In his movie The Village, M. Knight Shyamalan explored the many faces of fear, but particularly the way we allow our fear of external threats to blind us to very real threats from within. In the movie, the leaders of a group of settlers controlled them by pointing their attention to threats from monsters in the woods, leaving them vulnerable not only to the lies of the leaders themselves, but to the very real threats of jealousy, hatred and murder in their midst.
Jesus warned of the same danger, “What goes into man’s mouth does not make him unclean, but what comes out of his mouth, that is what makes him ‘unclean’. . . . For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander. These are what make a man ‘unclean’; but eating with unwashed hands does not make him ‘unclean’” (Matthew 15:11, 19). And “You clean the outside of the cup and dish, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence” (Matthew 23:25). Or as Pogo put it, “We have met the enemy, and he is us!”
Our fears can be used against us, distracting us from the enemy within--both our nation and ourselves. Greed and self-indulgence are encouraged in this nation to drive the wheels of our economy. But at what cost? Do our fears blind us to our own selfishness, dishonesty, and evil feelings toward others?
According to Juhi Bakhshi, Sigmund Freud affirmed that we all contain “unacceptable and even harmful sexual and violent tendencies, the expression of which is unacceptable to our society. During our growth and socialization process, we learn to bring under control or rather repress the negative tendencies. We, thereby, obliterate them from our conscious psyches but leave them alive and kicking in our sub-conscious psyches or ‘Id.’ Horror films with their blood and gore help us deal with these destructive ‘Id’ impulses from ‘discreet distances with the insulation of metaphor.’” Thus fear can shield us from our own negative tendencies.
Ghost stories keep us at a distance from the real threats and fears in our lives. Bakhshi quotes H. P. Lovecraft's description of fear as “the oldest and strongest emotion.” Things that frighten us appeal to our curiosity--about a world without God, about evil forces, and about the evil that lies in our own hearts. They appeal to our need to test ourselves and conquer our fears by facing them and staring them down. They satisfy our need to seek sensations by allowing us to identify with those at risk while avoiding risk ourselves. We get an endorphin high, or what Matthew J. Friedman, M.D., calls “‘stress induced analgesia’--a state of painlessness brought on by stress.” In other words, the heightened awareness brought on by fake fears can actually deaden us to real threats.
It’s not that we aren’t afraid. According to Rose Pacatte, Wes Craven said that “the reason people go to horror films is because they are already scared. They go so they can gain a kind of symbolic control over the loss and chaos of their lives and experience catharsis, or as the dictionary says ‘a purgation of emotions.’”
We’re afraid all right Afraid of natural disasters, afraid of terrorists. afraid of enemies in other countries, afraid of losing the comforts and position we have. But, mostly we’re afraid of dying, something that will happen to all of us. And ironically, our very fears may cost us something even more precious than our lives--our freedom to question, to examine ourselves and our society--to uncover the evil within. |
