Fear and Imagination

"Everybody in their own imagination decides what scary is."              
                                                                       -Yvonne Craig


This is an attempt to throw our previous conversations on imagination and our current ones on fear together.  So how we decide what is scary to us?  Well, I find it to be a real simple matter, actually.  We take our knowledge and experience on things in the world that have frightened us, or made us nervous or anxious or stressed, and then take them to the next level and degree with our imagination.  Now, when we read a narrative or watch a movie and experience something from within the narrative that reflects or makes us think of that which we have conjured to be frightening in our heads, then that is when we truly experience fear.  It is a combination of experience, imagination, and then an outside influence to stimulate that which we have invented in our heads to trigger the emotion.

Why is it that we are so attracted to horror movies, whose only goal is to scare us?

I believe this is just a result of human curiosity.  It is a desire to feel an emotion that we do not normally feel, or at least, do not feel now as I'm sure we used to back when our sole goal was to survive.  We want to be scared at times, because it is a fascinating feeling.  It is not one that we experience on a regular basis (or at least, not one that most of us experience on a regular basis) and due to our curiosity, we seek out ways to experience things that are not common to us; that is where horror movies come in.  They are a way for us to immerse ourselves into a world where our nightmares become real and we can become truly frightened, if only for an instant.

Perhaps it is also a desire to fall back to a base emotion, but all in all, this is what horror movies provide for us. We can experience true fear, and not just petty feelings like stress or anxiety, which most of us experience day to day.  This takes it to a whole different level, and it is that level which we desire.  Now, if we have experienced truly frightening things in our past, then obviously we will be turned off from horror movies to avoid feeling that way again.  But for those of us who have not, the reason we keep going back to feel this emotion is because we recognize that we were viewing a work of fiction, and while we did in fact feel real fear, we realize the cause of it was fake, and that drives us to keep pursuing it.

We talked about varying degrees of emotion in class. If it goes to say that we are feeling an authentic emotion when observing a piece, is it not possible we tricked ourselves into feeling it?

I think this is possible.  In class, we talked about the idea of ourselves feeling something as though we weren't feeling authentic emotion, which I disagree with.  I believe that the idea of tricking ourselves into a piece means that we tricked ourselves into believing that what was happening in the book or movie or what have you to be real, and if we are projecting ourselves into the piece, as we usually do, then it just intensifies the experience.  So when we trick ourselves into believing that the experience is real, as opposed to fiction, then we feel real emotion, for just because it is an emotion caused by the realm of fiction, it is still a real emotion.  Now, what degree of that emotion you are feeling will vary between the experience and the person that you are, but that does not change the fact that you are feeling an authentic emotion due to tricking yourself into a false state of reality.

Nicole's Question on Make-believe

The last time I played make-believe, as I recall, is I was playing a game of mafia with my friends.  Basically, we all had fake guns and we were pretending to be a mob group and taking people and doing mob stuff to them.  I was the don guy, and it was just a fun experience.

However, I wouldn't say that it was the same as reading a book or any other narrative.  For one thing, a book is something that is presented to you, something that you follow along and immerse yourself into, while playing make-believe is spontaneous, and is more wild than the somewhat tameness of a narrative.  With make-believe, you are creating the experience as you go along and you are literally the one acting everything out, where in reading literature you are following something that the author has created and has presented to you, and you are simply there for the ride.  While the two do really involve immersing yourself into the activity and placing yourself into the situation, one is in more of a literal sense and the other is in a figurative sense.

A more comprehensive quote

"An artist's only concern is to shoot for some kind of perfection, and on his own terms, not anyone else's."
-J.D. Salinger


This is one quote that I believe we can all understand and agree with, to an extent.  I do believe that an artist's true goal should be to create that perfect piece of art, or what they consider perfect.  I know that when I try to write (or at least, my new, current way of writing) I like to revise it and edit it until I feel that it is exactly how it should be, but I do this on my terms.  I don't judge my writing on how I feel others will feel about it, I judge how it feels to me.  I want to be satisfied with my own work before I worry about what others think about it.  Yes, how others will react does come into mind, but I don't attempt to completely design my work over how others will judge or react to it.  I do attempt to follow certain guidelines and styles laid down by those before me, but in doing so I try to make it my own, and I believe that is what is important in art and for an artist.


P.S. I have no idea why my blog suddenly decides to highlight all of my posts and change the font color and everything whenever I copy a quote into my blog. If someone could help me fix this it would be most appreciated.

Interesting quote. Please comment.

“An artist is someone who can hold two opposing viewpoints and still remain fully functional.” 

-F. Scott. Fitzgerald

This is a quote that I am currently trying to mull over in my head, and I was wondering what everyone else thought of it.

For some strange reason I am having a difficult time completely grasping what to make of it.  I do believe I understand what it means, and yet I find myself hitting a brick wall with it.  An artist can be confronted and hold two opposing viewpoints and still remain functional.  So essentially, an artist can be hypocritical and be aware of it, and yet still stand by both claims; or at least that is what I am getting from this.  Does Fitzgerald have a point?  Do artists really do this?  Can artists, or even people in general truly do this?  I feel like most of us to at points, but can we justify it?  I'm not sure, I guess I'll have to mull this over some more.

Could we survive without creativity?

Most certainly, however, we would not be the same human beings we are today.  Creativity is what truly sets us apart from other creatures in the animal kingdom, for no other animal (that I myself am aware of) possesses creativity like we do.  We are a unique species in that sense, for we can create great pieces of art, giant cities, machines, and most of all, one major aspect that sets us apart is the fact that we can lie.  We are able to fabricate a false truth, weave a story, create fiction.  I am most positive that no other animal can do this.

To continue the answer to the question at hand, if we lacked creativity we would simply be like other animals around us, or so I believe.  Creativity is what makes us human, so without it, we would not be different.  We would be like the nomads that we had evolved from many ages ago.  A simple, base people whose sole objective is to survive, nothing else.  We would rely only on our instincts and base natures, with, I'm sure, some reason dabbling here and there at times.  But, I do believe that creativity is a good thing, as do many, and we should continue to be as such.