Trauma Town-5 Moments that Scarred Me as a Child

Ah, Halloween! A holiday I used to celebrate, but not anymore. I know it’s a cop-out to say that, as it detracts from the fun of the holiday, but I’ve kinda grown out of terrorizing people for candy. Plus, the concept of dressing up exists in Purim, a day dedicated to giving and not taking. So yeah, not a fan.

That said, I’m game for this trend that’s been floating around the internet since the Summer, in which people list traumatic moments in entertainment that scarred them as children. I know I’m late to the party, but seeing as it’s Halloween, and I’m ready to jump on the trend bandwagon, I figured why not? I have several moments that perturbed me growing up in the 90’s, and I guess I can share 5 of them with you all. You ready?

(Also, spoilers!)

Beginning this list is a moment that hasn’t aged well. Like, at all. Remember that really “beloved” Pokémon show that’s still going strong? Remember when said show had its first movie, and the hype was everywhere? I do, and I even dragged my uninterested mother to the theatre for it. I think it might’ve even been a birthday present, come to think of it…

Either way, I remember the film being pretty dark and scary at a few points, most-notably when Pikachu’s running from those shadow balls Mewtwo used to capture the Pokémon of the guests he’d invited to his sanctuary. But the moment that hit the hardest came in the film’s climax. I’m sure you know where I’m going with this, but it’s the scene where Ash intervenes in a match between Mewtwo and Mew because he can’t take their senseless fighting anymore. He stupidly runs in-between their attacks, gets hit by them and turns to stone. Pikachu tries shocking him back to life, but when that doesn’t work, well…he starts crying.

This scene got to me for the longest time. For one, despite being a reckless idiot, I liked Ash as a kid. Two, he looked like he was gone for good. And three, seeing Pikachu attempt to revive him unsuccessfully, then cry, was heart-breaking. It got to the point where I couldn’t watch the scene for years without bursting into tears myself. Of course, it’s stupid in hindsight, especially since Ash is revived with the power of Pokémon tears, but I was 9 years old.

Transitioning to an entry that’s aged much better, I can’t discuss Pokémon without mentioning Digimon. Digimon has plenty of traumatic moments throughout its first four seasons, most of them being, obviously, in Season 3 (Digimon Tamers for those outside of North America.) However, for nostalgic purposes, I’m sticking to Digimon Adventure, and its Myotismon Arc. Specifically, Episode 37, “Wizardmon’s Gift”, and its one moment that destroyed me. Even after the first season had ended its syndication, I went out to buy the VHS collection that featured this episode so I could prove that this was actually scary. Call me a masochist, perhaps.

The moment comes when The Digidestined are battling Myotismon atop the tower. Myotismon clearly has the upper-hand, being an Ultimate, and his only real opponent is Angemon. Even then, Angemon can only bruise him, not defeat him. With the kids’ Digimon unable to take him down, Myotismon plays dirty and aims an attack at Kari, who’s stuck at the sidelines and unable to join in the fight with Gatomon. It’s here that the wounded Wizardmon jumps in and takes the full blast. It kills him instantly, to the shock of Kari and Gatomon.

What makes this moment traumatic is that, similar to Pokémon: The First Movie and Ash, Wizardmon was a character I’d grown to love and care about. What makes this moment even more traumatic than Ash is that his death isn’t a fake-out. The reason is that the show had made it clear that Digimon who die outside of The Digital World don’t reincarnate as eggs, but rather stay dead. That this happened to Wizardmon, who was built up as a hero, made his death even more terrifying. Add in the music in the English dub, which was actually fitting for once, and you’re left with 9 year-old me scared pants-less.

Moving to Western animation, because I grew up on a diet of good and bad, Pixar had plenty of nightmare fuel when I was growing up. There were many terrifying and traumatic moments in their early works, and they all scarred me in some way, shape or form. Monsters, Inc., for example, had that heartbreakingly terrifying moment where Sully showed off his scream, not realizing that Boo was right there and got the full brunt. Finding Nemo was packed with scary moments, like when Bruce got a whiff of Dory’s blood and went on a rampage. And while I never saw the movie in its entirety until teenage-hood, anything involving that bird in A Bug’s Life scared me to no end.

However, I have to go with Toy Story here. I was the prime age for this movie when it released, so I was excited by toys coming to life when their owners weren’t around. I got so sucked in that witnessing one of them get blown up by child psychopath Sid was horrid on its own. As I watched that poor army soldier, complete with rocket attached to its back, get blasted to smithereens, all-the-while Sid laughing maniacally, I shrank in my seat. True, the soldier never actually was shown exploding, because kid’s film, but with the debris flying in the air, well…y’know.

This moment was so etched in my 5 year-old mind that whenever I saw the movie afterward, be it on VHS or TV, I’d get uncomfortable when it came up. Even now, as the movie’s visuals themselves have aged terribly, that scene is chilling. And yeah, it’s a movie, so it's not exactly real. But it’s pretty traumatizing regardless. (That poor soldier… *Sniff*)

Speaking of which, we can’t forget Disney, the master of childhood nightmare fuel, can we? There’s a lot to choose from, be it the Pink Elephants scene in Dumbo, the Chernabog skit in Fantasia or Shere Khan ripping Baloo to shreds in The Jungle Book, if I’m only considering the old classics. Even in The Disney Renaissance, you had Gaston fighting The Beast in Beauty and the Beast and the entirety of The Hunchback of Notre Dame, the latter of which I remember leaving the theatre because it was too scary. Still, I was initially gonna have The Cave of Wonders collapsing in Aladdin as my choice, but I chose not to at the last-second. It freaks me out even today, but this spot belongs to Ariel’s voice being taken away in The Little Mermaid.

I had a soft-spot for The Little Mermaid for years, to the point where my shock that it doesn’t fully hold-up actually scarred me in its own right. But “Poor Unfortunate Souls” hasn’t aged a day. Nor has the song’s conclusion, in which Ariel’s gasping for air with her new lungs, all-the-while Ursula’s laughing in the background, as she swims to the surface. I wasn’t a great swimmer when I was younger, so seeing the heroine nearly drown made me self-conscious. It eventually got better when she gasped for air for the first time, but that struggle, when mixed with the suspenseful music, was a nail-biter!

I guess, as a runner-up, I’d include King Triton blowing up Ariel’s collection with his trident. That’s pretty scary on its own, but it’s been knocked down over time because: a. I sympathize with Triton as an adult. b. Triton’s shown to have remorse afterward. c. It’s a cheap set-up for Ariel’s lowest point, and she immediately heads to Usrula following that. Ariel losing her voice, on the other hand, still creeps me out now.

In keeping with Disney nightmare fuel, I saved the best for last. Everyone loves The Lion King, or at least respects it. It’s easy to see why, as its ambitions are equally-matched by its storytelling. It may be easy nowadays to point out its most-obvious plot-hole, which occurs during its third-act confrontation with Scar, but no one can deny its most-famous scene. You all know what I’m referring to.

The worst part about the stampede is that, as a 4 year-old in theatres, I had no idea what was going on initially. The song about murdering Mufasa, for some reason, had eluded me. So seeing this moment, where an entire stampede of antelope nearly runs Simba over, came out of nowhere. I honestly thought Simba caused it himself by accident, hence being badly-traumatized by the time it was over and saw Mufasa’s dead body. That alone was enough to give me nightmares.

This moment gets the top spot because it hurts even more as an adult. It hurts more because I understand the full-context, and it hurts more because I appreciate why Simba was tricked. But, most-importantly, it hurts more because it highlights how evil Scar is, driving home the central conflict. It’s not even the saddest Disney moment I’ve ever seen, Dumbo being cradled by his caged mother is, but it’s definitely the scariest. That alone makes it worthy of the top spot.

So there you have it: 5 moments in TV and film that traumatized me as a child. Let me know what your choices are, if you have any, and have a spooky/fun Halloween.

The Copycat Cinematic Universe

*Sigh* Here we go again!

I often feel like I’m dancing in circles over The MCU, as if it’s a personal lifeblood. It’s irksome because, despite my constant defence of the franchise, I’m not its biggest fanboy. I enjoy what it has to offer, but, save Iron Man, none of the movies have transcended a 4/5 on my personal enjoyment scale. So frequently seeing people argue how it’s “destroying film” or “mediocre entertainment”, only to present weak or easily-rebuffed arguments in favour of their positions, is tiring. And, to be frank, I’m tired of responding.

However, for the sake of trying to extrapolate writing ideas, and because The Whitly-Verse hasn’t seen an entry for a month, I’ll do it again:

… (Courtesy of The Unintentional Fallacy.)

I’d like to apologize for getting to this video 5 months late. I subconsciously mark video essays calling Marvel movies a “problem” with red flags, so I usually avoid them like a plague unless I’m desperate. But there can be no holding back how pretentious I think the video is. I think it’s pretentious because it assumes, like most detractors, that MCU movies are solely created with the intent to pander for money, completely ignoring that they almost all function as films, and I think it’s pretentious because it assumes that said films don’t inspire individuals to be creative. I also think it’s pretentious because it assumes that Star Wars, a franchise the essayist holds in high-regard, wasn’t made for intertextuality, even though George Lucas acknowledged inspiration from Akira Kurosawa and the Flash Gordon serials of the early-20th Century.

However, the one area this video missed the mark in is in its insistence, perhaps indirectly, that Marvel’s responsible for the corporate, franchise-based model that modern-Hollywood’s vapidly abusing. Because it’s not. It’s not Marvel’s fault that Hollywood’s mimicking its formula without understanding why it worked. It’s also not Marvel’s fault that The MCU’s successful enough to warrant shameless copycats. And it’s not even close to Marvel’s fault that the films are adored by moviegoers, yet their imitators aren’t. How do I know this?

Because I’m a moviegoer.

I’m not much of a comic reader. I’ve read the odd issue here-and-there, and there are definitely stand-outs that I own, but for the most part it’s never been a medium I’d spend hundreds of dollars on a regular basis. Comics, despite being interesting, don’t fancy my interest. And Marvel Comics, a brand that’s been around for over 50 years, is guilty of constant interlocking and continuity nods spanning so far back that knowing where to start would give me a headache.

I am, however, a film fan. I enjoy some genres less than others, but I’m open to anything so long as it looks good. And The MCU, for all of its continuity nods and winks, captures my fancy because it deals with superheroes, whom I happen to really like and admire. Plus, the franchise can draw-and-pull from the best of the archives while ignoring the garbage. Captain America: Civil War, for example, drew from a largely-maligned event series, yet it was praised because it knew which ideas to keep and which to discard. That’s a luxury that film’s entitled as a medium.

This is why I respect Marvel despite not loving them. I also mention this to springboard from the above video on how Marvel’s opened the door for low-strung imitators that miss why they’ve been so successful. Not that some of them aren’t entertaining, I enjoyed Star Trek into Darkness and Spectre despite both being completely ludicrous, but when they mimic The MCU without knowing why it works-its commitment to characters and story-then whose fault is that? If the smartest kid in class inspires lazy copycats, would you criticize the kid for being smart, or the copycats for being lazy?

This is why the video bugs me so much: it claims the franchise is responsible for a corporate attitude toward filmmaking, all-the-while not recognizing the bigger issue of laziness. Is it a problem that so many franchises are attempting half-baked MCU replicas? Absolutely. Will it kill the film industry? Maybe. But is it solely The MCU’s responsibility? Absolutely not. Because Hollywood has always run after trends in an attempt to make quick money, not realizing until it’s too late.

Also, digging into the essayist’s reverence for Star Wars, keep in mind that there was resistance to that franchise in its early days too. The older crowd of critics doomed it as the “death of filmmaking”, and the franchise’s most-beloved entry, Star Wars Ep. V: The Empire Strikes Back, was met with lukewarm responses from many respected tabloids of the time. We look fondly on it now, but hindsight’s 20/20. Not to mention, Star Wars inspired its share of knock-offs too, such that Castle in the Sky, which I adore, wouldn’t exist without it.

I know it’s easy to point fingers at the flavour of the day for “ruining ice cream forever”, but it’s not fair to shirk the blame on populist tastes. Because The MCU isn’t an exercise in vapid entertainment. Could it be better-executed? Yes, but it could also be worse-executed. And until that level of self-awareness is understood by its detractors, then the real issue, a lack of effort from Hollywood, will continue to be ignored. And I think that that’s most harmful.