with the modern era's fascination with the occult and the paranormal.132

Subsequently, writers and filmmakers have channelled pubic fixations with the supernatural, and rather

than solely continuing the Gothic genre's nineteenth-century “writing of excess”, instead utilise the

restrictive narrative forms of documentation in attempts to bridge the abstraction of the fantastic with

the domestication of reality.

Fiction has always simulated means of communication, allowing not only alternative methods

of how art is received but also allowing levels of mimetic authenticity. However, the significance of the

contemporary fictional document relies as much on its form as its content. Its form, drawing less on

the traditional literary approaches of the epistolary or the frame tale, uses the myriad varieties of mass

media as its primary source of inspiration, not only in terms of 'shape' but as a metacommentary of

the media itself. The fictional document has also expanded to reflect the speed at which methods of

communication and gaining information have evolved. As well as interpretations of the personal diary

or the letter, the genre has continued forward to imitate media as diverse as court transcripts,

psychiatrist reports, business memorandums, newspaper articles, textbooks, television programmes, and

artefacts of the digital age including digital filmmaking, video diaries and websites.

The genre, although imitating tangible yet fragile forms of documentation (fragile from a

narrative perspective as well as the fragility of a physical artefact, easily misplaced or damaged) also

addresses mass production and distribution. In a sense, this propagates a universal trope of the

supernatural: immortality. Throughout the history of Horror or Gothic fiction, one of the key themes is

the transcendence of death and the ability to exist outside the common arena of mortality. Whether the

phenomena takes the form of the vampire, a parasitical revenant who extracts the life of others in

order to prolong itself, to the more singular zombie, which rises from the grave and take the lives of

the living, continuing itself, the end result is the same - the occupation and termination of the mortal

narrative and the perpetuation of the unnatural. In the age of twenty-first century mass media, where it

is easy to leave an imprint or record of oneself in some digital form, effective immortality is routinely

132 Sconce (2000), p.24

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achieved. Digital documentation also means an immortality of accessibility: repeated access to digital

media – including file-copying, uploading, multiple viewing - is not subject to the same degradation (or

physical wearing-out) of its analogue predecessors.

The key method for such perpetuation is essentially reproduction: a methodical continuation. In

this sense, the supernatural infiltration of the fictional document becomes a method of production,

replicating itself industriously. In an epistolary such as Stoker's Dracula, the reader comes to understand

the maddening horror of how the vampire maintains his legacy through systematic seduction and

conversion to vampirism. However, in a text such as Aickman's Pages From a Young Girl's Journal, the

reader finds themselves personally closer to the effects of the vampire. The supernatural begins to utilise

the medium itself, perpetuating its own narrative through the journal entries as well as through its

victim, allowing for a private glimpse of its alien intentions before shutting the door of comprehension

completely. The physical 'pages' constituting Aickman's text may not carry the same imperishability as

its digital successors, but the supernatural resonates beyond, due to its unnerving narrative irresolution.

In China Miéville's Reports of Certain Events Around London, the Viae Fera phenomena may not be

identifiable as any traditional Gothic horror, but its narrative is just as potent, finding perpetuation

through encouraging the reader closely examine what appears on the page (often encouraging re-

reading back and forth, like hypertext) in order to find some 'pathway' into the text. The narrator in

Miéville's text, through their obsession with gathering more information about the Viae Fera, is

portentous of the risks of becoming haunted by the alienation caused by fragmented analysis of

piecemeal knowledge, therefore allowing the phenomena to gain a closer position towards reality

through the possibility of endless miles of unchartable narrative, much like the Viae Fera themselves.

In the motion picture REC, at first, the late-night television filmmakers, Ángela and Pablo, go

to great lengths to document and contextualise the violence and horrors occurring around them. REC

satirises the fetishization of emergency services and criminal acts in contemporary reality television

shows and the viewer's constant thirst for more. Eventually, the filmmakers lose control of the

narrative and the phenomena consumes the document. Through their recording and reporting, the

filmmakers unwittingly lead the viewer into the uncanny plateau between reality and the fantastic, where

all the usual signifiers of contemporary urban existence (the proximity of tenement co-existence,

multiculturalism, reliance on the emergency services and the authorities) as well as expectations

regarding scientific fact, are inverted to become part of the supernatural phenomena as it unfolds.

Through being the subject of obsessively-collected documents filling the penthouse, to the tape

recording chronicling its existence, the supernatural finally achieves virtual immortality via the efforts

of the unwitting filmmakers, and the watching eye of the viewer. In the film Troll Hunter, the 'reality

footage' of a group of student filmmakers, beginning as a pedestrian account of Norwegian bear-

hunting controversies, inadvertently transforms into an account of the 'actual existence' of trolls. In the

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ensuing narrative collapse (the 'visual' narrative of reality as witnessed, and the contextual narratives of

Norwegian national culture and of governmental censorship, amongst others) André Øvredal's film

challenges both societal and individual preconceptions. For contemporary Norway, the film highlights

questions of national identity, multiculturalism and religious intolerance. From an individual perspective

(through the pedagogic motif of the folk tale), the film addresses the risks of disobedience, and

venturing toward the unknown armed only with a righteous desire for knowledge and academic

preconceptions. In an age of transmedia interactivity, Troll Hunter takes the viewer on a journey through

the simultaneous panoramas of rural Norway and Norwegian national culture, to the tightly-framed

personal experiences of innocence, prejudice and exposure to the unknown or unknowable. Through

the use of contemporary special effects, Troll Hunter also makes intertextual references towards the

abstraction of special effects-laden Hollywood cinema, and how the equally impressive effects can offer

a more culturally-domesticated, uncanny experience. The trolls of Troll Hunter many not actually be

malevolent in the same way as phenomena in traditional Horror, but the dissonance caused by the

interaction of such conflicting narrative plateaus, like the other texts addressed here, emphasises the

key effect of the fictional document. The stratification of media, communications, and hyperreal

interactivity in the digital age might allow for the streamlining of knowledge and instant dissemination

of information, but on occasion there will always appear something unexpected, something unbidden.

Media stratification has lead to personal stratification also, where the individual has to maintain myriad

registers in order to engage myriad narratives. As Lev Manovich says about digital media, “different

worlds can clash semantically rather than form a single universe.”133

On occasion, amongst the seemingly controllable discordance of contemporary existence, one

such narrative may cause hesitation, or destabilisation. Something completely unexpected may reveal

itself. Only then do we awaken to the possibility that not all is as it seems, and that reality might be a

very different thing.

133 Manovich (2001), prologue xix

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