Guest Author - Lisette BC Abbott

Why do we like to be scared? Now, I grant you, not everybody likes to be scared. Like not everybody likes rollercoasters. But those of who do… well, sometimes the act of being scared, of being frightened can be a thrilling, heady experience. However, I think those of us who genuinely like to be scared like to be so only when limitations are placed on whatever is scaring us. For example, I don’t think many of us would willingly experience what characters in movies or books are going through as they’re facing their worst fears. Instead, we’d rather sit in the relative comfort and safety of our living room or cinema theater and watch these characters (or read about them) being bombarded with all things scary. As a result, our sense of being frightened, of being scared witless, is rather contained and contrived. Artificial, if you will. Our experiencing of fear is in a controlled environment, and, frankly, with a controlled fear. We can walk out the cinema, or at the least look to the right and see our friend, or date, or whoever with whom we came to the movies. If we’re at home watching a scary movie, we can turn off the television or pause the DVD and stop the onslaught of frightening imagery. We're in control of whether or not we're going to be scared, and, by extension, we're in control of our destiny. Or at least we think we're in control.

That moment when we dislocate ourselves from the intense fear that’s being generated onscreen and replace our ravaged emotions with the everyday, “real” world of our movie companion or the paused television further confirms for us that we’re in control. We’re not like the characters in the movie who are not in control, who lost control, or who were never in control to begin with. No, we’re at home, or in the cinema theater, safe and away from the threatening boogeyman. Thus, we experience a sense of superiority over the movie characters. This sense of superiority serves as a foundation to the dual-pronged process of being frightened.

The first part of the process involves the notion of culpability. These movie characters are somehow responsible for what’s happening to them. If they only didn’t look under the door, or if they listened to our frantic advice as we yelled at them “Don’t go in that room!” then they wouldn’t be confronting their own demons. Since these characters failed in ways we wouldn't have, these characters must take responsibility for what has happened to them. These characters, we subconsciously believe, created, or at the very least contributed to, the atmosphere of their own doom. Which brings me to the second prong of the process...

Somehow we perceive the characters as being, shall we say, lacking in the smarts department. When an individual fails, or, worse yet, refuses to heed the warning signs, then that person is perceived as lacking common sense. Now, don't get me wrong. The very nature of human beings is rife with such arrogance, the kind of arrogance that fools us into believing "It's not going to happen to me." Yet, when we watch horror movies, when we're safe in our home or the cinema, we easily tell ourselves or our movie companions, "I wouldn't have done that." That underscores the very assumption that we viewers are smarter than the movie characters. After all, we're safe while they're running for their lives!

In a recent Fox television behind-the-scenes look at the recently-released movie, “Hide and Seek,” Elizabeth Shue said that she never realized how much fun it is being scared. I completely agree. Being frightened is fun, but it’s fun when we know we’re safe and what we're watching isn’t real. It’s simply a story being told to us so that we experience one of the most primal emotions humans have—fear. And after all, fear is a very powerful contributor to our very existence. It helps us evolve by fine-tuning our survival skills.

Besides that, it makes for a helluva, dizzying ride on this journey called life!

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