Age Doesn't Always Come with Wisdom

Eternal Sunshine on a Spotless Mind (2004)

Eloisa to Abelard, by Alexander Pope:

How happy is the blameless Vestal’s lot!

The world forgetting, by the world forgot;

Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind!

Each pray’r accepted, and each wish resign’d.

That is what stands out when it is quoted in the film, and puts the entire event into what Charlie Kaufman was proving. This idea of erasing memory that is in the movie lets one have that eternal sunshine, or bliss without dwelling on what has happened in the past.  It is reiterated throughout the movie that the characters linger on the past and say that, “Nice is good and why didn’t I just stick with nice?” We slowly see the relationship between Joel (Jim Carrey) and Clementine (Kate Winslet) and we figure out that they started out with great intentions but were slowly losing the romance they had. Clementine goes to a company to have the memory of Joel erased and this takes Joel a little while to figure out. He then decides to erase his own memory of her when he finds the company and what they did for her. He gets the memories erased but hates saying good-bye to the good ones of Clementine. So this movie asks us if we really have these bad experiences, do we really want to try to forget, the good, and the bad? It may be in people’s interest to forget those experiences but they all gather to make us into that pure being, and we experience that Pure Becoming that Richard Taylor writes about. The thing is that all these memories of Clementine that Joel is erasing still lingers in the recesses of his conscious.  Even without them, he has still aged and existed to that point to where even though he has had those memories erased he is still in that present point of time, thinking, and being. And that is how the movie ends and begins; both of these characters have memories of each other erased by a business while their relationship is going on. Both characters have the intuition to go to a certain point where they meet again and pick up almost exactly where they had left off. The whole experience acted as a reset in the relationship and emotions.  They both resume life as they had before they met one another but in the end, they reset back to where they were before they went to erase each other’s minds, starting the relationship again. This is all a bit crazy to write about but that is what this movie alludes to, that with or without certain memories of events, we are still at that point psychologically in our pure becoming with or without the noticeable physiological change that we associate with aging.  Taylor writes on the subject, “’pure becoming’ to designate the passage through time to which all things seem to be subjected, merely by virtue of their being in time…. Becoming older simply in the sense of acquiring a greater age, whether the that increase in age is attended by any other changes or not”.

Here is further definition on Pure Becoming from Taylor:

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00048406085200141#.VPJp3UJhM7c

Minority Report

In the movie Minority Report Law enforcement now has the ability to predict future crimes and stop them before they happening. The would be criminals are arrested based on the account of three oracles that the police seems to be keeping in enslaved of on retainer. Our main character, a very angsty com played by tom cruise, is one of the officers in charge of making these arrest, that is until he himself is pictured in one of these reports. This starts his quest to find the minority report which is a prediction made by the oracles that is different from the other twos' predictions.

This varying in predictions means there's a chance of there being a different outcome then the one he could be prosecuted for. 

The Idea of prosecuting people for crimes they are yet to commit is in support of the theory of determinism because it means our destiny is laid out before us with no chance of our changing it in favor of ourselves. Their law system completely takes the idea of free will out of the equation by believing that you will undoubtedly do the wrong thing. This is an example of Lucas's logical determinism which s the belief that the future is already fixed by events that were set in motion at the beginning of everything and we're just a the logical aftereffects of that catalyst. We're more like pieces falling into place then dust randomly drifting in the wind. 

It makes sense to use an intricate form of calculations to unravel the human thought process and take into account all possible variable to receive an accurate prediction. This would hold place unless there was a radical change in space in time that made it so the laws of nature didn't apply and everything lost it's natural order. The thing about making judgement based of of predictions made from calculations made by humans s that humans are imperfect. The universe to which they were born is also imperfect so there's never really a final most definite completely undeniable answer to anything. To believe that everything is determined ahead of time is to believe that everything is perfect and will always follow a natural order on a grand scale. That's just not how it is, we're not even sure how a quarter of the stuff in the universe works. We don't have enough knowledge to support the idea of predetermination. 

You can't be an asshole or...

...the universe will strip you of your free will, time, life, and sanity. At least, in Groundhog Day.

Luckily for Bill Murray's character, Phil, all it takes is some condensed town-wide selflessness and a pretty face to right the poor order of the world.

Ignoring the plot for a moment, it was interesting to go back to this film and observe it from a philosophical lens. Personally, compared to Leaving Los Vegas, I found this a much stronger exercise in free will and no consequences. Phil truly has no consequences. He can lie, cheat, steal, commit suicide, over eat, smoke, anything. And the world will reset, with no changes.

It's interesting, how the license to do anything can become the ultimate prison. Because in the end, he's exhausted all possibility, saved everyone, helped everyone, fostered these emotional connections and bonds with people who will never remember him. He has no loved ones, he drove them away with his awful early personality.

It's a cruel wakeup call for a selfish man. Luckily, this is a comedy, and he has the chance to redeem himself through a series of pure acts of selflessness. For all he knew, the day would reset and his efforts would go for naught. In finally opening himself up and sacrificing his own place in the world (the position/job/status) he frees himself from the bonds of his own past. From that point on, Phil is truly free to do as he wishes, because now he's living in a world that won't be continuously dampened or damaged by the force of his awful personality.

Freewill and Necessity through No Country for Old Men ~

In No Country for Old Men, a young man in the American South West happens upon a scene where many have died in what appears to be either a shootout or a massacre. Among the corpses he also finds a bag with a large sum of money. It could’ve been assumed by it’s location that this money would bring trouble but the young Llewelyn proceeds to take it anyway.  Taking this money causes the hiring of a rather blood-thirsty bounty hunter(Anton) to track him down, retrieve the money, and execute him.  

Though a large sum of money could be incredibly beneficial to Llewelyn and his wife who both live in a trailer, there is an obvious danger to the finding of this cash. To Llewelyn it is worth it. Most would not likely fight for this money given the possible consequences. However, according to Hume, “Human conduct is irregular and uncertain. The one, therefore, proceeds not from the other”(Hume, 516). This is to say that though people tend to think of humanity as a uniform entity with predictability as a prominent feature, human beings have a special quality that is free will. There is essentially no certainty to the actions a person may make, as is the case with both Anton and Llewelyn.

Both the antagonist and protagonist are arguably exceptional human beings. Their actions fall outside of the realm of uniformity. What each does is, in the case of the film, almost completely determined by what each thinks the other character would do. This is the necessity that drives each character. At a certain point there are multiple conditions that form necessity. According to Hume, “necessity makes an essential part of causation; and consequently liberty, by removing necessity, removes also causes, and is the very same thing with chance”(Hume, 517). The necessity of each to fight for money is created by multiple causes. Initially for Llewelyn it is financial gain and for Anton it is likely a mix of financial gain and blood lust. Eventually, however, the two must fight for their initial goals but also for survival as they’ve both ‘met their match,’ so to speak. 

Both characters are essentially free and exceptional. In accordance with David Hume’s Of Liberty and Necessity, it can be asserted that neither characters freedom exists without cause and therefore necessity. It can’t be said that either one’s fate is pre-determined as their fight for survival seems so unpredictable. A cause must be present in order for either to be free.

Freedom Under Circumstances in Groundhog Day

Sartre's concept of "bad faith" means consciously ignoring our freedom in order to avoid accepting responsibility for our actions and choices. As humans, we have free will under any circumstances, although bad faith leads us to believe we do not. In the film, Groundhog Day, Phil (Bill Murray) is a grumpy, inconsiderate, and unhappy weatherman bored with his annual assignment to cover Groundhog Day in a small town. It is his bad faith that causes him to think he has no other choice but to continue living life this way.  Bad weather causes Phil and his camera crew to have to stay in the town overnight, but when Phil awakens the next morning he discovers that it is again Groundhog Day and that he must re-live the day. This cycle repeats to an insurmountable number of days in which he must repeat this day over and over, despite his failed attempts to escape it. This can appear that Phil has lost his freedom, but I believe it is the opposite. Being forced to re-live the same day allows Phil the freedom to perfect that day, to learn skills- both practical and emotional, inevitably causing him to break his bad faith. He is even free from death, allowing him to fear nothing and allowing him the freedom to do absolutely anything he wants, good or bad, with the knowledge that he won't have to take responsibility for his actions that day. Sartre claims that life is a project, we must make it into what we ourselves want it to be. For Phil, this single day became his life and his project. He experimented, learned, and grew into the person that he wanted to be- a happier, compassionate, and loving person, able to accept his circumstances but remain aware of his freedom to change them.

The Omen

Svendsen believes that we can all practice to control our fears. We may not be able to fully master them but we will become more alert. Also, learn how to react to certain things that go on. In the movie The Omen, the fear of the mother was constantly tested. Her son was constantly attacking her but she controlled her fear, because that was her son and she did not want to believe that he would hurt her. The dad was a little more careful because when he was scared he did not attempt to cover it up but, he reacted on the spot. Svendsen believes that we should go beyond fear. In the movie The Omen fear was presented through the entire movie. I believe that true fear cannot be controlled. Because it is usually something that you do not see coming, so u cannot prepare for it. Everyone's fear is shaped because of their own personal experiences that have experienced. No one has the same exact fearSvendsen says that we a limited ability to control our fear, but we can only practice to be more prepared for things we fear. I believe in the Omen the dad presented this best because of how he was very thoughtful in each situation. He did not react how i expected him to in certain situations. But it seem like he anticipates his reactions.

On Paradoxes and Responsibility

In Noel Carrol's "Paradox of Fear" Carrol mentions one aspect of horror that isn't only a trope, but is an essential function to understanding horror. The fact that the protagonist, within the logic of the film, deserves what they're getting. In Hitchcock's Psycho, for instance, the protagonist is a realtor who has stolen money from her boss and a customer. This bothers her to no end as she is nervous and anxious, visibly so, when she is trying to make a getaway. She keeps thinking that she is going to be discovered, that someone is going to know she took it, and imagines what her boss might do and say to her, and all of the trouble she is in. It is only when she meets mild-mannered Norman Bates and stays at the motel that he runs does she ever let down her guard. And *Spoiler for exactly nobody* She is murdered in the shower.

The film constructed an internal logos where she has to suffer for her crime, if not by her, then by the actions outside of her, the universe, perhaps. To not suffer is to deny responsibility for the crime, and to deny responsibility means to completely deny her own actions and identity, which she is unable to do. If she does, then she essentially becomes Norman Bates, a figure who has to shift his responsibility and his actions onto his mother's persona, giving up all freedom in service to a ghost. "Look, I won't even kill this fly, Then they'll say that Norman Bates wouldn't even hurt a fly"

Only Villains and monsters deny their responsibility, heroes take responsibility for both the actions of themselves and the actions of their society and culture. Which is why it is instrumental that the monster is created by the society, or created by the hero, because otherwise it would be just a scared animal, and we the villains. Without it being our fault, it is difficult to make it our duty to kill it.

And that's why the paradox exists, why we're drawn to the thing that disgusts us. Because it is an entity that we created, therefore we must destroy it. So In its repulsiveness it shows all of the ugly and negative aspects of ourselves. It shows us what we're afraid to look at, but instinctually, we must take responsibility for, in order to balance ourselves. And we know that if we look away we allow that very thing to consume us.

"Bad" Omens

I typically think of horror as gore and not usually interesting but this movie was more suspenseful and kept me on the edge of my seat. Its hard to think of something to say about this movie relating to horror. The movie is essentially about the prophesied end of the world and the events that will lead up to it. A father begins to believe that his son is not human and must decide whether to kill his son and save humanity or let him live.
Even though the movie was titled "the omen" in reference to the boy, the story focused more on the father's literal and moral journey as he searched for the truth. I feel like this made the father into both a tragic character and a hero as he lost many people he was close to but in the end tried to do what was right. The boy on the other hand was evil but the situations that surrounded him seemed to shape his destiny more than he himself did. There were many symbolic images and references in this movie, but I'm still not sure which could be considered "the" omen. Especially not when the boy does very little to fulfill the prophecy.
Compared to the few other horror films I've watched, the plot is very similar, usually loosely revolving around religious content and having most of the cast die and one left who must avenge them. The difference here I feel is how this movie went about it. In "Why Horror?" Noel Carroll says "Indeed, even if horror only caused fear, we might feel justified in demanding an explanation of what could motivate people to seek out the genre. But where fear is compounded with repulsion, the ante is, in a manner of speaking, raised." He also asks the question "How can horror audiences find pleasure in what by nature is distressful and unpleasant?”
A simple answer would be by creating inciting and meaningful stories. "The Omen" is considered horror but it doesn't share the same so called repulsiveness of many other films in the horror genre.  The movie elicits many emotions and the fact that at its basis tells a religious prophecy helps give it a sense of worry for the unknown. This fear is of a grander scale than your average slasher flick and it encourages deeper insight into the self. There is also the sense of fear for this man, an average man who we are afraid for and identify with. Its these senses of fear, the fear of the unknown and fear of the known that creates such an eerie and intangible atmosphere for "The omen." 

 

The Omen

Carroll explains the different aspects of horror and the many ways horror can be portrayed. "If horror has something repulsive about it, how can audiences be attracted to it?" Why are we attracted to it? Many audiences enjoy the unknown and suspense a horror film may bring to the viewer. Perhaps it's the interesting fact that you may find The Omen very scary, suspenseful, disturbing, while your friend finds it slow, not scary and lagging. The many different avenues and ways people feel about horror can be so diverse.

In The Omen, life is good for Robert and Katherine Thorne, they are a happily married couple very much in love with a baby on the way. Mr. Thorne is the ambassador of Great Britain and is under the spotlight. After his wife gives birth to a still born he accepts a newborn from a priest at the hospital whose mother died during labor.... After the family moves to London many strange occurances begin to happen... At the child's birthday party I wondered why the nanny hung herself and the dog had a fierce staring contest with the dog.

The priest that was impaled tried to worn Mr. Thorne that his son was the anti Christ. His wife was also aware that there was something strange about their son but could not put her finger on it until it was too late. Mr. Thorne met a photographer in which he gained trust and traveled abroad to seek his son's true identity. There he meets Bugenhagen a reclusive priest who tells him his son Damien was born not of a woman but of a jackal. Then tries to persuade him with seven daggers to kill his so called son, the anti Christ. Mr.Thorne also discovers the grave of Damien's mother which has the body of a jackal and his so called still born child... This was all set up so the anti Christ would go to a powerful family. Mr. Thorne is executed in the end as he tries to execute Damien ... Damien then gets adopted by Robert Thorne's brother (head of Thorne enterprises) the most powerful company in the world.

This movie follows close to "The Book of Revelations" and the coming of the apocalypse. How the anti Christ from birth will rise to power through wealth, politics, greed, manipulation, envy and to be perceived as a savior,but really bring about all that is unholy and evil.

Horror and Why we watch it (Poltergeist)

To start with horror movies are one of my biggest passion. If I had the time I would write a whole essay on the subject but I'll try to keep it short for the blog. One of the biggest questions asked about the horror genre is, "Why horror at all?". Well, I believe the answer is simple, it gets a reaction out of us. For the same reason we laugh at comedy, we will scream at scary things. It is an urge, if you will, to obtain a primal, almost instinctual feeling. An unexpected moment that we wouldn't normally see or experience, is what we crave.

To have a good movie generally you need to have the audience suspenseful, or willing to sit in their sits. It's almost comical that horror movies have to make so scared you want to run away, but also make you so interested that you want to stay. The reason we want to stay is the basic human need for discovery and resolution. As a spectator in the audience, we are separated from the events actually taking place. When the monster pops out of the closet we jump or scream, but after the initial scare we know we're not in that situation, so we watch to see what happens next. We want to know more about the monster. "How did it get there? what is it? can we kill it? can we stop it? will those people even survive?"

The movie Poltergeist, I find, is a good example of a movie that instills the thought of making people yearn to know more. The main antagonist in the movie is never truly present, rather it is omniscient. It constantly tortures this family and the main question I kept asking myself is "why?". There is absolutely no reason for this family to be going through this. They moved into a new house, no old creepy building with a dark past. The family was normal, no kids suddenly becoming creepy or possessed-like. No weird family heirlooms that might be cursed. Later in the movie (SPOILERS) they find out it might be a dark spirit left over from a cemetery and after a lengthy ordeal they supposedly rid their house of the evil and everything's hunky dory. But the movie doesn't end.

Where a normal horror movie would have called it quits. Poltergeist keeps the movie rolling. Not only is the family STILL getting tortured, it's even worse than before. I am captivated, everything I thought I understood had completely been eliminated. In that moment, I knew that this was why horror movies enthrall us. It brings out our urge to know more. In an instant the movie had reintroduced the whole story again.

To finish my thoughts, a horror movie will leave you questioning and screaming. That is why I love them.

Funny Games: Satire and juxtaposition

    Carroll was right to say that Horror thrives on the narrative form, At the heart of this "drama of disclosure"  Carroll speaks of this need for some sort of motivation for the monster. Our curiosity peaks as we try to make sense of it. It is a part of our human nature to try to make sense of the world, and it is a similar passion that drives science.
    Whenever it comes to horror movies the motivation and reason for "the monster's" existence is usually something that we find out close to the end of the movie so that we might get some sort of satisfaction to our world of logic. Funny Games however, completely flips this idea on it's head. The movie takes the normal conception of a scary movie and strips it of all pretext, bringing the "Paradox of Horror" to the front of the stage. As Carroll suggests, we are drawn into these narratives to find out why "The Monster" exists in the first place. And yet the reason that the evil brothers and their twisted narrative exist is because of the fact we are drawn to them. This overwhelmingly ironic circular reasoning is what makes Funny Games almost as much of a comedy as it is a horror. Funny Games is in fact a satire on the whole genre, which the director has made quite obvious in his decision to have the brothers break the fourth wall in order to essentially say to the audience "Well, this is what you wanted, right? are you happy now?"
   A perfect example of this attraction to the repulsive is at the very beginning with the grindcore style music juxtaposing the calming classical music that plays in the car. Its so jarring and nonsensical that the reaction is the perfect mix of scary and funny. This does a great job of setting the tone of the movie, because the exact same thing can be said of the brothers' calm demeanor and their sociopathic cruelty. The movie goes on to compare the genre of horror to a kind of game that the victims play with the "monsters." In other words, when we see the cliche scene of a potential victim exploring a mysterious noise from a dark basement, we often think "wrong move." Funny Games satirizes this idea by completely undressing it and laying out the "rules" to the victims. This is playfully done with metaphor, as we can see after the pain that is inflicted on the father with a golf club. Paul says "you're the ship's captain so everyone on board has to do what you say. These kinds of comparisons indeed make the movie feel very much like a game". In other words one of the  "monster's" mysterious motivations that Carroll says draws us to the genre would, in this case, be the fun of the game. This is yet another striking juxtaposition that is very much comedic, but in a somewhat repulsive way.

Hush... Hush, Sweet Charlotte

In Noel Carroll’s essay “Why Horror?” he questions why viewers are attracted to fear and horror. He says that one reason we seem to enjoy causing ourselves to be afraid is because of the mystery of fear. Carroll says that these stories “are often protracted series of discoveries” in which viewers are let on first, then the characters, and so on.  While curiosity in art is not specific to the horror genre, it is different in the way that elements of horror films are typically not seen in everyday life. Carroll also talks about how fascination compensates for being disturbed, particularly the fact that viewers do not have to confront the subject themselves. 

While watching Hush... Hush, Sweet Charlotte, I did not recognize elements of horror at first. The film begins in 1927, with Charlotte Hollis and John Mayhew, a married man, deciding to elope. Charlotte’s father tells John that he has to leave Charlotte alone. Soon after, John is murdered and everyone inevitably thinks that Charlotte is the culprit.

When the story picks up in 1964, Charlotte is still living in the same home, with her housekeeper Velma, and has become sort of an urban legend around town. Ever since John’s death Charlotte has believed that her father was John’s killer. 

When the government tries to build on Charlotte’s property, she contacts her cousin Miriam for help. After Miriam comes to visit, strange things start happening to Charlotte - from hallucinations, to hearing John calling to her name in the night,  to even “seeing” John’s severed head rolling down the stairs. At this point, I thought that Charlotte may have been hallucinating from her years of guilt; however, it is later evident that the whole thing is a sham. Miriam and her old friend Drew have been playing tricks on Charlotte all along. They are the ones talking to her at night and even purchasing a fake head that looked like John’s. The housekeeper Velma becomes suspicious of them and subsequently gets fired. Miriam even tries to trick Charlotte into believing that she killed Drew. When Charlotte later sees Miriam and Drew and hears about their plans to commit Charlotte to a mental institution to get her inheritance, she kills the two of them. It is revealed that Miriam witnessed John’s murder and that his wife Jewel was actually the culprit. Miriam had been playing Charlotte all these years by sending her letters “from Jewel” and others, in order to drive her mad.

While Hush... Hush, Sweet Charlotte isn’t a typical horror film, the elements of curiosity and the gradual building of suspense can be found. The “monster” that Carroll talks about in his writings is eventually revealed as Miriam, the woman who for over thirty years, ingrained fear and guilt into Charlotte’s mind. Charlotte lived with paranoia and her mind was the real crime scene. Sure, John’s murder was wrong, but Miriam was the real villain, as she manipulated Charlotte in order to get what she wanted.

What is really the Monster?

In Carrol's The Paradox of Horror, she brings about the point of "how to make a monster". She states that monsters can be different in regards to how they scare, or threaten; that it has to destroy, whether its fatal physically, morally, or societal. She then states:

"However, in order to be threatening, it is sufficient
that the monster be physically dangerous. If it produces further anxieties that
is so much icing on the cake. So the creators of art-horror must be sure that the
creatures in their fictions are threatening and this can be done by assuring that
they are at least physically dangerous. Of course, if a monster is
psychologically threatening but not physically threatening—i.e., if it’s after
your mind, not your body—it will still count as a horrific creature if it inspires
revulsion." -Noel Carrol

 The Shining plays a major role in having a threatening monster(s). The story revolves around a small family stranded in a hotel locked away by winter storms. The hotel is haunted and is basically playing terrifying mind games with the family. The two most important characters: the father, Jack, being an alcoholic and a major anger streak, and the son, Danny, who is telepathic, become the most affected. The hotel wants Danny, which causes a lot of strife for the father, who becomes jealous.

 There are a lot of ghosts in the hotel, causing mental distress for the family, but in the sense of who, or what, is the monster of the story, it would be the hotel itself. It isn't physical but it turns the dad into the physical being that is threatening. There are differences between the book and film, which can lead the audience astray to Stephen King's meaning of a monster. The father isn't supposed to be an evil person, he becomes entranced by the hotel and uses the fathers weaknesses against him. Having a building as the major antagonist is so fascinating in itself, because it takes the idea of what a monster has to be, and construes the idea. Who are we supposed to be afraid of? Who is the real monster? Examining the film while keeping Carrol's statement in mind, I question these things. I question if the true monster is the hotel, or the father.I believe Stephen King wanted the hotel to portray horror in a strange way, and if that's the case, I don't necessarily believe that the monster has to be physically dangerous. The hotel couldn't actually touch the family, which is why the hotel had basically "possessed" the father. The ultimate goal is that the hotel wanted the family dead, and to absorb Danny's powers.

Personally, I recommend reading the book. Even Stephen King was unnerved by the film, believing that a lot of the direction that the film took, ignored the key undertones that the book had, which made the story far more intense. A huge issue is that Jack Nicholson was given the role, and he makes the father character seem mad from the get-go, but the father is actually a sympathetic character, almost a Byronic hero in the sense that he is flawed, and the hotel used that against him, but his intentions were well at first.

The Overlook

In Stanley Kubrick's film adaptation of The Shining, Jack Torrence and his family move to the historic Overlook Hotel to be the winter caretaker. But over the months of snowbound solitude, Jack begins to lose it. The hotel comes alive around the family as Wendy tries to keep her son safe from her now  homicidal husband. It happens slow,  but the characters soon realize what a dangerous place the Overlook is.

" As far as my wife is concerned, I'm sure she will be absolutely fascinated when I tell her about it. She's a confirmed ghost story and horror film addict." This is Jack's response when Ullman tells him the story of how a past caretaker murdered his family in the hotel one winter. This plays in with Carroll's essay "Why Horror?" He discusses why horror as a genre is so popular and the draw it has. Although Jack says this about his wife, he never tells her about the murders. We are shown horrific events and given hints at the Overlook's past through Danny and his gift of shining.

Carroll discusses the narrative structure of horror films and their importance. Throughout the movie, the monster that is the hotel is slowly revealed to the viewer, as well as the characters. The most important facts are shown to us through Danny, which makes his character especially important to the structure of the film. In Horror movies the viewer is usually a few steps ahead of the characters, which gives the viewer a kind of pleasure while watching things play out.

Jack is slowly revealed to be taken over by the monster, and like Carroll states, "...the human characters in the tale must undergo a process of discovering that the monster exists, which in turn, may lead to a further process of confirming that discovery in an ensuing scene or series of scenes." Wendy has to realize that her husband has been taken over by the hotel, which takes time. Watching someone you love become a monster is a realistic fear, although this sense may be taken to extremes. But like Carroll's points about monsters, the viewer craves the reveal and always wants to know more.

Blair, Omen, and Carroll

Carroll said that the fear is a trade off. That the audience trades the repulsion of the monster for the curiosity of the revelation and knowledge. The audience is repulsed by the monster but wants to know more. The most interesting part of The Omen is that the monster is actually something very familiar. The monster is a little child switched for a baby boy at birth. By all accounts he seems like a normal happy child. But slowly strange things happen around him.

Part of the appeal of a monster is that they cannot exist in our world. Something that sets apart horror from other genres based in curiosity like drama is the impossible nature of the monster. The part of The Omen that is so compelling to me is the fact that the monster is this mysterious child. It makes it more ambiguous.

The monster is not only familiar, but elicits sympathy from the audience. He is a very happy, lively child. The monstrous nature of the evil is only manifested through secondary things, like tragedies happening around him, being fearful of churches, and strange people guarding him. So while the viewer learns about the evil it is put against this image of an innocent child.

The child seems to never be deliberate in causing harm. It is either people around him that worship him or the environment itself that does evil in his name. So the child may not even be aware of the monster within him. That is what makes it effective. When the protagonist goes to fight the monster, he is attacking a small toddler. This tension between the innocence of the evil as victim and the guilt of the evil as a destructive influence is what makes The Omen such a dramatic and efficacious piece of film.

Another interesting aspect is that there is no monster in the traditional sense. The monster of the story is the force or forces that surround the child and cause tragedy. In this way there is no physical object that is the monster, just the influence it exerts on things around it. This parallels the Blair Witch Project where there is no monster seen, only strange influences. I found the movie to be scarier than most and it may be due to the lack of a physical monster to fight.

You and Me and The Devil Makes Three

In Alfred Hitchcock's films, he tried to get something that was quaint, nice, or benevolent to seem menacing. Which explains why motels or flocks of birds give us the creeps. But in Richard Donner's The Omen we don't just see something neutral being turned evil. Billions of people see churches, the Bible, and sacraments as welcoming, if not just nostalgic. So there is far more damage done when suddenly there is a horror film based on what you hold incredibly dear. This movie, if taken as fact, would immediately put intense suspicion upon your closely held beliefs and even your own children.

In Noel Carrol's Philosophy of Horror, he persists that to be a monster, it must be both threatening and impure. Threatening to life, limb, mind, and/or morality. It must be trying to destroy some part of the main character in order to bring forth revulsion. The boy in The Omen, along with his guardian maids and dogs, have this quality. On a  deeper level however, it must be what Carrol calls "impure". This is a combination "between two or more conflicting cultural categories," he says. One way to combine conflicting categories is fusion, a physical blending of entities into one spatially limited frame, like Swamp-Man, Frankenstein's monster, or zombies (blending living and dead). He says that possessed monsters are fusion because of their being a blend of personality and body, but each belonging to different persons. So the mind belongs to a demon but the body belongs to a girl.

Though not an exorcism story, The Omen takes advantage of opposed forces in the same way. The boy, usually innocent, pure, and harmless is born with the personality of the devil himself. The monster is not a fusion inside the movie narrative, but to the viewer, the contradiction is blatant. As mentioned before, there is the added element religion into the fusion. The little boy could have merely been an evil alien and the story only affect how one may see their child, but because the film's central themes are of religion and churches and scriptural text, the once familiar entities now have a dark shadow cast across them. How could these beliefs and this little child produce something so reviling? So there is actually a fusion of three, the boy, the church, and the devil, making, I presume on purpose, a sick, unholy trinity of heebie jeebies.

 

The Lengths of Good and Evil

In the 1991 Martin Scorsese film Cape Fear, He uses the story from the original 1962 movie to set up a more up to date and refined plot of the film introducing fear as a way to defeat a conflict. As in Noel Carroll’s writing he talks of how we go to the movies out of fascination and because these problems are known to not exist we can then deal with them with curiosity. With that we might be able to face a fear or even come up with a way of taking our fear and creating a way to resolve it as is a theme mentioned in this film.  We are introduced to Sam Bowden who is an attorney and a family man. Max Cady is a man who has spent 14 years in prison for battery and rape.  He is after Bowden for withholding evidence that would have shortened his sentence. Cady has grown vengeful and studied in multiple ideologies that let him become the old testament psychopathic stalker he is to the Bowden Family.

The stalking is small but noticeable to Sam and is within legal limits. But the stalking soon becomes noticeable and threatening to the point it plays with Sam’s mind. This is the biggest fear to Sam. The way he fights is within legal situations and him being the educated man he is, there is no way to combat the “White Trash” man he is facing, yet this man knows enough to use the system to his advantage. This idea is used throughout the film where this uneducated man is defeating an educated man at his own business and is slowly bringing him down to his level. Multiple times in the film we are reminded of the moral consequences of actually dealing with Cady and eventually drives Bowden to the same unethical level; as in the final scene, Sam and Max are fighting in the mud with rocks. 

I think the fear was more on the suspenseful side but certainly poses the question and scenario what we would do if someone who could manipulate us to that degree to where we change our whole sense of moral. Noel writes,” the audience knows that the object of art-horror does not exist before them. The audience is only reacting to the thought that such and such an impure being might exist”.
This is interesting to me because throughout the film it is referenced to harness your own fear to overcome your problems, and both Bowden and Cady live that, one is forced to do it to survive, while the other revels in the idea. Sam is driven to the lengths that he feared where his morals for the justice system and the good of his family are questioned. But it all forces his will to where the law cannot protect him. This also corresponds with what Carroll is saying in his ideas that we use these movies to question our own reactions, would we be willing to kill a man illegally to protect our family? But according to Carroll we are curious about why such a man would go to such lengths to right his wrong when it was his wrong doing in the first place. The movie isn’t a horror film but sets up a story that is any family man’s worst nightmare that has to deal with convicts. But overall it makes us question what we would do to defeat this character and it gives us some laughs at the ridiculous odds by the end.
This is not related to my blog other than it is a philosophical theme within Cape Fear. It might be worth the read for others who watch the movie but it is a view on how this movie relates to Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil.
https://philosophynow.org/issues/82/Cape_Fear

The Omen

Noel Carrol was very descriptive when trying to explain horror movies.  In the beginning, for one of her hypothesis, she says that a horror movie must peak someone’s interest first, in a narrative form. The story has to be interesting so that we want to follow along. Part of what makes the story interesting, is that there is something scary and the characters must figure out what it is, and then attempt to stop the monster. The monster makes people curious because many of the times it is not something that actually exists and so it makes people wonder.

For me, the plot of the actual horror movie is the most important part. I feel that horror movies need to make someone really think about the situation. So while the characters are trying to figure out what is going on, you are too and it’s as if you are part of it. You try to be a step ahead of the characters and try to solve it first. Figuring out what the monster is or how to stop it, makes a movie more interesting. Another thing that I think makes horror movies scary is having a lot of situations that are unexpected. Not as in things like jump scares but plot twists.

 The Omen, was about the U.S ambassador for Britain, his wife, and their child. The couple was in Rome when the wife, Katherine, was giving birth. The baby died moments after being born and the priest at the hospital offered the father, Robert Thorn, another child to take home in place of the one he lost. He does, but he does not tell his wife that the child is not theirs. They name him Damien.  Strange things begin to happen when they get home. Their first nanny hangs herself publicly at Damien’s birthday party, Damien screams and refuses to go to a church, and big, black dogs appear from nowhere and seem to want to protect Damien. The Thorn family ends up getting a second nanny that an “agency” sent over. Then a catholic priest tries to warn Mr. Thorn that his child is not human. That, of course, angers Thorn so he doesn’t believe it. Later that day, the priest is impaled by a lightning rod. After that, a photographer, Keith Jennings, decides to investigate Damien. He finds shadows in the images of the first nanny and the catholic priest that predict their deaths and also a shadow in an image of himself.  So Robert goes to investigate the birth of Damien and Keith wants to help. Eventually, they find the grave of Damien’s original mother. It turns out that the mother was actually a jackal. The grave next to hers, is that of his actual child. His child had been bashed in the skull so that he would take Damien. While investigating, Keith ‘s head is sliced off in accordance to the shadow in the image. So Robert goes back home to find that the second nanny has killed his wife and so he decides that killing Damien is the only thing to do. As he is getting Damien to take him to a church, he kills the nanny in her attempt to stop him. He speeds to the church which leads to cops following in pursuit. Robert makes it to the church and is about to stab Damien with the first of seven knives, and the police shoot Robert. Then it shows the Funeral of Katherine and Robert. Damien is there holding the hand of the president.

After watching this movie, I did not find it scary. I think the main reason was because it seemed to be happening at such a slow pace. The movie just seemed to drag. Something interesting would happen, but then it seemed like forever until the next exciting moment.  Also, some of the events that happened-more so at the beginning- just were not intense enough to make me get scared. One of the only reasons I kept interest was to figure out what Damien’s actual mother was. Because when the priest was trying to tell Robert he said “His mother was a jack-!”, and was cut off.  I thought jackalope?, jack-o-lantern?, jack ass?, what was she? There were two interesting things I thought helped the movie. One was the intense music in Latin that would play throughout and that the second is that named him Damien because Damon, in Latin, means Demon. Another reason this movie did not really scare me was because Damien never actually did anything except make his mother fall and have a miscarriage, but even that wasn’t entirely his doing. The nanny had a large role in that. This movie technically had all of the elements that would make this movie scary and interesting. Although I did have a small interest in seeing how it ended, it was not scary. However, when the movie ended, there was something about it that made me want to watch the sequel…

It's More Than Just A Photograph

Until the late 19th-century post-mortem photography was used as a way to cope with the loss of a loved one; having a visual representation for the last moments of someones presence brought a sense of tranquility to those who found attachment to a person or thing.

In Be Right Back we find a similar scenario with Martha after losing Ash. Only in this instance we are faced with what has become of technology in this stage; the ability to manipulate persona through artificial personhood. While she was initially pressured into what we can call stage one of this automation the sense of relief pushes her forward, causing her to create an android as replacement.

What sticks out more so than not isn’t the intention of the science but the possibility of further manipulation. In this episode this technology was used to covet grief, but what if thats not the only service provided? In a hypothetical context let us assume that someone takes on this process for revenge; what social impletion could come of this? And what resources are in place to ensure this technology isn’t abused?

Reincarnation & Cloning

In John Locke’s “Of Identity and Diversity,” he discusses the necessary requirements and the restrictions of having an identity, or of being a Person-- a being who is more than “substance” and more than a “man.” A Person is a conscious being. Locke stresses that one being cannot have two beginnings of existence; neither can two diverse beings share one beginning. In the episode of Black Mirror titled, “Be Right Back” we observe a failed attempt of one being trying to have a second beginning of existence. The episode begins with Martha and Ash, a young, happy, and in love couple moving into Ash’s childhood home to start a new chapter of their lives together. Not far into the plot, Ash dies in a car accident. At first, devastated Martha strongly opposes to her friend’s recommendation to try software that learns and mimics a deceased person’s personality via that person’s online interactions. Once Martha does give the software a shot, in desperation to share the news of her pregnancy with Ash, she is immediately obsessed with it. And who wouldn’t be excited about the opportunity to speak with a deceased loved one again? (I asked this in class and surprisingly it seemed that the majority of people wouldn’t want to, I’m not sure if I believe that though…) When Martha takes the technology to the extreme, by buying a synthetic body (Locke’s “man”), at first it appears to be a successful experiment. But the expectations and its limitations did not take long to build. If Martha had been able to acknowledge and accept that this New Ash can never and will never be the Old Ash, then I think it might have been able to work out. But Martha expected and desired so badly for this being to be Ash reincarnated, which is impossible for two of the same identities to exist separately or for one being to have two beginnings of existence. In the scene where New Ash and Martha are standing on the cliff’s edge and they have a confusing argument about how the Old Ash would react in comparison to New Ash, Martha has a realization and asks, “You aren’t you, are you?” This statement expresses Martha’s associating both Ashs to be the same Person, and her frustration with being unable to accept that they are not.

This topic also brought to mind the idea of cloning. I’ve seen an interview of a wealthy older couple that had a beloved dog they never wanted to lose. So before this dog died, they paid for the preparations to have it cloned once it did. It was so bizarre hearing them speak about it; hard to believe it was real. They are extremely happy with their decision. They kept saying how it’s just like having their old dog all over again, from the beginning. They did admit that they know there probably will be personality differences, confirming the impossibility for it to be the same exact being. So in this case, it comes pretty close to one being having a second existence, but because it is an animal and not a complex human being, it is easier to accept it. 
I just found another video of a pet owner who cloned her dog, but she claims they have no differences. Very interesting. She also said she wanted to get him cloned before he even died to see how they would have interacted together. John Locke must be screaming from his grave.


Video of couple I referred to: 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DDUULl7HOws

Second video I referred to: 

http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/video/pay-bring-back-clone-mans-best-friend-15338091


***UPDATE: I just watched the first episode of a TLC show about this subject called I Cloned My Pet. Very entertaining if you have the time to watch it. If not, skip to 23:00 and one of the cloned dogs has a "Dog Whisperer" come speak to the clone to ask if it is the same dog as before. Hilariously, the dog whisperer says the dog is recalling all his memories from his previous life and that the dog is in fact the same being. Haha! Basically, every one of the pet owners in this show believes that their cloned dog is their dead dog re-born.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a7bw0-5ja5Q

Does This Unit Have A Soul?

Black Mirror's "Be Right Back" raises interesting questions about the validity of personhood and what exactly makes a person who they are. Despite absorbing all of Ash's public (and some private) memories, he is able to mimic him. He is never able to fully become the man Ash was, but is instead more like a photograph of Ash when he died-- never aging, caught in time, and unable to offer the spectrum of human emotion and interaction to his bereaved wife.

The most interesting point is when Ash's replacement begs for his life. When first asked to jump, he refuses, quoting that Ash had no suicidal tendencies. However, it also brings into question if the unit has any coding for self preservation. Of course, he begs for his life when instructed to, mimicking the emotions that Ash would possibly have, but one does wonder if some truth lies underneath.

Issac Asimov wrote the Three Laws of Robotics in I, Robot and they have been exceptionally influential in the further exploration of robots. They are as follows:

1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
2. A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

In this short, Ash does explicitly follow these rules, even if they are not quoted. He will not injure another human, even when prompted (perhaps even not if she insisted that Ash hit her in their private life) and he will not destroy himself by jumping off the cliff (perhaps even not if she said Ash had been suicidal in his private life). 

So where does the coding of the unit end and the memories of Ash begin? Is the desire for self-preservation genuine or simulated based upon the memories of the man he's trying to be? 

I believe there's some validity to his claims that he's acting on Ash's previous behavior. His entire purpose is to mimic the man he was in life. It is an act, but not one performed with any malicious intentions. The path laid out for him has hurdles and expectations that he could never possibly achieve, which sets him up for failure. 

Ash's replacement will never question his existence because it's hard coded into him. He will not doubt, but only act upon the parameters (being Ash's life, in this situation) set before him. His personhood is only a snapshot of Ash and while he can be convincing, it is ultimately artificial.