news

한어Русский языкEnglishFrançaisIndonesianSanskrit日本語DeutschPortuguêsΕλληνικάespañolItalianoSuomalainenLatina

"Alien: Reaper", rated R in North America, was released without any cuts.

#Alien is too scary. Not only did it top the trending searches, the cinema was also complained by a parent with an 8-year-old child. The reason was that it was too scary and the child might have sequelae, so he demanded compensation for medical expenses.

It has been on the screen for 40 years and remains popular.

As a pioneer of science fiction horror, why can this disgusting monster capture the global aesthetic?

* Friendly reminder, the content is scary, children are not allowed to enter

Aliens scare the kids and make the adults feel sick?

"Alien" should be the most terrifying screen experience in China in the past two years.

The box office exceeded 100 million yuan in two days after its release, and it can be said to be the biggest dark horse of this summer's movie.

But at the same time, it was also complained by parents for being too scary.

Not to mention that "Alien" itself is not suitable for 8-year-old children, the poster also states that minors should watch it with caution.

The child was scared, but instead of advocating for film ratings, you blame the cinema for showing horror films?

But to be honest, "Alien" can really be said to be the most terrifying alien creature in film history.

To be frank, it was the nightmare of all moviegoers in the 1980s. Especially those with claustrophobia, they might have fainted.

Its impact is also extremely wide-ranging.

The Thing, The Fly, and Species all followed its lead.

Akira Toriyama's "Dragon Ball" was also inspired by it.

There is even a saying in the film and television industry:It "redefined the sci-fi thriller"。

The reason why it received such high praise and made the audience feel so involved is largely due to the image of the alien.

This is the most successful monster image in film history.

The designer of the alien is the Swedish surrealist master H.R. Giger.

His painting style combines organic flesh with metallic mechanical structures, with obvious reproductive themes that make people feel physically uncomfortable.

Just look at the alien and you will know.

The facehugger eggs correspond to the female uterus.

The face hugger, which is wrapped in a white film, is equivalent to an embryo wrapped in amniotic fluid. The outer layer of fleshy tissue is the vagina. (It is more obvious when it is open.)

When someone approaches, the closed fleshy tissue will open and eject the facehugger, completing a "childbirth" like a human.

The so-called "facehugger", as the name suggests, jumps onto someone's face like a little octopus and sticks a tube down the person's throat to supply breathing and produce offspring at the same time.

When it reaches adult form, it becomes like this.

Several dorsal tubes, a genital-like head and lower limbs, and a hard exoskeleton.

And it has no eyes, because "eyes will betray the soul, and without eyes, others will not know what it will do next."

Even the producers described it as "disgusting".

This is a concept drawing. The eyes are removed from the film version.

In addition to the terrifying and weird appearance, the director also created an extremely cruel and cold-blooded reproduction and existence mode for the alien -

Egg—face-hugging body—broke chest body—adult heteromorphic body.

The so-called chest-breaking means that the alien breaks out of the human body.

It is said that when the movie was first released, everyone in the theater rushed to the toilet to vomit during the chest-breaking scene.

After all, before that, the greatest horror people had ever felt on the screen was "Jaws" and "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" with human skin masks. Compared with that realistic and understandable fear, you can imagine how thrilling it would be to see an alien whose blood can corrode metal.

Disgusting but still enjoy watching it?

Alien pioneered the space science fiction horror and parasitic mutant creatures. Since then, various science fiction horrors have emerged one after another, gradually replacing traditional horror.

Why are people so obsessed with something so disgusting and horrible?

This is partly because the horror of the creature can trigger "exciting emotions" in people.

Norwegian scholar Lars Svendsen put forward a view in "The Philosophy of Fear" -

Terror and boredom are, if not opposing emotions, at least they play off each other.

In other words, people are tired of the mediocrity and boredom of life and seek excitement in the emotional experience of horror. Compared with the experiences brought by other art forms such as the sublime, introspective, and ironic, horror is the most stimulating one.

This stimulation can cause physiological excitement, which is then replaced by a sense of pleasure.

This is why science fiction horror monsters are successful.

They use uncertainty to trigger people's deep fears.

The indescribable is a challenge to the rational world. When the source of fear cannot be determined, we will think that it is a systemic problem. However, this system is so large that it is difficult to change even if we want to save it.

This kind of terror is also superimposed on despair.

Weird and disgusting creatures like the Alien are unknowable and mysterious, and people can't even give them a form.This triggers the irrational fear factors deep in the brain.。

This is something that cannot be avoided no matter how much science advances.

At the same time, psychological research has also shown that disgusting stimuli can attract and maintain attention more effectively than emotionally neutral stimuli.

This is because from an evolutionary perspective, "an attentional bias toward disgust—no matter how disgusting—prepares humans to better avoid noxious substances."

So, while nausea may be an unpleasant feeling, the emotion has captured your attention.

Going a step further, psychologist Nina Strohminger argues thatHumans tend to seek out seemingly “negative” experiences in order to enjoy “limited risk”。

“Any negative feeling has the potential to become enjoyable, and when it is stripped away from the belief that what is happening is actually bad, the physiological excitement that remains is itself exhilarating or entertaining.”

That is, not only are you predisposed to be attracted to gross things, your brain also has a psychological mechanism that enables you to enjoy them under the right circumstances.

It is not difficult to understand why the alien creature has been popular all over the world for 40 years.

The alien is a combination of human body, snake, insect, skeleton, machinery and no eyes. This inhuman image is not only disgusting but also better completes the theme of "horror" by establishing a connection with the human inner self.

In a two-hour movie, the Alien's appearances total less than four minutes, which is about 3% of the entire movie's length.

Because the director always uses light and shadow to cover most of its body, the audience's constant imagination has made the alien leave a deeper impression in their minds, and the urge to be both afraid and unable to spy has been fully mobilized.

Moreover, compared to other monsters that feed on humans, the aliens use the human body as a host for reproduction.

The insertive attack is highly aggressive, and the sight of the larvae breaking out of the chest also makes people feel full of reproductive fear.

The combination of sex, birth and death creates a deep bond with the audience, and the dual experience of fear and nausea reaches its peak, while the desire to watch also reaches its peak.

From this perspective, humans seem to be born as a kind of "benign masochist".

Why does North America like to shoot such disgusting and horrific things?

In fact, looking at North American horror films, it is not difficult to find that they always like to create various disgusting and terrifying images.

This is the case with "Alien", "The Shining" and "The Exorcist", and even the image of Venom is slightly disgusting.

So here comes the question,Why does North America always like to film such disgusting and horrifying things?

One reason is that American horror films themselves focus more on presenting visual spectacles and rendering bloody violence.

American horror is a cruel game of life and death. Although ghosts also exist in Europe and the United States, people are generally more materialistic, so in various Hollywood horror movies, most of them are real monsters.

Characters like Dracula, Frankenstein, The Mummy, King Kong...all have hideous faces as soon as they appear.

And because North America likes to combine terror with social panic.

When the environment is bad, a mutated monster will appear; when there are technological worries, an out-of-control AI system will appear.

Therefore, their monsters are always strange and disgusting, so that the visual impact can radiate the current social situation and further arouse people's inner fear.

The specific industrial environment also makes North America like to use this disgusting and terrifying monster.

During the Great Depression, Hollywood promoted the "double-film system" in order to stimulate civilian consumption while raising ticket prices. That is, two movies were bundled together for screening. A-level films were big productions, and the box office was shared by the film company and the theater, while B-level films were bought out for $70,000 to $80,000 each.

Horror films are one of the main types of B-movies, shouldering the historical mission of attracting audiences with visual stimulation and even "saving cinemas."

Coincidentally, after the war, influenced by the background of nuclear threats, the US-Soviet space race and other factors, horror began to combine with science fiction. The source of horror began to incorporate aliens, plants, and insects, making people physically uncomfortable.

This is the case with Howard Hawks's "Something Happens to Me" and Don Siegel's "Innocent Women."

In fact, horror itself is a disgusting emotional response.

Noel Carroll believes thatThe core elements of horror aesthetics include fear and disgust. ReadersI was disgusted by the ferocious monster, but at the same time I was also satisfied with the novelty.。

Because horror movies have always faced an eternal contradiction: they have to rely on horror to attract people, but they can't be too scary to scare people away.

So their main direction is to make the source of terror dirty and disgusting.

Because disgust can trigger the fear mechanism, but people also clearly know that such disgusting monsters do not exist in real life and humans can defeat monsters.So it can achieve the ideal effect of scaring people but not scaring them to death.。

Some people say that "watching horror movies is the safest adventure." No matter what kind of horror it is, it ultimately points to the human instinct of "escape."

So, when you can't stand it anymore, run.

Author: Shufeng

Editor: Huixing

hi~inker

Welcome to join our community

Please scan the QR code and reply with a small print [join the group]

- Welcome to follow the Yinke Aesthetics video account -

Irregular pearl U-shaped earrings can better enhance the sense of fashion. This type of earrings is not only a symbol of fashion, but also a great choice to show personal style.

The U-shaped design of 925 silver is simple yet elegant. It is a good helper for matching clothes for work and improving your complexion.

The U-shaped lines are smooth and elegant, which not only modify the ear contour, but also reveal the wearer's unique taste in the details. It is very suitable for modifying wide and square faces.