Every work of art calls on his own experience. One of which I would describe as the feeling of fear. Even though art, like movies, rarely makes me feel afraid, fear (which is something different than being afraid) is in fact an emotion that I much enjoy in various forms of art, especially in music.
For example, a few months ago I went to a live concert of one of my favorite pieces of classical music: Béla Bartók’s The Miraculous Mandarin. A piece I heavily associate with fear and horror. This relatively unknown piece of expressionist music originally accompanied a ballet about violence, lust and death. The music is atonal and dissonant and succeeds greatly in creating an unsettling atmosphere that complements these dark and violent themes. In fact, it is one of the first horror-like pieces of music, and very similar to some subsequent horror movies scores.
Another piece I associate with fear is Beethoven’s fifth symphony (the first classical concert I went to). The first movement, the allegro con brio, with its famous four-note motif, is like an inevitable battle against an unprecedented power. Listening to this masterpiece always leaves me with the underlying impression of fear, fear for an overwhelming and indifferent force, one that I could only attribute to two things: fate or nature.
But these were only two examples of (classical) music, I however, enjoy the same thing in books, games and movies as well. Horror movies, especially those from the 70’s, are some of my favorites.
Admittedly, fear is an unusual emotion to take pleasure in and regard as beautiful. I think it is therefore reasonable to question whether there is an explanation for this. I reckon this requires some introspection from me.
I think a good start is with an experience I’ve occasionally been subjected to: the experience of some sort of derealisation. Experiences where the entire external world feels unreal and has some kind of aloofness. A sort of phantasmagoria, an alienation of reality, like if there is some cloth that resembles the world that, if I reach out my hand to it, could tear apart. As if Descartes’ evil demon is giving me some subtle clues about his deceit.
It’s an interesting experience, funny at times, but disturbing as well, but that is not what I want to get into here. I instead think I could connect this experience to the feeling of fear. Because when analysing something or someone, it is perhaps best to start with looking at an extremity, and from there on try to understand more about it, to figure out if it is a manifestation of something. To me it seems that this experience of derealization is such an extreme that might lead us toward the right path for an explanation.
One could say there are two types of people: the observers and the participators of life. A continuous spectrum will probably be a more accurate model, but nonetheless, I’m pretty certain I would fall quite far on the observer side.
As far as I know, I have always had this tendency to dwell in my thoughts a lot, sometimes escaping in a world of my own making. We might suppose that this is one reason I am more vulnerable to derealisation: it is as if the inner world, where I dwell so often, pushes the external world away. Like how, when being immersed in a video game or a book, the fictional world in there comes across as more real than the physical world around us.
But I think this could also be a reason as to why I enjoy the experience of fear in art.
In Dune they say “fear is the mindkiller”, and maybe that explains it for us. Even though one's inner world can be extremely lively in one sense, it is also very much dead in another. When thinking deeply, you are after all isolated from the two things where life manifests itself: your body and the outside world. You’ve probably had times when you were in such deep thought you forgot where you were and what you were doing, or that something someone just said completely passed your mind. Thinking, in whatever form, is what makes you less present in the here and now, it makes you feel less alive. Therefore we could say it is precisely when your “mind is killed”, the opposite happens and you start feeling more alive.
We can find some sense in the functioning of fear if we formulate it like this: when in fear, you feel the presence of death, and exactly when death is nearby, you will feel more alive. In situations of fear, there is no time to think, instead our senses sharpen and we become hyper-alert to threats in the outside world.
In my opinion this link is a fulfilling explanation. Since I found that I have a tendency to focus on mental-phenomena, which we noted to make you feel less alive, the fact that I enjoy fear in art suddenly becomes quite reasonable. Fear counteracts this tendency and makes my interaction with sensory experiences stronger. It is, in a certain way, like a drug.
(Of course, I have to address that this is not a scientific explanation. The question of whether such a scientific explanation of oneself will ever be fulfilling is an interesting one. Does anyone really get to know themselves with such explanations – which, after all, is usually the purpose of introspection?)