THE INTERVIEW (PART DEUX)

Here's the second part of my interview with The POC Pinoy Pop's Pao Chikiamco. You can read the whole thing here.

Here's a pix of the first book Damaged People (Tales of the Gothic-Punk), still available at bookstores.

Excerpts from the interview with Atty Chikiamco are below.

Horror is transgression: interview with Karl De Mesa (2 of 2)

This is the second part of our interview with Karl De Mesa (Trust Your Black Shirt), editor (of Playboy Philippines, and several anthologies), journalist and horror writer. He recently co-edited the horror anthology Demons of the New Year from Estranghero Press (reviewed here and here), and has a collection of novellas entitled book "News of the Shaman" coming from Visprint Enterprises. He is a part of several bands: a post rock group (Biscochong Halimaw), a stoner metal group (Ninja Empire), and a post beat duo (Gonzo Army). In this portion of the interview, De Mesa speaks about his definition of horror, and the state of the genre in the Philippines, as well as tips for young writers.

What's your personal definition for your type of "horror"? It seems to be, in its own way, just as broad as fantasy or science fiction.
Exactly. For me, I've outgrown the "Creature Fights" sort of horror. What I'm going for with my horror is a cross between gothic punk and transgressive literature, the type where characters might reach enlightenment through a  haymaker, or when their legs are cut off at the knee. It's very Sith.

Is it right to say, then, that horror for you is not a shock and gore thing?
Right, it's about confronting taboos, coming face to face with the unarticulated, the places we simply do not want to tread, because of who we believe we are. Take a look at Japanese horror, as one good example: there's this one movie called "Audition" where a woman is slicing up a man using piano wire. 

Would you say that it's easier for a visual medium such as film to evoke that sort of disturbing emotion in its horror?
Yes, it is easier, but at the same time, I don't think that film can stimulate the other senses--aside from vision and hearing-- in the same way that fiction can. Good fiction can make you smell something, touch it, taste it…  Only good prose can do that.


What about comics? You did one for Demons of the New Year.
Comics are great, especially if a writer finds an artist like Gani (Gani Simpliciano, who drew De Mesa's The Magdalene Fist: Search for the First Edition) who can execute the images in the story. Gani even slices himself up sometimes to get the red "just right"… so yes, I'm trying to avoid having too much of that color in our future collaborations! 

When you're dealing with taboos, with that kind of transgression, you take the reader far beyond their comfort zones. How do you ground them?
You ground them with characters who are real people, with sympathetic concerns and motivations. This is something Philip K. Dick was great at. Even monstrous creatures can have drives that people will understand: hunger, for example, is something we're all familiar with--I used that for my were-dog story in "Tales of Enchantment and Fantasy". Other creatures can be motivated by a need for control, say a Tikbalang in a crime family. The characters can be inhuman, but their motivations can still be human. They may have special needs, but that's still a motivation that can be sympathetic.
I think this is one of the powers of horror: defamiliarization. That can also work to make the central form of a metaphor stronger.