Emotions and Fictions: How Do I Give A Shit?

In an earlier article entitled "Siding With a Murderer: Confessions of An Immoralist, which can be found here: http://cliffsmovietalk.blogspot.com/2016/01/siding-with-murderer-confessions-of.html, I asked a question concerning my tendency to cheer or root for Jason, Freddy, or Michael of Friday the 13th, Nightmare on Elm Street, and Halloween, respectively.  The question was: am I immoral, bad, wrong, evil etc. because I cheer for Jason to murder his victims even though Jason and his victims are fictional?  Built into this question, and the article as a whole, is an assumption, namely - that real people are in fact able to have real emotional reactions to fictional characters and fictional happenings.  So, the purpose of this follow-up article is to address that assumption and elaborate on it because it's an important piece of our experience when we watch movies, listen to songs, and/or read novels etc. that goes unnoticed and ignored.

If you have ever read a novel, poem, watched a movie, or heard a song and were moved emotionally

by it, then you have experienced what is commonly referred to as the fictional paradox.  The fictional paradox, to put it simply, is when a real person has a real emotional reaction to something that happens to a character, who is fictional or not real, in a movie, song, poem, novel, or painting etc..  This is called a paradox for one primary reason which can be stated as such: how and why is it possible for real people to have real emotional reactions to non-real characters in a fictional space?

If you have ever experienced this paradox, then you should be bothered by it because it should disturb your rationality a little bit.  Essentially what the paradox is implying is that every time you have an emotional reaction to a fictional movie character in a fictional space, your feelings are irrational.  However, I doubt that you would would accept that your real emotional reaction is irrational (I know I don't accept this).  My emotional reactions are real when I watch any SAW movie and the tortures that the characters endure gets under my skin.  I do not want to deny that those reactions are real.  I want to say that they are real and rational, but the paradox slaps me in the face and screams:

"No, your emotions are irrational, nobody is REALLY being tortured.  Those characters are NOT REAL."  Yet, I still want to argue that my emotional reaction is REAL despite my knowing that the characters are fictional and in a fictional space.  But how and why????

The 'how and why' pieces of puzzle are so crucial because without the 'how and why,' we basically have a huge gap in our understanding of the human condition; our condition.  I don't know about you but I am hostile to the notion that I am unable to explain a part of my own self.  In other words, since I have access to my own thoughts, feelings, emotions, and moods, then I should be able to explain why and how it is that I can have an emotional response to a scary movie, romantic comedy, poem, or novel.  However, this task seems to be endlessly complicated, yet we go on watching movies, reading poems and novels, listening to music without giving the paradox any considerations.  I find this part of the human condition dissatisfying, in that, we can be aware of something that needs explanation but because its hard we just ignore it.

So, the bottom-line is that the paradox lingers in and around us all the time and we ignore it. However, I challenge anybody to attempt to enter the ring and spar with the paradox and explain how and why we are able to have real emotional responses to fictional characters in a fictional space.  I am eager to hear thoughts and opinions on solving this paradoxical puzzle.

What Are Your "go to" Scary Movies?

Late one night, I found myself looking for a movie to watch.  It was between that time where you're sleepy, but not tired enough to go to sleep. I decided that I wanted to watch a good horror movie, which is very hard to find these days.

As I was going through my Netflix and Hulu account, nothing looked enticing. So, I went inside my memory warehouse (I got that from Stephen Kings 'Dreamcatcher', great movie by the way) and looked for my "go to" horror movies that creep me out when I watch them by myself.  You know what I'm talking about, the movies that make you paranoid enough to always look over your shoulder, or run up the steps to your room when you turn off all the lights, or when every little house noise turns into a life and death situation.  If a horror movie can do this to me, then I know it's good. Here are two movies (more to come) that consistently scare and creep me out no matter how many times I watch them.

1.Silent hill

This entire movie had weird all over it from the first time I watched it in theaters. The eerie music, dim environment, and the people that lived in Silent Hill, at least to me, could be based off a real town in backwoods USA somewhere. But the icing on the cake is the little girl who plays 3 different characters in the movie (two if you want to get technical). She was basically an innocent child that was bullied and tortured because her and her mother were the outcasts of the town. When she was burned alive (and lived), a witch or demon came to her and made a deal to make the people and the town itself suffer. Creepy!

2. Rob Zombie's Halloween

Rob Zombie did an excellent job with this movie, taking the Micheal Myers that everyone knows and giving him the perfect origin story. First of all, that kid who played Micheal just had a face that had serial killer written all over it. They showed his crappy home life, being picked on, and seeing him killing animals for the fun of it. Just watching a kid grow up with all those issues gives me some justification for accepting Micheal as a murderer. The adult Micheal was just a huge, strong, violent guy with no remorse. No matter how many times I watch this movie I cringe at the shear brute force of the way he kills someone.

What is your "go to" scary movie? What do you do when you get scared?

Siding With a Murderer: Confessions of an Immoralist.

Superficially, what do Jason Vorhees, Freddy Kruger, and Michael Myers all have in common.  Among other things, they all kill a lot of people indiscriminately.  Arguably, the films are challenging to watch because, if you are like me, I am not sure for whom I should be cheering.  For example, do I root for the ignorant and stumbling teenager who Jason is chasing and is more than likely going to annihilate the face of with his machete?  Or do I root for Jason to slice that kid up into a thousand pieces and continue the rampage and impose his wrath onto his next victim?  The same questions can be applied to Freddy and/or Michael; who's corner am I in?  Let us take this in stride starting from the top.

Jason and Freddy share another crucial factor, namely - they were wronged and are out seeking revenge.  Jason was brutally teased as a child, Freddy was lured by the parents of his victims to a building, where he was set on fire and burned to "death."  Michael, on the other hand, from the beginning of his life was just a sociopath with a murderous personality.  In the case of Freddy or Jason, I can sympathize with their intentional positions in that if I were treated the way they were, I may consider externalizing my rage on the world in a similar fashion.  However, in the case of Michael, it is a little bit harder to sympathize with him because I do not know what it's like to see the human as something to be killed for pleasure.  Though it is harder to sympathize with Michael and easier with Freddy and/or Jason, I still have found myself siding or cheering for any one of the three as they slice, chop, hack, and claw their ways through victim after victim.

If your like me and have ever cheered for Michael, Freddy, or Jason, then we must admit that we have cheered for a murderer.  Regardless of what Jason or Michael's intentions are for why they kill, the fact is that they are murderers.  I have actually watched one of the Friday the 13th films and picked out one of the characters I hated and hoped Jason killed them.  Then when Jason actually did kill that character, I would be excited and thankful as if the character deserved it.  Moreover, if the killing was especially brutal, namely if the character received a machete through the face, this would enhance my excitement.

If you have made it this far, then we probably have similar experiences.  Here is where things get a little complicated, though.  We cheer for Freddy, Jason, or even Michael to slaughter their targets, but would you cheer for the 9/11 terrorists, James Holmes (guy who shot up the movie theater in Aurora, Colorado) Timothy McVeigh (Oklahoma City bombing), Ted Bundy (serial killer), Jeffrey Dahmer (serial killer), Osama Bin Laden (suspected mastermind behind 9/11), I could go on but you get the point.  Did we cheer as the people, who were stuck in the Twin Towers, jumped out of the windows to avoid being burned to death or die of asphyxiation?  Would we cheer if we were to watch a replay of the Aurora shooting while people were shot in their faces or delight as a pregnant woman has her stomach ripped open by a bullet causing the fetus to ooze out of the wound?  Do you think the juries, who watched the multiple bodies Dahmer chopped up to consume carried out of his apartment, were eating popcorn and relishing in the film?  My guess is that the answer to all of the above is "No" we would not cheer, delight, or relish in any of this.  So why do we do it in the cases of Freddy, Jason, and Michael?

There are going to be some who are chomping at the bit to make this argument, which is as follows: Jason, Freddy, and Michael are fictitious characters in fictitious movies not grounded in reality whatsoever.  The movies do not even pretend to depict real life events.  In other words, Freddy, Jason, and Michael are just simply not real and neither are the characters they kill or the plots they carry out.  However, those people who jumped out of the Twin Towers, the victims in the Oklahoma City bombing, Holmes' gunshot victims were real.  Those events actually happened and those victims actually died.  Cities, communities, and families were ripped apart, destroyed, and annihilated due to the acts of a few or single actors.  There is a difference between real life events and consequences and fictitious events and consequences.  One should not conflate the two or argue that the two are similar.

While I am sympathetic to this argument, there is a nagging itch I have to make another argument which is as follows: Jason, Freddy, and Michael are murderers.  When I cheer them for their accomplishments, I am cheering murder.  Yes, the murder is pretend; however, the object of my delight is murder nonetheless.  Murder, I argue, is a concept which transcends the realm of fiction.   Murder is supposed to be bad, wrong, evil, immoral etc. regardless of where, when, how, or to whom it happens.  A note must be made here that justified homicide i.e. self-defense or defense of others is not murder, it is justifiable homicide; there is an argument that they are different both morally and legally.  When I cheer Jason, Freddy, or Michael I am blurring my normal moral evaluations and engaging in behavior that would otherwise illicit condemnation from others and from myself as well.  Yet, when my friends and I watch Jason, Michael, and/or Freddy dice someone up with a cleaver, machete, or in Freddy's case that wicked claw he has for a hand, and cheer we feel neither guilt nor shame or condemn each other or ourselves for this behavior.  Are we immoralists?

If you accept the premise that the concept of murder is a transcendental one and is bad, wrong, evil, immoral at anytime in anyplace, as I have been taught through my experience living in the world, then I need to justify my tendency to side with Jason, Freddy, or Michael when they murder their victims.  Perhaps, I side with them because I do not wholeheartedly believe that murder bad, wrong, immoral evil etc.?  Do these kinds of movies speak to a deeper level of consciousness, or perhaps the unconscious, within us?  They may allow us to indulge in our more animalistic tendencies for violence, destruction, and carnage.  Siding with Jason, Freddy, and/or Michael could be a way of appreciating the suppressed inner killer that is shadowed by prohibitive moral judgments.  How many times have you been cut off in traffic and wanted to unleash a furry of anger toward the person guilty of the infraction, but didn't?  Watching Jason, Freddy, and/or Michael murder at will may allow us to vicariously appreciate real unadulterated violence without real consequences.