The New Weird

The word weird can be easily looked up in any dictionary yet when it is used as a story element it can be used in a whole different way rather than just as a description as something that is odd or strange. The weird in horror literature is a term that refers to something that is supernatural yet supernatural is is only part of what makes the new weird so bizarre. The weird isn't anything we as humans can really perceive in all honesty, its like trying to explain quantum mechanics to a very small child really, by that i mean its not meant to be understood. Its not something our minds can really truly perceive and yet we can take it in all the same as we do the normal. We can dissect it we can summarize it and we can read it and take it in all the same as the normal but with the weird more often than not people will have a different reaction to it and come up with their own conclusions as to what just happened or what a certain thing is. In Borne, its a very strange and weird book in the sense that a grizzly has a sea anemone attached to it and it becomes sentient and talks to the main character, Rachel, and she has more or less adopted it and named it Borne. Borne itself is an almost Frankenstein's monster-esc character in that he learns to speak in the same way and he learns of emotion in the same way as well.    

Comments

  1. AnonymousSeptember 29, 2018 at 9:33 PM

    Its funny how you compare the idea of the new weird genre to explaining quantum mechanics to a small child. But you're definitely right. And the new weird genre does cause people to try and interpret the story very differently.

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