Carroll gives a basic blue print to build a monster in the book we've been reading. The easiest way to make a monster according to him is making it lethal. I think this is the little kids monster method. Think back to when you were a little kid, nothing was more scary than things that could eat you, velocer raptors, the shark from jaws, lions, the monster under your bed. All very scary and highly lethal according to little kid laws of biology. These monsters were even more lethal because they did not fallow the rule of living solely in the native habbit. A tiger could spring from the trees in your back yard, jaws could be lurking in the Lake Cumberland, raptors could be hidden in the darkness of your basement (that one always worried me). Point is when your a kid it was anything that could kill you that was scary.
Its a whole different game now that were grown and educated college students. We scoff at the idea of a lake filled with prehistoric pirahana (admit it if you saw this movie as a kid it would stay out lakes for at least a few summers). Were educated in field of biology and chemistry and other such sciences. With my biology knowledge I quickly wrote off "Splice" as a terrible impossibility. Now its not the lethal that monsters that keep us up at night, its the second kind of monster, the ones that destroy the morality and characters of other humans. It's villians like Jig-Saw that capture and make you pay for your immoral decisions that are really distrubing to us now. Hannibal Lector from "Silence of the Lambs" and The Joker from "The Dark Night" with their power to manipulate those around them without those weak minded fools realizing it. Real people that are truely evil are more scary than even a sharktopus because they are real possibilities. The only one other real possibility thats more scary than a real psycopath, and there are 5 gold stars and a high five to the first person to guess it....
10 comments:
The real monster under my bed?
Haha. Be warned people, forthe zombie apocalypse is coming
Sparkley vampires?
I agree that those things that scare adults are scary for different reasons, and that perhaps the fear of all the horrible things that could happen to you instead of dying take precedence, but I'm not sure that the fear of that which can kill us is a hard and fast rule for five year olds. Perhaps it's just me, but I don't remember being afraid of dying as a child. Instead, I was more worried that all those mosters that I could dream up in my head would "get me," whatever that entailed. I was scared because they were repulsive, rather than the possibility that they would actually hurt me in a any way. But then again, that was me as a five year old. Anyone else care to share their preschool experiences?
Oh, can I have another guess?
ummm... imaginary phsycolpaths?
Organic Chemistry exams?
Those gross jell-o salads that old people like to make?
My 1st grade teacher read us "The Anklegrabber". Whenever I couldn't use the top bunk, I slept curled up in a ball, so my feet were not near the vulnerable edge of the bed.
The last thing to really freak me out was 'Signs' when I was 13. Since then, the horror generated by a creature only lasts until the movie is over.
I do think there's something to be said for the psychology of horror. I feel as children we do take on a more primitive fear, basically, anything that can bring us physical harm. As we get older, and hopefully a little wiser, simple physical harm isn't what frightens us. At least for me, it's more about what I think I could survive. Sure, getting my arm eaten by a monster would totally suck. I would not be too pleased, but I know that I could still survive without that arm. However, mind games are something much more scary to me. If my mind is messed with, will I still be the same person? Loss of identity is loss of self. You no longer exist as the person you were before, which means that person you were no longer survives.
Oh, and Penny, I have a philosophical question for you regarding those disgusting and repulsive jello salads: What makes a salad a salad?
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