The Semiotics of Erratic Head Movement
This small essay was inspired by the convergence of several random things. Warren Ellis, whose blog is always worth reading, posted a short rumination about “the semiotics of shades”, as a comment to a YouTube clip showing a CSI character putting on sunglasses in a whole bunch of episodes. I thought it was interesting in itself, but also as an example of how you can learn interesting things by focusing on a small detail that seems to repeat itself a lot, and try to figure out what it means.
Then there was some reading my old blog, which turned up a few interesting quotes, and then Sean T. Collins posted about a new Chris Cunningham music video called “Sheena Is A Parasite”, which is very typical Chris Cunningham, and very cool. Have a look.
Now, this video has several occurrences of what I wanted to talk about, namely erratic head movements. Once you start looking for them, they’re surprisingly common in horror narratives. The earliest I’ve been able to find is from the Montague Summers edition of the Compendium Maleficarum, a 1608 text on demonology and witchcraft, which has a lot of eye witness accounts of supernatural goings on. The (somewhat long) passage in question goes:
At Luthz at the foot of the Vosges Mountains in May 1589 the villagers were celebrating a pagan festival. Claude Cothéze was returning in the evening from that village to the next, which is called Wisembach, and had already climbed a good part of the hill which separates the two villages, when he was suddenly caught in a whirlwind and stood looking about him in amazement to see if he could find any cause for such an unusual occurrence, for the air was most calm and still everywhere else. Then he saw in a sheltered place six witch women dancing round a table sumptuously decked with gold and silver, tossing their heads about like people afflicted with madness; and near them was a man like a black bull watching them as if he were a casual passer by. He therefore stood still for a while collecting himself and making sure that he saw quite clearly; and when he had done so, they all suddenly vanished from his sigh. Recovering from his fright he then started on his road again and had already passed the top of the hill when behold, those women were following him from behind, throwing their heads about as before and keeping a deep silence, while before them went a man with a black face and hands curved like talons, with which he would have clawed his forehead if he had not turned and opposed him with his drawn sword; but then the man ceased to threaten him and vanished as if in fear of his life. The women showed themselves yet again, and with them the man like a bull, who, as I have said, was looking on at their dances. Cothéze now felt more confident towards this man, and went up to him, saying: “Are you not my friend Desirée Gazéte?” (for so he was named). “I beg you to protect me if you can; for I promise you that I will tell no one anything of what I have seen.” Hardly had he said this when he was encompassed by a fresh whirlwind or cloud, and when he had come out of it as soon as he could, he went home.
So there we have not only an extremely early example of erratic head movement as a marker of demonic possession or other supernatural events, but it’s even explicitly compared to a symptom of mental illness. In fact, inhuman and “wrong” movement patterns in horror (Samara’s walk in the US Ring remake, the spider walk in the Exorcist rerelease, and so on) could be triggers for deep-down instinctive fears of the mentally or physically ill (evolutionary speaking, it makes sense to be afraid of the sick, it makes you stay away from them, so they can’t hurt you in their madness, or infect you with whatever they’ve got). It seems to work quite well.
Erratic head movement seems to be especially common amongst the abnormal movement patterns in horror, though. Especially, a lot of very classic horror movies seem to feature it. Sam Raimi’s The Evil Dead is a good and well-known example, where those possessed by demons, in addition to levitating and moving spastically, have their heads loll about in a very disconcerting manner, as if their neck was broken. It might well be that that’s the reference here: The head movement suggests a broken neck, thus the body should not be alive and moving, but it is, so it’s in an intermediate state between living and dead, thus fitting into one of Noël Carrolls categories of monsters in The Philosophy of Horror.
Similar is the infamous 360 degree head turn in The Exorcist. It’s a highly abnormal head movement, of course, but specifically, it’s one that is impossible to voluntarily perform, and that would lead to death if induced. The fact that Regan remains alive and taunting after performing it again suggests something’s amiss (although we already knew that, of course).
One of my personal favourite scary movies is Adrian Lyne’s beautiful, unnerving 1990 masterpiece Jacob’s Ladder, in which a postal worker experiences a terrifying mix of Vietnam flashbacks, reality distortion, and demonic creatures besetting him on every side. There are lots of abnormal movement patterns in the various creatures and demons in this movie, but specifically, there are many demons displaying very erratic, high-speed head movements which seem to erase their faces, that is, if they had faces to begin with. The effect is very unsettling, and might suggest that erratic head movement frightens because it denies the spectator a clear view of the face. The brain is a pattern recognition machine, first and foremost, and what it’s best at recognizing are faces, so when we see something that’s clearly human or humanoid, but the face is hidden to us, it throws the very humanity of the creature into doubt.
There are many possibilities here, I just wanted to explore a few. I’m not convinced that any of my loose theories above are correct, but the facts of the matter are hardly in dispute: Erratic head movements creeps me the fuck out. I’d like to know why. Thoughts?