Be Scared of Everything: Horror Essays
by Peter Counter
Invisible Publishing, 2020; 188 pages; $20.95
Reviewed by Andrew Wilmot
From Ouija boards to demon clowns, X-Files to H.p. Lovecraft (and all of his awfulness), in Be Scared of Everything, culture and technology critic peter Counter uses genre — mostly horror — to not only mark periods and events in his life but also to reckon with matters of personal trauma and mental health. Across twenty-nine essays digging into a variety of horror- and spec-based sacred cows to great personal effect, Counter takes us on a deep dive through his life, with only his — and our own — fears to guide us.
In “The Shattered Teacup,” the author, through NBC’s cancelled-too-soon Hannibal, draws a line between the representation of PTSD suffered by protagonist Will Graham and his own after witnessing his father being shot in the chest during an attempted robbery in Costa Rica. “Corporate personhood” addresses the reality of our modern capitalist and IP-driven hellscape wherein the creatures that haunt our dreams (in this case, the xenomorphs from Alien) do not belong to us and are owned part and parcel by corporations that exist in a liminal space, simultaneously claiming personhood while being void of humanity. And in “Manufacturing Mephistopheles” — one of my favourite titles in the collection — he details the ways in which the technology of our modern world is horror enough in that we no longer require the influence of the supernatural for us to freely descend into terror and inhumanity:
“Religion, literature, and spirituality give us the lexicon for supernatural horrors. History, science, and engineering help us understand extreme secular horrors. Chainsaws aren’t all that different from demons. Werewolves and pit bulls, radiation and spell books — they all destroy us, no matter how we define them.”
Perhaps one of the most open and honest essays in the book is “Broken Nightmare Telephone,” in which Counter discusses the “shared ghost” of bipolar II disorder on his father’s side and the role grief has played in its presence in his life — a haunting of a very specific sort, personified and personalized. This essay, like many others in this collection, is illustrative of the individual at the heart of this book: a person wishing to be seen, honestly, for who they truly are — scars and all.
Counter’s writing is sharp and colourful, his analyses incisive and on point. He writes about horror from a position of respect and admiration, recognizing its power, its potential; its prominence in so many aspects of our daily lives, despite what derision it might receive via puritanical mindsets and agendas that have routinely demonized or downplayed the genre’s importance for both media and culture as a whole.
Part critical media analysis, part scathing social critique, part personal exposé, Be Scared of Everything is many things at once: a dissection of popular horror conventions and genre expectations; an almost academic-like look at the genre’s social influences; and, a glimpse into the ways in which our pasts and presents, collected and personal, are reflected in the very real horrors we inflict upon ourselves and one another — and those inflicted upon us in turn. Mostly, however, it is a cutting yet surprisingly tender biography of sorts — a life lived with horrors large and small, real and imagined, and those deeply, truly personal.