This blog post contains minor spoilers, so spoiler alert. Viewer discretion is advised.
A motif we see in the real world is sickness coupled with hysteria. One does not imply the other, but we do see them together an awful lot. Recently, I finished the book The 5th Wave by Rick Yancey (great book, might I add). The third wave is referred to as pestilence. Basically, 9 out of 10 people get sick and bleed to death from the inside out. It is extremely contagious, extremely painful and extremely hard to avoid. So now you have a good deal of corpses covered in blood that is basically a death sentence on contact, what do you do? You burn that all up. People that were unconscious were thrown into these great fires on the outskirts of cities and burned to death. It was an accident, sure, but no rationally thinking human being just grabs anyone that's not moving and throws them into a fire. Some type of medical check is recommended.
Another movie, Contagion, is about a mysterious new illness that breaks out and slowly begins to sicken the world. The people in the movie rally behind a person with absolutely no grounds or evidence who recommends a drug to cure this mysterious illness. Naturally, people take everything he says with a grain of salt and go to their homes to sit this one out. Oh yeah, no. They flock to their pharmacies, buy up all of this miracle drug and--can you guess? Loot everything. When one person rushes the Red Cross trucks full of aid, everyone rushes the Red Cross trucks full of aid. That kind of behavior? Not recommended.
Let's also not forget The Crucible. Betty is sick. Sick with what? Sick with the Devil's evil spirit or with witchcraft or with trippy fungus or with a curse put on her. It doesn't matter what she's sick with, only that, coupled with the fact Ruth is also sick, drives the town into hysteria. I am aware there are other forces, but for the sake of just examining this motif, we'll stick with my awful summary.
I'm not sure if maybe it's not a motif, but a way of human nature, but I've found (in books) that when people get sick, other people get crazy. They are directly related. Sickness does more than attack the body; it attacks the chains that hold society together. As soon as any number of people are infected, the whole system falls apart.
I like how you came up with a similar motif about hysteria as the ones in The Crucible. It was also interesting how sickness causing hysteria applies to many different time periods.
ReplyDeleteI agree, especially with this marvelous sentence, "Sickness does more than attack the body; it attacks the chains that hold society together." Sickness, particularly unknown sickness, leads to fear for oneself, and when a whole area is gripped with this panic, hysteria and irrationality ensue. And incredibly, this phenomenon still occurs nowadays, because I can clearly remember a few years ago how the swine flu made my mother paranoid. Anyone one who *achoo* sneezed, was "infected".
ReplyDeleteI must say that every time I see the word "anarchy" I picture the kids in Talladega Nights running away from Sunday School.
ReplyDeleteThis post made me literally laugh out loud! :D Yeah I found it hard to write a blog this weekend as well. But this post opened my eyes; I never thought that sickness and hysteria were related! I love your style and your posts keep me interested the whole way through.
ReplyDeleteThe summary was not awful! Entertaining post full of little humorous quips. Like the cookie dough in ice cream. I think that sickness causes s lot of chaos and is a topic of interest in the entertainment industry today because of medical snd scientific advancements, as well as the basic human instinct to preserve. Whether it be yourself or others depends on the individual.
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