Something I have noticed in the past few years has been the growing trend in the entertainment industry of showcasing sweet little girls as sinister figures of horror. There are of course earlier examples I can think of, the twins in matching Sunday dresses from The Shining for instance, but in the recent years few could deny that this practice has grown to mania proportions. In my aimless free time this topic has become an object of idle thought and I have sought to answer the following three questions. What about these figures do audiences find so scary? Why has every entertainment hack decided to employ this now so much more than the past? And for how long in the future am I going to be forced to listen to the sinisterly off-key humming the previews for these movies invariably have?

After a few false starts on the first question, I came with an answer I liked. It boils down to this: the things we find scariest are things that have been turned inside out. In other words, things we associate with good, turned evil. I can’t speak for everyone but I know that my most terrifying dreams are not necessarily the ones where nuclear war destroys most of the earth and the survivors are forced to fight radioactive mutants or self-aware computers. No, the really disturbing ones are where ordinary objects try to kill or dismember me. The lower our suspicion of an object, the greater our shock when it turns out it’s a ravening monster bent on revenging what happened in that school cafeteria’s giant mincing machine all those years ago. I naturally expect a Great White shark to hone in on my scent with brutal efficiency, or a zombie to go for my brains (or whatever other vital organ takes its fancy). What I don’t expect is for the telephone I am holding to jump out of my hand and spiritedly attempt to eviscerate me. Little girls fit into this because they tend to be seen (often inaccurately) as the symbol of innocence, sweetness and youth. Media capitalizes on this by making them knowing, cruel and containing some kind of ancient nameless evil.

My answer to the second question isn’t particularly imaginative; in fact I have given it the least amount of thought because natural cynicism and an instinct on how these industries work has informed me that Hollywood, not unlike other industries, quite likes money. All the more so if money can abound without tedious time spent thinking and writing. If a plot or plot device can be recycled, or in many cases stolen, without sacrificing an audience, why shouldn’t they?

For the third question I have no answer. To understand how long something can draw an audience one has to understand why the audience is drawn to it at all. My search in this has been somewhat tainted by my abysmal ignorance when it comes to understanding anyone who enjoys horror. Most horror movies I seem to walk in on tend to be towards the inane and are often a weak excuse to watch some eighteen year old cheerleader get torn apart by a squid-like alien that despite the incredible intelligence and time it took to make it to earth, Something I have noticed in the past few years has been the growing trend in the entertainment industry of showcasing sweet little girls as sinister figures of horror. There are of course earlier examples I can think of, the twins in matching Sunday dresses from The Shining for instance, but in the recent years few could deny that this practice has grown to mania proportions. In my aimless free time this topic has become an object of idle thought and I have sought to answer the following three questions. What about these figures do audiences find so scary? Why has every entertainment hack decided to employ this now so much more than the past? And for how long in the future am I going to be forced to listen to the sinisterly off-key humming the previews for these movies invariably have?

After a few false starts on the first question, I came with an answer I liked. It boils down to this: the things we find scariest are things that have been turned inside out. In other words, things we associate with good, turned evil. I can’t speak for everyone but I know that my most terrifying dreams are not necessarily the ones where nuclear war destroys most of the earth and the survivors are forced to fight radioactive mutants or self-aware computers. No, the really disturbing ones are where ordinary objects try to kill or dismember me. The lower our suspicion of an object, the greater our shock when it turns out it’s a ravening monster bent on revenging what happened in that school cafeteria’s giant mincing machine all those years ago. I naturally expect a Great White shark to hone in on my scent with brutal efficiency, or a zombie to go for my brains (or whatever other vital organ takes its fancy). What I don’t expect is for the telephone I am holding to jump out of my hand and spiritedly attempt to eviscerate me. Little girls fit into this because they tend to be seen (often inaccurately) as the symbol of innocence, sweetness and youth. Media capitalizes on this by making them knowing, cruel and containing some kind of ancient nameless evil.

My answer to the second question isn’t particularly imaginative; in fact I have given it the least amount of thought because natural cynicism and an instinct on how these industries work has informed me that Hollywood, not unlike other industries, quite likes money. All the more so if money can abound without tedious time spent thinking and writing. If a plot or plot device can be recycled, or in many cases stolen, without sacrificing an audience, why shouldn’t they?
For the third question I have no answer. To understand how long something can draw an audience one has to understand why the audience is drawn to it at all. My search in this has been somewhat tainted by my abysmal ignorance when it comes to understanding anyone who enjoys horror. Most horror movies I seem to walk in on tend to be towards the inane and are often a weak excuse to watch some eighteen year old cheerleader get torn apart by a squid-like alien that despite the incredible intelligence and time it took to make it to earth, has subsequently decided that the whole point of its vast interstellar journey has been to chase human youths through an abandoned insane asylum.

But maybe I’m making a mistake trying to understand an entire demographic. Perhaps the reasons for doing something are as diverse as the number of people who do it. I’m sure there are some people who merely enjoy being scared and others who, for some horrible reason, like seeing grisly dismemberment. There is probably some wish fulfillment there as well. People my age who have just emerged from the Darwinistic melting pot of high school and want to see some stereotypes of the jerks who used to make their lives miserable brutally murdered or reduced to gibbering convulsing masses. You’ll notice that it’s quite often the overlooked but quietly intelligent kid that survives the ordeal.

We can assume that little girls won’t be the object of our fears forever. No doubt eventually Hollywood will have forcefully extracted the last commercial and creative appeal of these avatars of death. But this lapse will probably only be temporary. The attention span of a society is, by its nature, generational and as soon as there are a fresh batch of mal-adjusted youths to whom ravening little girls aren’t a cliché they will come back as strong as ever. In the meantime all we can do is sit and wait for Hollywood to recycle another primal fear.