Monsters and Everyday Life

This paper addresses the topic of ‘Screening Animals and the Inhuman’ through a discussion of the coexistence between supernatural phenomena and the documentary mode both in mock found-footage horror films and in reality television shows. Here the ‘inhuman’ relates to demonic figures, even though this investigation also includes the more arguably ‘human’ ghost. I draw from studies about the relationship between media and the spiritual world by Tom Gunning (‘Phantom Images and Modern Manifestations’), Jeffrey Sconce (Haunted Media: Electronic Presence from the Telegraph to Television) and Annette Hill (Paranormal Media) in order to investigate, within the boundaries of genre studies, new articulations of the relationship between horror and the documentation of reality, and more broadly, the ways in which the connection between supernatural themes and documentary modalities change our relationship to film. I argue that the confusion between fiction and fact within both found-footage horror and reality TV blurs the boundaries between the films and the surrounding world, removing horror narratives from the exclusive domains of the symbolic, the unconscious, and the escapist, embedding the ‘monster’ in everyday experiences. The paper’s filmography includes the Paranormal Activity and [•REC] films, as well as the Paranormal State and Ghost Hunters shows.