[Applause]
there is a woman in a forest she comes
to a decaying building and discovers a
dark door she reaches for the handle
turns it the door creaks open she stares
into the BLAP and sees nothing
frustrated she digs in her pockets cuz I
would like to flicks it on the tiny
yellow flame Quivers in air she takes a
step over the threshold hello
and then another step into the dark now
we all know how this horror movie is
gonna end badly logic smart
decision-making critical thinking these
are the enemies of the horror movie but
I want to talk to you today about how
the woman at the door can be all of us
now the dark door something that we all
need to open because there is something
down there something that we cannot bear
to face and that is exactly why we need
to face it now we don’t all have the
same dark door they can take many forms
trap door cave an ocean none of these
dark doors have been captured on film
and brought to the collective
imaginations yet but when they are what
use are they that’s the question I want
to try and answer a question that has
bothered me for years what use is horrid
what use is horrible sure horror films
can be entertaining something akin to a
roller coaster or a cheap trail right
but beyond that can they serve a purpose
now don’t get me wrong any art form high
or low
or should be considered an end in itself
but I believe that horror can actually
be tremendously useful especially in the
moment that we find ourselves today
where monstrous things seem to creep
around every corner so what’s up by
talking about the thing that drives all
horror movies ba now here I’m indebted
to the novelist and previous TED talk er
Karen Thompson Walker hurt a global tour
from 2012 is called what fear can teach
us and it’s great
what time Sam Walker has to say in a
nutshell is this what if we think of our
fears as a kind of unintentional
storytelling that we do to ourselves you
know we open the dark door we look down
the dark Hall and already our minds are
racing ahead asking the question what’s
there and then supplying us with a
variety of terrifying answers she says
most of us don’t have a problem
imagining these scenarios
now we don’t struggle to write these
horror stories for ourselves but often
we struggle to read these stories in a
web it’s actually useful to the choices
that we make
so what chunks of Walker says to us is
that we can read those that fierce now
here it is useful to think about the
distinction between two basic kinds of
fear between terror and horror
Devendra varma provides a useful
distinction between terror and horror
he says terror and horror the difference
between terror and horror is the the
difference between awful apprehension
and sickening realization the difference
between the smell of death and stumbling
against the corpse so terror is the
dreaded expectation of something awful
whereas horror is the actual experience
of coming face-to-face with the object
of that dress
you see scary stories stick even if we
can believe and discover with a little
research but these stories may be untrue
for example when I asked my students for
their more afraid of sharks or bees the
majority of them will say shucks ok
sharks and and I think you know I think
movies like jaws have something to do
with this
and I’m sure Alfred Hitchcock would
agree that when you remove a person’s
closed and add water this innate sense
of human vulnerability increases the
dread factor tremendously but you see in
the United States last year one person
was killed by shark and 56 people died
from being stoned via a hornet or wasp
or a bee yet overwhelmingly people fear
the shark they dread the shark and this
is possibly because these stories are
reinforced for us by culture movies like
Jaws things like Shark Week the scary
stories that we tell ourselves and that
culture reinforce for us
they stick so here’s another horror
movie that it’s all about threat okay
interior bedroom note a 17 year old boy
awakes to discover that in place of the
normal bedroom door that has always been
there there is a dark door about the
door seems to look at him seems to
grumble as if something inside is moving
in the cavernous blackness the boy
pulled the sheet up above his eyes in an
attempt to shut out the nightmare
interior biology classroom day son the
boy has dark rings under his eyes he
yawns and shakes his head in an attempt
to stay focused on the lecture then he
years a sound like a dead tree bending
in the wind he looks up and sees the
dark door he slams his book closed and
darts from the room fellow students
there in amazement as he pleased now he
strides down a corridor line with
lockers head down trying to talk himself
out of the dreaded hallucination he
comes to the end of the corridor reaches
out his hand places it on the exit and
looks up to discover it is not the exit
but the dark door he has his hand upon
he drops his books and runs later
they’re always in a park with some
friends they pass around a bottle that
one of them a snack from the parents
liquor cabinet
he takes long gulp of the burning liquid
he steadies himself and looks around
nothing no door just the part and his
friends he takes another swig later it’s
dark the boy is it some kind of party in
the woods there are large oil drums
burning too like the clearing violent
electronic music is burning is is is
bumping from these speaker stacks boom
boom boom he is Hammett now he’s swaying
strobe lights are flashing he staggers
through the crowds of young people he
sees flashes of faces can toss it in
fearsome masks boom boom boom he walks
past the crab passing trees and there he
sees the door the music seems to fade
and now that boom boom boom is coming
from the other side of that door as if
something terrible we’re trying to smash
its way out it all grows in the
flickering light its hinges grown now
the terrifying thing about this story is
that it is true the 17 year old boys me
I’ll explain in 1997 my parents don’t
James in kimella car they travel to
Grozny in Chechnya to run a center for
children who’ve been orphaned by the
Russian invasion they weren’t there for
a couple of months
then they work in UPS they were tortured
and my stepmother was raped numerous
times as they were held hostage in a
variety of bedrooms cellars barns even a
sauna after a 14 months they were
released and returned to the UK now as
these events unfolded details were
sparse occasionally we would get a
letter damn I think ransom once in the
night we received a phone call saying it
was my dad saying if we didn’t get them
the money soon it would be too late
what was happening to my parents in
captivity was invisible to me and that
invisibility conspired with my
imagination this scary story stuck and
so it did everything in my power to shut
down that storytelling part of myself my
imagination what is my greatest asset my
greatest story thought of joy and
creativity my imagination I shut it down
I started with alcohol I smoked a little
pot then I smoked a lot then it’s into
harder things to try and keep that door
shut I shut that door and I ran from it
but it wasn’t a total burnout I was very
lucky to get into university I tried to
study theater but what was most visceral
most accessible to me was film I’ve
learned a great deal from film it’s a
medium of the light that comes alive in
the darkness and I’ve especially learned
some things from horror so here are a
few discoveries that I’ve made that I
want to share with you number one
remember the woman in the opening scene
in the forest she is everywhere in
horror she is one of my favorite
characters Ellen Ripley from the movie
alien this is the carrot who spends the
whole film sink guys this is a bad idea
and she is overruled by the men in that
film time and time again until they’re
all dead she is Barbara in Night of the
Living Dead Johnny stop it she pleads
very doesn’t
my stepmother said no to the men that
raped her but she went and heard because
they thought all then they thought they
knew or they needed to about this
situation and who cares what she has to
say anyway the horror film teaches us
them what happens when we ignore women
when we deprive them of the voice horace
shows us that we must listen to women
when they say they feel unsafe when they
sense danger when it’s saying no useful
discovery one listen to women it sounds
simple but to by contrast and you bear
with me on this one
horror monsters are people too
from Frankenstein to movies like Silence
of the Lambs hora is populated by
characters who are maligned by society
ignored and disregarded to the degree
that they they have no choice but to
react through violence this is an
important lesson when my parents came
back from captivity I could not
understand how they could have empathy
for these men who had abused them so
terrible what I learnt was that these
men had been made monstrous the Russian
invasion had deprived them of their
livelihood of their community they lost
their friends their family members had
died their mothers fathers brothers and
sisters their wives their children these
men had nothing but the hatred in their
hearts and the stories that they’ve been
told how the West turned a blind eye
when they needed our help
so horror shows us the when we look past
the face of terror behind the mask we
can actually see something far more
unsettling in our own community as
worthy about scrutiny 3 finally and
that’s the greatest way that horror can
be useful now and into the future brings
me back to movies like jaws and hinges
upon the way that it is constructive to
manipulate us and terror
Reiser’s you see in 1974 Steven
Spielberg was experiencing his his own
his own kind of dread as he watched the
first lunges of his 250,000 dollar shot
in action his heart sank the Beast was
anything but menacing its eyes crossed
the paint kept coming off in the salt
water its jaws didn’t even close
properly and it had a big dimple in his
chin that made it look like Kirk Douglas
but even if the shark had functioned
properly and perfectly it would never
have been it would never have been as
effective as what Spielberg decided ooh
the shark was almost totally cut from
the film and that is what made it
terrifying its invisibility
so discovery number three invisibility
is what gives horror monsters their
power obfuscation masks nests therein
lies their power to terrorize us and
pick us off one by one
the novelist HP Lovecraft knew exactly
what he was doing when he said that his
monsters were unspeakable or
unimaginable because through the
Auckland void of those words he offered
us a dark space to imagine our own
personalized fears into and that’s what
horror does it offers us that dark space
and we can read our own Horrors into it
but then as Karen Thompson Walker says
we can read we can study those fears a
film that does this brilliantly a recent
film that does this brilliantly as
Jordan peels get out this is a movie
that takes something that’s virtually
invisible to a huge proportion of the
population you know the lie of living in
a post-racial society and it gives it
back to us in equal parts funny and
shocking and horrifying ly recognizable
so this is how a horror cannot only be
entertaining that can be profoundly
useful in the future and finally I just
want to turn turn to a address the dark
door one last time and I want to talk
about something that so
you may find uncomfortable but that is
what horror is meant to do Chapman
University survey from 2016 reported
that 41% of Americans were either afraid
or very afraid of terrorist attack but
maybe this is just let the sharks and
the bees you see if we look at the
numbers from the US Department for
Disease Control and Prevention we could
see that the total number of deaths
caused by terrorism between 2001 and
2013 are three thousand three hundred
and eighty and yet the total number of
deaths caused by firearms during that
same period is four hundred and six
thousand four hundred and ninety-six
that second number is over one hundred
and twenty times greater now that’s a
scary story and here’s another one since
1979 the US has lost one hundred and
sixteen thousand three hundred thirty
three hundred eighty five children and
teens to guns now that number is three
times greater than the number of US
military deaths during the Vietnam War
that number is 23 times greater than the
number of u.s. military their deaths
during Iraq and Afghanistan now I moved
to this country from the UK and so
perhaps that explains why am i able to
understand why this is allowed to happen
in this democracy and no other is there
a good reason or do we keep the deaths
of those children behind a dark door
that we do not dare to open I can
understand what we cannot bear to open
it I’m stood in from the dark door
myself I mean too afraid because to open
it meant to face things that were too
powerful for me to deal with on my own
but we do not have to face these things
alone if I’ve learned anything from
horror movies it’s don’t split up
so together we can open these dog doors
we drag these horror monsters out into
the life beyond the movie theater and
give them the scrutiny the compassion
their understanding and the action that
they need so let’s open the door
you
[Applause]
there is a woman in a forest she comes
to a decaying building and discovers a
dark door she reaches for the handle
turns it the door creaks open she stares
into the BLAP and sees nothing
frustrated she digs in her pockets cuz I
would like to flicks it on the tiny
yellow flame Quivers in air she takes a
step over the threshold hello
and then another step into the dark now
we all know how this horror movie is
gonna end badly logic smart
decision-making critical thinking these
are the enemies of the horror movie but
I want to talk to you today about how
the woman at the door can be all of us
now the dark door something that we all
need to open because there is something
down there something that we cannot bear
to face and that is exactly why we need
to face it now we don’t all have the
same dark door they can take many forms
trap door cave an ocean none of these
dark doors have been captured on film
and brought to the collective
imaginations yet but when they are what
use are they that’s the question I want
to try and answer a question that has
bothered me for years what use is horrid
what use is horrible sure horror films
can be entertaining something akin to a
roller coaster or a cheap trail right
but beyond that can they serve a purpose
now don’t get me wrong any art form high
or low
or should be considered an end in itself
but I believe that horror can actually
be tremendously useful especially in the
moment that we find ourselves today
where monstrous things seem to creep
around every corner so what’s up by
talking about the thing that drives all
horror movies ba now here I’m indebted
to the novelist and previous TED talk er
Karen Thompson Walker hurt a global tour
from 2012 is called what fear can teach
us and it’s great
what time Sam Walker has to say in a
nutshell is this what if we think of our
fears as a kind of unintentional
storytelling that we do to ourselves you
know we open the dark door we look down
the dark Hall and already our minds are
racing ahead asking the question what’s
there and then supplying us with a
variety of terrifying answers she says
most of us don’t have a problem
imagining these scenarios
now we don’t struggle to write these
horror stories for ourselves but often
we struggle to read these stories in a
web it’s actually useful to the choices
that we make
so what chunks of Walker says to us is
that we can read those that fierce now
here it is useful to think about the
distinction between two basic kinds of
fear between terror and horror
Devendra varma provides a useful
distinction between terror and horror
he says terror and horror the difference
between terror and horror is the the
difference between awful apprehension
and sickening realization the difference
between the smell of death and stumbling
against the corpse so terror is the
dreaded expectation of something awful
whereas horror is the actual experience
of coming face-to-face with the object
of that dress
you see scary stories stick even if we
can believe and discover with a little
research but these stories may be untrue
for example when I asked my students for
their more afraid of sharks or bees the
majority of them will say shucks ok
sharks and and I think you know I think
movies like jaws have something to do
with this
and I’m sure Alfred Hitchcock would
agree that when you remove a person’s
closed and add water this innate sense
of human vulnerability increases the
dread factor tremendously but you see in
the United States last year one person
was killed by shark and 56 people died
from being stoned via a hornet or wasp
or a bee yet overwhelmingly people fear
the shark they dread the shark and this
is possibly because these stories are
reinforced for us by culture movies like
Jaws things like Shark Week the scary
stories that we tell ourselves and that
culture reinforce for us
they stick so here’s another horror
movie that it’s all about threat okay
interior bedroom note a 17 year old boy
awakes to discover that in place of the
normal bedroom door that has always been
there there is a dark door about the
door seems to look at him seems to
grumble as if something inside is moving
in the cavernous blackness the boy
pulled the sheet up above his eyes in an
attempt to shut out the nightmare
interior biology classroom day son the
boy has dark rings under his eyes he
yawns and shakes his head in an attempt
to stay focused on the lecture then he
years a sound like a dead tree bending
in the wind he looks up and sees the
dark door he slams his book closed and
darts from the room fellow students
there in amazement as he pleased now he
strides down a corridor line with
lockers head down trying to talk himself
out of the dreaded hallucination he
comes to the end of the corridor reaches
out his hand places it on the exit and
looks up to discover it is not the exit
but the dark door he has his hand upon
he drops his books and runs later
they’re always in a park with some
friends they pass around a bottle that
one of them a snack from the parents
liquor cabinet
he takes long gulp of the burning liquid
he steadies himself and looks around
nothing no door just the part and his
friends he takes another swig later it’s
dark the boy is it some kind of party in
the woods there are large oil drums
burning too like the clearing violent
electronic music is burning is is is
bumping from these speaker stacks boom
boom boom he is Hammett now he’s swaying
strobe lights are flashing he staggers
through the crowds of young people he
sees flashes of faces can toss it in
fearsome masks boom boom boom he walks
past the crab passing trees and there he
sees the door the music seems to fade
and now that boom boom boom is coming
from the other side of that door as if
something terrible we’re trying to smash
its way out it all grows in the
flickering light its hinges grown now
the terrifying thing about this story is
that it is true the 17 year old boys me
I’ll explain in 1997 my parents don’t
James in kimella car they travel to
Grozny in Chechnya to run a center for
children who’ve been orphaned by the
Russian invasion they weren’t there for
a couple of months
then they work in UPS they were tortured
and my stepmother was raped numerous
times as they were held hostage in a
variety of bedrooms cellars barns even a
sauna after a 14 months they were
released and returned to the UK now as
these events unfolded details were
sparse occasionally we would get a
letter damn I think ransom once in the
night we received a phone call saying it
was my dad saying if we didn’t get them
the money soon it would be too late
what was happening to my parents in
captivity was invisible to me and that
invisibility conspired with my
imagination this scary story stuck and
so it did everything in my power to shut
down that storytelling part of myself my
imagination what is my greatest asset my
greatest story thought of joy and
creativity my imagination I shut it down
I started with alcohol I smoked a little
pot then I smoked a lot then it’s into
harder things to try and keep that door
shut I shut that door and I ran from it
but it wasn’t a total burnout I was very
lucky to get into university I tried to
study theater but what was most visceral
most accessible to me was film I’ve
learned a great deal from film it’s a
medium of the light that comes alive in
the darkness and I’ve especially learned
some things from horror so here are a
few discoveries that I’ve made that I
want to share with you number one
remember the woman in the opening scene
in the forest she is everywhere in
horror she is one of my favorite
characters Ellen Ripley from the movie
alien this is the carrot who spends the
whole film sink guys this is a bad idea
and she is overruled by the men in that
film time and time again until they’re
all dead she is Barbara in Night of the
Living Dead Johnny stop it she pleads
very doesn’t
my stepmother said no to the men that
raped her but she went and heard because
they thought all then they thought they
knew or they needed to about this
situation and who cares what she has to
say anyway the horror film teaches us
them what happens when we ignore women
when we deprive them of the voice horace
shows us that we must listen to women
when they say they feel unsafe when they
sense danger when it’s saying no useful
discovery one listen to women it sounds
simple but to by contrast and you bear
with me on this one
horror monsters are people too
from Frankenstein to movies like Silence
of the Lambs hora is populated by
characters who are maligned by society
ignored and disregarded to the degree
that they they have no choice but to
react through violence this is an
important lesson when my parents came
back from captivity I could not
understand how they could have empathy
for these men who had abused them so
terrible what I learnt was that these
men had been made monstrous the Russian
invasion had deprived them of their
livelihood of their community they lost
their friends their family members had
died their mothers fathers brothers and
sisters their wives their children these
men had nothing but the hatred in their
hearts and the stories that they’ve been
told how the West turned a blind eye
when they needed our help
so horror shows us the when we look past
the face of terror behind the mask we
can actually see something far more
unsettling in our own community as
worthy about scrutiny 3 finally and
that’s the greatest way that horror can
be useful now and into the future brings
me back to movies like jaws and hinges
upon the way that it is constructive to
manipulate us and terror
Reiser’s you see in 1974 Steven
Spielberg was experiencing his his own
his own kind of dread as he watched the
first lunges of his 250,000 dollar shot
in action his heart sank the Beast was
anything but menacing its eyes crossed
the paint kept coming off in the salt
water its jaws didn’t even close
properly and it had a big dimple in his
chin that made it look like Kirk Douglas
but even if the shark had functioned
properly and perfectly it would never
have been it would never have been as
effective as what Spielberg decided ooh
the shark was almost totally cut from
the film and that is what made it
terrifying its invisibility
so discovery number three invisibility
is what gives horror monsters their
power obfuscation masks nests therein
lies their power to terrorize us and
pick us off one by one
the novelist HP Lovecraft knew exactly
what he was doing when he said that his
monsters were unspeakable or
unimaginable because through the
Auckland void of those words he offered
us a dark space to imagine our own
personalized fears into and that’s what
horror does it offers us that dark space
and we can read our own Horrors into it
but then as Karen Thompson Walker says
we can read we can study those fears a
film that does this brilliantly a recent
film that does this brilliantly as
Jordan peels get out this is a movie
that takes something that’s virtually
invisible to a huge proportion of the
population you know the lie of living in
a post-racial society and it gives it
back to us in equal parts funny and
shocking and horrifying ly recognizable
so this is how a horror cannot only be
entertaining that can be profoundly
useful in the future and finally I just
want to turn turn to a address the dark
door one last time and I want to talk
about something that so
you may find uncomfortable but that is
what horror is meant to do Chapman
University survey from 2016 reported
that 41% of Americans were either afraid
or very afraid of terrorist attack but
maybe this is just let the sharks and
the bees you see if we look at the
numbers from the US Department for
Disease Control and Prevention we could
see that the total number of deaths
caused by terrorism between 2001 and
2013 are three thousand three hundred
and eighty and yet the total number of
deaths caused by firearms during that
same period is four hundred and six
thousand four hundred and ninety-six
that second number is over one hundred
and twenty times greater now that’s a
scary story and here’s another one since
1979 the US has lost one hundred and
sixteen thousand three hundred thirty
three hundred eighty five children and
teens to guns now that number is three
times greater than the number of US
military deaths during the Vietnam War
that number is 23 times greater than the
number of u.s. military their deaths
during Iraq and Afghanistan now I moved
to this country from the UK and so
perhaps that explains why am i able to
understand why this is allowed to happen
in this democracy and no other is there
a good reason or do we keep the deaths
of those children behind a dark door
that we do not dare to open I can
understand what we cannot bear to open
it I’m stood in from the dark door
myself I mean too afraid because to open
it meant to face things that were too
powerful for me to deal with on my own
but we do not have to face these things
alone if I’ve learned anything from
horror movies it’s don’t split up
so together we can open these dog doors
we drag these horror monsters out into
the life beyond the movie theater and
give them the scrutiny the compassion
their understanding and the action that
they need so let’s open the door
you
[Applause]
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