What is the most frightening thing one can conjure up? The living dead, perhaps? Ichabod Crane galloping through the swards of Sleepy Hollow? Hearing the words “good morning, President Kardashian?”
Fortunately pre-teens have yet to be granted the right to vote. And the other examples are also bits of fiction.
People apparently crave scary tales, plausible or not. Readers tucked into corner chairs starting at every sudden sound made Edgar Allen Poe and Stephen King famous. From the creaky silent “Nosferatu” to the current film “Ouija,” pain, suffering and terror the film industry has found fortune in chopped up bodies and horrifying screams. Even parodies — the “Scary Movie” series or that commercial where would-be victims cower behind chain saws — connect with our desire to teeter on an treacherous fictional edge.
Sometimes this predilection tips into mass hysteria, of course. In 1938, Orson Welles” radio drama “War of the Worlds” supposedly panicked a population convinced Martian invaders were pulverizing New Jersey, turning it into a vast strip of asphalt. Of course, the reality was somewhat less interesting. Likely some in the radio audience were momentarily fooled by the “breaking news” style introduction employed by Welles. But the story was already 40 years old, having been published in the 1890s. And bruised egos caused much of the uproar, as media executives complained about the innovative approach.
Besides, it was all just a tall tale.
The most curious aspect of human nature is this willingness to focus attention to fictional troubles — or at least to the dangers that threaten us the least. The Ebola virus is a case in point. New Jersey quarantines a nurse with no symptoms. Members of Congress ponder closing transportation routes. Healthcare systems scramble to stock Hazmat suits. Environmentalists warn these same suits are single use, must be discarded and will overflow from landfills. The Obama administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention bumble around, promising to kick Ebola”s butt one day, overreacting like the rest of us the next. Network news ignores war, poverty and all else for the latest Ebola rumors. Meanwhile one person, who contracted the virus in Africa, has died in the U.S.
One.
Each year in this country, more than 50,000 die from flu or pneumonia — 53,826 in 2011. Parkinson”s killed 23,111 Americans in 2011, but the disease only prompts dullards like Rush Limbaugh to ridicule the likes of Michael J. Fox for appearing on screen without first taking medication. Vehicle accidents, responsible for more than 35,000 deaths, generally earn little more than a few paragraphs in print. The accidental discharge of a firearm ended the life of 591 people in 2011. Even malaria, with a grand total of three, racks up a larger annual toll than Ebola. In fact, more people have been bored to death by Oliver Stone”s plodding films than even contracted the Ebola virus, at least on this side of the ocean. Indeed, just stepping outside your door invites greater danger than proximity to Ebola.
The only thing that gets me out the door and into work are the very real threats inside the home.
But I guess it was ever thus. I grew up in the “duck and cover” era, when authority figures worked in concert to instill fear of a communist nuclear missile launch. Years later, during an evening of conversation in the former Soviet Union, I learned those same communists believed we were keen to obliterate them without warning.
This is fear mongering, and it works wonders. As long as we focus on the latest conjured crisis, we are more likely to ignore more serious threats. If sea levels rise six feet in the next 100 years, as projected by a recent National Climate Assessment, more than 600,000 in California alone would lose their homes.
On the other hand, another half-million or so would find themselves with beachfront property, so it balances out.
I guess debating gun control or climate change or any other disputed issue involves some fairly tedious processes, from gathering research to forming an opinion and staking it against others — hardly the stuff of drama. But “we”re moving you to our Detroit office,” now that inspires true dread.
