I characterize my own personal development by what scares me. Since nothing induces fear like sound and moving pictures, I list below TV and movie characters that shaped who I am today.
Age 4: Endora (Samantha’s mother), Bewitched (TV Series, 1964).
I loathed how she could pop into and out of existence. It bothered me so much that I hid in the living room curtains every time she suddenly appeared to make life miserable for all. Thanks Agnes Moorehead, even in syndication you sewed the seeds for my lifetime of torment.
Age 10: Mola Ram, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. (1984)
One day in fourth grade, we got to watch this movie as a special treat. Anything occult-related absolutely terrified me at the time so demi-god Mola Ram performing a ritual human sacrifice–you know the scene where pagan chanting crescendos as some poor dude is lowered into a fire pit right after his still-beating heart is pulled out of his chest–did wonders to help me overcome this fear. What a friggin’ sissy I was.
Age 19: The many space-frozen, demon-mutilated victims in Event Horizon (1997)
I couldn’t even finish this exhaustively terrifying flick (neither could my pop who was watching it with me). It was as eerie as it was graphic (which is to say a whole hell of a lot). Basically, a spaceship achieves faster-that-light travel by some geometrically paradoxical space-folding invention of the main character. It just so happens that the ship’s shortcut through space-time goes straight through Hell. A few castaways find their way on board, happy to relieve the crew of their eyeballs, entrails, sanity, gravity, heat, and pressurization (I’m pretty sure in that order). I found this review on Rotton Tomatoes: “In its first hour, “Event” is startlingly beautiful and compelling… its last half-hour (is) a gore-drenched free-for-all, with images of Hell that seem to have been lifted directly from a Nine Inch Nails video.” True cinematic delight this sum’bitch is. Don’t miss it!
Age 29: Corporate entities, The Corporation (2003).
In this documentary, psychologists analyze corporations, and their behaviors toward society, as if they were individual people (after all, 19th century law affords them all the rights that individuals enjoy). Unsurprisingly, they diagnose corporations as a whole as profit driven psychopaths with notions of limited liability. It makes me proud our government enjoys the strong corporate lobby that it does. Now what issues haven’t been getting attention this presidential campaign?…hmm.
