The Girl who Cried Michael Myers

In the well-known fable “The Boy who Cried Wolf,” we see a person who alerts people of danger, and is not heeded. He calls out, but his yelling is not regarded due to his past deception. The moral of that story is to not be flippant in declaring an emergency, and to not lie about dangers, lest you run out of credibility when the time of danger actually arrives. In this fable, there is a clear violation of trust, and the consequence for that offense is loss of credibility.

In Holloween, we see characters that are treated with a similar level of disregard with their warnings of danger. Throughout the movie Laurie notices the killer early on, and mentions his presence to multiple people, but is disregarded as being paranoid. This disregard for her alerts becomes especially apparent in the last twenty minutes of the movie. After she has been attacked, Laurie goes to a neighbors house seeking help. We see the neighbor look through the window at her, and then kill the lights to the house. It seems that something about Laurie- either her age, gender, economic status, or otherwise- has apparently hurt her credibility in declaring danger.

However, she is not the only character whose warning of danger is disregarded. Dr. Sam Loomis is acutely aware of the medical case of the killer, and does his due duty to make the local authorities fully aware that he is returning to his hometown. In spite of both being a trained professional and having worked personally with the escaped killer, local authorities disregard the warning when the killer didn’t immediately surface. We see the police officer tell the doctor that his opinion is being disregarded as only fancy babble. So if Laurie is being discredited for being under qualified, Dr. Loomis is being discredited for being over qualified. This leaves viewers with a valid question: what could one do to actually merit the attention of other to gather needed help?

On the flip side of the story, there is very little explanation given to the antagonist in this movie. The opening scene shows the villain as a 6-year-old as he brutally murders his older sister. From there the audience told that he is one of the escaped inmates of the mental hospital. We are never told of his motivation, or made to understand the intricacies of his disorder, however. People the details of his psyche are sparse, he then serves

One staple of many horror movies is a rural setting that eliminates the possibility of getting help. However, in Holloween it seems that effectively, the possibility of getting help is equally desolate. This substitution of the isolated setting for the small town setting, but with the retention of the element of being without aid against the threat adds to the feeling of hopelessness in the film. That fact that is should be very possible to get aid and yet people void that possibility with their denseness creates an even more frustrating situation. The fact that such a situation could be easily avoided creates a cynical feeling around the whole film. Oftentimes people feel that they could have fared better than the protagonists in a horror film due to better decision making, but that feeling is somewhat negated when those in the film seem to make reasonable decisions and yet do not benefit from them. Beyond that, the fact that it is other people who thwart those efforts makes the helplessness and isolation greater than it would be if there was simply no possibility of assistance. In that way the true villain of this film isn’t the unexplained killer, but rather the various bystanders around town. The fact that those who reached out were discredited for no wrongdoing of theirs, as opposed to the boy who cried wolf, turns this from a fable to a sad reflection. 

Butt Ugly: District 9 and Race Relations

Neil Blomkamp’s District 9 uses parallel and analogy to bring about a discussion of race, political power, human rights, and what differentiates people, along with what makes them the same. When aliens land on Earth, over Johannesburg, the people of the area must deal with questions of how to handle the insurgence of a new population, one that is notably diverse from the existing citizens. While this could bring about more questions of political logistics (are these new aliens citizens?) or human rights (are these aliens legally human? What rights do they get?), it brought me to questions and race. One of the intriguing things about this film is the fact that it is directly modeled after District 6 and political/racial strife in Johannesburg. One of the beautiful things about this film is that, despite not knowing much of anything about that situation, I found a lot of truth in the picture that applies to my life and to America as a whole. While the film uses various elements to convey its message, I feel that focusing on the physical appearance of the Prawn reveals some notable depth in the film.

The nuance of the film isn’t accepting that it’s commenting on race relations; that fact is fairly easily obtained. The true introspection for me came with the fact that I knew it was dealing with race relations, and I still had a hard time being accepting. In the United States in my lifetime, we’ve been programmed to know that all cultures and races are accepted, and that we should be open minded about everyone we meet. This notion seems to be blindly accepted, and perhaps because it isn’t challenged, it doesn’t grow as deep of roots as it should. By making these aliens resemble insects and having them look so distinct from humans, it create the need for me to actively try to be accepted. My first impulse was to reject these ugly creatures because they were physically repulsive. I’m not totally sure I can rationalize that view, but it was the Id in me coming out, for better or for worse. I had to actively remind myself that this was a metaphor for race relations, and that I wasn’t being accepting as I should be. On top of being ugly, they also were distinctly not-human in appearance. This also forced me to remember that the “other,” in this case aliens, were supposed to be more like humanity than unlike humanity (I contrast this with the movie Her, where I personally had little trouble accepting AI as part of humanity). I think this gave me a look into the views of past generations, where racial acceptance itself wasn’t accepted. As awful as it sounds, I can start to understand how the first people to deal with people of a different race saw them, and could treat them so awfully. By comparing my initial repulsion to the Prawns to past generations looking at different races, I’ve gained some nuance to the way they thought.

Another notable way they contrast the Prawn with humans in physical depiction is the size and strength of the aliens. Aside from being distinct with humans, and off-putting in appearance, they are also notably larger than the humans in the film. This gives a sense of power asymmetry, where the aliens have a physical advantage over the humans. This contrasts political power, where humans have a sufficient advantage over the aliens. This creates a volatile environment, where the humans are leery of the aliens, and live in fear of their physical power. This seems to mirror the way in which many people view minorities in our world. This is one way to view the extreme reactions to fear of minorities in our world, most notably with police violence, sometimes leading to death. It seems that the fear the authorities show in dealing with the physically powerful prawns may reflect the fear that authorities deal with minorities in the United States (and beyond) in our world.

"Interstellar," and the Need for the Next Generation

In Interstellar, Christopher Nolan depicts a world in which mankind must leave Earth behind in favor of a more habitable world. The film focuses primarily on Cooper as he leads the voyage to determine which faraway planet would best serve as humanity’s next home. As film-goers journey with these pioneering astronauts, Nolan makes statements about humanity, hope, and the importance of survival through various means. Before launch and intermittently throughout the film, however, we also get a glimpse at the Earth they left behind. We get preview into their world of education, a slight understanding of their job market, and even a look into their world of science, which isn’t exactly flourishing under the barren condition of their Earth. Some of the interactions on Earth illustrate a sociological phenomena that sociologists today have identified, and we can understand that phenomena through the film.

Physicist Max Planck made a statement about the adoption of scientific innovation into the mainstream belief system, that has since been referenced as the “Planck Problem.” He said, "An important scientific innovation rarely makes its way by gradually winning over and converting its opponents: it rarely happens that Saul becomes Paul. What does happen is that its opponents gradually die out and that the growing generation is familiarized with the idea from the beginning.” Social scientist Jay Stuart Snelson refers to this as “ideological immunity.” he expands and explains Planck’s statement by saying, “the more knowledge individuals have accumulated, and the more well-founded their theories have become, the greater the confidence in their ideologies.” Snelson says the problem is further exasperated by humans’ tendency to seek information that conforms to their established views, and dismiss information that contrasts it. So, in total, Planck’s problem states that people grow too solid in their beliefs to appropriately amend them to consider new information, and the problem is exasperated as people collect new information, given that they follow the tendency for people to find information that supports their views and dismiss information that does not support it.

We can use Interstellar to understand Planck’s problem; there are three instances where I believe this social phenomena is displayed in the film. The first example comes early in the film and doesn’t get much screen time, but still serves as a jarring example of just how different this world is from ours. Early in Interstellar Cooper goes to a parent-teacher conference, and while there his daughter’s teacher tells Cooper that she believes, and is teaching, that humans have never been to the moon. She says this in defiance of Cooper’s statement that the United States indeed landed on the moon. Although there is no further information presently by either side, which makes this an imperfect example of people’s defiance of new information in favor of their beliefs, it does serve to show how intrenched both the teacher and Cooper are in their own beliefs to serve as an example of Planck’s problem.

Later in the film, Murph is trying to convince her brother, Tom, to move his family and try something new, in light of the growing health issues his son has developed from the environment. Tom refuses to consider this, saying that he intends to continue farming, the only thing he knows. Murph once again uses his son’s health, and Tom’s deceased son, as examples of why this current course of action is detrimental to the health of his family. Ultimately, Murph must resort to trickery to evacuate Tom’s family, as Tom is too entrenched in his habits of farming to consider a new possibility, which shows the inability to accept information that defies established views that is expressed by Planck’s problem.

The last example of Planck’s problem that I’ve identified is the most complete depiction of the phenomena in this film. Dr. Brand, the head of NASA, has been working on an equation that is supposed to be of vital importance to the mission for much of his lifetime (surely a non-communications major could explain why it is important, but I’ve learned to just accept that it is). We see in one scene where Murph looks at Dr. Brand’s incomplete equation, and starts to see where his shortcomings lie. Dr. Brand is quick to whisk Murph away in an attempt to guard his own pride. A bit later, Dr. Mann explains to Cooper that Dr. Brand knew the equation was unsolvable prior to Dr. Mann’s launch, which was decades prior to this point in the film.

At this point in the film, Dr. Brand passes away, using his last breaths to apologize to Murphy for making her believe the equation was solvable and that she would see her father once again. However, as soon as he dies, we see Murphy take it upon herself to solve the problem and, ultimately, she saves the world. In this sense, we literally had to wait for Dr. Brand to die to solve the issue. This is a more textbook example of Planck’s problem than the other two, also, because it the more information Dr. Brand got, the more he was certain the problem couldn’t be solved. It was indeed his tendency to find support for his preformed hypothesis that cemented him into his false conclusion all the more. As the movie hinted, all it took were fresh eyes that had no conclusion formed, in this case, Murphy, to find the errors and a truer conclusion. Through this example, and the other given, we can use Interstellar to get a better understanding of Planck’s problem, and see how it can play out in the worst of scenarios.