September 30, 2014 • 46 mins
Are horror movies a sure-fire aphrodisiac? Does the haunted house really exit into the bed room? Join Robert and Julie as they examine the old scary movie seduction trope and look for the scientific connection between scares and sexual arousal.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot com. Hey are you welcome to Stuff to
Blow your Mind? My name is Robert Lamb and Julie Douglas. Julie,
what did your history with horror movies and dating? Horror
movies and relationships? So it goes way back because I
(00:27):
remember my brother and I staying up late and watching
the Jack the Ripper and I'm like six maybe, and uh,
it made a huge impression on both of us. And
I remember, even though he was older, he was like,
you gotta walk me down the hall, you gotta look
behind the shower curtain. And so I began to really
have that feeling like something was out there lurking. But
(00:49):
I gotta say, in terms of dating, it wasn't like
a you know, a fifties drive in. I wasn't like, oh,
let's go watch something. It wasn't like the beginning of
the Thriller video, which I was like, oh it's scary
hat here. Well. Um, Interestingly enough, I anytime my wife
and I are trying to determine how long we've known
(01:09):
each other, we have to look up the Saw movies
on on Internet movie database. Um not because the Saw
movies are particularly near and dear to our heart. Um,
you know, the first one was okay in some respects,
but it's you know, it's not something I cherished. But
we shortly after we met each other, we went and
saw the first Saw movie in the theater, so we
(01:30):
know that if we can determine for a while, they
were putting out one a year, so we knew that
we could see which which Saw a movie they were on,
and that would tell us how long we've known each other.
But now we have to do a little math. But
we have to find that starting point by answering the
question when did the first Saw movie come out? Wow?
So that just shows I think it's very reflective of
your deep history with horror movies and that genre in general,
(01:54):
because my husband and I would probably look at the
Coen Brothers movies and be like, Okay, which one was
the one that we saw together but didn't know it's
at the beginning of the relationship. But you yes, that
vast history of the genre. Well, even though I you know,
I certainly hold the Cohen Brothers films far above most
bits of horror that I've seen, But for some reason,
a horror movie that I don't even particularly like all
(02:15):
that much is the signifier. But but you know, from
an early age, I remember being hit over the head
with that trope though of if you're going on a date,
what do you do? You take the person to a movie,
and and generally it needs to be a horror movie
because you saw this. You see this in films. You
see this. I horror movies as well, especially the older
(02:38):
ones that would come on, you know, on TV in
the middle of a Saturday. You'd see these old films
which would show uh, people in the nineteen fifties and
sixties going to the drive in, right, going on dates
and seeing a horror movie. Yeah, I mean, you're right.
This is something that has actually sort of woven into
our cultural fabric and it's a rite of passage in
(02:59):
a way. And so I love that you guys that
you and your wife's first date was a horror flame,
because we're gonna talk about the ways in which it
might influence our amorous feelings for others out there. Yes,
and leading to the big question, does this actually work
as an aphrodisiac? Does the haunted house actually empty into
(03:20):
the bedroom? Uh, etcetera. So so we're gonna back up
just a little bit and and talk about the effects
of fear on the body, on the mind, because at
every basic level, Uh, this should come into no surprise
to anyone. We did not evolve to watch horror movies.
Horror mos, we didn't. We we evolved to deal with
(03:43):
frightening and or dangerous stimulation. But the horror movie in
many cases stands as an example, as an example of
supernormal stimuli, and and it's also a simulation. So we
we have this unreal experience with fear that plays on
our minds and on our bodies in the same way
that actual lethal threats to do. Right. So you have
(04:05):
a tiger, which is an actual threat and at one
point when humans were part of the food chain, would
have been a real problem, right, And we have bodies
that can respond to that. On the other hand, we
have the paper tigers of our mind, which come to
life in the form of movies, and sometimes in mind
is like, hey, I can't distinguish between the two. So
(04:26):
we should talk about what's happening in the mind. And
we'll also get to who this might be affecting the most.
All right, So let's just let's just run through what happens.
You're in the You're in the movie movie theater. You're
and and therefore you are in the movie in a sense,
you're immersing yourself in the experience. You're you're watching these
fearful sights, you're hearing fearful things. Um, maybe you're spelling
(04:47):
something fearful, depends on what kind of gimmick the the
theater is throwing at you. But for the most part,
we're talking about your ears and your eyes. So horror
is running into your ears and your eyes to an
almond shaped clump of neurons called the amygdala. There is
located front and center in the brain, and it's vital
to instantaneous emotional processing, especially surprisingly enough, love and pleasure.
(05:10):
Uh So we've we've conducted in the past spring experiments
on rats that have shown that damaging the amigola interferes
with their capacity to feel fear as well. And this
suggests an overlap between these seemingly opposite emotions of pleasure
and fright. And we've touched on this before. Um and
and when we see this kind of dual purposing a
lot because because ultimately with the brain, uh, you know,
(05:34):
some some cases you can point to a certain region
of the brain to say, well, this is this lines
up with this. But in many cases we see double duty.
You see that that the different areas are involved in
the processing of different different feelings, etcetera. So it shouldn't
come as any surprise that we see, um, we see
love and pleasure, we see fear and tear wound up
(05:54):
in the same mechanisms. Yeah, we talked before about how
the amingela processes pain, emotional pain and physical pain, and
that the two are just so bound up together. So
again there's there's no big surprise here that there's an
overlap and pain and pleasure as well. So if you
think about Freddie emerging from behind the door, or that
chainsaw getting closer and closer to your neck, you think
(06:15):
about your magdala getting all juiced up, unleashing a brain
embody energizing cocktail of hormones energizing. Remember that you know,
and while all this is happening, you also have your
prefrontal cortex getting in on the game and saying it's okay,
it is just a movie. And the result of that
is a just kind of wave of pleasure because you
(06:38):
know that you're in this domain where you're not actually
going to get hurt, and yet you're you have all
those energizing hormones and chemicals flowing through you. Yeah. All
in about three seconds, You're amgala is is unleashing this
this hormone cocktail. UH is prompting an already already busy
adrenal glands to turn out cortisol, the stress hormone. High
(07:00):
levels of cortisol can't impede insulin, causing a rising blood
sugar a little extra fuel if case you need to
punch something in the face or run away in the hills,
You're you're gonna you know, breathing faster. You're taking in
more oxygen. That way, your heart is racing to get
that oxygen into your muscles. UH. Your your appetite stalls
because you know the energy your body would use for
(07:21):
digestion is diverted towards getting away from the mass maniac
UH in your mind, if not in real life, You're
you're potentially starting to sweat. Pupils are dilating, and the
car the cortisol has saturated your blood stream at this
point and feeds back into the amgala to boost the
perception of danger. UH. So in this way, you know,
reinforcing memory for the of the initial fright sittings may
(07:44):
end up actually feeling a little jumpy afterwards. So anyway,
all this is hitting within three seconds, which which really
makes you look at the horror movie or any kind
of artificial scare in a way. It's it's kind of
like a drug. It's this artificial stimuli we take in
and it and it causes these these physical responses. Yeah,
(08:05):
and one of the more counterintuitive findings in the science
of fear is that the stronger the negative emotions we're
talking about, like anxiety and worry and fear, um, the
more the person will enjoy that movie, that bit of
horror in front of them. And that's where you see
that the distress and delight really are interconnected because it
(08:28):
is intrinsically a cathartic moment for the person. And another
big thing to point out here is that within five
seconds of of of bringing in this fearful stimuli, your
nerve cells start to release endorphins to combat the injuries
that you have probably sustained from the the act building
(08:49):
maniac on the screen, and so your brain is also
releasing dopamine. The neurotransmitter best known for giving you that
feel good rush. Uh and also some property a neurotransmitter
that we bring up a lot on the podcast because
it's one of those, uh, those those key substances that
plays a role in so many different emotional responses to
(09:11):
the world. Yea, and that reminds me to you have
mirror neurons in on the game as well. We've talked
about that before, the mirror neurons that are essentially aping
what they see in front of us in our brains.
So I always think about this with a clockwork orange
that the moment in which his eyes are being peeled back,
(09:31):
I will instinctively, you know, cover my eye and try
to prevent it because it feels like it's happening to me. Yeah.
I mean, even if it's a bad harmard with poorly
defined characters, we can't help but invest a little of
ourselves in that character. And then all the more so
if they actually bothered to to to to develop the
character and or have somebody you know, competent play that
(09:53):
character and bring them to life on the screen. And uh.
And the and the eye thing is interesting too to
note because you see a film that just has injuries
that consists of say, arms gett chopped offs and its
getting chopped off. I mean, that kind of gore can
can certainly have an effect, but so often it's those
little moments that make the most sense to us and
touches the most. The character uh scraping their their hand
(10:16):
or or you know, something jabs into their side or
they step on some glass. Those little injuries that are
far more relatable because for the most part, you and
I cannot relate to an individual getting their arms chopped off,
their head chopped off. It's uh, you know, it's it's
a real world injury, but it's not something that we
can say, it's not necessarily WinCE worthy. But it's those
(10:36):
little injuries that we can relate to, and those and
when the more we relate to what's going on in
the screen, the more we can immerse ourselves and what's happening. Yeah,
that's why the idea of something like saying needle going
into your eye is so horrific because all of us
have probably at one point or another hat and needle
pierce or skin, so we are familiar with that or
even poke in the eyes. So like the the immediate
danger to the eye is not something that's beyond the scope. Yeah,
(10:59):
and you pair that with a vulnerability of the eye,
and it just becomes like this terrible thing that you
can't even imagine, but you can't imagine. So there you go.
That's our next science on the web. We'll just deal
with one only has clips from horror movies in which
injuries are done to eyes. I know, if you guys
thought that your wax footage about what looked like to
be like a steak of croissant being pulled out of
(11:20):
a ear was terrible, then you know, you just imagine
this next video. Who is the really artsy filmmaker who
did the scene with the razor blade in the eye
that was it was? Ah, I don't know, but did
you see I just so just to summarize again, do
you can think of the horror movie experience or even
the haunted attraction experience as a drug. So bear that
(11:41):
in mind when we're talking about um people on a
date partaking of the horror movie. If you're one person
asking another person out on a date to a horror movie,
you're basically saying, hey, do this drug with me, this
drug that will have this this physical emotional effect on
me and you right, and will both experience this to
other There'll be this communal aspect and we'll both survive
(12:02):
it together. It will come out on the other hand,
And if you frame it that way, when you ask
the madame a date, they I don't know. It depends
on the individual. They might be more inclined to say yes,
but they might be more inclined to say no and
never speak to you again. But that is what the
proposition actually is. When someone says, Hey, um, I know
you're in my my physics class and we haven't really talked,
(12:24):
but why don't you go watch the new Friday to
thirdeenth movie with me? Let's metaphorically survive this together. Yes, yeah,
I don't know. I might, I might go all right,
So who might be watching these kinds of movies the
most Well, we've talked about the type T personality before.
We're talking about the new philiacs who crave new experiences.
They get more of a jolt and they release more dopamine.
(12:48):
So it would follow that perhaps a type T personality
would be more amenable to getting the pants scared off
of them. Yeah, someone who just is who just goes
into the theater and says, just push my boundaries, push
my buttons. You know, they're not They're not worried about
any of their triggers being pulled on a particular movie.
(13:08):
If anything, they want their triggers pulled, and they want
all the triggers possible to be pulled. Yeah, they were like,
I just jumped off a plan today. Bring it on
what you got, And it's it's often hard to relate
to people like that when it comes to U two
movies to fiction written fiction, even because there they seem
to have at times drastically different expectations of the subject matter.
You know. But anyway, that's another digression for for another time.
(13:32):
I think, um, now, who else might be juiced up
by this? Teens and twenty somethings, which flows in nicely
with the again the trope of the teenagers going to
the drive in theater and watching something scary and winding
up arm in arm and lip and lip at least
lip and lip. I like that. Research fear research expert
(13:54):
Edward Campbell says that older people have stimulation fatigue, like,
for instance, do you have these these real horrors of
life scaring you? There are things that are actual real threats.
When you get older, like you know, there's looming tough
that's always unpleasant. Also, you're just more aware of what's
going on in the world. I mean, like I feel
(14:14):
like I I see a trailer for a film, especially
a horror film, that has to do with home invasion,
It's like, I'm not going to see that. If I
want to get frightened about the possibility of home invasion,
you know, I'll just set in my house and listen
to the news or something that's that doesn't take me
out of my own experience. I know. My brother keeps saying,
you gotta watch Cabin in the Woods, you gotta watch
the Strangers, And I'm like, you know, I don't want
(14:35):
to because I like to go to the mountains in
a cabin a lot, and I don't want to now
freight my experience there with these paper tigers. Well, Cavin
in the Woods you should maybe see. Just know that
there's a lot more going on than than meets the eye.
It's not just a Cabin in the Woods film. It
really plays with that trope a lot and goes into
and ultimately goes into a more fantastic area. All right, Well,
(14:58):
both of you have really great judgment when it comes
to media. So I'm obviously gonna have to see this now.
Although you promise this will not ruin my experience in
the mountains. Unless you're going to a really weird mountain,
I think you'll be fine. Okay, alright, So anyway, would
it would make sense that older people are like, you
know what, I don't need this necessarily. I don't find
(15:18):
it as entertaining as I used to, because you know,
when I was a young buck of sixteen, I was
more likely to look for really intense experiences. Yeah, I
mean just physically, you get older and you're maybe not
up for the adrenaline pumping roller coaster ride of of
a horror film. It's just you just don't want to
(15:40):
feel it in your body. Um. And uh, And I'm
not I'm not quite there yet, but I've I've I've
certainly heard people make that argument. They say, I just
can't do it just makes my heart race. I just
don't want to go through it. And and I can
understand that, especially again, when you think of the horror movie,
the is the the artificial fear experience as a full
body event. Yeah, it's funny. Um, I think I've mentioned
this before, but before the birth of my daughter, I
(16:02):
could watch anything, and it really wasn't that difficult for
me to watch, um, you know, because I could very
much say, oh, yeah, this is the willing suspension of disbelief,
it's not real, so on and so forth. But after
her I had her, I was everything was sort of like, oh,
this is difficult to watch, including horror movies. So I've
(16:23):
come out of that a bit, but it's not the
same anymore. And it's also not the same for the
people who make it obviously either. I remember reading an
interview with Clive Barker where he was talking about looking
back at some of his younger writings and and about how,
you know now is as an older man, who's who,
who's known people, who's who has died, you know, death
has become more part of his reality. And therefore, looking
(16:46):
back on his view of death in his earlier horror films,
he says, you know, sometimes it's harder to relate to that.
It just seems is a different person. Indeed. All right,
so it's not just me out there having a different
perspective on this. All right, We're gonna take a quick
break and when we get back, we are going to
talk about the thematic power of these movies. All right,
(17:10):
we are back, and uh, you know, all that snack
talk remind me that we are actually going to talk
about products that eat during scary movies. But before we
do that, let's talk about the thematic power of scary movies. Yeah,
because that's another huge thing to think about, because, as
always um with humans, there's this sort of animal level,
(17:32):
there's the I'm seeing something scary and then I'm bodily
responding to it. But of course horror movies have a
lot of baggage with them as well. Even a bad
horror movie is is generally coming to you on the
backbones of long standing tropes, long standing folk tales, long
standing cultural fears. I mean, it's a it's a complex
(17:53):
there's a complex undercurrent there, even if the director or
actors or whoever responsible for this piece don't really have
a clue what they're doing. Yeah, I feel like, um,
I feel like writers and directors are tapping into these
very ancient stories that we have been telling each other
as cautionary tales. So you begin to see, obviously the
(18:13):
tropes pop up again and again. Yeah, It's one of
the reasons why I probably enjoy bad horror movies and
bad genre films as much, if not more than than
good ones, because you do see these accidents of genius.
They'll be a bad film and like somehow they'll they'll
have like a perfect scene, or the monster will will
will somehow connect on a on a level that it's
(18:34):
just out of keeping with the rest of the film,
because they'll they'll they'll accidentally at times get it right. Um,
they'll they'll tap into these these at times primal feelings. Now,
I should also say that when we talk about this,
we're talking about a very sort of hetero norm situation
going on here that horror movies appeal to. So let's say,
(18:58):
for instance, that your walk during a movie and all
the guys in it generally are cads, right, there's no
sort of night and shining armor. There is this idea,
according to the site Killer Film, that that might put
your male date attendee in a really good light. So,
for instance, you could be watching all of this terrible
(19:19):
uh sort of things unfold in front of you, and
you might have this guy next to you who just
took twenty dollars out of your wallet, but you don't
have to worry about him hopefully gutting you like a
fish later. Yeah, that's true. Um, you know, we're looking
at an article how watching horror movies on dates can
help you score by Serena Whitney at Killer Film and
and she does bring up a number of interesting points,
(19:41):
again in a very heteronormal uh sense here, but but yeah,
you're watching a horror film. All of the men are horrible,
even the ones that aren't bearing machetes. And then oftentimes
there is at least this misguided attempt to have a
strong female because you have that you have that lone
survivor that one female that makes it to the end
of the film. And granted, the character development is generally
(20:04):
not gonna beete there. It's not gonna it's not going
to be the kind of character that that feminist essays
are written on, written about for years and years and years.
But there's an idea of of female strength and male
lacking there. Yeah. I was thinking even in the scream films,
or at least the first one, the male that is
supposed to be the one who is sensitive and perhaps
(20:26):
the hero turns out to be actually the purp yeah. Yeah,
so you know, could you can find examples of these
all day long. Yeah, some of your more interesting films
are aware of these tropes and then begin to play
with them on some level or another. So so yeah, yeah, alright, Um,
then you also get this kind of like symbolism that
that's that's couched in there. So if you look at
(20:48):
a movie like Predator or even the Alien franchise, what
do you see? You see these creatures who have uh,
there's no sensitive way to say this. They have these
Jenna Talia like looking creatures that evoke the idea of
vagina dentata ven jhona dentata. I feel like we've probably
(21:09):
mentioned here a couple of times, is the idea that
of Jinna might have teeth and attack you. And it's
this very sort of grotesque rendering of the female body,
and it taps into this fear of females and this
rendering of females as monsters, as unholy and evil. And
so it's interesting that in horror movies, uh you'll see
(21:30):
some of this embedded. Yeah. Yeah, the monster's feminine plays
a huge role in in more more horror films than
we could We could count more horror properties and more
horror tales. Um. So, yeah, when you're when you're going
into a film, you're encountering the monstrous. The monstrous always
has some level of symbolic power, right, because you're you're
involving the animal and the hybrid coming together, and that
(21:52):
ends up having some sort of symbolic meaning that you
end up deciphering on on some level or another. And
then when you throw in all of this uh, you know,
yonic or or phallix symbolism, then suddenly there's there's gender politics.
They're sexual issues at way. Uh again oftentimes just going
on completely under the surface of the film. And and
maybe the filmmakers themselves were not even aware of the
(22:14):
symbols they were playing with, which I feel like plays
into this idea of of hey, hussy watching you know
that that you're a hussy, so why don't you just
you know, submit to it. I mean, obviously they're not
really command saying it, but there are those undertones there,
which then are compounded by the fact that most scary
(22:35):
movies have a ton of actual sex going on. Yeah,
it's generally a great place to throw in your gratuitous
nudity and uh and really. I mean I remember as
far as like seeing nudity on film, like all the
earliest examples of it. I feel like we're in horror
films um or even like not even quite nudity, but
just semi nude bodies. It would be like that scene
(22:55):
an alien with the underwear, So that that in and
of itself is kind of a a conflicting area where
you end up having your your early ideas about sexuality
are partially molded by films that are also full of
bloodshed and problematic displays of sexuality and or gender, and
along with with with poor character development. But at the
(23:17):
very least, it's a very good possibility that when you
go in to see a horror film there's also going
to be a little bit of skin. Yeah, And I
think it's writing on the coat tails of what we
talked about before, which is a certain amount of vulnerability
wrapped up in nudity, which we've talked about before. Um,
I'm even thinking about this. Have you ever seen that
nineteen seventies French film called The Beast? No, but I've
(23:39):
I've always wanted to because the VHS cover always calls
out to me when I go to video Drone, the
of course mecca of of of vhs and DVD rental
here in in Atlanta, because you see that be steel
hand reaching after a woman's bottom or is it just
her flesh? I can't remember remember the cover art for it,
but what I came away from that is that you know,
(23:59):
there's of this beast, you know, stalking this woman and
in the forest, and she's naked a lot of the time.
And so it really comes down to sort of the
rudimentary brass tacks of horror. You've got your vulnerability, You've
got this creature that's after you, and you're in the woods,
you're in unfamiliar territory being stalked. Now, I also want
(24:20):
to throw in that that the Sigmen Freud, of course
suggested that horror was appealing because it traffics and thoughts
and feelings that have been repressed by the ego but
which seemed vaguely familiar. So again, all of these symbolic
ideas are are embedded in the meat of the horror,
even if even if the creators were not aware of it.
And just and when you play with the monster, when
(24:41):
you're playing with the with with images of the monsters,
you end up playing with weird uh alignments of these symbols. Um.
I want to read that just a quick passage here.
I want to read a quick passage here from Monster
Culture by Jeffrey Jerome Cohen. It's one of the Essays
and Speaking of Monsters, which is a collection of wonderful
(25:02):
essays about the monsters and film monsters and fiction monsters
and culture in general and what they mean. I recommend
checking in that book out if this is it all
your thing, But anyway, Cohen says, the monster is continually
linked to forbidden practices in order to normalize and to enforce.
The monster also attracts the same creatures who terrify and
interdict can invote potent escapist fantasies. The linking of monstrosity
(25:26):
with the forbidden makes the monster all the more appealing
as a temporary aggress from constraint. The simultaneous repulsion and
attraction at the core of the monster's composition accounts greatly
for its continued cultural popularity. For the fact that the
monster seldom can be contained in a simple binary dialectic.
We distrust and loathe the monster at the same time
(25:48):
we envy its freedom and perhaps it's sublime despair. The
habitations of monsters are more than dark regions of uncertain danger.
They are also realms of happy fantasy, horizons of liberation.
Their monsters served as secondary bodies through which the possibilities
of other genders, other sexual practices, and other social customs
can be explored. And you know, right before we started
(26:11):
the podcast, we were talking about literary criticism when we
were talking about Jacques Lacan and Deridav who both took
on language as saying, it is a coda for for
the rules of how we behave in society or the
ideas that we have, and it's heavily patriarchal. So it's
(26:32):
interesting to think about that, um, the way that we
are forming the symbols, which is part of language to
inform the actual story unfolding before us. Indeed, all right,
so we have this idea that we have the really
powerful themes, and we have these mirror neurons working in
our brains. We're responding to this chemical cocktail inside of us,
(26:57):
and perhaps we inch closer together in a symbolic act
of defending ourselves from the terror before us on the screen.
Is there any evidence that watching scary movies can increase
acts of humping. Well, that's that's the big question, right,
And fortunately we do have a pretty key study that
(27:21):
sheds some light on this. It doesn't necessarily answer all
the questions, but it continues to stand as a as
a pivotal study into this this question. Uh and uh.
In this we're talking about the misattribution of arousal, which
is the process whereby people make a mistake in assuming
what is causing them to feel aroused. And it all
comes down to this. Uh, this article heightened sexual attraction
(27:43):
under conditions of high anxiety. And this is the study
by psychologist Donald Dutton and author Aaron Um And it
all has to do with in what is in a
sense kind of a physical manifestation of a horror movie. Hey,
a dangly bridge bridge. Yeah. And it's sometimes known as
the Catalano suspension bridge experiment because they had eighty five
(28:07):
males between the ages of eighteen and thirty five who
would walk across one of two bridges over the couple
in a river in Vancouver, Canada, and afterwards they were interviewed. Yeah,
it's a little bit more layered than that. Yeah, So
you have the two bridges. One is The is definitely
the scary bridge, the horror movie bridge, five ft wide,
(28:29):
foot long bridge construction of wooden boards attached to wire cables.
Perhaps you've walked on one of these before, but I
can't stand them. They sway and there and then and
it's it's hard enough when you're alone, but then inevitably
there's gonna be some some jerkwad's gonna come come on
the under the bridge right behind you and start jumping
around and some type tea yeah, and then and then
(28:50):
you're starting to freak out, and you know, crawling across
the rest of it, I mean basically the rope bridge
in the the second Indiana Jones movie. You know, that's
that's the experience. Okay, so some people use that bridge.
Other people though that we're going across the Control bridge,
which was a solid wood bridge that was a little
further upriver, and this is the constructed a heavy seater.
It's not going anywhere. Nobody's jumping on this thing to
(29:11):
make it sway around. It's solid. So they both crossed.
Both groups crossed the bridges, and at the other end
of the bridge, they're interviewed by a female conducting a
survey and giving them all these these questions they have
to answers. The guys who had crossed the scary bridge
filled out their questionnaires with stronger sexual imagery than the
men who had crossed the safe bridge. Now this is
(29:32):
where it gets very interesting. Both groups were given a
number where they could reach the female assistant in case
they required any clarification on the surveys that they took,
which would obviously give them a chance to follow up
with her. Right the guys on the suspension bridge where
five times is likely to call her the next day.
(29:55):
So what's the idea here, I mean, what's going on? Well,
the idea is that your body is aroused by the tear.
You know, we're talking about this basic physical arousal again.
You know, think back to what we're talking about with
your your your heart is raising, your breathing faster, and
you have all this dopamine rushing through through your system.
You're feeling all of that, and then you're encountering this
(30:16):
member of the opposite sex, and and you end up
misattributing the cause of that arousal to the woman instead
of the scary bridge. Uh and and this is all,
of course all uh and of course all this has
to do as well, supposedly with the with the chemical dopamine,
which is gushing out when you feel that first rush
of attraction or terror. Again comes back to the dual
(30:39):
nature uh and the and the shared machinery for these
positive and negative emotions. Yeah, because it's funny. Even though
there is an uptick in dopamine, it's not like a
gushing uptick. There is the feeling that it's gushing and
you're gushing, and you feel emboldened by this. So it
makes sense that the men were more likely to call
(31:00):
because they're looking at this experience and thinking about it. Um. Now,
there was a another I wouldn't say it was an
experiment because it was on ABC's Catalyst program. There was
an episode called The Science of Dating, How to Catch
a Mate, in which the suspension bridge experiment was reversed.
They had two groups of women who were tested to
see if the same thing would happen. So the reporter
(31:23):
on this, Dr. Paul Willis, recruited six women to ride
what he called the Terrifying New Superman roller coaster, and
then another six to go on Marvin the Martians Rocket,
which Marvin the Martian is like a kitty ride. There's
nothing thrilling, thrilling or scary about it. It sounds pretty fun.
I would probably prefer that it does have sort of
(31:44):
an adorable quality too, but I think I would ride both. Actually,
So what happened next is that Willis hits on all
the women on camera, So obviously there's some amusing stuff
going on there. Now, five of the six women who
rode the roller coaster were up for a drink after
filming Good for You, dr Willis, while only two of
(32:06):
the Marvin the Martian women accepted his invitation. Moreover, when
they filled out a survey and they used um language.
The women on the roller coaster that was much more
sexually charged and Marvin the Martian. Now that's not to
say that there are not some potential holes in this article.
It's been brought up by critics over the years that
(32:26):
that some of this doesn't hold up as well when
you reverse the genders, when you start trying to replicate
the exact results. Uh. In particular, we're looking at an
article titled attraction at first Sight What data and Aaron
really demonstrated almost forty years ago. A two thousand twelve
article by Katazan Suzuka, and she pointed out that some
of the funds have done in arab um created in
(32:47):
subsequent experiments could not be replicated by both a nineteen
seventy nine study by Kendrick, Kale, Danny and Linder and
a ninety three study by Reardon and Tatsishi. That's right,
and so that's when when we talk about studies and
we talk about experiments, UM, it's always helpful to know
(33:08):
the context of it and to know whether or not
the data could be duplicated. And so in this sense,
it really does kind of cast a little bit of
doubt over what was going on here. Also, you have
to wonder about the person um who was participating. Was
that person a neophiliac, a type T personality who was
(33:28):
open to more experiences? Would that person be more apt
to try to pursue some sort of relationship or dating opening, Yeah,
I mean you could even get into cultural differences. That
first study was its Canadian So does that end up
playing a role in subsequent studies They're not, Uh, that
don't don't involve Canadians or their cultural differences that play
(33:49):
a role. And it also in terms of applying that
study to this uh, people on a date at a
movie theater scenario. Um, you have the added complexity of
the individuals on the date are going to be stimulated
and aroused by what they're watching, but they're also potentially
going to be stimulated by each other. I mean, they're
they're on a date, so they're they're thinking about this
(34:11):
other person. They're looking at that other person. They're conceivably
feeling some level of physical arousal just by being in
their company. So you're having these two competing uh sets
of stimuli. Well, maybe not competing, but complimentary, which is
really interesting when you stop to consider one study that
had to do with products kind of hitching a ride
(34:36):
on those feelings. Oh yes, this one's great because what
do you do when you're at the movie theater. You're
seeing this horror movie and you don't have this other
person to to jump into the arms of, Right, you
cling to whatever you're drinking or you're eating as a
source of comfort. Yeah, and you go for the brand. Right,
you don't go for TWI, you don't go for Red Vine,
(34:58):
you go for twists. You go for the You go
for the good stuff, the strong stuff, the stuff you
care about. The brand you can trust for all plastic candies. Yeah,
you don't go for it. Was that hydroxy versus oreos.
That that one always troubled me. Just the name hydrox
sounds like the version of oreos that Walter White cooks
up in his lab beneath the chicken plant. Right, never
(35:18):
eat anything that Walter White makes. That's just a rule
in life. There's a two thousand and four study in
the Journal of Consumer Research that looks at this idea
that that when you don't have person to person support
when you're experiencing something that's scary, that you will replace
that person um with something else, like a actual physical object.
(35:41):
So they had a couple of studies, but in one
they had one in which participants were asked to drink
the juice or this kind of juice during a movie
and they were asked to wait or given a choice
to drink at leisure. Now their choices were horror action
or a documentary. And the study results showed that the
most increase in emotional attachment to the juice and participants
(36:03):
who viewed the horror movie and who were allowed to
drink at leisure or asked to wait until the end
of the movie, So again we see some sort of
emotional connection to that, which I have to say, I
don't know if you've ever done this when you watched
something that, you know, a movie that was scary or
just ramped up your sense of anticipation, um, and you
(36:25):
just kept going for the popcorn over and over again, because,
as we've talked about before, food is a source of comfort. Yeah,
and then when you're in the popcorn, of course, you're
you're you're eating it and it's getting the salty, the sweet,
the fat. I mean, it's it's it's in itself kind
of a super normal stimuli as well. But but yeah,
I've certainly had that experience where you're watching the film
and you just can't stop eating the popcorn. Now, this
(36:46):
study was conducted because there's this idea that you could
have negative associations with brands and then you would turn
away from them. At least this is what a lot
of industries like coke and and other manufacturers of snack
food thought, and so this experiment was interesting because it
kind of turns that paradigm on its head and if
you're interested in learning more about it. The studies called
(37:09):
the Impact of Fear on emotional brand attachment. It was
published in the June fourteen edition of Journal of Consumer Research.
I feel like I can I can definitely relate to
that because just Monday evening I watched the nineteen seventy
nine horror film Tourist Trap and if your film dunkies.
It starred Chuck Conners, you know, the rifleman from the
(37:31):
old TV shows, as this kind of like psychic hillbilly
mannequin obsessed. It was kind of a it was did
you say mannequin? Oh, yeah, it's it has creepy mannequins
in it and psychic abilities and uh and in fear
of of rural folk and old versus their whole true detective. No,
it's it's not so elegantly crafty. It's it's not a
(37:54):
good movie, but but there's but it has some flip
scenes that are legitimately creepy, and it has a say
where there's a Dr Pepper machine in the background while
our lone survivor girl tries to figure out what she's
gonna do, and it's just, you know, she's terrified and
she's standing around and there's a Dr Pepper logo. And
at the time I was just kind of like, oh,
what's that's kind of weird that Dr Pepper machines there.
I wonder what they thought about it, if they, if
(38:16):
anyone in the corporate level ever knew that their logo
showed up in this film. But even even still thinking
back on it, uh, the other evening, I started thinking
about Dr Pepper. I started thinking about how it takes
and even though I haven't haven't consumed a Dr Pepper
in years and years and years, I did kind of
want one in that moment. Did you know what goes
with it? Really? Well, what's that? I kid you not,
(38:39):
My sixteen year old self will tell you that that's
a beautiful flavor combination. Okay, well, well I'll have to
keep that in mind for next time for sure. Okay.
We talked about these things, and then often we try
to find examples in nature, and lo and behold, we
did find an example of perhaps the scary movie effect
with us trailing birds. Yes, particularly we're talking about uh
(39:03):
the splendid fairy wrens, which sounds pretty uh fantastic, but
this is an actual thing. Particularly the male splendid fairy
wrens um alright, sexually promiscuous, small bird, and they are
known to kind of peggyback onto the calls of predatory
birds such as butcher browder birds. So the butcher bird
(39:23):
lets out its predatory cry, and in any any potential
prey in the area are instantly going to go, you know,
And that's that's a bad sign. That's the sound of
something that could potentially kill me. That is a scary
bird call. What is the male ferrier ndo He packs
on his own little uh love cry onto the end
of the predator's cry. Yeah, And it's in fact, he
(39:46):
does it so quickly that it is sometimes considered a duet.
At least vocally it sounds like that, and this is
called vocal hitch hiking. And by the way, I love
the fact that this predator bird is called a butcher bird.
And I can't help but think you might build a
butcher with this glorious mustache. So so that's what I
think of flying around out there. Well, if it's perfectly right,
(40:07):
there's a butcher. There's a horrible killer in our midst
and it's calling out to us, it's shrieking. And then
here is the male of this species, the splendid fairy,
splendid fairy wren saying hey ladies, Hey ladie, what's going on?
And it is specifically, it's called a type to call
that the splendid fairy wren makes, which is specifically a
(40:30):
mating call, and that's really important. Um. And they were
out in the field. They did tons of painstaking research
on this to figure this out. So essentially what they're
doing at the very basis here is trying to get
the female's attention, and that is much easier done if
it is preceded by this terrifying predator out there. Indeed,
(40:53):
it's almost sending that message. Life is horrible, life is
full of dangers. You could die, don't when you like
to have a little comfort, wouldn't you like to have
a chance, maybe even to fulfill your genetic mission on
this planet before you wind up in the belly of
a butcher bird. That's right, there's no time like the
president to get it on, ladies. I think that's what
they're saying. Now. Less you think that these male birds
(41:14):
are competing for a Darwin Award out there in nature, Um,
it turns out that this singing after a predator call
may actually be really safe. Male fairy wrens know where
the predators located first of all, and he also knows
that the predator isn't actively hunting at that moment, but
is instead seeing it's hard out as if it were
(41:34):
in the shower. Oh man, See this makes me think
of a perfect pitch for for a horror movie. You
have your basic slasher scenario, right, He's a slasher killer,
and he you know, he pops up, you know periodically,
it's some you know late camp or you know, similar haunts.
But then you also have uh, males, male humans that
are essentially like our splendid fairy wren who realized, hey,
(41:59):
if they have a shot at the ladies, they had
best go hang out in regions where the slasher killer
uh happens to to frequent. I don't know, I don't know.
I mean that's that's it's an idea here. Yeah, it
would be a nice reveal because because again, we love
the horror movies where all the men are horrible, So
there would be that reveal. We realize the male characters
(42:20):
who seem like they're trying to help our female, they're
basically just looking to score and they're they've they've they're
using the presence of the Flasher Killer to their advantage
cats all of you. All right, Um, this is the
single kids that they've found so far in nature. But
the researchers um, and this is headed up by Emma
Greig and she's a PhD. And she's one of the
(42:42):
first authors of the study. They suspect that there are
more cases like this out in nature. They just have
to find them. And if you're interested, the study is
called Danger may Enhance Communication Predator calls alert females to
male displays. Alright, so there you have it. Now, based
on everything we've we've told you here, I feel like
this would be a good time for us to give
you some some recommendations. If you're looking for a manipulative
(43:06):
dating movie experience, you want something you want to watch,
some horror that would perhaps have some romantic results, though
we by no means guarantee results. Yeah, if you want
to try to scare the pants literally off of your date, uh,
no matter whether gender. Okay, my picks love actually what
(43:29):
the notebook? What on Golden Pond chilling? They're those are
not horror movies, Julie, I've seen none of them. No,
I take that back, I have seen love actually and
it was a horrifying experience. Yeah, so that's your Rationaley,
this will this will frighten people into gene fond It
(43:50):
is just terrifying. She is She's an excellent actor, great
in Barbarrella, but terrifying in on Golden Pond. That's all
I'm saying. Okay, Well, my recommendations um would be High
Tension two thousand three horror film from Alexandra Aja. And
this one is interesting. It has it has a twist
(44:12):
that doesn't quite hold up to repeat viewings, but stylish,
really well done, and it plays with gender expectations in
kind of a unique way. And another film that came
to mind, and this was based on the fact that
in Sereno Whitney's article for Killer Film, she mentioned that
that it that at times like a horror movie can
be almost like going to a funeral, so after which
(44:33):
you're so disturbed that you you kind of have to
cling to other, to to another person, like you need
real human contact. You almost have to mourn for what
has happened. Um which would probably indicate either a really
good or really bad movie watching experience. So um Oculus
comes to mind. Two film about a haunted mirror from
(44:53):
Mike Flanagan. Uh. Not everybody loved it. I thought it
was really well crafted. I thought I did some wonderful
stuff with with the way Maria works and uh in
taking the past and the president mixing them together. But
it ultimately leaves you in such a devastated place because
you care about the characters and all of these these
horror movie events happen, and and at the end you
(45:14):
kind of needs somebody to hold. Indeed, I do stand
by the beast. I gotta say the seventies French one, Um,
it's campy. And if anybody goes out and they see
it on my recommendation, I apologize in advance for the
beast penis that I have to say. So warning may
contain beast penis. Yeah, exactly all right. As always, you
can find this and all the other podcast episodes on
(45:37):
our homepage Stuff to Blow your Mind dot com, and
I'll try to include links to related contents on that
landing page for this episode, as well as some outgoing
links to some of these resources that Julie made mention off.
Also on the website, you can find all of our videos,
are blog posts, and links out to our various social
media accounts all right, and if you have any thoughts
brewing about this, if you think this is just some
(45:59):
sort of hetero noi orm who we a relic of
the past, or if you think there's a basis to it,
let us know. You can do that by emailing us
at below the mind at how staff works dot com
for more on this and thousands of other topics. Does
it how staff works dot com
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot com. Hey are you welcome to Stuff to
Blow your Mind? My name is Robert Lamb and Julie Douglas. Julie,
what did your history with horror movies and dating? Horror
movies and relationships? So it goes way back because I
(00:27):
remember my brother and I staying up late and watching
the Jack the Ripper and I'm like six maybe, and uh,
it made a huge impression on both of us. And
I remember, even though he was older, he was like,
you gotta walk me down the hall, you gotta look
behind the shower curtain. And so I began to really
have that feeling like something was out there lurking. But
(00:49):
I gotta say, in terms of dating, it wasn't like
a you know, a fifties drive in. I wasn't like, oh,
let's go watch something. It wasn't like the beginning of
the Thriller video, which I was like, oh it's scary
hat here. Well. Um, Interestingly enough, I anytime my wife
and I are trying to determine how long we've known
(01:09):
each other, we have to look up the Saw movies
on on Internet movie database. Um not because the Saw
movies are particularly near and dear to our heart. Um,
you know, the first one was okay in some respects,
but it's you know, it's not something I cherished. But
we shortly after we met each other, we went and
saw the first Saw movie in the theater, so we
(01:30):
know that if we can determine for a while, they
were putting out one a year, so we knew that
we could see which which Saw a movie they were on,
and that would tell us how long we've known each other.
But now we have to do a little math. But
we have to find that starting point by answering the
question when did the first Saw movie come out? Wow?
So that just shows I think it's very reflective of
your deep history with horror movies and that genre in general,
(01:54):
because my husband and I would probably look at the
Coen Brothers movies and be like, Okay, which one was
the one that we saw together but didn't know it's
at the beginning of the relationship. But you yes, that
vast history of the genre. Well, even though I you know,
I certainly hold the Cohen Brothers films far above most
bits of horror that I've seen, But for some reason,
a horror movie that I don't even particularly like all
(02:15):
that much is the signifier. But but you know, from
an early age, I remember being hit over the head
with that trope though of if you're going on a date,
what do you do? You take the person to a movie,
and and generally it needs to be a horror movie
because you saw this. You see this in films. You
see this. I horror movies as well, especially the older
(02:38):
ones that would come on, you know, on TV in
the middle of a Saturday. You'd see these old films
which would show uh, people in the nineteen fifties and
sixties going to the drive in, right, going on dates
and seeing a horror movie. Yeah, I mean, you're right.
This is something that has actually sort of woven into
our cultural fabric and it's a rite of passage in
(02:59):
a way. And so I love that you guys that
you and your wife's first date was a horror flame,
because we're gonna talk about the ways in which it
might influence our amorous feelings for others out there. Yes,
and leading to the big question, does this actually work
as an aphrodisiac? Does the haunted house actually empty into
(03:20):
the bedroom? Uh, etcetera. So so we're gonna back up
just a little bit and and talk about the effects
of fear on the body, on the mind, because at
every basic level, Uh, this should come into no surprise
to anyone. We did not evolve to watch horror movies.
Horror mos, we didn't. We we evolved to deal with
(03:43):
frightening and or dangerous stimulation. But the horror movie in
many cases stands as an example, as an example of
supernormal stimuli, and and it's also a simulation. So we
we have this unreal experience with fear that plays on
our minds and on our bodies in the same way
that actual lethal threats to do. Right. So you have
(04:05):
a tiger, which is an actual threat and at one
point when humans were part of the food chain, would
have been a real problem, right, And we have bodies
that can respond to that. On the other hand, we
have the paper tigers of our mind, which come to
life in the form of movies, and sometimes in mind
is like, hey, I can't distinguish between the two. So
(04:26):
we should talk about what's happening in the mind. And
we'll also get to who this might be affecting the most.
All right, So let's just let's just run through what happens.
You're in the You're in the movie movie theater. You're
and and therefore you are in the movie in a sense,
you're immersing yourself in the experience. You're you're watching these
fearful sights, you're hearing fearful things. Um, maybe you're spelling
(04:47):
something fearful, depends on what kind of gimmick the the
theater is throwing at you. But for the most part,
we're talking about your ears and your eyes. So horror
is running into your ears and your eyes to an
almond shaped clump of neurons called the amygdala. There is
located front and center in the brain, and it's vital
to instantaneous emotional processing, especially surprisingly enough, love and pleasure.
(05:10):
Uh So we've we've conducted in the past spring experiments
on rats that have shown that damaging the amigola interferes
with their capacity to feel fear as well. And this
suggests an overlap between these seemingly opposite emotions of pleasure
and fright. And we've touched on this before. Um and
and when we see this kind of dual purposing a
lot because because ultimately with the brain, uh, you know,
(05:34):
some some cases you can point to a certain region
of the brain to say, well, this is this lines
up with this. But in many cases we see double duty.
You see that that the different areas are involved in
the processing of different different feelings, etcetera. So it shouldn't
come as any surprise that we see, um, we see
love and pleasure, we see fear and tear wound up
(05:54):
in the same mechanisms. Yeah, we talked before about how
the amingela processes pain, emotional pain and physical pain, and
that the two are just so bound up together. So
again there's there's no big surprise here that there's an
overlap and pain and pleasure as well. So if you
think about Freddie emerging from behind the door, or that
chainsaw getting closer and closer to your neck, you think
(06:15):
about your magdala getting all juiced up, unleashing a brain
embody energizing cocktail of hormones energizing. Remember that you know,
and while all this is happening, you also have your
prefrontal cortex getting in on the game and saying it's okay,
it is just a movie. And the result of that
is a just kind of wave of pleasure because you
(06:38):
know that you're in this domain where you're not actually
going to get hurt, and yet you're you have all
those energizing hormones and chemicals flowing through you. Yeah. All
in about three seconds, You're amgala is is unleashing this
this hormone cocktail. UH is prompting an already already busy
adrenal glands to turn out cortisol, the stress hormone. High
(07:00):
levels of cortisol can't impede insulin, causing a rising blood
sugar a little extra fuel if case you need to
punch something in the face or run away in the hills,
You're you're gonna you know, breathing faster. You're taking in
more oxygen. That way, your heart is racing to get
that oxygen into your muscles. UH. Your your appetite stalls
because you know the energy your body would use for
(07:21):
digestion is diverted towards getting away from the mass maniac
UH in your mind, if not in real life, You're
you're potentially starting to sweat. Pupils are dilating, and the
car the cortisol has saturated your blood stream at this
point and feeds back into the amgala to boost the
perception of danger. UH. So in this way, you know,
reinforcing memory for the of the initial fright sittings may
(07:44):
end up actually feeling a little jumpy afterwards. So anyway,
all this is hitting within three seconds, which which really
makes you look at the horror movie or any kind
of artificial scare in a way. It's it's kind of
like a drug. It's this artificial stimuli we take in
and it and it causes these these physical responses. Yeah,
(08:05):
and one of the more counterintuitive findings in the science
of fear is that the stronger the negative emotions we're
talking about, like anxiety and worry and fear, um, the
more the person will enjoy that movie, that bit of
horror in front of them. And that's where you see
that the distress and delight really are interconnected because it
(08:28):
is intrinsically a cathartic moment for the person. And another
big thing to point out here is that within five
seconds of of of bringing in this fearful stimuli, your
nerve cells start to release endorphins to combat the injuries
that you have probably sustained from the the act building
(08:49):
maniac on the screen, and so your brain is also
releasing dopamine. The neurotransmitter best known for giving you that
feel good rush. Uh and also some property a neurotransmitter
that we bring up a lot on the podcast because
it's one of those, uh, those those key substances that
plays a role in so many different emotional responses to
(09:11):
the world. Yea, and that reminds me to you have
mirror neurons in on the game as well. We've talked
about that before, the mirror neurons that are essentially aping
what they see in front of us in our brains.
So I always think about this with a clockwork orange
that the moment in which his eyes are being peeled back,
(09:31):
I will instinctively, you know, cover my eye and try
to prevent it because it feels like it's happening to me. Yeah.
I mean, even if it's a bad harmard with poorly
defined characters, we can't help but invest a little of
ourselves in that character. And then all the more so
if they actually bothered to to to to develop the
character and or have somebody you know, competent play that
(09:53):
character and bring them to life on the screen. And uh.
And the and the eye thing is interesting too to
note because you see a film that just has injuries
that consists of say, arms gett chopped offs and its
getting chopped off. I mean, that kind of gore can
can certainly have an effect, but so often it's those
little moments that make the most sense to us and
touches the most. The character uh scraping their their hand
(10:16):
or or you know, something jabs into their side or
they step on some glass. Those little injuries that are
far more relatable because for the most part, you and
I cannot relate to an individual getting their arms chopped off,
their head chopped off. It's uh, you know, it's it's
a real world injury, but it's not something that we
can say, it's not necessarily WinCE worthy. But it's those
(10:36):
little injuries that we can relate to, and those and
when the more we relate to what's going on in
the screen, the more we can immerse ourselves and what's happening. Yeah,
that's why the idea of something like saying needle going
into your eye is so horrific because all of us
have probably at one point or another hat and needle
pierce or skin, so we are familiar with that or
even poke in the eyes. So like the the immediate
danger to the eye is not something that's beyond the scope. Yeah,
(10:59):
and you pair that with a vulnerability of the eye,
and it just becomes like this terrible thing that you
can't even imagine, but you can't imagine. So there you go.
That's our next science on the web. We'll just deal
with one only has clips from horror movies in which
injuries are done to eyes. I know, if you guys
thought that your wax footage about what looked like to
be like a steak of croissant being pulled out of
(11:20):
a ear was terrible, then you know, you just imagine
this next video. Who is the really artsy filmmaker who
did the scene with the razor blade in the eye
that was it was? Ah, I don't know, but did
you see I just so just to summarize again, do
you can think of the horror movie experience or even
the haunted attraction experience as a drug. So bear that
(11:41):
in mind when we're talking about um people on a
date partaking of the horror movie. If you're one person
asking another person out on a date to a horror movie,
you're basically saying, hey, do this drug with me, this
drug that will have this this physical emotional effect on
me and you right, and will both experience this to
other There'll be this communal aspect and we'll both survive
(12:02):
it together. It will come out on the other hand,
And if you frame it that way, when you ask
the madame a date, they I don't know. It depends
on the individual. They might be more inclined to say yes,
but they might be more inclined to say no and
never speak to you again. But that is what the
proposition actually is. When someone says, Hey, um, I know
you're in my my physics class and we haven't really talked,
(12:24):
but why don't you go watch the new Friday to
thirdeenth movie with me? Let's metaphorically survive this together. Yes, yeah,
I don't know. I might, I might go all right,
So who might be watching these kinds of movies the
most Well, we've talked about the type T personality before.
We're talking about the new philiacs who crave new experiences.
They get more of a jolt and they release more dopamine.
(12:48):
So it would follow that perhaps a type T personality
would be more amenable to getting the pants scared off
of them. Yeah, someone who just is who just goes
into the theater and says, just push my boundaries, push
my buttons. You know, they're not They're not worried about
any of their triggers being pulled on a particular movie.
(13:08):
If anything, they want their triggers pulled, and they want
all the triggers possible to be pulled. Yeah, they were like,
I just jumped off a plan today. Bring it on
what you got, And it's it's often hard to relate
to people like that when it comes to U two
movies to fiction written fiction, even because there they seem
to have at times drastically different expectations of the subject matter.
You know. But anyway, that's another digression for for another time.
(13:32):
I think, um, now, who else might be juiced up
by this? Teens and twenty somethings, which flows in nicely
with the again the trope of the teenagers going to
the drive in theater and watching something scary and winding
up arm in arm and lip and lip at least
lip and lip. I like that. Research fear research expert
(13:54):
Edward Campbell says that older people have stimulation fatigue, like,
for instance, do you have these these real horrors of
life scaring you? There are things that are actual real threats.
When you get older, like you know, there's looming tough
that's always unpleasant. Also, you're just more aware of what's
going on in the world. I mean, like I feel
(14:14):
like I I see a trailer for a film, especially
a horror film, that has to do with home invasion,
It's like, I'm not going to see that. If I
want to get frightened about the possibility of home invasion,
you know, I'll just set in my house and listen
to the news or something that's that doesn't take me
out of my own experience. I know. My brother keeps saying,
you gotta watch Cabin in the Woods, you gotta watch
the Strangers, And I'm like, you know, I don't want
(14:35):
to because I like to go to the mountains in
a cabin a lot, and I don't want to now
freight my experience there with these paper tigers. Well, Cavin
in the Woods you should maybe see. Just know that
there's a lot more going on than than meets the eye.
It's not just a Cabin in the Woods film. It
really plays with that trope a lot and goes into
and ultimately goes into a more fantastic area. All right, Well,
(14:58):
both of you have really great judgment when it comes
to media. So I'm obviously gonna have to see this now.
Although you promise this will not ruin my experience in
the mountains. Unless you're going to a really weird mountain,
I think you'll be fine. Okay, alright, So anyway, would
it would make sense that older people are like, you
know what, I don't need this necessarily. I don't find
(15:18):
it as entertaining as I used to, because you know,
when I was a young buck of sixteen, I was
more likely to look for really intense experiences. Yeah, I
mean just physically, you get older and you're maybe not
up for the adrenaline pumping roller coaster ride of of
a horror film. It's just you just don't want to
(15:40):
feel it in your body. Um. And uh, And I'm
not I'm not quite there yet, but I've I've I've
certainly heard people make that argument. They say, I just
can't do it just makes my heart race. I just
don't want to go through it. And and I can
understand that, especially again, when you think of the horror movie,
the is the the artificial fear experience as a full
body event. Yeah, it's funny. Um, I think I've mentioned
this before, but before the birth of my daughter, I
(16:02):
could watch anything, and it really wasn't that difficult for
me to watch, um, you know, because I could very
much say, oh, yeah, this is the willing suspension of disbelief,
it's not real, so on and so forth. But after
her I had her, I was everything was sort of like, oh,
this is difficult to watch, including horror movies. So I've
(16:23):
come out of that a bit, but it's not the
same anymore. And it's also not the same for the
people who make it obviously either. I remember reading an
interview with Clive Barker where he was talking about looking
back at some of his younger writings and and about how,
you know now is as an older man, who's who,
who's known people, who's who has died, you know, death
has become more part of his reality. And therefore, looking
(16:46):
back on his view of death in his earlier horror films,
he says, you know, sometimes it's harder to relate to that.
It just seems is a different person. Indeed. All right,
so it's not just me out there having a different
perspective on this. All right, We're gonna take a quick
break and when we get back, we are going to
talk about the thematic power of these movies. All right,
(17:10):
we are back, and uh, you know, all that snack
talk remind me that we are actually going to talk
about products that eat during scary movies. But before we
do that, let's talk about the thematic power of scary movies. Yeah,
because that's another huge thing to think about, because, as
always um with humans, there's this sort of animal level,
(17:32):
there's the I'm seeing something scary and then I'm bodily
responding to it. But of course horror movies have a
lot of baggage with them as well. Even a bad
horror movie is is generally coming to you on the
backbones of long standing tropes, long standing folk tales, long
standing cultural fears. I mean, it's a it's a complex
(17:53):
there's a complex undercurrent there, even if the director or
actors or whoever responsible for this piece don't really have
a clue what they're doing. Yeah, I feel like, um,
I feel like writers and directors are tapping into these
very ancient stories that we have been telling each other
as cautionary tales. So you begin to see, obviously the
(18:13):
tropes pop up again and again. Yeah, It's one of
the reasons why I probably enjoy bad horror movies and
bad genre films as much, if not more than than
good ones, because you do see these accidents of genius.
They'll be a bad film and like somehow they'll they'll
have like a perfect scene, or the monster will will
will somehow connect on a on a level that it's
(18:34):
just out of keeping with the rest of the film,
because they'll they'll they'll accidentally at times get it right. Um,
they'll they'll tap into these these at times primal feelings. Now,
I should also say that when we talk about this,
we're talking about a very sort of hetero norm situation
going on here that horror movies appeal to. So let's say,
(18:58):
for instance, that your walk during a movie and all
the guys in it generally are cads, right, there's no
sort of night and shining armor. There is this idea,
according to the site Killer Film, that that might put
your male date attendee in a really good light. So,
for instance, you could be watching all of this terrible
(19:19):
uh sort of things unfold in front of you, and
you might have this guy next to you who just
took twenty dollars out of your wallet, but you don't
have to worry about him hopefully gutting you like a
fish later. Yeah, that's true. Um, you know, we're looking
at an article how watching horror movies on dates can
help you score by Serena Whitney at Killer Film and
and she does bring up a number of interesting points,
(19:41):
again in a very heteronormal uh sense here, but but yeah,
you're watching a horror film. All of the men are horrible,
even the ones that aren't bearing machetes. And then oftentimes
there is at least this misguided attempt to have a
strong female because you have that you have that lone
survivor that one female that makes it to the end
of the film. And granted, the character development is generally
(20:04):
not gonna beete there. It's not gonna it's not going
to be the kind of character that that feminist essays
are written on, written about for years and years and years.
But there's an idea of of female strength and male
lacking there. Yeah. I was thinking even in the scream films,
or at least the first one, the male that is
supposed to be the one who is sensitive and perhaps
(20:26):
the hero turns out to be actually the purp yeah. Yeah,
so you know, could you can find examples of these
all day long. Yeah, some of your more interesting films
are aware of these tropes and then begin to play
with them on some level or another. So so yeah, yeah, alright, Um,
then you also get this kind of like symbolism that
that's that's couched in there. So if you look at
(20:48):
a movie like Predator or even the Alien franchise, what
do you see? You see these creatures who have uh,
there's no sensitive way to say this. They have these
Jenna Talia like looking creatures that evoke the idea of
vagina dentata ven jhona dentata. I feel like we've probably
(21:09):
mentioned here a couple of times, is the idea that
of Jinna might have teeth and attack you. And it's
this very sort of grotesque rendering of the female body,
and it taps into this fear of females and this
rendering of females as monsters, as unholy and evil. And
so it's interesting that in horror movies, uh you'll see
(21:30):
some of this embedded. Yeah. Yeah, the monster's feminine plays
a huge role in in more more horror films than
we could We could count more horror properties and more
horror tales. Um. So, yeah, when you're when you're going
into a film, you're encountering the monstrous. The monstrous always
has some level of symbolic power, right, because you're you're
involving the animal and the hybrid coming together, and that
(21:52):
ends up having some sort of symbolic meaning that you
end up deciphering on on some level or another. And
then when you throw in all of this uh, you know,
yonic or or phallix symbolism, then suddenly there's there's gender politics.
They're sexual issues at way. Uh again oftentimes just going
on completely under the surface of the film. And and
maybe the filmmakers themselves were not even aware of the
(22:14):
symbols they were playing with, which I feel like plays
into this idea of of hey, hussy watching you know
that that you're a hussy, so why don't you just
you know, submit to it. I mean, obviously they're not
really command saying it, but there are those undertones there,
which then are compounded by the fact that most scary
(22:35):
movies have a ton of actual sex going on. Yeah,
it's generally a great place to throw in your gratuitous
nudity and uh and really. I mean I remember as
far as like seeing nudity on film, like all the
earliest examples of it. I feel like we're in horror
films um or even like not even quite nudity, but
just semi nude bodies. It would be like that scene
(22:55):
an alien with the underwear, So that that in and
of itself is kind of a a conflicting area where
you end up having your your early ideas about sexuality
are partially molded by films that are also full of
bloodshed and problematic displays of sexuality and or gender, and
along with with with poor character development. But at the
(23:17):
very least, it's a very good possibility that when you
go in to see a horror film there's also going
to be a little bit of skin. Yeah, And I
think it's writing on the coat tails of what we
talked about before, which is a certain amount of vulnerability
wrapped up in nudity, which we've talked about before. Um,
I'm even thinking about this. Have you ever seen that
nineteen seventies French film called The Beast? No, but I've
(23:39):
I've always wanted to because the VHS cover always calls
out to me when I go to video Drone, the
of course mecca of of of vhs and DVD rental
here in in Atlanta, because you see that be steel
hand reaching after a woman's bottom or is it just
her flesh? I can't remember remember the cover art for it,
but what I came away from that is that you know,
(23:59):
there's of this beast, you know, stalking this woman and
in the forest, and she's naked a lot of the time.
And so it really comes down to sort of the
rudimentary brass tacks of horror. You've got your vulnerability, You've
got this creature that's after you, and you're in the woods,
you're in unfamiliar territory being stalked. Now, I also want
(24:20):
to throw in that that the Sigmen Freud, of course
suggested that horror was appealing because it traffics and thoughts
and feelings that have been repressed by the ego but
which seemed vaguely familiar. So again, all of these symbolic
ideas are are embedded in the meat of the horror,
even if even if the creators were not aware of it.
And just and when you play with the monster, when
(24:41):
you're playing with the with with images of the monsters,
you end up playing with weird uh alignments of these symbols. Um.
I want to read that just a quick passage here.
I want to read a quick passage here from Monster
Culture by Jeffrey Jerome Cohen. It's one of the Essays
and Speaking of Monsters, which is a collection of wonderful
(25:02):
essays about the monsters and film monsters and fiction monsters
and culture in general and what they mean. I recommend
checking in that book out if this is it all
your thing, But anyway, Cohen says, the monster is continually
linked to forbidden practices in order to normalize and to enforce.
The monster also attracts the same creatures who terrify and
interdict can invote potent escapist fantasies. The linking of monstrosity
(25:26):
with the forbidden makes the monster all the more appealing
as a temporary aggress from constraint. The simultaneous repulsion and
attraction at the core of the monster's composition accounts greatly
for its continued cultural popularity. For the fact that the
monster seldom can be contained in a simple binary dialectic.
We distrust and loathe the monster at the same time
(25:48):
we envy its freedom and perhaps it's sublime despair. The
habitations of monsters are more than dark regions of uncertain danger.
They are also realms of happy fantasy, horizons of liberation.
Their monsters served as secondary bodies through which the possibilities
of other genders, other sexual practices, and other social customs
can be explored. And you know, right before we started
(26:11):
the podcast, we were talking about literary criticism when we
were talking about Jacques Lacan and Deridav who both took
on language as saying, it is a coda for for
the rules of how we behave in society or the
ideas that we have, and it's heavily patriarchal. So it's
(26:32):
interesting to think about that, um, the way that we
are forming the symbols, which is part of language to
inform the actual story unfolding before us. Indeed, all right,
so we have this idea that we have the really
powerful themes, and we have these mirror neurons working in
our brains. We're responding to this chemical cocktail inside of us,
(26:57):
and perhaps we inch closer together in a symbolic act
of defending ourselves from the terror before us on the screen.
Is there any evidence that watching scary movies can increase
acts of humping. Well, that's that's the big question, right,
And fortunately we do have a pretty key study that
(27:21):
sheds some light on this. It doesn't necessarily answer all
the questions, but it continues to stand as a as
a pivotal study into this this question. Uh and uh.
In this we're talking about the misattribution of arousal, which
is the process whereby people make a mistake in assuming
what is causing them to feel aroused. And it all
comes down to this. Uh, this article heightened sexual attraction
(27:43):
under conditions of high anxiety. And this is the study
by psychologist Donald Dutton and author Aaron Um And it
all has to do with in what is in a
sense kind of a physical manifestation of a horror movie. Hey,
a dangly bridge bridge. Yeah. And it's sometimes known as
the Catalano suspension bridge experiment because they had eighty five
(28:07):
males between the ages of eighteen and thirty five who
would walk across one of two bridges over the couple
in a river in Vancouver, Canada, and afterwards they were interviewed. Yeah,
it's a little bit more layered than that. Yeah, So
you have the two bridges. One is The is definitely
the scary bridge, the horror movie bridge, five ft wide,
(28:29):
foot long bridge construction of wooden boards attached to wire cables.
Perhaps you've walked on one of these before, but I
can't stand them. They sway and there and then and
it's it's hard enough when you're alone, but then inevitably
there's gonna be some some jerkwad's gonna come come on
the under the bridge right behind you and start jumping
around and some type tea yeah, and then and then
(28:50):
you're starting to freak out, and you know, crawling across
the rest of it, I mean basically the rope bridge
in the the second Indiana Jones movie. You know, that's
that's the experience. Okay, so some people use that bridge.
Other people though that we're going across the Control bridge,
which was a solid wood bridge that was a little
further upriver, and this is the constructed a heavy seater.
It's not going anywhere. Nobody's jumping on this thing to
(29:11):
make it sway around. It's solid. So they both crossed.
Both groups crossed the bridges, and at the other end
of the bridge, they're interviewed by a female conducting a
survey and giving them all these these questions they have
to answers. The guys who had crossed the scary bridge
filled out their questionnaires with stronger sexual imagery than the
men who had crossed the safe bridge. Now this is
(29:32):
where it gets very interesting. Both groups were given a
number where they could reach the female assistant in case
they required any clarification on the surveys that they took,
which would obviously give them a chance to follow up
with her. Right the guys on the suspension bridge where
five times is likely to call her the next day.
(29:55):
So what's the idea here, I mean, what's going on? Well,
the idea is that your body is aroused by the tear.
You know, we're talking about this basic physical arousal again.
You know, think back to what we're talking about with
your your your heart is raising, your breathing faster, and
you have all this dopamine rushing through through your system.
You're feeling all of that, and then you're encountering this
(30:16):
member of the opposite sex, and and you end up
misattributing the cause of that arousal to the woman instead
of the scary bridge. Uh and and this is all,
of course all uh and of course all this has
to do as well, supposedly with the with the chemical dopamine,
which is gushing out when you feel that first rush
of attraction or terror. Again comes back to the dual
(30:39):
nature uh and the and the shared machinery for these
positive and negative emotions. Yeah, because it's funny. Even though
there is an uptick in dopamine, it's not like a
gushing uptick. There is the feeling that it's gushing and
you're gushing, and you feel emboldened by this. So it
makes sense that the men were more likely to call
(31:00):
because they're looking at this experience and thinking about it. Um. Now,
there was a another I wouldn't say it was an
experiment because it was on ABC's Catalyst program. There was
an episode called The Science of Dating, How to Catch
a Mate, in which the suspension bridge experiment was reversed.
They had two groups of women who were tested to
see if the same thing would happen. So the reporter
(31:23):
on this, Dr. Paul Willis, recruited six women to ride
what he called the Terrifying New Superman roller coaster, and
then another six to go on Marvin the Martians Rocket,
which Marvin the Martian is like a kitty ride. There's
nothing thrilling, thrilling or scary about it. It sounds pretty fun.
I would probably prefer that it does have sort of
(31:44):
an adorable quality too, but I think I would ride both. Actually,
So what happened next is that Willis hits on all
the women on camera, So obviously there's some amusing stuff
going on there. Now, five of the six women who
rode the roller coaster were up for a drink after
filming Good for You, dr Willis, while only two of
(32:06):
the Marvin the Martian women accepted his invitation. Moreover, when
they filled out a survey and they used um language.
The women on the roller coaster that was much more
sexually charged and Marvin the Martian. Now that's not to
say that there are not some potential holes in this article.
It's been brought up by critics over the years that
(32:26):
that some of this doesn't hold up as well when
you reverse the genders, when you start trying to replicate
the exact results. Uh. In particular, we're looking at an
article titled attraction at first Sight What data and Aaron
really demonstrated almost forty years ago. A two thousand twelve
article by Katazan Suzuka, and she pointed out that some
of the funds have done in arab um created in
(32:47):
subsequent experiments could not be replicated by both a nineteen
seventy nine study by Kendrick, Kale, Danny and Linder and
a ninety three study by Reardon and Tatsishi. That's right,
and so that's when when we talk about studies and
we talk about experiments, UM, it's always helpful to know
(33:08):
the context of it and to know whether or not
the data could be duplicated. And so in this sense,
it really does kind of cast a little bit of
doubt over what was going on here. Also, you have
to wonder about the person um who was participating. Was
that person a neophiliac, a type T personality who was
(33:28):
open to more experiences? Would that person be more apt
to try to pursue some sort of relationship or dating opening, Yeah,
I mean you could even get into cultural differences. That
first study was its Canadian So does that end up
playing a role in subsequent studies They're not, Uh, that
don't don't involve Canadians or their cultural differences that play
(33:49):
a role. And it also in terms of applying that
study to this uh, people on a date at a
movie theater scenario. Um, you have the added complexity of
the individuals on the date are going to be stimulated
and aroused by what they're watching, but they're also potentially
going to be stimulated by each other. I mean, they're
they're on a date, so they're they're thinking about this
(34:11):
other person. They're looking at that other person. They're conceivably
feeling some level of physical arousal just by being in
their company. So you're having these two competing uh sets
of stimuli. Well, maybe not competing, but complimentary, which is
really interesting when you stop to consider one study that
had to do with products kind of hitching a ride
(34:36):
on those feelings. Oh yes, this one's great because what
do you do when you're at the movie theater. You're
seeing this horror movie and you don't have this other
person to to jump into the arms of, Right, you
cling to whatever you're drinking or you're eating as a
source of comfort. Yeah, and you go for the brand. Right,
you don't go for TWI, you don't go for Red Vine,
(34:58):
you go for twists. You go for the You go
for the good stuff, the strong stuff, the stuff you
care about. The brand you can trust for all plastic candies. Yeah,
you don't go for it. Was that hydroxy versus oreos.
That that one always troubled me. Just the name hydrox
sounds like the version of oreos that Walter White cooks
up in his lab beneath the chicken plant. Right, never
(35:18):
eat anything that Walter White makes. That's just a rule
in life. There's a two thousand and four study in
the Journal of Consumer Research that looks at this idea
that that when you don't have person to person support
when you're experiencing something that's scary, that you will replace
that person um with something else, like a actual physical object.
(35:41):
So they had a couple of studies, but in one
they had one in which participants were asked to drink
the juice or this kind of juice during a movie
and they were asked to wait or given a choice
to drink at leisure. Now their choices were horror action
or a documentary. And the study results showed that the
most increase in emotional attachment to the juice and participants
(36:03):
who viewed the horror movie and who were allowed to
drink at leisure or asked to wait until the end
of the movie, So again we see some sort of
emotional connection to that, which I have to say, I
don't know if you've ever done this when you watched
something that, you know, a movie that was scary or
just ramped up your sense of anticipation, um, and you
(36:25):
just kept going for the popcorn over and over again, because,
as we've talked about before, food is a source of comfort. Yeah,
and then when you're in the popcorn, of course, you're
you're you're eating it and it's getting the salty, the sweet,
the fat. I mean, it's it's it's in itself kind
of a super normal stimuli as well. But but yeah,
I've certainly had that experience where you're watching the film
and you just can't stop eating the popcorn. Now, this
(36:46):
study was conducted because there's this idea that you could
have negative associations with brands and then you would turn
away from them. At least this is what a lot
of industries like coke and and other manufacturers of snack
food thought, and so this experiment was interesting because it
kind of turns that paradigm on its head and if
you're interested in learning more about it. The studies called
(37:09):
the Impact of Fear on emotional brand attachment. It was
published in the June fourteen edition of Journal of Consumer Research.
I feel like I can I can definitely relate to
that because just Monday evening I watched the nineteen seventy
nine horror film Tourist Trap and if your film dunkies.
It starred Chuck Conners, you know, the rifleman from the
(37:31):
old TV shows, as this kind of like psychic hillbilly
mannequin obsessed. It was kind of a it was did
you say mannequin? Oh, yeah, it's it has creepy mannequins
in it and psychic abilities and uh and in fear
of of rural folk and old versus their whole true detective. No,
it's it's not so elegantly crafty. It's it's not a
(37:54):
good movie, but but there's but it has some flip
scenes that are legitimately creepy, and it has a say
where there's a Dr Pepper machine in the background while
our lone survivor girl tries to figure out what she's
gonna do, and it's just, you know, she's terrified and
she's standing around and there's a Dr Pepper logo. And
at the time I was just kind of like, oh,
what's that's kind of weird that Dr Pepper machines there.
I wonder what they thought about it, if they, if
(38:16):
anyone in the corporate level ever knew that their logo
showed up in this film. But even even still thinking
back on it, uh, the other evening, I started thinking
about Dr Pepper. I started thinking about how it takes
and even though I haven't haven't consumed a Dr Pepper
in years and years and years, I did kind of
want one in that moment. Did you know what goes
with it? Really? Well, what's that? I kid you not,
(38:39):
My sixteen year old self will tell you that that's
a beautiful flavor combination. Okay, well, well I'll have to
keep that in mind for next time for sure. Okay.
We talked about these things, and then often we try
to find examples in nature, and lo and behold, we
did find an example of perhaps the scary movie effect
with us trailing birds. Yes, particularly we're talking about uh
(39:03):
the splendid fairy wrens, which sounds pretty uh fantastic, but
this is an actual thing. Particularly the male splendid fairy
wrens um alright, sexually promiscuous, small bird, and they are
known to kind of peggyback onto the calls of predatory
birds such as butcher browder birds. So the butcher bird
(39:23):
lets out its predatory cry, and in any any potential
prey in the area are instantly going to go, you know,
And that's that's a bad sign. That's the sound of
something that could potentially kill me. That is a scary
bird call. What is the male ferrier ndo He packs
on his own little uh love cry onto the end
of the predator's cry. Yeah, And it's in fact, he
(39:46):
does it so quickly that it is sometimes considered a duet.
At least vocally it sounds like that, and this is
called vocal hitch hiking. And by the way, I love
the fact that this predator bird is called a butcher bird.
And I can't help but think you might build a
butcher with this glorious mustache. So so that's what I
think of flying around out there. Well, if it's perfectly right,
(40:07):
there's a butcher. There's a horrible killer in our midst
and it's calling out to us, it's shrieking. And then
here is the male of this species, the splendid fairy,
splendid fairy wren saying hey ladies, Hey ladie, what's going on?
And it is specifically, it's called a type to call
that the splendid fairy wren makes, which is specifically a
(40:30):
mating call, and that's really important. Um. And they were
out in the field. They did tons of painstaking research
on this to figure this out. So essentially what they're
doing at the very basis here is trying to get
the female's attention, and that is much easier done if
it is preceded by this terrifying predator out there. Indeed,
(40:53):
it's almost sending that message. Life is horrible, life is
full of dangers. You could die, don't when you like
to have a little comfort, wouldn't you like to have
a chance, maybe even to fulfill your genetic mission on
this planet before you wind up in the belly of
a butcher bird. That's right, there's no time like the
president to get it on, ladies. I think that's what
they're saying. Now. Less you think that these male birds
(41:14):
are competing for a Darwin Award out there in nature, Um,
it turns out that this singing after a predator call
may actually be really safe. Male fairy wrens know where
the predators located first of all, and he also knows
that the predator isn't actively hunting at that moment, but
is instead seeing it's hard out as if it were
(41:34):
in the shower. Oh man, See this makes me think
of a perfect pitch for for a horror movie. You
have your basic slasher scenario, right, He's a slasher killer,
and he you know, he pops up, you know periodically,
it's some you know late camp or you know, similar haunts.
But then you also have uh, males, male humans that
are essentially like our splendid fairy wren who realized, hey,
(41:59):
if they have a shot at the ladies, they had
best go hang out in regions where the slasher killer
uh happens to to frequent. I don't know, I don't know.
I mean that's that's it's an idea here. Yeah, it
would be a nice reveal because because again, we love
the horror movies where all the men are horrible, So
there would be that reveal. We realize the male characters
(42:20):
who seem like they're trying to help our female, they're
basically just looking to score and they're they've they've they're
using the presence of the Flasher Killer to their advantage
cats all of you. All right, Um, this is the
single kids that they've found so far in nature. But
the researchers um, and this is headed up by Emma
Greig and she's a PhD. And she's one of the
(42:42):
first authors of the study. They suspect that there are
more cases like this out in nature. They just have
to find them. And if you're interested, the study is
called Danger may Enhance Communication Predator calls alert females to
male displays. Alright, so there you have it. Now, based
on everything we've we've told you here, I feel like
this would be a good time for us to give
you some some recommendations. If you're looking for a manipulative
(43:06):
dating movie experience, you want something you want to watch,
some horror that would perhaps have some romantic results, though
we by no means guarantee results. Yeah, if you want
to try to scare the pants literally off of your date, uh,
no matter whether gender. Okay, my picks love actually what
(43:29):
the notebook? What on Golden Pond chilling? They're those are
not horror movies, Julie, I've seen none of them. No,
I take that back, I have seen love actually and
it was a horrifying experience. Yeah, so that's your Rationaley,
this will this will frighten people into gene fond It
(43:50):
is just terrifying. She is She's an excellent actor, great
in Barbarrella, but terrifying in on Golden Pond. That's all
I'm saying. Okay, Well, my recommendations um would be High
Tension two thousand three horror film from Alexandra Aja. And
this one is interesting. It has it has a twist
(44:12):
that doesn't quite hold up to repeat viewings, but stylish,
really well done, and it plays with gender expectations in
kind of a unique way. And another film that came
to mind, and this was based on the fact that
in Sereno Whitney's article for Killer Film, she mentioned that
that it that at times like a horror movie can
be almost like going to a funeral, so after which
(44:33):
you're so disturbed that you you kind of have to
cling to other, to to another person, like you need
real human contact. You almost have to mourn for what
has happened. Um which would probably indicate either a really
good or really bad movie watching experience. So um Oculus
comes to mind. Two film about a haunted mirror from
(44:53):
Mike Flanagan. Uh. Not everybody loved it. I thought it
was really well crafted. I thought I did some wonderful
stuff with with the way Maria works and uh in
taking the past and the president mixing them together. But
it ultimately leaves you in such a devastated place because
you care about the characters and all of these these
horror movie events happen, and and at the end you
(45:14):
kind of needs somebody to hold. Indeed, I do stand
by the beast. I gotta say the seventies French one, Um,
it's campy. And if anybody goes out and they see
it on my recommendation, I apologize in advance for the
beast penis that I have to say. So warning may
contain beast penis. Yeah, exactly all right. As always, you
can find this and all the other podcast episodes on
(45:37):
our homepage Stuff to Blow your Mind dot com, and
I'll try to include links to related contents on that
landing page for this episode, as well as some outgoing
links to some of these resources that Julie made mention off.
Also on the website, you can find all of our videos,
are blog posts, and links out to our various social
media accounts all right, and if you have any thoughts
brewing about this, if you think this is just some
(45:59):
sort of hetero noi orm who we a relic of
the past, or if you think there's a basis to it,
let us know. You can do that by emailing us
at below the mind at how staff works dot com
for more on this and thousands of other topics. Does
it how staff works dot com
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