Transformative Learning through Watching Horror Films

The educational values of fiction have long been recognized by philosophers and education theorists. As an example, the philosopher Noël Carroll’s clarificationist view (2001) states that fiction helps deepen our understanding of certain moral principles by providing us specific cases whereby we apply them. Fiction can be used for moral education. Education theorists deem that fiction has the potential to prompt transformative learning. Transformative learning is a process of “effectuating change in frame of reference”, that is “associations, concepts, values, feelings, conditioned responses” (Jack Merzirow, 1997:5) that an adult has already acquired through the social environment. Transformation in adult students occurs when their critical consciousness is activated in a way that they examine, question and revise certain existing perceptions shaped by their experiences. Fiction fosters transformative learning by connecting readers with others whose lives are very different from, or even strange to, the readers’, by allowing them to “identify discourses that shape their lives”, or by leading them to ideology critique. (Hoggan and Cranton: 2012:11).

Despite the vibrant discussion of the educational values of fiction, relatively few attention has been paid on horror films. This paper discusses how some horror films fosters transformative learning in the context of university education. This study was motivated by observations of certain profound changes in understanding and judgment in some adult students who took my course years ago, in which they were required to study a list of horror films. Based on the testimonies provided by the students, I present two cases showing how two horror films, namely, Roman Polanski’s Repulsion (1965) and Tod Browning’s Freaks (1932), foster profound changes in them respectively within the framework of transformative learning. How the two films engaged the students by virtue of its content and cinematic elements will also be detailed. I will also show that the kind of transformative experience that the two students underwent is suggestive of the value of horror films as well as fiction in general, for which Carroll’s clarificationist view cannot properly account. I suggest that the transformative experiences in question are better captured by the Foucauldian approach to the value of fiction developed by Timothy O’Leary (2009). It is hoped that this paper can offer a portrayal of the importance of horror film in whole person education.