Fear
Ever since the dawn time mankind has been afraid. Fear is a natural defense mechanism that has always kept us safe from the world’s great mysteries and dangers. If humanity was never afraid then we would never know when something was harmful to ourselves and stupidity would consume us, but how has fear evolved since the dawn of time? As our race has grown up and evolved there have become less things to fear, but instead of living a more comfortable lifestyle we’ve come up with new things to be frightened of. Last week in class we learned about how people will cower from things they don’t understand, simply to be afraid of something. The three movies we examined were Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Guilty by Suspicion and Bad Day at Black Rock illustrated what role fear plays in American society.
The first movie I want to discuss is Bad Day at Black Rock, a film about how secrets being discovered and the fear of being revealed can be some people’s worst nightmare. This film takes place in a tiny desert town, miles away from civilization where the people are all holding onto a terrible secret. One day a man comes in looking for answers as to what happened to a friend of his and the town becomes a cauldron of distrust and deception. But why is the town so concerned with having their secret out? Only one of the townspeople actually committed a crime, so why is everyone covering up for him? I think it’s because everyone is so used to the way that things were that they were willing to lie about what happened to ensure that life would not change for them. There is a delicate balance in parts of the world that are cut off from civilization that nobody wants to disrupt because the fear of the unknown is rather staggering.
Along with the fear of the unknown there is the fear of change, change that once again affects normal everyday people’s lifestyle. In the movie Guilty by Suspicion the government is taking down average law abiding Americans simply on the suspicion of fraternizing with the “enemy” that is communism. The main character Dave was a successful director until the government accused him of being a traitor. After this accusation Dave found it impossible to live a normal healthy life without being followed by g-men, all his wealth and success amounted to nothing. The frightening thing about this is that the government used the fear of another power taking control as a scare tactic in order to get the American public on their side. This shows the power that fear has over us and how willing we are to buy into our most basic instincts. The government used our fears in order to get publicity, using other people’s torment and misery in order to gain control is a filthy, underhanded tactic that I cannot condone on any level.
The last movie I want to look at is Invasion of the Body Snatchers, a look at what it would be like if the United States were to be invaded by a foreign entity. Of course the pod people are supposed to represent communism, the unknown evil that stalks us right in our own back yard. In this movie the characters enjoy a carefree lifestyle until the aliens come and rob people of their humanity, turning them into emotionless drones designed to procreate and consume. Communists are portrayed as emotionless automatons, content in the bliss of not having trivial problems like love and sorrow burden them. This is supposed to show that the real thing that the characters are afraid of is the loss of feeling human, they would rather cling to a system where individuals make their own choices as opposed to succumbing to a conformist dictatorship. These are obvious parallels to the events of the cold war and hatred of communism, another scare tactic used by those in power used to bend our will.
In conclusion fear is a powerful emotion that holds fascinating potential. It is to this day the most effective way to sway the thoughts of the masses and has been used throughout history, from the Spanish Inquisition to the Iraq war. It is an emotion that should be examined rationally and respectively otherwise the grip of panic could influence your decisions.