Fear: Fear-based Entertainment

Many novels, films and computer games are driven by violence (physical and emotional) the threat of violence, and the fear-arousal response. This is not so far distant from the thrill of extreme sports – or extreme sex. I don’t want to get into too much analysis of why so many gentle, decent people go in for this sort of ‘recreation’ – but I do want to suggest that arousing fear is not, in itself, helpful.

Most of us have plenty to do, just dealing with our own fears, putting them to rest, gradually letting go of some of them, maintaining equilibrium amid the twirling events of every day, without conjuring up fresh things to be afraid of.

If a story evokes fears, in order to let us see further into how fear works on us, like acid – how destructive its effects are, how it can paralyse, torment, and even drive to reckless actions, the young, the old and the middle aged, in different ways – then insight may calm and release the fears, or it may not.

A great deal of fear-based entertainment is made cynically, purely for profit. Fear, after all, is very profitable for many economic sectors, from the military and security industries, through insurance to pharmaceuticals and entertainment. Even education – meaning, parents’ anxious pressure on their children to perform well and get on, for fear of them being left behind in the race – is not untainted by fear.

Fear attracts in an addictive way, like adrenaline – like the lure of the vortex. It has aspects of both carrot and stick (the threat, hidden or explicit, of ‘something awful’).

There are also writers – and painters – who are not cynical about their work, and yet who are content to mine their own unconscious for violent and fear-arousing images and stories, and who have little or no insight into the origins, or effects (on themselves and on others) of the fears they arouse. This feels to me irresponsible, and even sometimes exploitative.