When you’re reading or listening to verbal material ( e.g. fiction, nonfiction, prose, poetry, lyrics, etc.), what kind of imagery has the most impact?
Imagery in the broad sense (including all senses, not just sight).
“Kind” can be whatever categorisation you can think of, e.g. genre, sense, place, scale, human/non-human, etc.
- The death of a dog
- Rape
Unreliable narrative imagery, where the description reveals more about the narrator’s interpretation of reality than it reveals about the actual setting. (Classic examples would be Poe’s The Telltale Heart or Joyce’s Ulysses.)
There’s been two times I’ve felt physically ill when reading books. Once was the pool scene in Chuck Palahniuk’s Haunted and when the murderer describes his actions in Jon Krakauer’s Under the Banner of Heaven.
That latter one is not for the faint of heart, especially troubling if you’re a parent with a young child.
So gory imagery has a decidedly negative impact when reading. I’ve never felt sick watching a film, and I’ve watched the worst in that department.
Wow, interesting. I can tolerate a bit of gore reading (I think I just zone out on the worst of it). I don’t enjoy it in film at all.
I generally avoid horror films. There’s one that has stuck with me horribly, and I wish I’d never seen it (The Ruins). Didn’t enjoy some parts of Annihilation either.
Possible I’ve just never read any really bad scenes though…
I don’t really enjoy the “gore porn” sub-genre that lots of horror has devolved into. But have seen a lot of the worst ones due to their cultural significance.