Stephen, THAT is an interesting question. How does one model horror. There’s loads of ‘horrifying’ kits out there with gore, monsters, and the like but I’ve yet to see one that is genuinely scary.
For me, the whole ‘Ocean Ramsey’ thing is interesting. She’s there swimmining with this primal creature that could tear her to pieces with no shred of care for her ecological intentions. She has not tamed that shark, she doesn’t ‘understand’ it, and certainly can’t claim that because she is able to do this that great white sharks don’t deserve their reputation as ‘man eaters’. They do eat men. And women.
The photo reminds me of Damien Hurst’s installation ‘The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living’ where a tiger shark is supposed to stimulate the thoughts of death, but the shark itself is robbed of any real terror, therefor not stimulating the required thoughts of death.
I do a similar thing on presentations on anxiety. Edmund Burke, a philosopher and writer postulated that when we look at a tiger in a cage we can see beauty, power and an intellectualised sense of fear (because the cage is there). Take away the cage, and out relationship with that tiger changes instantly. Each of us has a varying and changeable relationship with our own tigers, depending how strong our own cage feels at any given time.
So, back to models and horror. Jaws would not have been half the movie it is if we’d seen the shark from the beginning. I remember swimming after midnight in the Indian Ocean with a friend some time ago. The moon was full, we were young, it was warm, and there was wine back at the beach. Me being me, I made a remark about prime tiger shark hunting times; cut the swim short and killed the atmosphere.
What lies beneath. Yes, Ocean is petting the great white, but with one quick movement it could reduce her (with her youth, and beauty, and ecological credentials) to pieces of butcher meat. Which is what we all become. And we all fear. How to model this? There is a great question, Stephen.
@stephen-w-towle
