Tuesday, November 3, 2009

The Fear of the Abnormal


I recently saw this little promo clip for a new show on ABC, FlashForward:



What struck me is just how frightening the clip is. Or, rather, how frightening it is considering the contents.

The premise, quite honestly, is hokey. Everyone on the planet falls down, unconscious, at the same time. They're all out for 2 minutes 17 seconds. The settings of the clip are not particularly striking: a gal at a computer, surveillance camera footage of people doing ordinary things, like attending a baseball game. Even our villain - if he is indeed such - is not particularly interesting; he's a nondescript man in a coat. Big deal. We've all seen those before.

But juxtapose all these together and the result is fairly unnerving. Who is this man? Why is he walking about? Did he have a hand in this world-wide phenomenon? What makes him different? There is something profoundly sinister about this man whose only real crime is being different. (Ok, the creepy music helps too.)

Is there something in human nature that makes us fear difference? Some people would say there is. They would point to racism, for example, as proof that we instinctively fear those who are not like us. There may be something to that, but let me offer a second explanation: we fear the unknown. There are, of course, lots of things we do not know. But most of our unknowns fit well within our everyday parameters. Who is that man in the car next to me? I don't know, but I probably don't care either. He seems to follow basic traffic laws, thus endangering me in no way. Moreover, I'll wager that he's from our town, or visiting from a neighboring town. One way or another, he probably fits in a category I know.

But what the creators of FlashForward have done is create a situation we do not know, a situation where nothing can be taken for granted. Here every unknown becomes sinister, threatening. There are no categories for thinking about this sort of thing. And that puts a wrench in everything...


PS Did anyone else think of Dark City when they first saw this?

PPS Since watching this clip and writing the above comments, I've taken to watching the first few episodes on Hulu. I'm rather enjoying them. There's the usual FBI investigative drama, but with a strong dose of the abnormal (supernatural? We're not sure). And since the "blackout" covered the whole planet, the show's creators have plenty of material with which to work, something they generally do to good effect. Thus far, at least, they've managed to play out the mystery at a decent pace, always providing more clues and new twists, without giving away too much too quickly. And the situation raises a number of questions about fate and faith in the lives of our characters, questions which are usually treated with a degree of seriousness and intelligence typically lacking in television (but without being over the top).

4 comments:

Stephen said...

Wouldn't fear of difference be just a form of fear of the unknown? After all, you can't know anything until you assimilate it to yourself (i.e. make it similar to yourself). We instinctively fear people who are different, precisely because we don't know them the way we know ourselves or those close to us.

As for your point about categories, how much of knowing something is about fitting it into a category? Quite a bit it seems, but...I'm getting in over my head.

Aaron Linderman said...

I think I was too. You're probably right about difference being tied to the unknown. I think what I was trying to get at was the fact that we often use "difference" as shorthand for "unknown". The results can sometimes be confusing.

In the politics of race, class, etc, this often means trying to convince people that are different than them are not. To an extent, this is true: we're all what Aristotle calls rational animals. However, significant differences do exist between peoples. If we want unity and harmony, the better approach is convincing people that these differences can be understood and need not be feared, rather than pretending they don't exist.

With the exception of the fellow at the baseball game. Clearly, a creep...

Jeremy M said...

I wonder if the this tries to invoke not "fear of the unknown" but "fear of power". This encompasses both fear of BEING controlled -- that is, fear that your actions or thoughts are in some way "not your own" -- but also fear that all my circumstances have their origin in some plan that I'm not a part of.

This guy strikes a god-like image, and the suggestion is that someone (perhaps him) dictates events for some unknown and perhaps unknowable ends.

Aaron Linderman said...

Jeremy, I think you're spot on about power. One of the themes the show plays with - not seen in the clip above - is the question of time and a sort of time travel and inevitability. If we've seen the future and it turns out X, is that inevitable? The ensuing powerlessness is quite fearful indeed.