Don't Spend Too Much Time Alone in Your Private Forest Or Else You Might Turn Out Like This Guy

I am cursed with a doppelganger, one that mirrors my most abject fears and to see this reflection causes me to violently recoil and turn my head in disgust. The doppelganger in question is Bert Lahr dressed up as the Cowardly Lion in the 1939 classic The Wizard of Oz.  Bert Lahr’s made-up lion face shoots off the screen like a ray of blinding white evil light. I convulse, I shudder, and I spin around in horror. As a kid watching the movie every year, I’d take quick glimpses of the lion’s plump jowls and turn my head with such a herky-jerky motion that it is a miracle I didn’t tear muscle tissue in my neck and spine area or suffer, like people in car collisions, a serious case of whiplash. Over time, I could partially desensitize myself to the lion’s face, but I feared deep down I was paying a price for that desensitization—somehow I was contaminating myself and was better off keeping my eyes off that evil visage. A part of me had wished I had never seen the quivering lion face at all, that in seeing it I had opened up a Pandora’s Box, which would make me susceptible to future visions of evil and terror.

I’m not as bad today, but as a child it was physically impossible to look the lion directly in the eyes. Framed with forlorn pouches beneath and crenellated brows above, those eye slits are especially suggestive of Satan or some other tormented demon. The bald pate and ruffled hair, tied in parts with ribbons to mock the pampered grooming of a Shih-Tzu or some other cuddly lapdog, only add to the terror. Then there are Bert Lahr’s growls, not the feral sounds of a lion but of a soul writhing and languishing in hell. 

I have seen my fair share of graphic horror films since then but nothing comes close to getting  under my skin like the Cowardly Lion. My best guess is that the fear can be explained by the phenomenon known as the uncanny, those things that are simultaneously strange and familiar.

Perhaps Bert Lahr with lion’s make-up, in all his bone-chilling otherness, is at the same time a reflection of the Scaredy-Cat Within. Perhaps his face reminds me of the fear of fear itself.

 Perhaps, also, there is something about the Cowardly Lion’s solitary lifestyle that reflects my own tendency to be the fretting loner who, hiding in the forest, loses all sense of proportion, and this makes us insane. Thus the fear of insanity. And here’s something I bet the Cowardly Lion worried about while moping around the forest: Spend too much time fearing insanity and you’ll go crazy. Or let’s play the paranoia game a step further: Spend too much time fearing that you’ll spend too much time fearing going insane and you’ll also go insane.

What's the lesson from all this? Don't spend too much time alone in the woods. We need people to tweak us and poke fun at us when we’re taking ourselves too seriously. 

Comments

[Ed S.]

I had read once that of all scary movies ever made, the one that disturbed children the most was the Wizard of Oz. So you're not alone.
In my childhood, and I confirmed it with my own son, the scariest movie ever was... "The Ten Commandments." When God-as-pillar-of-fire with that slooowed-down voice commands "HONOR THY MOTHER AND FATHER!" I always lost it.

[Sara]

I am glad you came out of the your woods on Sunday because Dylan and I had a great time with you and Carrie. We laugh so much being with you and we laughed thinking about it on the drive home. Wizard of Oz scared me too. I hated the monkeys flying down and taking Toto away! I also hated the scene in Close Encounters when the aliens took the little boy away through the doggy door. What are my issues?

[jeffrey McMahon]

Ed, for me the irony is that the presumably scarier parts aren't that scary while the scared lion does indeed scare me. Fear has a toxic smell to it which prompts dogs to attack the object of fear.

Sara,

Wall-E was a great film and the drive to the theater, all 2 miles of it, was a hilarious adventure. Leaving the woods, indeed.