Episode 148: Transcript
Transcription by Keffy
Charlie Jane: [00:00:00] Annalee, I feel like we need new kinds of scares besides the jump scare. Like, I don't know, what about the squat scare? I feel like it'd be really good for your quads, your dodecahedrons, and all the muscle groups if you could just squat and be scared.
Annalee: [00:00:16] Yeah, so I'm thinking more of like an opening the hips type scare, like a lower lunge position, or like a pigeon pose type scare, like it's really good for your lower back, it like stretches your psoas muscles. I just think we need to bring more yoga into our scares.
Charlie Jane: [00:00:35] Downward facing dog scare instead of jump scare. You heard it here first. I mean, I just think that we need to be exercising more muscle groups with our scares and I am seeking the rise of calisthenic horror or even some acrobatic—
Annalee: [00:00:48] Aerobic.
Charlie Jane: [00:00:48] Yeah, gymnastics scares. I want a triple axel somersault scare. I think those words made sense. Anyway, it's time to get Bram Stoked because today we are talking about horror.
Annalee: [00:01:01] I am so excited about this horror episode. I'm really hoping that we're just going to like, rip out all our entrails and like chomp on our own bones or—
Charlie Jane: [00:01:10] Hell, yeah.
Annalee: [00:01:10] Actually I have a better idea. We're going to build a haunted robot doll who can do it all for us. We're going to automate all that gut chomping with AI.
Charlie Jane: [00:01:20] We're gonna do it.
[00:01:22] Okay, so you are actually listening to Our Opinions Are Correct, a podcast about science fiction, society, and why a cat woke me up with a jump scare by jumping on top of me this morning. I'm Charlie Jane Anders. Most recently, I'm the author of Promises Stronger Than Darkness and also the comic book collection New Mutants: Lethal Legion.
Annalee: [00:01:44] And I'm Annalee Newitz. I am a science journalist who also writes science fiction. My latest novel is called The Terraformers and I have a book coming out in June, which is nonfiction, which is called Stories Are Weapons: Psychological Warfare and the American Mind.
Charlie Jane: [00:02:02] It's such an amazing book. I can't wait for everybody to read it.
[00:02:05] So like I said, today we are getting into the horror genre. It's almost October, right?
Annalee: [00:02:10] Yeah.
Charlie Jane: [00:02:10] And we're going to be talking to queer icon, Dr. Chuck Tingle, who is the author of the horror novels, Camp Damascus and the forthcoming Bury Your Gays. We're going to talk to Chuck about why queers love horror.
[00:02:23] You know, it's a scary time for the LGBTQIA+ community, so why do we actually want scary stories to help us get through it? And later on, we'll be talking about how horror movie soundtracks work, what makes a great horror movie soundtrack, and why does some random music geek’s experiment with bells still hold so much sway?
[00:02:45] Also, on our mini episode next week, we'll be talking about science fiction horror versus fantasy horror. How does it change a story if the things we're scared of is aliens or mutants instead of, you know, vampires or demons?
Annalee: [00:02:59] And by the way, did you know that this podcast is entirely independent and funded by you, our listeners, through Patreon?
[00:03:07] That is right. So if you become a patron, you're making this podcast happen. You're helping to pay Naya Harman, our amazing producer. You're helping to pay for our hosting and our thinking about stuff. You're helping to pay for our opinions to be more correct. And plus, if you support us at a $5 level or even more, you get mini episodes every other week, plus you get access to our Discord channel where we hang out, we answer questions, we chat about stuff.
[00:03:38] So just think about it. All of that could be yours for a few bucks a month. And anything you give goes right into my experiment with building automation to chomp your bones and also making our opinions more correct. So find us at patreon.com/ouropinionsarecorrect.
Charlie Jane: [00:03:58] All right, let's get horrified!
[00:03:59] [OOAC theme plays. Science fictiony synth noises over an energetic, jazzy drum line.]
Charlie Jane: [00:04:33] Now we're so lucky to be joined by Dr. Chuck Tingle, author of last year's amazing horror novel Camp Damascus, and the soon to be released Bury Your Gays. Dr. Chuck Tingle is a two time Hugo Award-nominated writer who also self publishes erotica and romance, and he hosts two podcasts, Pounded in the Butt by My Own Podcast and My Friend Chuck.
[00:05:00] Welcome to the show, Chuck!
Dr. Chuck Tingle: [00:05:01] Wow, thank you for having me. This is a great treat to be here. Also to reconnect because we we've trotted together before.
Charlie Jane: [00:05:11] Yes!
Dr. Chuck Tingle: [00:05:12] So it's really wonderful. I'm flooded with all kinds of warm memories.
Charlie Jane: [00:05:18] Aw, same here.
Dr. Chuck Tingle: [00:05:20] Yes.
Annalee: [00:05:21] Yeah. Thanks for being here.
Dr. Chuck Tingle: [00:05:22] Yes!
Charlie Jane: [00:05:23] So what made you want to write horror fiction? Have you always been interested in writing horror or is this something that you kind of came to in the past few years?
Dr. Chuck Tingle: [00:05:32] You know, I've always been interested in genres. I think that maybe push, taboo, things. I mean, most buckaroos know me from writing erotica, which is sort of exploring, sexual taboos and horror is, generally, violence or a taboo of violation. So, I find those art forms interesting because it's just kind of exciting to always know that you have that kind of button that every genres don't have. That you can hit that button and take it to a place that you can't take things in anything from, a mystery, or to, what's another one, just like a dang action or something.
[00:06:25] There's conventions to every genre, but I really love that erotica and romance and horror dabble in the extremes. And I also love that they are more body-centric and kind of eliciting more primal responses. So, that’s kind of a big thing for me. So I just love, I love both genres so much. It's just kind of natural, I think.
Annalee: [00:06:50] Yeah. So right now it's obviously a super scary time to be queer in the United States and also a lot of other nations in the world. And some of us are retreating into cozy fiction and escapist adventures. But why do you think that so many queer people are also seeking out these really scary, taboo-breaking stories?
Dr. Chuck Tingle: [00:07:10] Oh, wow. Well, that's a great question. I kind of see horror, for me, there's the two functions, there's kind of the catharsis horror, where the tables are turned on the villain and you get to feel this feeling that maybe you can sometimes feel in, in real life, or similar ways.
[00:07:31] And then there's also kind of an almost a punishment version, where the catharsis you feel is that you're not a character in that story. And so you can kind of explore both of those realms with horror. I think that, especially, you specifically are talking about marginalized horror, I would say. Which, when I think of genre, I kind of put that to the side a bit because I think there's special rules. I think that's what I write in. I write very specifically queer horror. So for me, it is really important to strike a balance and to also recognize that you kind of have to recalibrate, because for groups that are the subject of bigotry and different things like that, you already are living in a scary world.
[00:08:24] And so there needs to be a sort of recalibration, but I think if you get it right, wow, can it be powerful. Because there's just so much simmering there all the time.
Annalee: [00:08:38] Can you talk a little bit more about that process of recalibration? Like, does that mean that you would try to not violate certain taboos? Because you talked before about horror as being kind of taboo-breaking.
Dr. Chuck Tingle: [00:08:49] Well, I should say, I think that horror, because it is taboo-breaking, and this is kind of how I feel about most art. I really do think that there is artistic validity in horror that really is just pretty brutal all the way through. There is a place for that.
[00:09:12] This isn't like a queer horror, or anything. I guess it kind of is if I think about it, but maybe it's more in the subtext. But there's a film like the French film Martyrs that is just so brutal and that's almost the point of it. there's a lot of kind of new wave French extreme horror like that. And there is a time and a place, artistically, for that. That is valid art.
[00:09:35] More of the recalibration on my part is what I want to contribute. So, I don't want anyone to listen to this and think, wow, well, I hope Chuck's not saying what I do is wrong or what I love is wrong. I think that what it is for me, and what I want to get out of horror is much more on the side of that catharsis. Of taking these feelings, that pressure of, kind of the turn of, is this character gonna turn the tables and fight back? And if you amp that up to a certain level and then hit it just right? Artistically speaking, there are not many feelings that are as powerful as that to me. And so that is really, generally, what I'm trying to hit and yeah.
[00:10:28] To answer your question. Yes, to know the audience. I do think that is different if you're in a marginalized group, but I also think that, really, it’s for me. It's my personal taste. How much of that do I want to tolerate and things?
[00:10:45] And I think, you know, there's so many good examples. Someone like, Jordan Peele, so good. He is, currently, I see as the master of knowing where to crank that to and where to turn it. And so, he's a big touchstone for me when I'm thinking of ideas and plotting and stuff. So, you know, there's limits for everyone. It's just my personal level.
Charlie Jane: [00:11:09] Yeah. It's interesting that you bring up Jordan Peele, because I was actually going to mention that I read an interview with him where he said that there was an early draft of the movie, Get Out, where it has a less kind of upbeat ending. Like they don't escape and try—spoilers for a movie that's been out for a while at this point.
Dr. Chuck Tingle: [00:11:28] Yes.
[00:11:28] But you know, that was something that really struck me about Camp Damascus is it does kind of give you a lot of hope. It does... a lot of it is, like, actually I came away from it feeling like, yes, we can survive. Yes, we can fight back and we can win, which is not always what I get from reading a horror novel.
[00:11:44] Another thing that really struck me about Camp Damascus is that I went into it expecting kind of a standard conversion therapy camp story. Like there's the recent movie, They/Them. There's the movie, But I'm a Cheerleader, where you kind of know the format of it. Like, you show up at the camp at the start and then things get creepier and creepier.
[00:12:11] And your novel completely doesn't go that way. It completely doesn't follow any of that pattern did you kind of decide to break the out of all those conversion camp tropes, or was that just something that came to you as you were working on it?
Dr. Chuck Tingle: [00:12:25] I think, I've talked about this a little bit, but some authors say do you write a character first, so, the characters drive, or do you write a plot first, all these different things? Those two kind of go back and forth of what should lead your story. And the general consensus is character, at least in modern times. If you go to an English class, they're gonna say, well, let your characters drive.
[00:12:51] I am not ashamed to say that I actually don't go with either of those. for me, it is message. Message is always my number one touchstone. And that can mean a lot of things, but really, what that boils down to is, what is the point of this? What am I giving as a gift to the audience?
[00:13:09] And so, in the sense of what you were saying about, Camp Damascus and what I wanted to give and the point of it, of the idea, came first. And then the next thing I think with a novel is, well, what is the most interesting way to present this? And I just found that, instead of going through those numbers, I could have done that, but I just find a lot of the nuance and kind of the more interesting things, so what happened around the event, if that makes sense. Especially with horror because then you kind of create this creeping dread, you have a little mystery box at the center of everything that's going on. It's almost like the idea of waiting until Jaws shows up at the end of Jaws, but with an idea instead of a a creature.
[00:14:06] And so I realized recently, not only does Camp Damascus do that, but Straight, my first horror novella. It's about a zombie apocalypse that kind of only affects cis-straight people. and it happens one day a year every year. So, I think, you know, when I had that idea, there was a lot I wanted to say with it. And of course, I think most buckaroos would think, well, we got to open on the night that this happens for the first time.
[00:14:37] But instead, Straight takes place in the third year of it, because then you have kind of the political change of what does the world look like if this is happening once a year? There's all these other issues that you can talk about and it kind of like circles around it. Funny enough I'm talking this up like that's just the way the way I do things. But what's funny is Bury Your Gays is very much, it is happening as it happened. It's a very much a story of the time that it happens is where it is based.
[00:15:09] So it is kind of unlike Camp Damascus and Straight in that it is right there during the time instead of a sort of reflection on it, which is interesting. I don't think either is a better way than others, but it's just kind of more like how is this message going to be most served? Is it going to be straight in there or is it going to be to kind of walk around the edges a bit and see what we can pull out?
Annalee: [00:15:35] That's so interesting. I wanted to ask you a little bit, about moving between erotic fiction and horror fiction. You've said that you like the fact that both kind of elicit a physical response and that they deal with taboo-breaking. But when you talked just now about writing around a message. What's the difference between crafting erotica with a message and crafting horror with a message? And is it different messages? Or how does that work?
Dr. Chuck Tingle: [00:16:03] Wow. You know what? I think they're very similar. I think erotica and horror work this way, and I think comedy works this way.
[00:16:13] Which, speaking of, you know, Jordan Peele. That is why he's so good at what he does. If you watch episodes of Key and Peele, especially now with the context, there are so many horror ideas of that show that are turned into sketches.
Charlie Jane: [00:16:33] They did some great stuff with vampires and zombies in that show.
Dr. Chuck Tingle: [00:16:35] Oh yes, absolutely. I would say every episode there's at least one sketch that if you directed it a different way, it would be horror.
Charlie Jane: [00:16:46] Oh, like where they get trapped in an LMFAO music video and they can't escape from the music video. They're trying to leave and they can't leave. That's a horror premise.
Dr. Chuck Tingle: [00:16:57] Honestly, it absolutely is. And when I'm kind of thinking of premises, generally the ones that I decide to write are generally the ones that could probably be seen as comedy. I think that, Straight, I just said the premise and I said it in this context, we're talking about horrifying things, but if you say, oh, a world where only the straight cis people turn into zombies, that could be filmed as a comedy. Absolutely.
Annalee: [00:17:31] Like satire, yeah.
Dr. Chuck Tingle: [00:17:32] Yes. And Camp Damascus, you know, it is in this terrifying, horrible setting of a conversion camp. But if you really take kind of the high concept of it, spoiler alert for the next 30 seconds, everyone, if you haven't read it, but the idea of a church saying, you know what? The ends justify the means, and to stop sin, we're gonna partner with these demons instead and invoke possession instead of remove it. You could very much film that as a comedy sketch of a priest trying to get the demon to come in.
[00:18:04] Bury Your Gays, without doing any spoilers, could very much be a comedy. So I think that what's interesting is is that mostly what I resonate with is this idea of high concept across erotica, across the comedy and horror, and it's funny. That's a funny phrase because some folks think it means the opposite of what it means. If you go online, a lot of buckaroos throw that out and think that high concept means kind of an arty, not really defined, super kind of heady thing, which is actually the opposite. High concept is something, technically, if you're talking about film, you could pitch it without an actor or anything and sell it based on the concept because it has a certain level of sort of irony or kind of just a one sentence thing that turns an idea on its head.
[00:19:00] A great example would be just, you know, ‘90s movies were so high concept. But omething like Liar, Liar, where you literally just say, oh, it's a lawyer who can't lie. That is just kind of the epitome of what a high concept is.
Annalee: [00:19:13] The one sentence pitch.
Charlie Jane: [00:19:13] Yeah, the elevator pitch.
Annalee: [00:19:16] So do you see your erotica as being very comedic most of the time?
Dr. Chuck Tingle: [00:19:22] You know, what's funny is I actually don't at all. I see it as, and this, we could do five hours on this one question, so I'm trying to summarize it. I actually don’t—
Annalee: [00:19:38] Give us the high concept version.
Dr. Chuck Tingle: [00:19:40] Yes, I'll give you the high concept version. So, when I am sitting down to write erotica in the erotic Tingleverse, I don't see it as comedy at all, actually.
[00:19:52] But I recognized that the reason that it is popular and that the reason it is resonates is that others find it funny. And, I also think I'm kind of a naturally funny person, I guess. So even in my horror writing, in dark scenes, there can be funny moments. That's just kind of where I go.
[00:20:18] So, I do lean into what I know buckaroos will think is funny. I'll come up with an erotica title and think, oh, a lot of others are going to think that this is a clever twist or, oh, I recognize that feeling, so it's making me laugh. I think that's what a lot of tinglers hit is I'm kind of referencing something like, putting in the wrong order because all my friends were ready and I ordered too fast and now that order is kind of a physical manifestation. And so, that, I know is a funny concept, and I can kind of lean into that.
[00:20:58] But, the erotic Tingleverse as a whole to me is, I think a product of my sensibilities, which are very you could say, out there. They're very unusual. They're a lot farther out than I think the average buckaroo off the street would think, wow, that's a very strange thing. And to me, I always think, I don't know. It's just, they never actually seem that strange to me. Maybe that comes from being so kind of not just politically, but kind of artistically kind of far left or so open to ideas.
[00:21:37] I think maybe being in the queer community and the reason that, I think I resonate with everyone, but queer buckaroos, I think like it because there's that same sense of, yes, that's a funny idea, but also I am used to all kinds of these relationships that the mainstream would find silly. And to me it just kind of is just another journey to explore, another thing that is just kind of fine. So, you know, that's kind of like, it sits within me.
[00:22:02] Sorry, that was more than the high concept version. I tried my best.
Charlie Jane: [00:22:07] Yeah, no, that was really fascinating I'm really glad we got into that.
[00:22:11] Yeah, so final question, I guess. I was trying to think about what makes queer horror maybe kind of different from other horror that I've come across. I think a lot of horror I read and watch and encounter is about an individual who is surviving a thing. There's the trope of the final girl, but there's also just like one individual is in a really bad situation and has to get out of it or, you know, tries to get out of it.
[00:22:37] I feel like one of the things I love about Camp Damascus is that it's about working together, and do you think that queer horror maybe kind of foregrounds community a little bit more rather than the individual surviving something?
Dr. Chuck Tingle: [00:22:51] You know, it is, we're kind of all dabbling in queer genres a lot, so maybe you both can kind of relate in that there's this balance of not seeing it as a monolith and recognizing that there's so many different aspects of queerness, while at the same time being kind of realistic and talking his buds and being like, yeah, that is kind of a thing that happens with queer stories.
[00:23:20] I think of this a lot because a lot of the time for me, queer art has always kind of resonated, in fact, to me as sort of punk rock. And I say that and queer buckaroos will nod and I'm like, yeah, we all feel that and then at the same time I also have to kind of be like but it's also not. It's also all kinds of things So if you were to ask my personal experience with, and what I see, I think community, a lot like the example I gave of punk rock. A lot of buckaroos that it's sort of a pushing away of something else when really it's actually a bringing together of kind of a community and a unit.
[00:24:01] It's really not about exclusion. It's about inclusion. And I think that, ultimately what I have seen with queer horror is there's there is kind of a lot of that even if it's not in the text. Even if it's something that you read the text and you think this is a very exclusionary. This is dark and and all this stuff. The feeling that queer buckaroos get reading that is, oh, I'm reading someone else who has the same experience as me and that in itself is inclusive
[00:24:34] So I do agree with you that there is an element of community that really makes it resonate whether that's on the page or off.
Charlie Jane: [00:24:43] Yeah, that makes sense And by punk rock you mean sort of that it's kind of in defiance of mainstream culture, or, you know.
Dr. Chuck Tingle: [00:24:51] Yes, if you, I mean, just think about queerness in general. There is, for whatever reason we're traveling along this timeline and there are some of us who are queer and that is placed, all over the world, in a family of entirely cis straight people, suddenly there's there's this queer buckaroo, right, dropped right in the middle. In all the kind of marginalized communities that’s kind of an interestingly unique thing to queerness. That it just kind of happens like that and I think that inherently, at least for me, resonates with punk. Which like I said, I don't think is a... There's a stereotype that punk means like, heck off, and it does sometimes, but really what I think it means is, I am different and I am confident in that, and I am kind of harnessing that and using that as my power.
[00:25:51] So, that's kind of where I think that connection comes from, if that makes sense.
Annalee: [00:25:57] I love that. That's the utopian side of punk, for sure.
Charlie Jane: [00:25:58] Yeah.
Dr. Chuck Tingle: [00:26:00] Yeah, there are some other sides, don't get me wrong, but that's what I resonate with, you know?
Charlie Jane: [00:26:07] So, where can people find you online, Chuck?
Dr. Chuck Tingle: [00:26:09] Well, as of, I guess, a couple days ago, I am finally on Bluesky. I try not to mention the other place, and, I'm really enjoying Tumblr.
Charlie Jane: [00:26:20] Same!
Dr. Chuck Tingle: [00:26:20] They have Dr. Chuck Tingle on. I think I might already follow—
Charlie Jane: [00:26:24] Tumblr is my favorite.
Dr. Chuck Tingle: [00:26:25] It's wonderful, and when I tell buckaroos I'm on Tumblr, they say, what dang year is it? Is it 2010? And I say, no, Tumblr's where it’s all happening. So, that's another good one. Instagram, all those. Just look for old Chuck Tingle. You'll find me.
Charlie Jane: [00:26:43] Yeah. Well, thank you so much for joining us. And we're so excited to dive into Bury Your Gays.
Annalee: [00:26:48] Yeah. Thanks for coming.
Dr. Chuck Tingle: [00:26:49] Thank you. This was great.
[00:26:52] OOAC session break music, a quick little synth bwoop bwoo.
Charlie Jane: [00:26:54] Annalee, what's the first horror movie soundtrack you ever remember hearing?
Annalee: [00:27:00] So when I was a kid, my parents took me to see a lot of horror movies because I think their philosophy was if Annalee can walk, they can watch a movie. And so when I was very little in the 1970s, they took me to see. Invasion of the Body Snatchers. So this was the 1970s version with Donald Sutherland---
Charlie Jane: [00:27:23] And Leonard Nimoy!
Annalee: [00:27:23] And Leonard Nimoy, that's right. And the music in the movie incorporated the sound of a heartbeat, and so when a really scary thing was happening, there was a lot of tension in the movie, and remember, I'm seeing this when I'm like seven, they would bring in this heartbeat sound and I remember being so scared because it would make my heart race to hear this heartbeat.
[00:27:51] And so the way that I learned to deal with horror movies was instead of covering my eyes, I would cover my ears.
Charlie Jane: [00:27:57] Oh, wow.
Annalee: [00:27:57] I’ve always thought soundtracks were much scarier than visual.
Charlie Jane: [00:28:01] Yeah, I feel like I've watched horror movies with you and I've seen you cover your ears. I've noticed you doing that. Hadn't thought about that before but that is a thing that you do.
[00:28:11] Yeah for me like I remember like being in elementary school and like all the kids at my elementary school were obsessed with tubular bells. And they were talking about how tubular bells was the scariest music.
Annalee: [00:28:24] Wait, what is that?
Charlie Jane: [00:28:24] So Tubular Bells is a prog rock album by this guy named Mike Oldfield. We're going to talk about it later in the episode too, but it became the soundtrack to the 1973 movie, The Exorcist.
Annalee: [00:28:38] Okay.
Charlie Jane: [00:28:40] Yeah. And it's just like this kind of like weird kind of tinkly bell sound.
[00:28:42] Tubular Bells plays for a few seconds in the background. Frantic, tinkly bell sounds.
Charlie Jane: [00:28:51] Yeah. It's, it's so iconic. I feel like you're not wrong to cover your ears instead of your eyes when you watch a horror movie because horror movies use sound and sound design in a bunch of ways to to freak you out and scare you, but one of the ways that horror movies definitely kind of get at you is through music.
Annalee: [00:29:09] Yeah, I mean there are obviously genres of music that are made to be displeasing to listen to and when you watch a drama or a comedy, usually the music is there to be like pleasant or to kind of be lightly funny. And in scary movies, it's interesting because the music, it's not always hard to listen to, but it has a very distinctive character to it. You always know. that something is a horror movie based on the music, I find.
Charlie Jane: [00:29:44] Yeah, I mean, it's so funny, Annalee, you and I often will watch movies at home with the subtitles on for various reasons. And, I'll notice that the subtitles will try to describe the musical cues as we're watching. And it's funny because oftentimes I'm not consciously aware that the music is changing, except that the subtitles tell me that the music is changing. And they're like ominous music plays or unsettling music or suspenseful music is playing now. And I'm like, oh yeah, actually, that's true. I hadn't really thought about it, but the music, which had been either absent or kind of nice a moment ago is suddenly like, [Mimics creepy music growling] and it’s just like, oh yeah!
[00:30:25] And the music is kind of subtly cueing me in that it's starting to get scarier and that scarier stuff is starting to happen. Even if up until now, the characters have just been kind of having lunch. Suddenly it's like, oh, something scary is about to happen because the music is kind of warning you that things are going to happen. It’s this subconscious flag which, because of our habit of putting on the subtitles on Netflix and other streaming things, we are now more consciously aware of.
Annalee: [00:30:50] So, do you find that with horror movie soundtracks that they try to imitate, other sounds, like I mentioned the heartbeat sound that that I heard in Invasion of the Body Snatchers, which you do hear in other horror as well, especially in the ‘70s, I think it was really popular. Are there other examples like that?
Charlie Jane: [00:31:09] Yeah, actually, Naya, our heroic producer, found us this incredible article from Popular Science, where they talk about the soundtrack to Psycho, the Alfred Hitchcock movie, where the violins are copying the sound of a person screaming.
Annalee: [00:31:24] Oh, yeah.
Charlie Jane: [00:31:24] There are like, these shrieks from the violins.
Annalee: [00:31:26] That [mimics Psycho soundtrack violins, wah wah wah].
Charlie Jane: [00:31:28] Yeah. You know, it's become so recognizable that people just kind of like know that sound, even if they don't recognize it from Psycho. In that article from Popular Science, there's this great quote from a cognitive neuroscientist named Sascha Frühholz, who says we think that we perceive scream-like soundtracks as danger cues, most likely because they mimic the sound quality of human screams.
Annalee: [00:31:50] Yeah, I mean, I feel like one of the other really iconic horror themes that comes up again and again is the one in Jaws.
Charlie Jane: [00:32:00] Oh my God.
Annalee: [00:32:00] Which is, I mean, it has the same pacing, almost, as the Psycho theme. It's not like “nee nee nee!” It’s like urr urr urr. So it’s like the sound of like a shark screaming? I'm not sure what it is that it's trying to evoke. But John Williams wrote that score and he's really legendary in the soundtrack world. And he said that he really wanted to evoke this monstrous shark partly because they had this animatronic shark for the film that broke, so they couldn't actually use the shark. They had to use the presence of the shark.
[00:32:38] So when you watch that film, you notice that like the shark, we see pieces of the shark, but we never see like the full monty. We just get like a shark sound and then shark mouth, but not much else.
Charlie Jane: [00:32:51] Yeah. And that's a great example of how like, a, it's scarier to only glimpse something sometimes than just see it full on, but also sound can kind of supply a lot of that feeling, oh my gosh, you're about to be eaten.
[00:33:06] It's kind of more visceral than just seeing, oh, so there's a bunch of teeth and they're going to bite you or whatever.
[00:33:10] I want us to talk more about Tubular Bells because it was such an important part of my childhood.
Annalee: [00:33:16] All right, I'm glad we came back to this. It's an important part of horror.
Charlie Jane: [00:33:20] It really is. So I found an article with The Guardian where Mike Oldfield, the guy who made Tubular Bells describes himself as the godfather of scary movie music. And I think that that's definitely true.
Annalee: [00:33:34] Yeah, not wrong.
Charlie Jane: [00:33:34] I think this guy, he didn't set out to make a horror movie soundtrack. He was with some band and they were in the studio and they done everything they wanted to do in the studio and they had some studio time left and he just started kind of messing around and he decided to do this weird prog rock kind of ambient... He was really influenced by some of the early ambient music at the time and he wanted to do something ambient and weird and prog-y. And so he came up with this thing and record companies all turned it down. Nobody wanted to put it out. And then it randomly became the soundtrack to one of the biggest horror movies of all time and became so recognizable.
[00:34:09] In that interview, Mike Oldfield also says that there would be no Tubular Bells without LSD. Annalee, can you tell us more about like the influence of Tubular Bells?
Annalee: [00:34:18] I thought you were about to say like, Annalee, can you tell us about how LSD brought us Tubular Bells?
Charlie Jane: [00:34:25] I mean, many of us have wanted to be in a tube while doing LSD, I don’t know.
Annalee: [00:34:28] No. For sure, no.
[00:34:34] There's two things that I think are super interesting about this. One is that, really, that prog rock sound from Tubular Bells has a history going back, really, to the 1950s with the soundtrack to Forbidden Planet.
Charlie Jane: [00:34:46] Yeah.
Annalee: [00:34:46] Which, it's a very classic ‘50s space exploration film where, spoilers for a nearly hundred year old movie at this point, the characters come to a planet. They're being attacked by something kind of invisible, much like jaws, and they discover that it's actually, there's a machine buried in the planet that has the power to manifest monsters from the human unconscious. Monsters from the id is what they call it. And of course at the time that was actually quite scary.
[00:35:20] And the person who did the soundtrack was this experimental electronic musician who had really up into that point only been in like the avant garde scene. Her name is Bebe Barron and you and I saw this really great presentation about her work by Gita Dayal who writes a lot about electronic music, she's a really great writer and journalist. And she talked about how originally Forbidden Planet was going to have just this really basic orchestral score, and instead they just did this crazy weird electronic music, which you have to imagine in the ‘50s like they were literally just like running tape through weird machines and messing around with transistors. And then that later turns into kind of electronic music of the 1960s like the Doctor Who soundtrack is a great example.
Charlie Jane: [00:36:11] Another Lady electronica composer Delia Derbyshire put that together.
Annalee: [00:36:16] Yeah, a lot of women were really at the forefront of electronic music. And I think that's kind of been forgotten. And that goes into prog rock, like a lot of those sounds, a lot of those weird electronic cosmic noises, show up there. And so Tubular Bells does have a long history. It isn't LSD. It's actually just like ladies messing around with computers in the basement is the history. I don't know if they were doing LSD, but they were definitely high on transistors.
[00:36:46] And then, of course, Tubular Bells becomes so ubiquitous. Like, you and I were listening to a bunch of horror movie soundtracks to prepare for this episode, and we realized that the iconic music for the movie Halloween, written by John Carpenter, who also directed the film, it's basically just tubular bells.
[00:37:04] Like, listen to this.
[00:37:05] [Halloween music clip, sounds similar to Tubular Bells but with a different tempo]
Charlie Jane: [00:37:10] Totally tubular.
Annalee: [00:37:10] Yes, tubular, by the way, refers to waves, like on the beach. Like, you want to catch a tubular wave, so I'm sorry that it's not tubular bells.
Charlie Jane: [00:37:22] Yeah. And like, I was really struck researching this episode with the help of our wonderful producer Naya. You know, how important prog rock is to horror movie music, like from the early kind of years of what we now know as horror.
[00:37:36] Like Suspiria, the Dario Argento film from 1977 has a prog rock soundtrack by a band called Claudio Simonetti's Goblin, which I now want to know if that's related to like our Veronica Simonetti, our former producer, if Veronica also has a goblin. We need to ask her.
Annalee: [00:37:52] Yes, keep it in the family with those prog rock goblins.
[00:37:57] Yeah, you know, and it, really kind of morphs, I think, in the ‘90s and ‘00s into less prog rock and more almost like classical music.
Charlie Jane: [00:38:10] Yes.
Annalee: [00:38:11] Philip Glass. who's a famous minimalist composer from the late 20th century, he did the soundtrack for the original 1992 Candyman, which is a real favorite of mine. And it has tubular bells, but then it also has minimalist classical music elements, where he does these repeated musical phrases over and over. So it gives it this almost high culture sheen.
[00:38:42] [Candyman music clip.]
Annalee: [00:38:45] Yeah, and you know, you can hear that same kind of bell sound even in really contemporary films like, Get Out and, another Jordan Peele film, Us, has the same tinkling bells. And also what gets added to it, I think, is the sound of little children chanting or singing. That ends up being another signature of this.
[00:39:09] I feel like it comes out of maybe Nightmare on Elm Street. I'm sure it was around before that too, but like that idea of creepy little children are singing and that's really scary.
Charlie Jane: [00:39:22] That's my hideous thing in horror movie soundtracks is like the singing children just because it's like nails on a chalkboard. And it is really creepy.
[00:39:31] Speaking of someone who was a child choral singer, like I didn't think of it as creepy at the time. And now I’m just like, that's just inherently creepy.
Annalee: [00:39:38] Yeah.
Charlie Jane: [00:39:38] Like little kids singing. Especially if it's like a nursery rhyme or if you have a pop song, that's like slowed down so it sounds like a dirge, anything where they're singing and it's kind of like [growls], or it's echoing in a weird way.
[00:39:53] So yeah, it's interesting. Like last night we were kind of listening a little bit to the soundtrack for the 2021 Candyman remake. Yeah. Which has a soundtrack by an artist named Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe. And that feels like it's kind of pulling together a lot of the stuff we've been talking about. Like it has kind of some of the Philip Glass minimalism in there. And there's some tubular bells going like tinkly tinkly at parts. But it also brings in these dense kind of heavy horns that almost feel like cars honking at you. They're just kind of like this kind of soundscape of horns. And then there's chanting. There's some people chanting. So it's kind of like all the things but it's beautifully done.
[00:40:39] [Clip of the honking horns part of the Candyman 2021 soundtrack]
Annalee: [00:40:43] Yeah, it's a super great soundtrack. Actually, the soundtrack for the for the 1992 Candyman is also really extraordinary, but I like the 21st century Candyman soundtrack better because I think that that horn sound really evokes the fact that this is a movie about horror that can really only exist in an urban space. Like it's very specifically urban horror connected to places in Chicago. So having horns really situates it.
[00:41:11] The other, strand in horror movie music that I wanted to bring up is, I guess you could call it the Danny Elfman vibe. He's the former singer of Oingo Boingo, or I guess the present day singer. They just did a revival tour. But he started his career in Oingo Boingo singing songs about horror, like they have a song about, The Island of Dr. Moreau, which is called “No Spill Blood,” and a couple of other songs like that, but he famously did the soundtrack for Beetlejuice. He's worked a lot with Tim Burton. I think he's done almost all of Tim Burton's soundtracks.
[00:41:47] He's really famous for his theme from The Simpsons. So if you recognize that kind of bouncy Simpsons credits song, that's him. My favorite Elfman soundtrack is actually for this movie from 1990 called Nightbreed, which was written and directed by Clive Barker, one of my favorite horror writers.
[00:42:08] It's kind of a forgotten movie which is too bad because it's really wild and it's truly an allegory about being queer in the ‘80s and it's about these heroic monsters hiding underground in a place called Midian and all of the evil cops and psychiatrists who are trying to prevent them from just leading their freaking lives. And Elfman's music is this really delicious combination of a bouncy feeling but also a little bit spooky. I want to say it's like campy or it's a bit comedy, a bit scary. And so, that’s definitely a huge strand. I guess I would say it's like carnivalesque in a way.
Charlie Jane: [00:42:53] Yeah. I was going to say, when you mentioned The Simpsons theme, you could a hundred percent like slow The Simpsons theme down a little bit and change the instrumentation slightly and it would be a horror movie theme. Like [Slow and ominous singing of the theme from The Simpsons.] dah, dah, dah, dah, dah, dah, dah, dah, dah, dah, dah. You know, it would be actually really scary.
[00:43:12] And I feel like there is that, like, obviously there is a huge strand in horror movies of like horror comedy. And there is that thing of kind of leaning into the campiness of horror while still kind of allowing for the scares. And I think like Danny Elfman's soundtracks are really emblematic of that.
Annalee: [00:43:27] Yeah, and this is actually part of what we were talking about with Chuck earlier, about how comedy and horror have a lot in common.
Charlie Jane: [00:43:36] Yeah. And like, pivoting slightly, another thing that we were listening to last night is this recent sort of hip hop collab project by a Fabolous and Jadakiss, two hip hop artists, called F vs J, where kind of one of them is Freddy Krueger and the other one is Jason from
Annalee: [00:43:55] Friday the 13th.
Charlie Jane: [00:43:55] Right. That's right. Keep that in, that's actually funny that I was like, oh, it's Jason from something. Anyway, it's just, I love the background music for that has all the stuff we've been talking about. It's got the kind of bells, it's got the kind of ominous chords, but it's also got a really amazing beat.
[00:44:15] [Clip from F vs J] Dead wrong. You wanna live, I can’t let you. You at full speed, I’m walking, I still catch you...
Annalee: [00:44:23] Yeah, it’s funny because we were both really excited to listen to the lyrics of the song and the Jason segment of the song is very on point and deals with the Friday the 13th plot. The Freddy part is like...
Charlie Jane: [00:44:38] It was a little orthogonal.
Annalee: [00:44:42] It didn't, it was like they mentioned sleeping once, but like, it didn't feel like it was as much about Freddy. So maybe, maybe Jason is a more resonant character for hip hop.
Charlie Jane: [00:44:50] Yeah, so another thing I wanted to talk about is I found this article about like key signatures in horror movie music. You think about the music from like Star Wars or a bunch of other things like that where it's like these soaring major fifths and these kind of like heroic intervals that are like doo doo doo and with horror movie music it's often a little bit more like da da da da da da da you know it's kind of creeping up this minor scale or whatever. It sort of often subverts that heroic thing a little bit by kind of turning it minor and maybe slowing it down a little bit.
[00:45:24] And, you know, again, it goes back to what we were saying about The Simpsons theme. It could be, like if you changed it to a different key signature, it could just be light and silly, but it's got that kind of creepy tone to it because of the key that it's in.
Annalee: [00:45:36] So basically, if we were to kind of sum up what horror movie music feels like, it feels slowed down. There's something creepy about slowing things down, putting them into a minor key, but there's also just something creepy about that tinkling bell sound. And I was wondering if partly that was almost like an onomatopoeia for a shiver.
Charlie Jane: [00:46:03] Oh!
Annalee: [00:46:03] You know, like, if music can be said to have onomatopoeia. But it's like a sound that sounds like shivering. That these are our efforts to kind of make us feel like, ooh, there's some, like, my goosebumps are coming up and then like those little tinkling bells sound like that.
Charlie Jane: [00:46:19] I love that. And when I was a child vocalist, we were constantly being coached to have a bell-like sound to our singing. So that kind of chimes in with the thing of like, little children's voices also being in the mix.
Annalee: [00:46:30] Yeah. I also think that the little children's voices, it is partly the bell like sound, but also there's a lot of horror movies where children are either the monster or they're the victims. And so oftentimes it's kind of that the monster is somehow associated with childhood.
Charlie Jane: [00:46:49] You know, it's sort of orthogonal, but I always think about The Cook the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover, which features like a child singing a whole bunch.
Annalee: [00:46:56] Yeah.
Charlie Jane: [00:46:57] And it's a super creepy movie. And the score is super creepy. I feel like a lot of those Peter Greenaway movies have basically horror movie scores but they're not technically horror movies.
Annalee: [00:47:07] I mean, The Cook the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover is body horror for sure.
Charlie Jane: [00:47:11] It’s got some body horror in the mix for sure. Yeah.
Annalee: [00:47:14] It's supernatural in many ways. So I would say that that is maybe a very classic example of how the kind of bell-like sound is being used to signal to us that we should be like, in the case of Cook, the Thief, because it's body horror, we're kind of shivering with revulsion, you know, that's that shiver. Pre-barf shiver.
Charlie Jane: [00:47:38] Oh my God.
Annalee: [00:47:38] So, to wrap up, what do you think about horror movie music that we'd like to hear more of? I'm a little bit sick of the tubular bells and the singing children. Like, is there anything that you're like, you know, I'd really like a horror movie with the vibe of X. Not the band X. The integer X.
Charlie Jane: [00:47:59] It's so funny you ask that because I actually have the perfect answer just randomly. I've been listening to a lot of Bernie Worrell lately and Bernie Worrell was the keyboard player, most famously of Parliament/Funkadelic, also Talking Heads and some other groups. And he released some stuff where it's just like instrumental music. He also released an album of just him playing like different things that you could use for samples and he will do like an organ theme that is like so like the first minute or two of The Clones of Dr. Frankenstein, the Parliament album, is just him playing kind of creepy organ. And I feel like somebody, I mean, obviously, unfortunately, Bernie Worrell is no longer with us, so he cannot go and score a horror movie. But somebody influenced by Bernie Worrell could do so much with all the twiddly electronic sounds that he used to do, but also the, the interesting, chord progressions he would put into his music. I would love a Bernie Worrell-influenced horror movie soundtrack.
Annalee: [00:49:02] Yeah, I second that. And I was gonna say, I'd really like to hear more stuff like Bebe Barron's soundtrack to Forbidden Planet, stuff that's just like, really fucked up electronic sounds, like not prog rock-y, but stuff that sounds metal being torn and weird industrial noises, like Einstürzende Neubauten-type shit.
[00:49:28] Yeah, a little bit more of that, please. A little bit less of singing children. Maybe just a little less children being menaced in general in our culture. That'd be great, too.
Charlie Jane: [00:49:38] Won't somebody think of the movie children?
Annalee: [00:49:40] Won’t somebody stop thinking of the movie children? That's what I'd like. Let's think about the grownups here. We'd like something a little bit more grown up for us.
Charlie Jane: [00:49:50] So in case you somehow turned this on in the middle, this has been an episode of Our Opinions Are Correct. you can find us wherever you find your podcasts. If you like us, please leave a review. It really helps.
[00:50:00] You can find us on all the places, Mastodon, Patreon, Instagram. We're still technically on Twitter. We're still technically on Facebook. We're just everywhere. We're on Bluesky. Find us and talk to us.
[00:50:16] Thank you so much to our heroic producer, Naya Harmon.
Annalee: [00:50:17] Yay!
Charlie Jane: [00:50:17] Thanks to Chris Palmer, and Katya Lopez Nichols for the music, and we'll be back in a couple weeks with another episode. But if you're on our Patreon, we'll have a mini episode next week, and we'll see you on Discord. Bye!
Annalee: [00:50:30] Bye!
[00:50:30] [OOAC theme plays. Science fictiony synth noises over an energetic, jazzy drum line.]