(no subject)
Jun. 15th, 2008 10:41 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rynneSo I've been thinking some more about Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead and Midnight, in relation to what's scary. Those episodes sparked these thoughts, but they can apply to any fandom. Spoilers for those episodes, of course.
What people think is scary is a very subjective thing. Someone may want to laugh at something that another person finds terrifying. Still, there are some general, common fears, that writers use to create something that most people would find scary.
Personally, what I tend to find scary is not so much the external monster as the internal one. Sci-fi monsters don't really scare me, but I have to confess that many horror movies do. This is because sci-fi monsters create an obvious difference, one that you can see with nothing more than your eyes, and a common theme in horror movies is that you don't know who the killer is--it could be anyone. And that "it could be anyone" is terrifying--you can defend against the obvious, but not from the unknown.
Moffat's monsters have never scared me. The weeping angels are the closest, because statues are everywhere--it's the familiar turned into the monstrous. It has that element of what scares me, but it didn't really, because they're still statues. They may be able to lull you into a false sense of security, but they can't betray you, or turn against you. The clockwork droids were never human, and didn't do too well at fitting in as humans, despite their efforts. And the gas mask zombies once were human, but still have those obvious, at-a-glance differences--wearing the gas mask, the constant repetition of "Are you my mummy?" Those would be scary in the London Blitz, when gas masks were common and necessary items and you wouldn't be able to tell who was a zombie and who wasn't without hearing them speak, but I for one do not expect to come across anyone wearing a gas mask anytime soon, and so that danger is very far removed.
And I think the Vashta Nerada are the least scary of Moffat's monsters. The Doctor said it: "Almost every species has an irrational fear of the dark." It's not quite irrational, because the scary thing about the dark is that anything could be hiding in it. And the very ironic thing that Moffat did is taking away that nebulous "anything" and instead giving it a name, a history, specific abilities and limitations. Something that is categorized is pretty much always less scary than something unknown, because knowing what something is is one step closer to understanding it, from understanding to communicating with it, and to defending against it.
It presents a very sharp contrast to Midnight, I think. There are two scary things in that episode: the entity, and the passengers, both of which were handled to maximize fear. There's the entity--which managed to remain unknown pretty much the entire time. All we know of it is that it could survive on the surface of Midnight and that it took on the aspects of people it came into contact with. We can also extrapolate that it's evil of a sort, since it was trying to get the innocent Doctor tossed out the airlock. So we don't know what it is, and we don't know how to defend ourselves against it, should it return.
But more than that, it hit on another basic fear of human nature--loss of self. Skye ended up completely under its control, and its mimicry panicked everyone else. It progressed to stealing the Doctor's voice, specifically, reducing the Doctor to the mimic, taking on his persona and doing things with it he would never condone. Being impersonated is a terrifying thing because of what could be done with that impersonation that you could subsequently be blamed for. This entity had a double-whammy of scary, with both enhancing the other. You don't know what it is, so you can't defend yourself against it, and the person who tried understanding it ended up subsumed by it. If it could do that to him, it could do that to you, and what's stopping it? And if it takes over someone else but acts like it's taken over you, with you unable to defend yourself, then what can you do? No wonder the passengers panicked.
Those panicking passengers are the other scary thing. First is that they're extremely ordinary. That was actually my very first thought, upon seeing the dad--how ordinary he looked. But ordinary people can do horrible things.![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
tsukara brought up the Stanford Prison Experiment and the Milgram Experiment, and there's also the defense commonly brought up in the Nuremburg Trials, where people claimed they were just following orders. Ordinary people can do horrible things, and sometimes they don't even need an impetus beyond just being told to do so.
And fear is a great impetus. It's a common saying that "the only thing you have to fear is fear itself". That's because of what fear does to you--it makes you stop thinking. It makes you go back to instinct, the very basic "fight or flight". The passengers here try flight, congregating in the back of the vehicle, as far away from Skye as they can get--but they really can't get very far. They're trapped. So they turn to fight as the only other option that instinct gives them, and they're cornered. That's a very bad thing, since someone backed into a corner will fight all the most desperately because he has nothing left to lose.
Fear leads to other nasty things. It created paranoia, which made them decide the Doctor was in league with the entity, and they were happy to argue with him, because he was a safer target for their fear. It also created a mob, and mob mentality is scary. It's extremely difficult to reason with a mob (as I'm sure the Doctor noticed), because it's not reason that's driving them; it's instinct. And instinct says "safety in numbers" and "fight or flight".
And it can happen to ordinary people. It does happen to ordinary people. The Doctor even asks the passengers, specifically, if they could kill a person--and they decide they can, and they will. That's a question anyone might ask himself, and a question one very well might after watching that episode--"Could I do that? In that situation, or a similar one, would I be willing to commit murder?" If it turns out that the answer to that question is yes, even if you're not in that situation, the potential you've discovered in yourself is scary. And if you don't know the answer, that's still scary, because there's still the potential for yes. Perhaps we'd like to think that we would be better than that, but unless it happens to us, how can we know? And that just goes back to the unknown being a scary thing.
It made me think of Star Wars as well. Personally, I found Chancellor Palpatine scarier than all the overt Sith Lords, Maul, Tyranus, and Vader. Palpatine as Chancellor was even scarier than Palpatine as Emperor, or as Darth Sidious in the open. Vader may lock you up and torture you, but Chancellor Palpatine engineered a situation the inspired Padme's wonderful line, "So this is how liberty dies: with thunderous applause." He effectively made the people want to lock themselves up, with the illusion that it's all their own idea. This is another form of loss of self--loss of free will without even knowing it. To go back to Doctor Who--"Is a slave still a slave if he doesn't know he's enslaved?" The Doctor decisively answered yes, and I would as well. I would also add that the not knowing is worse, because the freedom is an illusion.
It's a particular aspect of human nature to distrust what is different, a distrust that has sparked off numerous wars throughout history, as well as other atrocities. But it often doesn't occur to us to distrust what is similar, which is what makes it all the more scary and surprising when we are betrayed by the most ordinary of people. I have an interest in biographies of LEOs (law enforcement officer), and I remember that more than one has commented that you could go to the street a serial killer lived on, tell his neighbors about his crimes, and have them comment how surprised they were, that they never thought he could do anything like that.
Midnight was a scary episode because it played on the real as well as the fantastic, human nature as well as the alien menace. Fear of the dark is relegated to superstition, the bogeyman to a childhood fear. On the other hand, fear of the unknown and mob mentality has created situations like the Salem Witch Trials.
And really, between fantastic monsters and human nature, I know which I'm more scared of.
What people think is scary is a very subjective thing. Someone may want to laugh at something that another person finds terrifying. Still, there are some general, common fears, that writers use to create something that most people would find scary.
Personally, what I tend to find scary is not so much the external monster as the internal one. Sci-fi monsters don't really scare me, but I have to confess that many horror movies do. This is because sci-fi monsters create an obvious difference, one that you can see with nothing more than your eyes, and a common theme in horror movies is that you don't know who the killer is--it could be anyone. And that "it could be anyone" is terrifying--you can defend against the obvious, but not from the unknown.
Moffat's monsters have never scared me. The weeping angels are the closest, because statues are everywhere--it's the familiar turned into the monstrous. It has that element of what scares me, but it didn't really, because they're still statues. They may be able to lull you into a false sense of security, but they can't betray you, or turn against you. The clockwork droids were never human, and didn't do too well at fitting in as humans, despite their efforts. And the gas mask zombies once were human, but still have those obvious, at-a-glance differences--wearing the gas mask, the constant repetition of "Are you my mummy?" Those would be scary in the London Blitz, when gas masks were common and necessary items and you wouldn't be able to tell who was a zombie and who wasn't without hearing them speak, but I for one do not expect to come across anyone wearing a gas mask anytime soon, and so that danger is very far removed.
And I think the Vashta Nerada are the least scary of Moffat's monsters. The Doctor said it: "Almost every species has an irrational fear of the dark." It's not quite irrational, because the scary thing about the dark is that anything could be hiding in it. And the very ironic thing that Moffat did is taking away that nebulous "anything" and instead giving it a name, a history, specific abilities and limitations. Something that is categorized is pretty much always less scary than something unknown, because knowing what something is is one step closer to understanding it, from understanding to communicating with it, and to defending against it.
It presents a very sharp contrast to Midnight, I think. There are two scary things in that episode: the entity, and the passengers, both of which were handled to maximize fear. There's the entity--which managed to remain unknown pretty much the entire time. All we know of it is that it could survive on the surface of Midnight and that it took on the aspects of people it came into contact with. We can also extrapolate that it's evil of a sort, since it was trying to get the innocent Doctor tossed out the airlock. So we don't know what it is, and we don't know how to defend ourselves against it, should it return.
But more than that, it hit on another basic fear of human nature--loss of self. Skye ended up completely under its control, and its mimicry panicked everyone else. It progressed to stealing the Doctor's voice, specifically, reducing the Doctor to the mimic, taking on his persona and doing things with it he would never condone. Being impersonated is a terrifying thing because of what could be done with that impersonation that you could subsequently be blamed for. This entity had a double-whammy of scary, with both enhancing the other. You don't know what it is, so you can't defend yourself against it, and the person who tried understanding it ended up subsumed by it. If it could do that to him, it could do that to you, and what's stopping it? And if it takes over someone else but acts like it's taken over you, with you unable to defend yourself, then what can you do? No wonder the passengers panicked.
Those panicking passengers are the other scary thing. First is that they're extremely ordinary. That was actually my very first thought, upon seeing the dad--how ordinary he looked. But ordinary people can do horrible things.
tsukara brought up the Stanford Prison Experiment and the Milgram Experiment, and there's also the defense commonly brought up in the Nuremburg Trials, where people claimed they were just following orders. Ordinary people can do horrible things, and sometimes they don't even need an impetus beyond just being told to do so.And fear is a great impetus. It's a common saying that "the only thing you have to fear is fear itself". That's because of what fear does to you--it makes you stop thinking. It makes you go back to instinct, the very basic "fight or flight". The passengers here try flight, congregating in the back of the vehicle, as far away from Skye as they can get--but they really can't get very far. They're trapped. So they turn to fight as the only other option that instinct gives them, and they're cornered. That's a very bad thing, since someone backed into a corner will fight all the most desperately because he has nothing left to lose.
Fear leads to other nasty things. It created paranoia, which made them decide the Doctor was in league with the entity, and they were happy to argue with him, because he was a safer target for their fear. It also created a mob, and mob mentality is scary. It's extremely difficult to reason with a mob (as I'm sure the Doctor noticed), because it's not reason that's driving them; it's instinct. And instinct says "safety in numbers" and "fight or flight".
And it can happen to ordinary people. It does happen to ordinary people. The Doctor even asks the passengers, specifically, if they could kill a person--and they decide they can, and they will. That's a question anyone might ask himself, and a question one very well might after watching that episode--"Could I do that? In that situation, or a similar one, would I be willing to commit murder?" If it turns out that the answer to that question is yes, even if you're not in that situation, the potential you've discovered in yourself is scary. And if you don't know the answer, that's still scary, because there's still the potential for yes. Perhaps we'd like to think that we would be better than that, but unless it happens to us, how can we know? And that just goes back to the unknown being a scary thing.
It made me think of Star Wars as well. Personally, I found Chancellor Palpatine scarier than all the overt Sith Lords, Maul, Tyranus, and Vader. Palpatine as Chancellor was even scarier than Palpatine as Emperor, or as Darth Sidious in the open. Vader may lock you up and torture you, but Chancellor Palpatine engineered a situation the inspired Padme's wonderful line, "So this is how liberty dies: with thunderous applause." He effectively made the people want to lock themselves up, with the illusion that it's all their own idea. This is another form of loss of self--loss of free will without even knowing it. To go back to Doctor Who--"Is a slave still a slave if he doesn't know he's enslaved?" The Doctor decisively answered yes, and I would as well. I would also add that the not knowing is worse, because the freedom is an illusion.
It's a particular aspect of human nature to distrust what is different, a distrust that has sparked off numerous wars throughout history, as well as other atrocities. But it often doesn't occur to us to distrust what is similar, which is what makes it all the more scary and surprising when we are betrayed by the most ordinary of people. I have an interest in biographies of LEOs (law enforcement officer), and I remember that more than one has commented that you could go to the street a serial killer lived on, tell his neighbors about his crimes, and have them comment how surprised they were, that they never thought he could do anything like that.
Midnight was a scary episode because it played on the real as well as the fantastic, human nature as well as the alien menace. Fear of the dark is relegated to superstition, the bogeyman to a childhood fear. On the other hand, fear of the unknown and mob mentality has created situations like the Salem Witch Trials.
And really, between fantastic monsters and human nature, I know which I'm more scared of.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2008-06-16 10:47 am (UTC)The only thing is that different things are going to scare different people. For us, SitL and FotD weren't quite as scary as Midnight, but for others, it might have been the opposite. There's no real way to quantify 'fear' since while clowns will scare one kid, they'll be loved by other kids.
One thing I was really happy about was that reviews for 'Midnight' were so positive. RTD hasn't done a 'traditional' horror episode before, and I'm glad the first time he did, it went so down more than well. It went down fantastic! (... I really need to get wittier lines.)
no subject
Date: 2008-06-17 09:58 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-06-16 12:33 pm (UTC)That is very true. The thing is, I have an incredibly active imagination that's still stuck in my childhood - when I'm lying in my bed at night I can see shapes which technically I know are my chair, and my dressing gown. When I go downstairs at night I'm always peering around corners or expecting to see something in the window. I love the dark, but I love it for being scary. A bad guy that is "the dark" should be something that scares me, or at least makes me take note. But they just fell so flat, it's not even funny.
Heck, the X files episode Darkness Falls is *very* similar in idea, except it's alien bugs that are scared away by the light and I found that absolutely petrifying and still have to watch the episode through my fingers. I think where he went wrong for scaring me is that he both told us too much and not enough. If he'd named them and all that like he did and then we saw them swarming - well, bug swarms are a very common thing to be afraid of. That would have worked, I think. But because they were mysterious and invisible, yet just not mysterious enough, there was nothing to be afraid of. Obviously that's personal for me, but I know Darkness Falls freaks out other people as well.
Ordinary people can do horrible things, and sometimes they don't even need an impetus beyond just being told to do so.
You don't even need to push very hard to see that. Human beings band together in difficult circumstances, and sometimes this creates amazing camaraderie, love and friendship (see the Doctor's relationships with *all* of his companions); but it also creates "sides". Everyone gangs together with sometimes some outsiders, but they might not pick the right "side". I've seen this first hand in some of the cadet exercises I did at college - and we were just 16-17 year old students, but we were crossing the line into bullying as well as abuse of prisoners (in a mock up exercise where our friends played the enemy).
And this makes Midnight interesting for me because I can answer the question of what I'd likely do - a half hearted protest before letting them get on with it because it's easier that way.
The Doctor even asks the passengers, specifically, if they could kill a person--and they decide they can, and they will.
All it takes is one person in the mob, as well. Everyone hesitated but then someone (can't remember who) answered yes, which allowed everyone else to jump up and say yes.
Human beings are scary creatures, really. Most of the DW monsters aren't scary because they're never going to happen (well, they're unlikely to). Midnight doesn't need the monster, it just needs the people. Almost everyone who watches will have some idea of what that sort of situation is like, even if nothing quite that extreme, so it's very easy for us to be afraid.
no subject
Date: 2008-06-17 10:10 pm (UTC)I've seen this first hand in some of the cadet exercises I did at college - and we were just 16-17 year old students, but we were crossing the line into bullying as well as abuse of prisoners (in a mock up exercise where our friends played the enemy).
*nods* I don't have experience with this personally, but I've studied the Stanford Prison Experiment, which had some Stanford students going to a prison, with one group becoming the inmates and the other the prison guards, with evaluators watching how their behavior progressed or regressed. Since you do have that experience, I'm sure you can guess how that turned out.
I've seen a bit of criticism with this episode, saying that they didn't think everyone would panic, but I think human behavioral patterns suggest this is exactly what would happen. Humans are social animals, and naturally band together. Fear creates panic and the mob mentality, which just heightens the fear, creating a circle. A leader steps up who suggests a course of action, and because people like having direction, especially one that will get rid of the fear, they follow that leader. People who would otherwise be reasonable get swallowed up in the crowd, either shouted down or staying silent to stop the mob from turning on them. People who are indecisive becoem decisive with the mob telling them what they should be thinking.
Frankly, I think RTD's version is a perfectly accurate picture of what would happen, and that's what's so scary.
no subject
Date: 2008-06-18 06:50 pm (UTC)And I've read a little about the Stanford experiment and other similar ones which place people in a position of power - the results are always on the depressing side.
I've seen a bit of criticism with this episode, saying that they didn't think everyone would panic, but I think human behavioral patterns suggest this is exactly what would happen.
I can't help but think a lot of that must come from people not wanting to believe they're capable of being that sort of person. I mean, the most "normal" ones - the middle class-ish parents - are the ones that turn out the worst.
My sister felt a bit like that - apparently my mum told her that she might react exactly how those people did and she wasn't too impressed. She took it a bit better when I explained it a bit better (I think she took mum's words as a personal accusation!) but I can understand it.
Midnight and VotD are two extremes of human behaviour. VotD is the sort of thing more commonly seen on TV, I think. But I reckon Midnight is probably more realistic.
That said, in my experience you get something in between those two, although closer to the Midnight end of the spectrum. You get people banding together and forming friendships and helping each other along, but woe betide you if you're too much of an outsider. People will follow the leader they want to follow.
The whole ep was very Lord of the Flies, really. You read that one? (I never thought I might actually appreciate a book I read in English class!)
no subject
Date: 2008-06-18 11:13 pm (UTC)And yes, this episode was very Lord of the Flies. I've studied that book in a few different classes, from several different perspectives, but the one I've always been most interested in is what it says about human nature. Fascinating stuff. :D
no subject
Date: 2008-06-16 01:48 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-06-17 10:11 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-06-18 01:28 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-06-18 11:01 pm (UTC)The hypothesis for this experiment was that most people would refuse to give painful shocks, even with testers standing by telling them to do it. What actually happened is that the majority of the subjects did what they were told to do, increasing and administering the shocks. Some expressed qualms, and others exhibited symptons of stress, but when the testers told them to keep going, they did, even though they believed they were causing real pain.
This experiment isn't an exact match for what happened in Midnight, but I think some of it really applies. Humanity likes having leaders, like the testers in the experiment, and the people in Midnight who stepped forward (the hostess saying they should throw her out the airlock, etc.). They especially like having leaders who will absolve them of responsibility for any pain they cause--in Midnight, they could justify themselves by saying it was a majority decision.
Criticizers might have valid criticism, but they also might be overestimating the likelihood and/or ability of individuality to assert itself within a group. As much as we like having leaders, we also like belonging to groups. Instinct says "safety in numbers", and we like having groups to identify with, and call "better" or more "right" than other groups. This is why nationalism exists, why people have their favorite sports teams--even favorite ships in fandom. ;)
As well, teamwork in an emphasized, valued quality in our society. Asserting individuality, unless in circumstances that benefit the team, is often frowned on--"there is no I in team". This leaves us with humans naturally forming groups, pushing the group's interests, and individuals reluctant to go against the majority and disturb the group's equinamity. Which, you'll notice, is exactly what happened in Midnight. The humans banded together, leaders stepped up (the hostess suggesting killing Skye, the dad vehemently agreeing, etc.) and suggested courses of action that would fulfill the group's interests (namely, getting rid of the thing that was scaring them), Jethro--who had been leaning with the Doctor--ended up indecisive, and then reluctant to defy the group, and Dee Dee was shouted into submission.
And one of the coolest things about the dynamics in this episode is that it both showed some of the worst aspects of a group, and the best of an individual. Because, as a counterpoint to the mob, we have the hostess, who, though she was the one who suggested killing Skye, she managed to rise above her fear, open her mind, listen to something she didn't want to hear, and sacrifice herself to save someone she'd been willing to kill just minutes before. How awesome is that? Between these two extremes, RTD just totally impressed me with this episode.
*cough* Sorry for the ramble, but I find this stuff really fascinating. :D
no subject
Date: 2008-06-20 01:14 pm (UTC)And I'm so pleased with the way RTD did it. It was both pessimistic and optimistic at the same time. They all fucked up BIG TIME, but the hostess probably just redeemed the entire human race in the Doctor's eyes. That's huge.