![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
skull_bearervia http://bit.ly/2JW9agw
I would say this is my last Dark Crystal post but that would be a blatant lie.
Something that got me thinking, after seeing all these posts about the Netflix series all going ‘OMG this looks great the original scared the shit out of me’.
And I’m just… no? I saw this film so young I’m still not 100% sure how old I was, I can narrow it down to between 3 and 4. Even then, I wasn’t scared of anything in it.
And yet, I was scared of something about the movie, because I know I used to duck out of the room during one or two particular sequences. But looking back, it’s hard to see what it was.
The first was very early in the movie, a short sequences right after the narrator introduces us to Jen. There’s a storm coming, Jen runs through the bushes, we see animals rustling in the grass, the music crests and the camera pans from Jen to a strange carved post.
That’s it.
It’s not even a particularly scary carving.
I sat through every scene with the skeksis, the whole bit with the podlings and Kira having their souls drained out, the Emperor crumbling the dust, the Garthim crushing everything in their path- I loved it all, but it’s this weird carving that freaks me out?
I’d have put it down to a weird kid thing, but I remember feeling I had to leave the room until I was at least in my tweens, so that’s- odd.
But then i thought about the other scene I sometimes felt I had to leave for, and it starts to make sense a bit.
This one was a bit more hit and miss. Sometimes I’d feel up for it, sometimes not. It’s the scene at the Prophecy wall, when Kira and Jen realise what the crystal shard is. Again, the slow build of music, the excitement as they finally understand what this has all been about- and about 50% of the time I’m curled up outside waiting for Skeksil’s screech of ‘prophecy?’ to assure me it was safe to come back in.
Again, nothing even close to scary. In fact, the Skeksis was the only scary thing in it, and he was the guy I didn’t want to miss (fav character).
So what did these moment have in common?
They’re moments of intense emotion in the movie. The music is roaring and building to a crescendo and everything is so vivid and pulls you in. The moment with the carving is the moment the narration stops and you are in the movie itself, the moment at the wall is the apex the plot has been building to.
It dawned on me that I wasn’t scared of the film. I loved the film. In fact, that wasn’t the problem. I was scared that I loved the film too much, that my emotion would become so huge and overwhelming that it would somehow break down the barriers between fiction of reality.
Which, to a barely-past-toddlerhood autistic kid, to whom the world doesn’t make any sense already- is terrifying.
I legitimately believed that if I sat through these moments and let my emotions overload me, I would- disappear into that world or the Skeksis would crash into my grandmother’s second living room or- something else I didn’t have the mental capacity to imagine.
It’s a bit like when you’re in the dark and you know the monsters aren’t there, but you can’t quite 100% believe it. I’m pretty sure at 12 I knew I couldn’t actually pull the world of Thra through my battered old cassette tape but… I couldn’t 100% convince myself.
At ¾ I didn’t have a chance. I was absolutely convinced I would cause some kind of Lovecraftian catastrophe if I stayed and watched.
So yeah, I’m mega hyped for the new Netflix series. I just hope I was right about the whole ‘barriers of space and time’ thing.
I would say this is my last Dark Crystal post but that would be a blatant lie.
Something that got me thinking, after seeing all these posts about the Netflix series all going ‘OMG this looks great the original scared the shit out of me’.
And I’m just… no? I saw this film so young I’m still not 100% sure how old I was, I can narrow it down to between 3 and 4. Even then, I wasn’t scared of anything in it.
And yet, I was scared of something about the movie, because I know I used to duck out of the room during one or two particular sequences. But looking back, it’s hard to see what it was.
The first was very early in the movie, a short sequences right after the narrator introduces us to Jen. There’s a storm coming, Jen runs through the bushes, we see animals rustling in the grass, the music crests and the camera pans from Jen to a strange carved post.
That’s it.
It’s not even a particularly scary carving.
I sat through every scene with the skeksis, the whole bit with the podlings and Kira having their souls drained out, the Emperor crumbling the dust, the Garthim crushing everything in their path- I loved it all, but it’s this weird carving that freaks me out?
I’d have put it down to a weird kid thing, but I remember feeling I had to leave the room until I was at least in my tweens, so that’s- odd.
But then i thought about the other scene I sometimes felt I had to leave for, and it starts to make sense a bit.
This one was a bit more hit and miss. Sometimes I’d feel up for it, sometimes not. It’s the scene at the Prophecy wall, when Kira and Jen realise what the crystal shard is. Again, the slow build of music, the excitement as they finally understand what this has all been about- and about 50% of the time I’m curled up outside waiting for Skeksil’s screech of ‘prophecy?’ to assure me it was safe to come back in.
Again, nothing even close to scary. In fact, the Skeksis was the only scary thing in it, and he was the guy I didn’t want to miss (fav character).
So what did these moment have in common?
They’re moments of intense emotion in the movie. The music is roaring and building to a crescendo and everything is so vivid and pulls you in. The moment with the carving is the moment the narration stops and you are in the movie itself, the moment at the wall is the apex the plot has been building to.
It dawned on me that I wasn’t scared of the film. I loved the film. In fact, that wasn’t the problem. I was scared that I loved the film too much, that my emotion would become so huge and overwhelming that it would somehow break down the barriers between fiction of reality.
Which, to a barely-past-toddlerhood autistic kid, to whom the world doesn’t make any sense already- is terrifying.
I legitimately believed that if I sat through these moments and let my emotions overload me, I would- disappear into that world or the Skeksis would crash into my grandmother’s second living room or- something else I didn’t have the mental capacity to imagine.
It’s a bit like when you’re in the dark and you know the monsters aren’t there, but you can’t quite 100% believe it. I’m pretty sure at 12 I knew I couldn’t actually pull the world of Thra through my battered old cassette tape but… I couldn’t 100% convince myself.
At ¾ I didn’t have a chance. I was absolutely convinced I would cause some kind of Lovecraftian catastrophe if I stayed and watched.
So yeah, I’m mega hyped for the new Netflix series. I just hope I was right about the whole ‘barriers of space and time’ thing.