On Whiteness in Folk Horror
I
I have been turned off folk horror since the first time it was explained to me what it was. According to the website folkhorror.com, folk horror is characterized as:
“Folk horror is a sub-genre of horror fiction (or of Occult fiction in WorldCat Genre terms) characterized by reference to European, pagan traditions. Stories typically involve standing stone circles, earthworks, elaborate rituals or nature deity”* — note this quote has since been changed on the site.
(Update- the above link now goes to a page that is only occult fiction.)
My introduction to folk horror as a subgenre was through this definition. The works cited to me, all had this characterization in common and as with much of what makes classic and current horror, I am not there. I have seen some sources cite Voodoo but in a very, down the nose aside and often put into the position of cartoonish trope riddled mentions in ways that the Christian demon stories or “old world” (read, White colonialist) themes are treated. My initial reading was what I have named, frontloaded Whiteness.
My position as a horror fan for most of my life as a reader has necessitated a certain amount of numbness and a certain level of willful myopia for me to continue loving horror. Horror does not love me and my Blackness. Folk horror has proven to be harder in terms of finding some way in that doesn’t hurt me. The set dressing so to speak of folk horror is made of things that draw me as a reader. Legends? Check. Cults, rituals, mysterious goings on in spooky forests? Hell. Yes. These themes are things I am deeply interested in but, when I dive in there’s just nothing there for me.
For context, here is where I’m coming from. I am a Black, Queer, non-binary person. I am a greedy promiscuous reader and as I’ve mentioned already, I love horror. Folk horror should be a place within horror where I feel at home, themes like isolation, superstition, mythos, occult. These are juicy, meaty themes I love. Folk horror feels like a place I could get comfortable.
Horror overall is my home. I feel comfortable in the dark. I want to know the monsters and the tingle of fear in my sacrum. To quote Paul Jessup from the March 2020 issue of Nightmare Magazine, in an essay titled The H Word: The Melancholy Beauty of Terror:
“Death is the crux and crucible of it all, for better or for worse. Death and the melancholy terror it brings.”
That quote is why I love horror. On instinct, I turned to folk horror to fulfill a very specific longing within the framework that Jessup presented and found nothing. We are not there. I do not exist there. There is no us there, even in American work.
I say us, I mean me. I mean indigenous people, Black people, Queer people, Latinx people- us. The ever mysterious Other. We know that horror in general has been slow to integrate to a great degree. Like most of the literary world, there are still questions about the value of things like #ownvoices and an adherence to the Western canon. That being what it is, we are still there. We exist. Our stories exist and we can find them. Folk horror on the other hand has proven to feel barren to me as a reader. When I’ve sought to see myself, the genre has proven to be difficult.
During the preparation for writing this piece, I spoke with people of color who have the same kind of feelings. Most of our conversations revolved around the front-loaded whiteness as a requisite to enter and the ways in which many of us feel both unwelcome and invisible. And
I read a lot of short work that in terms of content fit the folk horror genre but often wasn’t labeled as such. Stories that took place in the American South during slavery, no mention of slavery. Stories revolving around the “evil” of Voodoo in Louisiana, with no people of color, etc. These stories, American stories exist around us, but we are not there. This dynamic as a reader is very involved in the phenomenon of double consciousness, as talked about by W.E.B duBois. We love the stories and yet, for many of us it is painful to love these stories, this genre because we are just not there. Double consciousness in this case, refers to the pain of engaging in this work while being absent from it.
In American folk horror, I went looking for stories that potentially could reflect the country we live in, our shared history, the things that work for what folk horror is. I went looking for stories that spoke to me and found very little. Culturally, America is in a unique position to have a wealth of lore to create horrific tales with. There is enough, there are enough of us to carve a space in folk horror that is scary and representative of us. And yet, we are not there.
I am intrigued by the central themes of Folk horror. I love the occult; I love the mysteries of the Satanic and the esoteric mysticism folk horror is full of. Give me all those spooky woods, creepy cemeteries, weird creatures who might come out of the fog to eat me. I love all those things. The problem is as I stated to start with, the frontloaded level of Whiteness. As a fan, I’ve felt deeply reluctant to take a deeper dive.
The reluctance is mainly due to exhaustion. I have been reading and loving horror since I was 9 years old. I’m now 43 and the unnamed thing that bugged me for years as a child I now know the name of. It is double consciousness, and that burden is heavy. In the simplest terms, my experience of double consciousness as it applies to horror and in this case folk horror specifically, is loving something so much I want to talk about it forever and explore it and play with it but on the other side of the coin, I am not included. I am not there so I don’t want to play.
In the old stories, pre the modern age, I get it. Having read many foundational works in horror and folk horror, I understand. There is some degree of forgiveness in me for “men of their time” though, I can’t tolerate them as I get older. I get enough of that in my everyday life. I don’t need those dynamics replicated in the fiction I read. There is more to being the Other, than the xenophobia of the writers in the canon.
I am deeply critical because I love horror and folk horror so much. I love it so much and for so much of my life I am deeply invested in making it better not just for the few but for all of us. I am a dork. I’m a nerd. I’d much rather theorize and talk about weird ideas and things that can happen in the swamp.
II
I spoke with a few groups of people in the horror community, I focused mainly on people I don’t know personally. I did a survey of folk horror fans specifically; I spoke with some other writers of color interested in or fans of folk horror and a third group of mixed white and POC folks who weren’t familiar with folk horror but upon being introduced to it showed an interest.
Across the board from fans, potential fans and other writers the one thing that people are desperate for is diversity. Almost every person responded at some point in my survey when asked if they had any extra comments, said they wanted more stories outside of the traditional definitions of Folk Horror. Most without saying so explicitly are like me and are tired of the frontloaded or assumed requisite whiteness.
There is a hunger for diverse voices, diverse mythos and experiences that extends beyond us Others. In conversation with White fans, I was surprised to hear the depth of their desire to hear from us. One reader commented that their love of the sub-genre of folk horror, has been more difficult as they’ve started to experience any double consciousness where they haven’t before. One person expressed to me that they’d never given themselves the space to have the desire to see other people represented nor had they really thought about how it feels for the rest of us until recently.
Hearing that feeling articulated by people who are just learning what it feels like is an interesting experience. I am empathetic to a degree; however, I also want to stop them and not so gently remind them that for many of us this is just how it is to be a fan. Beyond my initial feelings about the, awakening to double consciousness I’m witnessing, I see the oldest most basic arguments about why it doesn’t matter.
All I want to say about the resistance or lack of care about things like diversity and #ownvoices is this. It is incredibly easy to not care about something you don’t know about. If you are not the Other you don’t know what it is like to have the hunger to see your own history, your own culture, your own place in our world reflected at you. You don’t know what it is to suffer the attempts at the authors we love to represent us. It hurts.
We as creators and fans know that fiction matters. We know that fiction is a window into worlds we don’t live in. For many of us it is how we learn to connect with the world, with our faith, with our experiences. We seek fiction for comfort. That is not a new theory. Further, there are decades of available research both formal and anecdotal that reinforces the need and value of diversity. If you dear reader want to know more, there are many resources available for free on the web.
The responses from other POC- Black people, were all very similar in both tone and content. I spoke with a few Black writers who I don’t know personally, their responses almost unilaterally were that they loved the idea of Folk horror on a broad spectrum but that, the upfront whiteness as prerequisite turned them off writing it or engaging with it. We could argue that whiteness given that it is not mentioned as a specific thing required of folk horror, means that folks like me are misinterpreting things.
In searching for folk horror that sees us, readers find lists of horror stories and novels by POC that could arguably be considered folk horror specifically, but the term is never connected. I have asked around, no one could put a name to the term. Granted, folk horror is as far as I’ve been able to find out a relatively new term for a type of horror fiction. And with that said, we are still stuck in a trench of whiteness that has no vision outside of itself.
I want to end this with a quote from myself. I wrote this in a 2014 review of a Peter Straub book. What has changed?
Not too long ago I went on a mission to check out some online horror/sf/f zines.
So much with the Whiteness. To the point where I wonder if classic horror tropes treated outside of European roots would be understood? Accepted?
What is even…ugh.
I’m so frustrated. I want to read shit I like and not feel shitty about it.
Something outside of Whiteness or nah?
Apparently nah.
I don’t want to read another mystical magical minstrelized blues playing shuck n jive negro.
So, a lot of stuff is just out.
I am seriously feeling some type of way about this right now. I have a lot of horror/sf/f/ related stuff on my writing bucketlist but I feel like there is no place for me in genre fiction and it hurts my fucking heart.
So really, dear other authors can you not?
Sincerely,
Shannon Barber
