Fiction and Fear
One evening, not long after I moved out of the family home, my mother phoned, anxious. Apparently Damon from Brookside had been stabbed in the street and left to die – standard upbeat fare. Clearly she was upset, Damon was about my age. One way or another she was phoning to check I was okay.
At the time I found her concern annoyingly naïve and misplaced, but a second example puts me in my place: When I was seventeen skinheads were having one of their many renaissances. To celebrate, ITV screened Made in Britain, a play about a psychotic and deeply defiant skin. Tim Roth was Trevor, the boy who respected no authority, listened to no reason, spat in the face of huge coppers and always managed to get up afterwards, and smile.
For all the thrill of witnessing his wild behaviour I have no doubt that Trevor made me more scared of skinheads. Always a bit scary, unknown skins on the streets of Chelmsford and Romford emitted higher levels of foreboding.
I’m sure many of them would’ve been chuffed. At the time the fashion attracted lads who wanted to look tough, whether or not they actually were. Then again, some of them might have just found the play exciting like I did, only with the added cachet of brotherhood.
Then again, others might have felt intimidated by it, incapable of emulating such behaviour. Perhaps some were even scared by it, and turned off. Whatever, one thing’s certain, the amount of real skinheads as sociopathic as Trevor remained vanishingly small. Most were only in it for the fashion, the friends, the scene. They no more wanted to hit me than I wanted to hit them.
Looking back I have to ask, was it worth it? For the sake of entertainment, my mother and me made reality into a scarier place for ourselves. For the thrill of fictional fear we sacrificed some confidence in reality.
Horror stories are scary, obviously. An open case of fiction as bringer of fear. Publicity boasts how scared you’ll get, how you’ll need to leave the landing light on (strange things, those humans.) But instilling fear is not the preserve of horror or the thriller. Fear is a staple of fiction, one of its most powerful means of moving us.
One consequence is an increased suspicion of reality. Entertaining ourselves with fear inevitably leaves us with a scarier looking world.
Although they’re usually not the most gorily violent, it’s probably the ultra-realist fictions that cast the longest shadows on the psyche. Alien petrified audiences, but I’ll bet the fear was mostly short-lived. Spacecraft and sentient robots simply aren’t a part of our daily lives. Nothing we encounter in reality reminds us of our fears in Alien.
Conversely, the fictional reconstructions used in programs like Crimewatch refer to our immediate surroundings. Naturalistic representations of frightening events, set against a backdrop of everyday reality. We’re assured the rationale is virtuous, but it’s simply not true. Even if such mini-dramas do jog memories it can only be those of a handful of people. Once it’s been established that you weren’t in the area at the time it all becomes porn, morbid curiosity, entertainment. Nothing more than the thrill of seeing real muggings and real molestations, played out by actors.
The payback comes when you’re walking home, after dark. While you might be fully aware that you’re in no greater danger after watching a re-enactment of a mugging, there’s no telling that to your subconscious. If you frequently immerse yourself in fantasies about people leaping out of dark alleys wielding knives, there’s no way to stop your animal brain from getting twitchy when you walk pass real dark alleys. No matter how sophisticated the audience there’s never a queue for the shower after a screening of Psycho. At some level of consciousness the fear remains.
If you want to know what it’s like to live in the sea don’t ask a fish. It’s a sentiment that applies well to fictional fear. It’s hard to see it until you get out of the water and look back. I followed Eastenders from it’s beginning until the mid-nineties. I remember liking it, and discussing the antics with colleagues the next day. When I see it now I’m staggered by the tension. I can’t eat my dinner with it on. An endless cycle of shouting and threatening, violence close at hand.
That tension, I suppose, was what I previously watched it for. A good part of the entertainment of Eastenders is the sensation of being in the company of crooks, hard men, the odd psycho. Eastenders is designed to make you feel you’re there, in the houses and lock-ups and dodgy pubs. ‘Realistic’ is the greatest compliment you could pay to its creators.
And of course it’s not just Albert Square. Film and television bombard us with horror stories about strangers, how awful it is ‘out there’. Not because it is, but because it sells. One consequence is a distorted picture of human nature, skewed toward violence and fear.
None of which is not to suggest horrible things don’t happen, clearly they do. The problem is one of proportion. Like sex, violence sells. One of the standard quick fixes for flagging ratings is to crank-up the aggression, the tension, the fear. Makers of soaps and cop-shows may claim they are just representing reality but that just begs the question – whose? The aspects of reality they choose to represent are often far more aggressive than the average viewer’s life. While many of us may regret not being as sexy as the people on the telly, it’s surely a huge compensation that we’re not as violent.
Since I stopped watching soaps and thrillers, strangers are less likely to give me the creeps. There are less silly fantasies waiting in my mind, sending out false alarms, painting innocent bystanders in a bad light. It’s logical enough really. If you don’t keep fantasising about unpleasant people you won’t keep seeing them on the bus. If you enjoy fictional street violence, but have an intense fear of dimly-lit city streets, you might try killing two birds.
