Trailers for the upcoming season of the Walking Dead have been appearing all over the place recently. I’ve watched them, of course, since I am a fan. The DVR is set up to record all new episodes between now and eternity. The series is well done with a great cast, special effects, and story line. Although, the pace of the series is much too slow at times with seemingly nothing happening for hours on end.

Apocalyptic fiction is hot too, and has been for a number of years now, mostly in the form of zombie novels. The latter have been hit or miss for me, mostly miss to be honest.  If you read one zombie novel, you’ve read them all it seems. That’s an overgeneralization, of course. I can think of a couple of zombie novels that have been quite good. Right off the top of my head is Rot and Ruin by Jonathan Maberry. Actually marketed as a young adult novel, I found the characterizations and the settings to be outstanding. This is one of those novels that actually captures the perspective of a teenager in a horrendous setting. A number of people disliked The Cell by Stephen King, but I really enjoyed it. There is something satisfying about cell phones turning people into zombies, as if they hadn’t already. I’m a university professor and it is not uncommon to see hordes of twenty year olds walking on campus while texting. At times the campus can be eerily quiet with the exception of a faint pattering of thumbs on tiny keypads or screens. Finally, the Swedish zombie novel, Handling the Undead by John Ajvide Lindqvist, is a favorite simply because it is such a unique take on the zombie genre.

When it comes to non-zombie apocalyptic novels, I can name a number of stellar examples. First (and second if you consider them separately) are the first two books in the Passage trilogy by Justin Cronin. The Passage and The Twelve are powerful novels that excel because they are literary pieces containing startling and well developed characters and imaginative settings. Each character is an individual with emotion, thoughts, and history. Patterns of behavior and motivations are consistent and logical (which is huge in my humble opinion in making a novel work).  The virals (vampires) are brutal, and survival of characters is not guaranteed. Another creative spin on the part of Cronin is his ability to describe this complex world in a non-linear fashion. I cannot wait for the third in the series.

When you consider top stories of the apocalypse, you have to include The Stand by Stephen King. The weaving of that tale is nicely constructed, although I would recommend reading the first edition/version. King later came out with an extended version which contained portions of the narrative that an editor had deleted when it was first published. I can tell you, the editor was right – there was a reason these sections were initially deleted. They added nothing to the story and were downright embarrassing to read at times.

Finally, a truly horrifying end of the world novel that isn’t a “horror” novel – at least on the surface – is Alas, Babylon by Pat Frank. Published in 1958, this novel tells the tale of a nuclear war between the US and the Soviet Union. I read this as a kid, and the passages that describe the nuclear attack and the immediate panic afterwards are some of the most terrifying words I have ever read. There are scenes that are still seared in my memory. Check out this classic if you haven’t had the opportunity.

My wife and I watched the movie The Impossible last night. This film detailed the ordeal of a family on vacation at a resort in Thailand when the massive Asian tsunami struck on December 26, 2004. The number of casualties was astronomically high (somewhere in the order of a quarter of a million people across 14 countries). The movie was extremely well done, the acting of the entire cast was excellent, and even garnished an academy award nomination for Naomi Watts as the wife and mother in the family.

The film clearly depicted the cataclysmic event from the perspective of the woman and the couple’s oldest son. Then the harrowing aftermath was given a wider berth in terms of perspective by adding the perspectives of the husband/father and the two younger boys. This is a horror story of a different type, and one that captures all the best about human nature.

Basically, the “best” of humanity falls under two categories. First, there is the response of the residents of the country – which in this case is Thailand. Evidently true in the strictest terms, many of the Thai people searched for and helped the tourists and visitors despite having lost everything. Second, despite overwhelming trauma, many people maintained a sense of calm, rose to the occasion and showed courage in the face of unbelievably poor odds. The odds of all five members of this particular family to survive this type of catastrophe were probably so small as to be nonexistent. Yet, the family did (hence, the impossible). Beyond that, however, was the will to remain alive and to think clearly and be conscious of the needs of others. Not only on the part of the adults, but of the kids as well.

I often wondered how I would react if I was in this type of situation. I hope I never have to find out. Yet, in the face of terror, people often behave selflessly – at least these are the stories that we constantly hear about in the media whenever horrific tragedies occur. The hero stories are first and foremost, and told repeatedly. It happens often enough that it must be true – at least I’d like to think so.

I have read a number of works by Greg Gifune, the most recent of which was The Bleeding Season. Based on my experience, two things are apparent. First, Mr. Gifune has a strong interest in the impact of dramatic (and in some cases traumatic) historical events in the lives of his characters – and how these events literally come back and haunt the characters at a later time. Second, he is a cerebral writer, and he spends much time within the thought processes and flow of consciousness of his characters. The Bleeding Season fits this pattern well, which is fine with me because I enjoy this method of character development.

The story focuses on three friends, men in their late thirties, who have just learned that a fourth friend recently committed suicide. The four had been friends since early childhood and the death understandably shakes them up. The remaining three, Alan, Donald, and Rick, begin working together to figure out why their friend unexpectedly took his own life. The impetus for their investigation is a suicide tape left by Bernard where he details the trio’s strengths and weaknesses and hints at his “other side”.  The postmortem tape is quite brutal in its honesty and taunts the men even further to review their lives, and the secret life led by Bernard. The long and short of Bernard’s life (and these are not spoilers) is this: in his teens Bernard was introduced to and became fascinated with evil rituals of a satanic nature – and began stalking and killing women.

The entire narrative is told through the first person from Alan’s perspective. He is a flawed character who constantly is reexamining his past and the past of his friends looking for clues, cause, and fault for the horrifying outcomes. Alan’s recounting of family and relationship history plays a huge role in the story, and much of the action takes place within Alan’s mind as he analyzes and ruminates about everything from what is happening at the moment to the experiences and interactions of the men when they were boys.  This is not to say there aren’t intense and frightening scenes. There certainly are, and they are routinely unnerving. Mr. Gifune casts these passages in such a way that the reader is kept on edge (at least I was), and constantly assessing the flow of the narrative. As a result, the horror is kept fresh and unpredictable and nothing comes across as rote.

This type of storytelling may not be everyone’s cup of tea – you don’t get a neat and tidy explanation or conclusion. This is fine with me – something to ponder after the book is done is a huge bonus. The Bleeding Season delivers big time.

I was never a good athlete, but growing up I was a huge baseball fan - the New York Mets, to be specific. My hometown of Port Chester, NY was a mere 25 miles or so from mid-town Manhattan. My brother and I were raised to be Met fans by my father. The extended family was firmly entrenched in the National league, a remnant from decades of being Brooklyn Dodger fans. So, when the Mets came along four years after the Dodgers moved to LA, the family was ready. Please note, if you were a Mets fan you were not a Yankee fan. The reciprocal was also true. I hung in with the Mets from the basement years through the championship years (The Amazing Mets of 1969 was the highlight). However, moves around the county due to graduate school and post doctoral work and then a real job loosened those ties. In addition, my interest in professional sports populated by self-centered millionaire athletes was quickly waning. Nonetheless, baseball always held a special place in my heart. So, I cheered for the Kansas City Royals in the mid-80s (even my wife who knows next to nothing about sports and couldn't care less about them knew who George Brett was). When we moved to Milwaukee to take faculty positions at UW-Milwaukee in 1986, I started following, more or less, the Brewers.

The Brewers have had a few good seasons since that time, and a lot of mediocre to bad ones, and my interests in them and in the sport waxed and waned. Now, I have a feeling that the Brewers are national news because of their all-star MVP left fielder Ryan Braun. Yesterday, he was suspended for the rest of the season for taking performance enhancing drugs. This has been a multi year drama which included appealing and winning a previous charge as a result of a technicality. Then, once his appeal was successful, he displayed an arrogant posture and blamed the process, the guy who collected the urine sample, and major league baseball in general for the snafu. At all times, he claimed he has never taken these drugs. Now, after finding additional evidence, MLB has suspended him for the rest of the season. Thankfully, Braun wised up and accepted the "sentence".

My overwhelming thought has been "What a jerk. How could he be so stupid?"

The truth always comes out eventually, why not own up to it in the first place? I do believe things would have been a lot better for him if he had just admitted the drug use two years ago, sincerely apologized, mention how he was wrapped up in trying to boost his performance, etc. There probably would have been a suspension, but it would have been over by now. But, the fool continued to lie about his involvement and and never too responsibility (until today). What a jerk. For someone so talented, did he really need the extra boost? Do any of these guys who take this stuff? Do they really think they'll beat the system? In addition, what made him assume the position and take the course of action that he has taken over the past year or two? Was this entirely his call? If so, then he only has himself to blame. If he has handlers or agents who have been advising him on this course of action, then he should can them and find new ones. Smarter ones.

Who knows what this means for Braun over the long haul. People tend to be very forgiving in this country (and thank God for that) when wrong-doers are honestly contrite and remorseful. For Braun's sake, I hope he chooses this course of action. maybe he can drop all his endorsements, or donate all these proceeds to some charity and engage in social service work in the Milwaukee area. Will that work? Nobody can predict the future.

But, it is well past time for the dope to nip the stupidity and the arrogance in the bud.  

Bullying and The Cold Spot, Part 3

I am continuing my comments on bullying with this blog – but first a thanks to The Cold Spot by J.G. Faherty – the ghost story about bullying which got the whole thing started in the first place.

Some practitioners are troubled with the proliferation of bullying programs in our schools (for instance, see Bully Nation by Susan Eva Porter). Their argument is interesting: we’ve adopted a bully-victim mindset that makes the problem worse and not better. According to this viewpoint, labeling one kid a bully and the other a victim has unfortunate consequences. First, the “bully language” is overly simplified and doesn’t address the nuance of the situation and the kids involved. Second, by being labeled, the kids are assigned and seen as fitting the role – which is very hard to escape. As a result, they are either demonized or pitied, and they cannot learn from experiences and grow from the experiences. For the “victim”, this produces victimhood and does not promote resilience. For the “bully”, there is no chance to reinvent him or herself. Third, labels make all kids the enemy – they are pitted against one another (when really, this is an adult problem in terms of how we should structure environments and deal with problematic behavior). Finally, developing anti-bullying programs, which often have zero-tolerance policies, sets up kids to fail – because kids, being kids, are bound to make mistakes in the future.

The folks who see anti-bullying programs as problematic would like to see the bully-victim language discarded. Instead, the emphasis should be on helping kids who are on the receiving end (I’m trying to avoid the “v-word”) develop resilience. Teaching and developing resilience would involve helping kids learn how to deal with unpleasant situations, develop coping skills, assertiveness skills, social support and communication skills, etc. – anything that would lead to personal growth. For the kids who perpetrate the unwanted behavior (avoiding the “b-word”), a pattern of responding should be set up which insures safety first (for all kids) and includes swift consequences for misbehavior – and consequences which “fit the crime” (this includes clarity of expectations – kids need to know ahead of time what is expected of them, and they need to know that consequences will be applied consistently).  In all cases, adults are there to support the kids, remain calm, and model and demonstrate appropriate problem solving behavior.

The advocates to eliminate or move away from anti-bullying programs raise some interesting points. The methods for dealing with the behavior seem on target to me. I don’t know how well their approach would work in a truly dangerous or intimidating environment, especially with older teenagers. I can report on a case with which I am familiar where a therapist took such an approach in helping a child who was bullied unmercifully. The therapist worked with the child to develop coping skills and resilience skills to address the painful distress and isolation of being a target. The results were phenomenal. This kid came out of the counseling with a stronger sense of self, an awareness of personal strength, an awareness of how to deal with unpleasant people, and a renewed sense of assertiveness. This is not to say that the experience became a “piece of cake”. The kid had to deal with some very difficult things – but that kid dealt with them and matured as a result.  While this success was remarkable, I am not convinced that we should move away from anti-bullying programs. For me, the jury is still out.

All of these thoughts as a result of a horror novella called The Cold Spot… I hope Mr. Faherty is pleased that his work generated these thoughts. Bullying is a very sad and frustrating problem, and he captures the issue in a unique way – within a ghost story and then some.  Whatever the form of the narrative, we need to be constantly reminded of how kids are hurt – and in some cases very deeply – on a daily basis from peers while right under the noses of adults.

Okay, I am continuing my comments on bullying with this blog – but first a thanks to The Cold Spot by J.G. Faherty – the ghost story about bullying which got the whole thing started in the first place.

A number of factors related to bullying often come as a surprise to people. First, kids who do the bullying are not the stereotypical antisocial hoodlums. Very often these kids can move among various roles: bully, popular kid, smart kid, jock, etc. They can be members of multiple groups. Second, they do not bully all of the time, so they have friends and social groups – and, this is interesting, they often report having been bullied as well. Third, while boys tend to engage in more physical bullying than girls, girls are masters at relational aggression (e.g., spreading rumors, excluding a girl from the group, withdrawing friendship).  The intent of this social manipulation is to cause damage to another kid’s social standing or self esteem. When you include both physical and relational aggression into the mix, gender differences between bullying in boys and girls disappears. Regardless, bullying of both forms indicates forms of aggressive behavior that occur within a context of an imbalance of power, are intentionally harmful, and occur repetitively.

The consequences of bullying are tremendous for victims: higher rates of depression, stress, isolation, anxiety, and in some cases suicidal ideation. Peer relationships are disrupted, and the disruption can persist into adulthood with these individuals having difficulty developing and maintaining relationships and trusting others.

Interventions to decrease bullying in school settings generally involve: arranging or altering the environment to minimize the circumstances which allow bullying to occur (this could be as simple as having teachers standing at their classroom doors during class transitions to monitor the hallways), training teachers and other school personnel how to identify and respond quickly if they observe bullying, establishing rules and specific consequences for certain forms of misbehavior or problem behavior which are consistently applied,  and developing a solution-oriented mindset where teachers and staff can share solutions that they have found successful in reducing the problem behavior.

I will continue with how The Cold Spot got me thinking about bullying in the next blog…

We’ve seen some startling examples of the negative impact of bullying on victims: media reports of suicide and attempted suicide by children, adolescents, and young adults in college. In addition, many personal accounts of misery and depression of those victims reach us seemingly daily. Yet, the issue persists, despite many attempts to change the way our schools operate and efforts to change our very cultural attitudes toward bullying.

I was reminded again about the topic of bullying after my recent read of The Cold Spot by J.G. Faherty. I found his use of bullying as a device for framing his horror novel to be rather unique and I enjoyed it immensely. As a psychologist and a professor, I am used to addressing bullying from those professional perspectives. I teach a graduate level course entitled Counseling Children and Adolescents, and one of the favorite topics is bullying. The reason, of course, is that the graduate students in our counseling program who are placed in settings (schools and clinics) where they work with kids often come face to face with this issue. Dealing with bullying is difficult. Circumstances vary across incidents, the situations and kids involved are often quite complex, and people (that is, adults) often don’t know how to address it.

I will continue with a discussion on bullying prompted by reading The Cold Spot in the next blog… 

The Cold Spot is the first work by J.G. Faherty that I have read. I am especially partial to ghost stories because they can genuinely creep me out. So, I am always thrilled to come across a good one. I’m excited to say that The Cold Spot fits the bill - and then some.

Clay is a young adolescent whose parents have recently died in a fire, and he is sent to live with some rather crude relatives in upstate New York – far from his home in Florida. Clay has the misfortune of having a large port wine birth mark on his face which subjects him to cruel bullying.  The bullying existed in Florida and began immediately upon his arrival in New York. Much to his surprise, he does make friends with a group of boys he meets in the woods. One problem, though – these kids are dead. Here is where Faherty really gets rolling with his story. First, the ghosts have “depth”; they are interesting kids in their own right. The actions and behavior of the ghosts are also unexpected as Faherty breaks some of the overused conventions associated with ghost stories. The story navigates surprising dark territory that I did not see coming, and I thought the conclusion was not only chilling but creative. 

One other interesting feature of the story: the author addresses the problem of bullying in a manner that doesn’t cheapen the trauma of those who have been victims. In fact, the accounts in the story highlight the issue and bring it to life (so to speak). I was very impressed.

If you’ve been reading the two previous blogs, I’ve been trying to summarize an article by Mathias Clasen entitled “Monsters Evolve: A Biocultural Approach to Horror Stories” which was published in the Review of General Psychology in 2012. According to Clasen, “Horror stories trigger the evolved danger management systems.” Put another way, Clasen indicates that

“horror fiction capitalizes on cognitive and physiological machinery that is a product of natural selection”

The question remains why many people continue to like horror stories? If horror triggers our danger management systems unnecessarily, why do we seek them out?

Well, here is where it gets a little tricky. More importantly, at least as far as I am concerned, here is where psychology begins to play a huge role. There are two potential explanations:

1.      We can loosely categorize this along demographic lines: Target audiences for horror. In talking demographics, we also end up considering gender roles. The main target of horror movies and the biggest consumers are adolescent boys. Beyond the obvious fact that this group is a little on the goofy end of things to begin with, male adolescents often engage in behavior that has been considered rites of passage. Some of this is culturally sanctioned, other rituals are more informal. Regardless, going to scary movies together and surviving the horror together can be considered a male bonding experience (according to Clasen). “Hey, dude, we survived and we did it together” (although teen boys probably wouldn’t report it in this manner). At the same time, girls tend not to be the market audience, but are often taken to these movies by their dates (the guys who love them – the movies in this case, and maybe the girls). Now, according to Professor Clasen, teen girls like boys who are brave and boys like to reciprocate by being brave (that is, gender appropriate reactions to horror movies). If everything goes according to plan, both parties get their wish – and boys also get to watch a cool movie to boot. According to Clasen, this is known as the snuggle theory of horror. (Please, I’m just reporting his argument).

2.      The second explanation makes more sense to me. Basically, it is this: we vicariously learn how to behave in extremely dangerous situations in the relative safety of a movie theatre or our own homes while reading a book. The situation as portrayed on a screen (or in a book for that matter) is indeed well beyond the norm and highly life threatening – but it is fictional. As a result, we learn how to mentally prepare for and handle unbelievable situations without the risk. This process has its parallel in childhood play. Kids act out practical strategies of survival in all kinds of games and activities. Pretend play is fun and pleasurable – and kids are vicariously learning all kinds of behaviors which are applicable to real life in years to come: problem solving, negotiating, self-control, assertiveness, physical safety responses and so on.

To put it simply, enjoying horror stories allows us to practice survival strategies and to form bonds with other survivors – all within very low-risk situations. As Clasen states, consuming horror is adaptive – we learn new skills for survival and practice and rehearse them in thrilling and uncanny encounters that aren’t real. How cool is that?

What about the people who don’t like horror? Well, I suppose they’ll be relying on us to keep them safe during the upcoming apocalypse. It’ll be annoying, but what the heck – everyone will get a chance to snuggle.

Clasen, M. (2012). Monsters evolve: A biocultural approach to horror stories. Review of General Psychology, 16, 222-229.

I’ve been talking about an article by Mathias Clasen entitled “Monsters Evolve: A Biocultural Approach to Horror Stories” which was published in the Review of General Psychology in 2012. In the previous blog, I summarized Clasen’s model that fear and anxiety are evolutionary adaptations to dangerous environments – these are the very emotions that help us deal with dangers… and they served our ancestors well.

This “threat-detection and handling system” has been deeply ingrained in our nervous system over hundreds of thousands of years (or however long we’ve been at this thing).  Professor Clasen says it far better than I can: “Human attention is preferentially engaged by evolutionary recurrent, fear-relevant stimuli”.  So, we’re wired to be frightened by snakes, large animals with fangs, and so on. Some psychologists also suspect we’re hard wired to fear being judged negatively by others. For our unlucky ancestors, being judged unworthy meant banishment from the clan or tribe. Banishment, in turn, meant death. Today, this fear translates into other modern fears of being judged negatively: public speaking, social anxiety, dating anxiety.

All by way of saying, we are preprogrammed to display emotional states of fear and anxiety to certain stimuli, because this reaction faired our ancestors well. However, we can’t go around with this vague response without it being adapted for our current culture. Therefore, the management system is constantly subjected to shaping and refinement to fit the local environment.

Now, as you may have guessed, horror stories fit nicely into threat-detection system. Monsters ghosts, serial killers, zombies, werewolves, vampires all qualify as something that we should react to in order to save our lives. Our reaction is unproductive, however, because books and movies are not a major threat to our survival. However, we have the reaction, the jolt anyway, and get to laugh about it later because, after all, we survived and that really couldn’t happen to us.  (By the way, versions of these monsters have been around forever. So, they are part of our psyche – whether they exist or not. We are on the lookout for these things – we’re programmed to do it…)

More on this topic in the next blog…