“Put yourself in my shoes”
-Common proverb
To be whisked away, and yet strangely to remain; To lose yourself entirely yet be found by others in the very same place; To have your soul ripped from its cage, only for your physical body to remain containing a completely new entity: This is my week’s theme of replacement in a nutshell. I knew that this was going to have to be one of my themes, but I had trouble defining exactly what it is. My three stories this week I feel fit comfortably into some version of the three definitions I have presented above.
I believe it to be one of my most intriguing themes, since it moves away from some more obvious terror inducing creatures and concepts and enters the fascinating realm of psychological horror. The human brain, to me and many others, is an enigma. There is so much that I don’t know about it, and I think that some of the techniques used by storytellers to affect the most carnal pieces of the lizard brain are downright genius. When the scary part is left to the imagination, the terror becomes much more real to us. Those that can manipulate this to their advantage have my kudos, and none do this better, in my opinion, than the Japanese. Though none of my tales about replacement are by Japanese authors, some of the most upsetting films and graphic novels ever created are by the Japanese. I read the graphic novel epic Uzumaki during week one for madness, and that has managed to stick with me for a long time. I haven’t eaten right since I turned that page and witnessed a crazed reporter eating his former colleague (who just so happened to turn into a giant snail) alive and raw. Ringu and Ju-On: The Grudge are still movies I haven’t had the courage to turn on.
And now I must digress and talk about my specific stories. Replacement is truly an interesting bit of psychological horror. Being whisked away to god knows where or killed, only to have some abomination go masquerading in your visage elicits more than a few uncomfortable squirms from audiences when done well. I believe the stories I picked are very good examples.
I’ll start with one of my favorite books of all time: The Strange Case of Doctor Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson. Funny thing about this story, it’s basically ruined for everyone in the whole world. The whole mystery and climax of the book revolves around the reader not really knowing that Dr. Jekyll turns into Mr. Hyde, but that fact has now become a piece of data in the pop culture lexicon, and thus the enjoyment of the read is rather lessened. I however, have a very special place in my heart for this novella. It was about a year ago that I was getting back into reading, and I was working with my parent’s small library. Their old copy of Jekyll and Hyde caught my eye, and I devoured it quickly. It was what not only made me love reading again, but it was also my first taste of my beloved horror genre. I moved from Jekyll and Hyde to Dracula, and I’ve been hooked since.
I won’t go into detail about the plot, since the main important piece for me to make my point is known by basically everyone: Dr. Jekyll decides to experiment on himself with a potion that turns him into an evil alter ego, and eventually he loses control of the transformations and becomes locked in a struggle in which his two personalities hate one another. That’s where the real scary part comes from: his loss of control in a struggle for good vs. evil. If he can just change whenever and indulge in his vices as the evil Hyde while maintaining his good side as a respected doctor, fine. When he starts to turn into Hyde when he falls asleep though, the notion becomes frightening. One begins to empathize with Jekyll. What could we do in his situation? If he, as a doctor, can’t figure it out then he is doomed to become Hyde permanently, or choose to kill himself.
It causes us to ask questions about ourselves. The story is really about repression. Jekyll only decides to continue his experiments because becoming Hyde is a release for him, but he wouldn’t need that if he wasn’t living a highly repressed life under the public eye. Stories that stick with me and make me ask questions about my own relation to the theme are some of my favorites. Thankfully, I don’t feel as though I’m living a particularly repressed life on one of the most liberal college campuses in the United States.
Next, I read The Shadow Out of Time by H.P. Lovecraft. It’s quite an abstract, and wildly imaginative novella, revolving around the existence of an alien race called “The Great Race of Yith” (pictured below from my own copy of S. Petersen’s Field Guide To Lovecraftian Horrors). The “Yithians” have the ability to swap consciousnesses with other life forms, something they do often to in order to gather data that they keep in a massive library. Other times they invade whole planets by switching bodies on a huge scale, often to save themselves from a dying planet whilst committing a mass genocide on the invaded species. Again, the details of the story aren’t the focal point, but the Yithians are. My goodness, what an efficient way to demonstrate the terror of replacement. This time, not only is some freaky alien inhabiting your body, but then you are inhabiting the body of that freaky alien! That means you now have a grotesque new form, and you have to take in an alien landscape, that only moments ago you never thought could have existed. Though they aren’t technically fatal, one would potentially wish they were when presented with that alternative…
Finally, I watched the movie Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978). I absolutely loved the creepy tone that this film set, and it is undeniably one of the classics. The film is about a race of “pod people” that drain human life forces when they sleep, and create an exact, emotionless replica to take their place while the real person crumbles to dust. A small group of survivors manages to escape capture by the creepy, screaming aliens, but, ultimately, they all succumb. The ending to this film is instantly recognizable, and infamous for a very good reason. The sheer terror that Donald Sutherland and Veronica Cartwright are able to draw out of the last crushing scene is impeccable (linked here): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wTP_SdjD5ms.
This movie is perhaps the best example of the three of a message of individuality. While the rest of the human race slowly becomes taken over by emotionless plants, our heroes soldier on, determined to remain themselves. I’ve always toiled to remain an individual. My mere presence at a school like Evergreen is a testament to my devotion to remaining a unique voice. The horror of Invasion of the Body Snatchers really resonated with me for this reason. It is an aggressively apparent fear of mine to lose my individuality in the way the people in the film did.
I took quite a long time to think before completing this essay, and I’m very glad that I did. It gave me a chance to look inward, and really reflect on this week 6 material. The stories gave me a chance to ponder my own individuality, but also my own duality. As a result, I think I’ve been able to come up with some song lyrics that accurately reflect my feelings about my own emotional tendencies. In particular I’ve been recognizing a lot about my soft, upset, physically ailed, defeatist side constantly battling with a more determined, passionate, confident, and intense part of me. I’m looking forward to getting the song recorded, and to sharing it with the community. I feel as though the two parts of the song accurately reflect those two sides through the lyrics of each part, and the use of the two distinct styles of guitar playing that I tend to employ in all my songwriting in each part. With that, I leave you in anticipation of the song’s release.
