The Science of Monsters

Panic attacks, the last form of phobia, greatly alter a person’s life. An example would be an agoraphobic, who while out in a public place suddenly feels physical symptoms like lightheadedness. They feel they are in great danger, and thus choose to stay out of public places, further intensifying their phobia. In the case of Ross Jennings in Arachnophobia, it seems appropriate to say he is indeed in this first “simple” phobia class, as his life is not vastly altered by his fear of a specific trigger, and the story of Ross’s childhood trauma rings true under the scientific studies of phobias. A moment or series of moments in our youth can construct a fear in our minds that takes hold. “Although childhood fears are a part of normal development, a significant minority of children evince fears that interfere with their functioning (specific phobia in the DSM-IV).”¹² For those whose fears do not diminish over time, these specific or simple phobias become a part of their adult life.

Ross Jennings has a physical reaction to his specific phobia. He loses motor function, describing a sensation of not being able to move, no matter how badly he wants to. We dug into medical literature to find if this is an authentic representation of a person suffering from a phobia. The Mayo Clinic describes several anxiety-based physical reactions for coming face-to-face with whatever specific phobia encountered, including nausea, dizziness, fainting, profuse sweating, rapid heartbeat, and a tight chest. Temporary paralysis is not listed. We broadened our search to find out if anxiety, in whatever form, can spark temporary paralysis. According to clinical psychologist Daniel Sher, MA, this is indeed the case. Sher gives two reasons for why this loss of motor function could occur under anxiety inducing conditions. The first is hyperventilation, depicted in many films as short breaths only remedied by exhaling and inhaling into a brown paper bag. Hyperventilation is actually the act of breathing out too much carbon dioxide. It is triggered by anxiety, which the Mayo Clinic describes as the main emotion felt by someone faced with a phobia. Hyperventilation can cause a person’s limbs to go numb, making them feel as though their muscles are not able to move. Secondly, Sher reasons why someone under great distress would sense that they are unable to control their body:

When someone suffers from anxiety, they often focus deeply on the way their body feels, becoming highly attuned and conscious of movements which would otherwise be performed spontaneously and automatically. The process of actively contemplating the series of movements that you’re performing may interfere with the automatic process whereby those actions would normally be carried out. This may make automatic movements harder to perform, creating a sense of immobilization.¹³

Sher further contends that while we discuss the concept of the “fight or flight” response to fears and anxieties, we should tweak it to be “fight, flight, or freeze.” The concept of a deer in headlights is proven to afflict humans as we, too, can freeze at the sight (or, in the case of the film, touch) of our greatest nightmares. We’ve concluded that because anxiety greatly affects all functions of a person’s body, including hyperventilation, Ross Jennings’s physical response is indeed an accurate portrayal of a phobia in the aptly titled Arachnophobia.

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CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

THE BIRDS

Year of Release: 1963

Director: Alfred Hitchcock

Writer: Evan Hunter

Starring: Rod Taylor, Tippi Hedren

Budget: $3.3 million

Box Office: $11.4 million

If dogs are a ubiquitous piece of our cultural landscape, then we are positively drowning in birds. Estimating how many birds there are on Earth proves to be difficult, but a conservative guess would be about one hundred billion.¹ (Meg gasps in horror!) Birds perch on our mailboxes, eat seed from our feeders, and scrounge for food in our picnic baskets. They are everywhere, whether we live in the bustling city center of London or on a rural farm in the Midwest of America. Birds are often seen as little more than an aspect of the background; they exist on the roads, up in telephone poles, swarming trees, even as pets in gilded cages. It is this prevalence that creates the unsettling question of what would happen if birds became malicious. Unlike spiders, snakes, or fellow-winged bats, birds are seen by nearly every human every single day. One is to assume that this omnipresence creates a sense of safety, that we consider birds to be harmless as they are constantly within view. We even delight in spotting different species. Yet, we have to wonder, are we watching the birds, or are they watching us?