Documentary Horror: The Transmodal Power of Indexical Violence

<jats:p> This article reevaluates critical distinctions between so-called ‘art-horror’ and ‘natural’ or real-world horror to challenge larger modal distinctions between fiction and documentary film and their ostensibly divergent spectatorial practices. It focuses on images of animal slaughter, which traverse boundaries between fiction and documentary, art-horror and natural horror. The indexical force of animal slaughter may displace or undo the metaphorical in fictional horror film, producing a spectatorial wavering between the registers of the figurative and the literal. Shaun Monson’s documentary film Earthlings (2005) demands of viewers a mode of spectatorial discipline derived from the horror film experience. Earthlings and its viewer reaction videos reinvent the collective performance of terror among theatrical horror film audiences for a documentary context and for online media platforms like YouTube. Earthlings functions as a form of spreadable media in which viewers’ horrified reactions are harnessed in the production of knowledge and political commitment. </jats:p>