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March 29, 2006
Horror Flicks
When I was about ten years old my brother, sister and I went over a neighbor's house during the summer and watched Pet Cemetery. Because of my age, naivety and innocence the movie had a fundamentally terrifying effect on my young mind. The experience was powerful for a number of reasons, the first being that I had no idea what I was in for; the concept that a moving picture displayed on a television screen could effect my emotional state in such a way was absolutely foreign and new to me. It was also the film's setting of a happy family's fresh move into a new home and their descent into fear and madness that shook the foundations of my own home life because, just two short years before, we had moved ourselves. Was it possible that in my own life a few small events could snowball and result in the demise of my family's sanity and put our lives into jeopardy?
It is my belief that terror manifests itself where the absence of rationality exists. It is in both the undiscovered areas of our minds as well as the imperceptibe hairline cracks of our rational inconsistency that allows fear to take root in the rich soil of the unknown.
A couple of years ago Pet Cemetery came on television during a lazy Sunday afternoon and I immediately changed the channel as my heart began to race. I rethought my decision, tuned back and watch the entire film again. At moments I was laughing out loud at how, over the course of time, the movie had transformed from one that inspired absolute terror to another campy flick fit for Mystery Science Theatre 3000. But, as my understanding of the world around me grew the harder it was to actually scare me so I started to take an interest in the B movie category of the genre enjoying such camptackulicious cinematic romps like the Puppet Master Series and the requisite Friday the 13th/Nightmare on Elm Street fare.
Though they were few and far between some movies still had the ability to conjure fear like The Exorcist which, because of my faith, scared the absolute hell into me and The Ring which through it's fantastic art direction and writing was able to wed our placid outlook on technology with age old ghost stories and urban myths making television static something to be afraid of. (Walking into a dark room alone with a television in it still freaks me out.)
But true fear, the kind that presents itself when you feel as though you may be involved in a cycle of danger you have no control over, is something that can only be achieved by creating monsters out of the ordinary. By showing you something that exists and is innocuous from the exterior and threatens you not through violence but, by a misuse of power. Watching documentaries on Hitler still absolutely ruins me but I am able to cope citing that the world could never possibly let that happen again. After all, the stage was set for the Holocaust: racism was widely accepted and propagated, not just by the Nazi's but by people like Ghandi and the United States government. It was the monster that rose out of our comfortable misassumptions about the world and racial superiority and through it we all learned about the evil that always existed beneath humanity's collective sin.
So what scares me today? Greed, corporate America and capitalism. I know that sounds all commie-pinko-liberal-facist but, it does. It inspires in me a new fear in that we, as a nation and as a world, accept greed and the acquisition of wealth as the rubric for success. I'm a libertarian and I think that the government should stay out of everyone's business as much as possible but my stance might be changing after I watched 'Enron: The Smartest Guys In The Room'. It is the most terrifying piece of footage I have ever witnessed because it exposes the absolute power that large corporations wield right now at this very second. It is as if Jason with his hockey mask and Freddy with his ability to hunt me in my dreams have become real. These are men who can, by signing their names on a check, ensure the outcome of elections and rewrite the constitution; who can make pensions evaporate and jobs disappear in the name of a free and unregulated market.
The scary thing is that the documentary under-girded my growing lack of trust in the government as the entity able to act as an equal and opposite power to this growing menace. It goes without saying that with every piece of information I learn about the Bush family the more scared I become but, that's for another essay altogether.
Where fear turns to terror, however, is in the realization that I can't simply watch through the rest of the movie to see how the monster is vanquished. These are real human beings, actual entities that affect my life today who I encounter everyday on the news telling me we're doing the right thing in Iraq, in commercials assuring me to buy pills because I might be sad and on the radio telling me not to trust those kooks who doubt our president and 'hate the military'.
One thing I am sure of is that I won't let fear dictate my life, I have chosen to live by a different economy, one where the giving and receiving of unconditional love is not a commodity to be bought and sold but given freely and lavishly to everyone, even my enemies. The more I think about the gospel and Jesus' radical message the more it's seemingly initial lunacy makes absolute sense. I am owed nothing and I owe nobody anything but, if I give love without hesitation and think of others before myself this world will undoubtedly be a better place.
Seriously though, see that movie, it'll send shivers up your spine. I heard that it's up on Limewire but, I wouldn't know anything about that. Semi-colon parenthesis.
Speaking of 'flicks' my buddy Jesse just made it to the internet and has posted a bunch of his impending graffiti masterpieces up in his MySpace profile pictures. Check that shish out and send him some love, he was nasty when we were roommates in college but the animals he has been working into his pieces now are out-of-control-silly-funky-fresh. If my landlords wouldn't freak, I'd let him come and paint up my walls right now. Respek.
Posted by Jon at March 29, 2006 12:48 PM