I had a realisation today while watching a preview for the new movie "The Crazies": we are becoming more and more scared of ourselves.
Think about the history of horror movies in the US (not that I claim to be an expert). The earliest are based on myths found in literature: Dracula, Frankenstein, etc. In the 1950's it was gigantic irradiated mutants and monsters that reflected the fears at the time of nuclear bombs and the growing connections with mysterious foreign lands: King Kong, gigantic mosquitoes, and aliens featured. Then zombies (who are, or were, humans) entered into popular representation. From what I can tell from the preview, 'The Crazies' are not zombies, but people who are sick or somehow infected (which has been the case in other recent horror films, often reflecting the contemporary threat of chemical weapons and science gone wrong). But the title implies that something is making people go 'crazy' and turn (violently) on fellow humans.
My point is that there has been a slow transition, from fictitious monsters to those that seem much more real and plausible, and more to the point, they are much more like you and me. Having just spent a year working on a thesis about how life is rebuilt after genocide in Rwanda, it's no surprise to me that we should be terrified of what we can do to each other, but how has this notion entered into popular media? Is the public overwhelmed with dumb-downed news blurbs? An odd paradox presents itself: I imagine that the creators of horror films today want their movie to be the scariest it can be, and usually that means making it as real as possible, yet for most people movies are an escape from reality. Or maybe an escape from an individual's present reality.
I say this partially because of the present fascination with "reality" TV and the rising number of films that seem to try to represent some truth or desire to honor the reality of experience (I prefer the more escapist genre myself, unless the film really has something to say). Despite the effort in this new film to strike fear in our hearts and minds (for entertainment purposes, I suppose that's another area for exploration) by creating a plot that seems realistic, they don't come too close. After all, this happens, according to the preview, after "humanity is lost." I couldn't help but role my eyes when I heard that line, because I think our understanding of "humanity", of what it means to be "human", is a bit skewed. I say this because each of us is just as capable of causing harm as we are of being caring and considerate. There are limits of course, one who is exceedingly compassionate can be revered as a saint or an angel, and one who is exceedingly cruel may be reviled as a monster or a demon. But the boundaries are transient, and I think that if we don't acknowledge the not-so-pretty sides of "humanity" (conflict, anger, bitterness, etc), then the good stuff can get forgotten too. The movie preview drew other unnerving parallels for me to Rwanda, where people describe those who killed in the genocide as becoming like animals, putting the question of how we define "humanity" in a different tone.
But I digress (I mean, how we, and others, define 'human-ness' is a thesis topic!). This blog is not well thought out, it's surely flawed. For instance, I do not intend to suggest that Dracula in silent black and white was not terrifying to the audience of the day. My motivating question here is: why is it that what we find terrifying today is ourselves? Or ourselves gone mad? (yet we still try so very hard to relegate that fear to the realm of the mythical, thereby negating any substantial response to or recognition of that fear?)
