Brian Fullerton: Fear The Reaper As There's Probably a Reason To Do So

Where do we draw the line between outright fear and just not wanting a specific outcome? Are we afraid of death or do we just not want to die? Fear almost implies something that isn’t rational. Recently, there was a headline on The Onion (a satirical newspaper, if any of you haven’t heard of it) where a toddler provides a convincing argument for being afraid of a horse. “I never thought about it before,” the mom in the article says, “but, taking into account his small delicate frame, it is entirely possible that he could fall off and die.” The toddler, on a certain level, has a point.

The other end of the fear spectrum, though, is me being deathly afraid of slugs. As far as I know, no slugs are poisonous, they don’t affect my day whatsoever, and even if there was some sort of The Birds like scenario if all slugs banded together to try to wipe out Mankind, they wouldn’t last long: if a slug ever killed another living thing, it was entirely by accident. I could write an entire dissertation about slugs and what they do that makes me afraid of them but I could never answer why I am afraid of slugs with a straight answer. Objectively, a fear of slugs probably carries the same weight as being afraid of hubcaps.

Things like my irrational fear of slugs, even if it might be completely psychological, completely arbitrary, and completely irrational, my brain feels the need to have this fear in place (otherwise why would the phobia be there in the first place?) just as much as me not wanting to die. How humans deal with fear is the underlying thing for a lot of things: from little things like our driving behavior and our dating rituals to big things like the United States’ foreign policy. The only way we can tell if a fear was justified is hindsight.

Knowing what happened to the town of Black Rock, we could assess that Black Rock’s fear of Macreedy was justified. Even before he gets off the train, all of the shots with the camera seemingly barreling towards the rushing steam train make us uneasy before we even see Macreedy. And why is he wearing a suit? Why is even in the town in the first place when no one has even gone there for four years? Chuck Klosterman asked once who you should be more afraid of: a man with a past or a man with no past? The town’s fear is justified, as the sheriff and the undertaker regain their honor and half of the town is put in jail.

In regards to The Red Scare (and Invasion of the Body Snatchers and Guilty By Suspicion), we can look back and laugh (or cringe, respectively), at the lengths the government and population would go to make sure America didn’t have communists. The foreign policy at the time was centered on this fear of Communism, and to some extent it seemed legitimate. With more countries wanting alternatives to exploitive capitalistic systems countries tried to turn into communism (Greece, North Korea, Vietnam, China, Cuba, Chile, and others). Communism is antithetical to John Locke right to the pursuit of property (or, as Jefferson put it “happiness”) and our foreign policy was centered on suppressing anything that might go against the United States’ position as the strongest military and economic power. We now know, though, that China, for example, was hardly an ally of any of the other communist countries in that area, Russia would collapse on itself with the perestroika, and that communists had not infiltrated every aspect of our society.

The only thing we don’t have at the present is hindsight, so it is easy to make this judgment when the fear was as legitimate as Dr. Bennell’s. Communism changes how people think and act. Really, any radical ism (feminism, communism, objectivism, nihilism) that someone you are close to begins to subscribe to changes them. To be completely honest, a lot of the time they become annoying to be around. Things you would normally say become open for debate when the friend suddenly sees everything in a new light. (One time after my sister got me on the so-called Third Wave Feminism I verbally attacked my roommate for describing someone as a “male stripper” implying that stripping is a “woman thing.” And by that he is saying that outlets for a straight women’s’ sexuality is the equivalent of the “Special Interests” section as the movie store. I later apologized. )

Much to the shadenfreud delight of all of my family and friends, my fear of slugs is irrational and I know this. Afterwards, embarrassed of my freaking out over coming dangerously close to touching a slug that had made its way to my back porch I realize in hindsight it was silly. If these mechanisms of the brain are hardwired then there is probably an argument that fear is hardwired into Hollywood. If, as Didion suggests Hollywood is this “mechanical monster, programmed to stifle and destroy all that is interesting and worthwhile and “creative” in the human spirit” (Didion 150) then why is it needed? The fear, I think, goes into the idea that Hollywood, like any other industry is just an industry. It creates “meaningful” films when it needs to but won’t when it isn’t profitable. The acceptance of this fact is essential to seeing The Whole Equation and if Hollywood films are to continue to make anything resembling something “artistic” then the fear is needed to see that the business side is “bad.” By fearing Hollywood as nothing more than an industry, to paraphrase Freud, we reaffirm our ideals and beliefs about what Hollywood film should be.

Brian Fullerton

Hollywood Film Journal

Fear The Reaper As There's Probably a Reason To Do So

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