The Real World Fears Behind 8 Popular Movie Monsters
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Whether she's playing a drunk girl, an obnoxious co-worker or a reluctant would-be porn star, Eliza Skinner's performances are always 100% committed; authentic to the point of making you uncomfortable. Despite all that talent, she spends her spare time geeking out on her blog. We asked her to fill in for us this Saturday, so we could spend the day dyeing our underwear red in anticipation of the new Superman reboot. For some reason she agreed to do it. Popular movies reflect society's fears. In the 1970s everyone was scared of the monolithic Soviets, so the bad guys in Star Wars were the evil Empire. In the late 1990s technophobes and Y2K gave us the Matrix. Likewise, horror movie monsters reveal our true anxieties. I am qualified to do this because I have a BA in Media Studies and a blog, so, you know, I'm pretty much an expert in whatever I want. So let's see what you're REALLY afraid of when you're afraid of ... #8.
The Monster: Zombies
What You're Really Scared Of: People At first glance, modern zombie movies seem to be about a fear of disease - most of them feature the "infected" type of zombies, not the "crawled out of a grave to dance with Michael Jackson" type. But the really threatening thing about zombies isn't their crazy diseased eyeballs, it's their sheer numbers.
Likewise, any scientist will tell you our biggest problem isn't Bird Flu - it's overpopulation. Humans - especially stupid humans - are making way too many babies, and it's starting to get crowded in here. Instead of a desolate wasteland, the Apocalypse will look like the day after Thanksgiving at the mall. Which is exactly what most zombie movies look like: hordes of other goddamn people mindlessly swarming everywhere. Hordes of people are scary!
Stop having so many babies, dum-dums. They're just going to end up being zombies. #7.
The Monster: Pennywise the Clown
What You're Really Scared Of: Perverts. Pennywise is the razor-toothed clown terrorizing the children -- and later, their adult counterparts -- in Stephen King's It. I know what you're thinking: "Duh. Pennywise is scary because clowns are scary." Really -- you're scared of clowns? The guys that ride tiny bicycles and can't figure out the difference between water and confetti? The folks with the crazy hair and an inability to correctly size their shoes? BULLSHIT.
Stephen King made clowns scary, and he did it by turning one into a child molester. Clowns don't try to lure you away with candy so they can do awful things to your body -- child molesters do, and that is what makes Pennywise scary. #6.
The Monster: Chucky
What You're Really Scared Of: Babies It would be wrong to make a movie about the horror of giving birth to a deformed baby, because it would be wrong to admit that people are terrified of that. So instead, here's a movie about having a normal kid who gets a monster babydoll that just won't leave! But make no mistake, Chucky is your baby, and he is the most nightmarish version imaginable -- ugly, murderous, and sexual.
The idea of a child's toy totally deformed. Also, much like a real child, Chucky wants to take over his owner's life and kill his soul. Child's Play is the junction of scary baby/pregnancy movies (Rosemary's Baby, It's Alive, The Brood, etc.) and little monsters (Critters, Troll, Puppetmaster, etc.) all of which tap into fears about parenthood, childbirth, and -- if you are a man -- things relating to vaginas. Spooky vaginas! #5.
The Monster: The Grudge
What You're Really Scared Of: Foreigners This stringy-haired wet lady is hard to understand. She REALLY wants to talk -- she even uses the phone a few times -- but her speech sounds to us like "ching chong ching chong!" Oop, I mean it sounds like "ggguuuhuhgghghhh". The vulnerability associated with being submerged in a foreign culture can be scary, but it's hard to address without being racist.
The girl from The Grudge acts and sounds totally opposite from the way normal humans do -- she floats on ceilings and occasionally lives underwater! You can't understand a thing she says! And you can probably guess which way her vagina goes. The original Japanese version had more to do with viruses and disease, which to a US audience clearly isn't as scary as Japanese people. #4.
The Monster: Vampires
What You're Really Scared Of: *Trick Question, Vampires are NOT Scary* Don't lie. No one is scared of Vampires anymore. Vampires haven't been scary since 1994.
What was once a vicious blood sucking monster has become a romantic character conflicted because the strength of his kiss will surely kill the woman he wants to love. Anne Rice cut the balls off of Vampires. They are now imaginary gay boyfriends for goth girls. #3.
The Monster: Leatherface
What You're Really Scared Of: Old Timey Executioners and Your Guilty Conscience On the one hand, it's easy to find a reason to be scared of a retarded guy with a chainsaw. But there is an extra level of menace in Leatherface (or Michael Meyers, or Jason, or the guy from Jeepers Creepers) because he is wearing a mask. These guys are executioners, punishing their victims for their sins. Even when they have no apparent sins, they probably at least listen to rock music or want to have sex. Close enough!
The mask and the mental disability both cripple the ability to feel or communicate empathy. No matter what you do, Leatherface is not going to look sad, or happy, or anything -- he's not angry, he's just going to kill you. And deep down, you know the real reason you can't stop it is because you deserve it. #2.
The Monster: Everything in Hellraiser
What You're Really Scared Of: Sex/Herpes This whole movie is about how sex will drive you crazy -- either you'll get so into it that you travel to an alternate dimension looking for even more painful sex, or you'll get so addicted to one dude's zombie dick that you'll kill people just to put some skin back on it. More specifically, a lot of the monsters in Hellraiser look like personified stages of herpes.
You've got an open sore in the attic, eating people for parts, and then there's the angry genital blister running around trying to snatch a virgin. Sex is gruesome! P.S., Your parents are doing it. #1.
The Monster: The Thing
What You're Really Scared Of: Messed up, Scary-ass Shit. Sometimes there doesn't have to be a secret deeper level -- this is just fucking scary.
Check out more from Eliza at ElizaSkinner.net. |
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@NefariousWalrus getting all bent out of sorts below:
First. I'm as much a psychologist as Erica Skinner is funny.
Secondly, If I went to a nice restaurant and they served me a taco-truck burrito I would reserve the right to be pissed. Unless it was really good. Which this wasn't. So, seeing as this is a public forum for commenting on the scratchings that YOU consider journalism or worse yet literature, you really shouldn't be so taken aback.
Finally, oh screw it... I have a 4chan thread that needs tending to which is far less homoerotic than your stylized crop of hans solo and chewbacca.
Later Hun.
The Thing is totally scary. Nothing like an alien parasite that kills people for shits and giggles, then makes a exact duplicate of them. For shits and giggles.
Small killers are scary because they could be anywhere. I guess I just have a fear of the unknown.
@MrMalice, she specifically says regarding the Grudge that the japanese version had a different theme. @Logo and Emily: you may think it makes you cool, but you just sound like a pretentious douche when you flaunt credentials instead of making a useful argument. The whole article's just taking a basic concept, using a little pop-psychology in a Jungian sort of way (which, yes, makes me also sound like a douche for using the word Jungian), and getting some humor out of the material. It's not a doctoral thesis, and it's not supposed to be.
And she's projecting her own fears? Really? What kind of knee-jerk PC BS is that? If the author was actually afraid of all these groups, she probably would've killed herself by now.
To summarize, you are cockgobblers.
"...more than a passing interest in human psychology..." Jesus? Really? Further down on the comments we have a few more self proclaimed psychologists (not majoring in, not even took in high school once, but people trying to pawn it off as thier actual career).
What exactly does acting like all the other 12 year old youtube whores and 4chan forum trolls say about you so called masters of the human mind? Is this some social experiment where you go undercover as a retard for a month to prove homosexuality is hereditary?
Is this the funniest thing we've ever read? No. But the remarks about the writer overanalyzing her own fears? Maybe you idiots really are psych majors but you clearly don't know s**t about lit. or journalism. She's writing an article for a humor site, and you geniuses act suprised that she added substance and a few attempts at humor.
And for the record, Japanese people are scary as a m**********r!
*head in hands* The Internet, I love & loathe it. So many unrealistically mean people around. Sure, I may not be a 'connoisseur' of 'fine internet comedy', but this was a s**t-ton better than what I could do so top job! I'd like to see some of the guys down there in the complaints department make something funny WITHOUT being ridiculously cynical. >P
O.O WTF!! I wanna see the movie about The Thing! That creature looks horrible!!
I personally thank Eliza is pretty.
and her article, although not Pulitzer material. was entertaining. and that is the concept of this site. HUMOR people.
good premise. s****y article.
Oh man. There are no words that I can spell that adequately describe how completely s**t this article is. Everything about it oozes crap. Upon closer inspection the comedienne's blog is consistent with the level of complete comedic shittery on display here.
As someone with more than a passing interest in human psychology I think its particularly revealing how the writers own fears and prejudices colour the tone of her interpretations.
f**k YOU for making my sentences run on. Get funny or go write for the Onion or some other washed out crapitorial...
Are you kidding me? For one The Grudge was made by Japanese people FOR Japanese people, and I'm damn sure at least 50% of Japanese people aren't afraid of Japanese people.....
I'm not even sure its worth commenting on the rest the guy before me did a damn fine job of ripping you a new one.
Thanks, thanks for making an article so bad it made me want to vomi.. I mean comment.
Hey, thanks for telling me who I really am! Silly me, I thought I knew! Of course I was scared of clowns as a kid before I'd ever even heard of pedophilia, but I'm sure I was totally wrong about why. And there's no way I love the Grudge because the Japanese know how to make seriously badass scary s**t! And obviously when I watched the American version of The Ring, I automatically pretended that white kid was Asian even before I knew it was a foreign remake! And that noise she makes doesn't sound like a massive burp. It sounds like chong? Seriously? Oh, right, there's no difference between China and Japan. How dumb of me to forget that. Leatherface couldn't possibly have been scary because he sliced people up with chainsaws! It must be because I feel guilty about something. And the cenobites didn't scare me because the friggin' skinned a guy. It was because herpes turned you insane. I must have somehow known that even though I never learned about the insanity symptom until, you know, just now.
Sheesh. I'm a psychologist and even I think you're overanalizing the s**t out of this.
You're right, that would explain why I didn't sleep for while after the Grudge. I'd just moved across the world to a new country and REALLY wasn't fitting in.
And Faranya's right, it's about the homeless and poor people when it comes to zombies, which sort of stems from overpopulation. After all, it takes longer to rot or get as dirty as the zombies usually are than the storyline gives.
The point of this article wasn't to tell you that you're secretly racist if you think The Grudge is scary. It's looking at the cultural fears that affected the ideas behind those movies.
And yes, Simski, overpopulation is a huge problem.
Very interesting, although I recommend doing research on vampires before assuming that it was Anne Rice who castrated them (that's Stephanie Meyer, smartass) in 1994 'cause The Vampire Chronicles actually came out in the '70's.
I actually think you're afraid of strangers if you're afraid of vampires, but the rest was an interesting look.
Either Faramya is joking/making a south park refference, or actually believes what he's saying and is therefore an incurable douchenozzle.
I'm not exactly afraid of The Thing, but I'm glad it was kept scary rather than dismissed as a real fear of spiders/petri dishes/Cerberus/anything else. High five to Eliza.
Zombies: You are not afraid of people. You are afraid of POOR people. Dirty, stupid, poor people who will, if they band together, come upon you like a plague and take everything from you until you become one of them.
Everything here is psychological.
Even that last thing.
f**k its 3 am and i cant stop looking behind my back....
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Actually, clowns have always been terrifying. The monster in IT just feeds off of each child's fear, it's a werewolf for one, a group of drowned kids for another. It's basically John Wayne Gacy with an unlimited costume budget.