Facelessness

Elkin talked about the face being horror, though I find that facelessness to be a recurrent theme in pop culture. Maybe facelessness is not entire accurate of a description-- after all, if we can see faces in door knobs then it is hard to imagine an actual absence of face. Perhaps "displaced" is a better way to describe these faces.

The X-files' mutant alien soldiers whose sole aim was to annihilate man kind was characterized by witnesses (in the series, of course) as "men with no face." At a closer look, or rather, when you have a screen shot to closely study this faceless man, you can see that his facial features are still somewhat discernible (admittedly the X-files was produced on fairly low budget at this point, so perhaps the intention was to fudge the face further) Though where we would expect the usual parts of a face that leads up to a unity are missing: eyes, nose, ears. I am wondering if the lack of sensory organs speaks more to the alien mutant's non-humanness.

Shutter, The Grudge, and The Ring each centers its plot around a vengeful ghost whose faces are either obliterated or covered. There might be something to be said about the Japanese roots of the The Grudge and The Ring and the ways in which an object (or aesthetic) of horror is culturally constructed. Nonetheless, these movies sold well in the US, too. The thing about these faces is that they are not non-existent, simply non-visible.

And in the realm of covered or obliterated faces popular portrayals of the grim reaper definitely features a lack of face. The grim reaper obviously still has a head, as suggested by his hoodie, so the face disappeared from where one would expect a face. The idea, I think, is that it's a skull rather than a flesh face underneath the cape, but skulls have faces, too. My emphasis is on the fact that his face is hidden. In fact, I think grim reapers characters are charactered in part by his hidden face.

South Park's Kenny who dies in every episode is dressed in an eerily similar manner as the grim reaper... and remember, he dies every episode.

But in Kenny's case, we know that he has a non-skull face because of his eyes. Okay, Kenny is not very scary, he might be a bit tangential to my point.

Considering these faces in light of Elkins and Siegel's argument that the face signifies to us a coherent spirit that is comprehensible, what really is the scary thing about these displaced faces? Are they scary because their lack of faces provides a constant reminder that underneath where the faces are supposed to be is not a unified mind within the realm of comprehension? That we can never know what an alien mutant, an angry Japanese ghost, or a grim reaper wants to do next?