Movie Effects

One of the first scary movies I remember watching was The Shining , a 1980s psychological thriller based on a Steven King novel. I watched it with my best friend—we didn’t react too much during the movie, but it definitely left its mark.

Throughout the movie, the director, Stanley Kubric, made good use of excitation transfer, which involves arousing the viewer with different techniques before scenes to enhance a reaction. What made The Shining was the music. Whenever the young boy experiences trauma, all you hear is this heartbeat in the background.

I never realized how much this one feature impacted me until a few years ago. Around the time I saw the movie, I started having nightmares where all I heard was my heartbeat. Nothing really horrible even had to happen in the dream to make it horrifying. Every time I would wake up in a sweat.

After I learned in school about film techniques people use to captivate audiences, scary movies haven’t had too much of an effect on me, but I don’t think I’ll ever really forget that heartbeat.

Nagging Fear

I’m a natural worrier. When I was 2, I would scream when my parents tried to put me in sand. At 4, bugs terrified me. For years I had a serious phobia about my teeth falling out. Fears seem to follow me, and any medium that highlights old or new worries never ends well for me.

Right now I’m reading a fictional book about leprosy. Now, this is a disease with an actual cure, yet I still get the creeps and secretly have started thinking about any possible way I could contract the disease.

It’s sad how paranoid I am. After reading about new studies in the health section of the news, I find myself avoiding foods or activities doctors link to cancer or some other health problem. When I was around 12 years old I remember seeing on the news that strawberries were said to cause some cancer. I gave up one of my favorite fruits out of fear.

I would love if journalists could lay off the scary health and safety topics because I really can’t handle them. I tell myself that I’m an adult, so worrying is pathetic, but all my logic flies right out the door the second I hear about some new scary aspect of the world.

So, I don’t watch or read enough news as I should as a journalist major. Now, in all fairness, injustice and harm from corruption does not scare me. I just hate hearing constantly about health problems and crime.

Who wants to think about kids having sex?

Take one look at primetime TV and it’s not so surprising that a lot of teens are having sex. I know it’s not fair to blame the media for every moral crisis in our country, but sex is one thing the media has changed. Fifty years ago, you would never watch a TV show constantly highlighting extramarital sex, but now the majority of sexual exploits involve the unmarried or adulterous.

Frankly, I’m sick of shows’ that revolve around sex. I’ve grown up believing that casual sex is normal and expected largely based on what I’ve learned from TV shows. My generation already has widely different ideas about sex than our parents, so will things reach another level with even younger generations?

On a recent episode of Private Practice, a spin-off of Grey’s Anatomy, a 13-year-old had a severe case of gonorrhea and nearly died due to a miscarriage. This girl, in her grade school uniform talked about how she always used condoms and has had sex with multiple boys. I’m sorry, but 13? I think this was irresponsible. I know sex sells, but let’s not sell it to kids quite yet.