The startle effect: Implications for spectator cognition and media theory

Film Quarterly

Volumn 53, Issue 3, 2000, Pages 12-24

  Baird, Robert ^a  

^a Center for Educational Technologies

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EID: 60949852975     PISSN: 00151386     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.2307/1213732     Document Type: Review

References (51)

1. According to the classic study carried out by Carney Landis and William A. Hunt - The Startle Pattern, (New York: Farrar & Rinehart, 1939) - the startle response consists of "the blinking of the eyes, head movement forward, a characteristic facial expression, raising and drawing forward of the shoulders, abduction of the upper arms, bending of the elbows, pronation of the lower arms, flexion of the fingers, forward movement of the trunk, contraction of the abdomen, and bending of the knees" (21). All of which may transpire in 0.3 to 1.5 seconds (SP, p. 31 ). Not all startle responses involve the full complement of physical reactions. At base, startle consists of the core features of the eye blink, the head movement forward, and the facial grimace.
2. In the same vein, Jenefer Robinson proposes that the startle effect can serve as a "model of emotional response" which "helps us understand the structure and function of emotional response in general" (54). Reversing philosophy's infatuation with highly conscious and refined emotions, Robinson argues that any emotional response can be seen as an elaboration of the startle dynamic, "as a response that focuses our attention on (makes salient) and registers as significant to the goals (wants, motives) of the organism something in the perceived (remembered, imagined) environment" (62): "Startle" in The Journal of Philosophy, 92:2 (1995), 53-74.
3. David J. Skal, The Monster Show: A Cultural History of Horror (New York: W.W. Norton, 1993), 31-2.
4. David Bartholomew, "The Horror Film," in The Political Companion to American Film, ed. Gary Crowdus (New York: Lake View Press, 1994), 205.
5. Dennis Fischer, Horror Film Directors, 1931-1990 (Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 1991), 666.
6. David J. Skal, Hollywood Gothic: The Tangled Web of Dracula, From Novel to Stage to Screen (London: W.W. Norton, 1990), 73-4.
7. David J. Skal, Dracula: The Ultimate Illustrated Edition of the World-Famous Vampire Play (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1993), 74.
8. Lewton's horror films are, in descending order, based on total number of startle effects: The Seventh Victim (8 startles);
9. The Leopard Man (1943; 4 startles);
10. Bedlam (1946; 4 startles);
11. Cat People (2 startles);
12. The Body Snatcher (1945; 1 startle);
13. I Walked with a Zombie (1943; 1 startle);
14. Curse of the Cat People (1944; 1 startle);
15. Isle of the Dead (1945; 1 startle).
16. Ghost Ship, Lewton's only other horror film, has long been out of circulation due to its contested authorship; reviews and plot descriptions of the rather sensational tale suggest, however, that the film contains startles. According to Edmund G. Bansak's Fearing the Dark: The Val Lewton Career (Jefferson, N.C: McFarland, 1995), Lewton apparently got feedback from his first bus effect in Cat People: "When Lewton attended a sneak preview audience for the film, he sat in the back and witnessed an entire audience jumping in unison at the appropriate time" (133).
17. Pages 124-25 from Joel E. Siegel, Val Lewton: The Reality of Terror (New York: Viking, 1973).
18. Playing the game of "cinematic firsts" is a bit dangerous, given how little of early cinema and records of early cinema spectatorship survive. I am certain that viewers were occasionally startled by films before Lewton's work at RKO. For instance, a very few horror films of the 1930s (The Mummy [1932] and Island of Lost Souls [1933]) offer scenes where characters act startled by threats in contexts that might have made some viewers responsive. Even silent film might have startled viewers, especially since much of it was accompanied by in-house music and effects. Beyond these caveats, it remains that the early films I am familiar with seem to lack the formal manipulations - shock cuts, tight framing, close-up reaction shots, intense sound modulations, and rapid visual movement - which Lewton first employed. My point, then, is that Lewton formalized, even institutionalized, the startle for horror and thriller film in 1942 with his Cat People.
19. Stanley J. Solomon, Beyond Formula: American Film Genres (New York: Harcourt,Brace, Jovanovich, 1976), 112. The strength and persistence of the condemnation of startle effects can be seen in the defensive comments of some threat scene directors. On the Criterion edition laserdisc commentary for Halloween (1978), John Carpenter three times comments on startle effects in a dismissive manner: "You're about to hear one of my musical stings that permeate the movie, I would say rather crassly but effectively." Later, he characterizes his use of false startles based on breaking glass and a ringing telephone as, respectively, a "cheap trick" and a "kind of cheeseball trick." While this self-criticism of startle might play well under the bright lights of academic and critical analysis, it does not lead, apparently, to any renunciation of the effect. More than a decade after Halloween, Carpenter's In the Mouth of Madness (1995) includes even more startle effects than does his Halloween. Indeed, the sound track for Madness betrays a veritable celebration of the sonic aspects of startle, employing intense and discordant sound bursts as loud and dynamic as any. The profits of this cheap trick apparently exceed the cost of any critical tax levied against it.
20. Some rare and intriguing deviations do exist. See The Hidden (1987) for a threat scene where a dog serves in the identificatory protagonist position of a startle effect. Filmed at a dog's-eye level, a cute mutt approaches a female stripper who has just fallen to her death in an alley. The corpse's eyes (an alien life form occupies her body) pop open (startle cue) and the alien/stripper lunges for the dog. The obvious implication, proven by countless outings by Lassie and Rin Tin Tin, is that humans can strongly identify with dogs and other domesticated animals.
21. A true threat is not necessary to generate a startle response. What is needed is only the possibility of a threat, the intimation of something dangerous offscreen. In fact, in many instances the offscreen "threat" turns out to be comically unintimidating: a ringing telephone in The Exorcist; a cuckoo clock striking the top of the hour in the original Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956); the ubiquitous domesticated feline (Jonesey the cat, twice used as a false startle in Alien);
22. the ever watchful guard dog (The Seventh Victim, Candyman [1992]
23. The Hills Have Eyes [1978]
24. The Howling [1980])
25. Other animals that have been enlisted for false threats: an owl in Cat People (1982), an excited baboon in The Fly (1986), a bird in I Walked with a Zombie, a leopard in The Leopard Man, a raccoon in The Client, a squirrel in Species (1995), and, my favorite, a little bunny in The Spiral Staircase (1946).
26. Besides the extensive catalogue of false startles based on flora and fauna (a tumbleweed in The Leopard Man), there is the widely used example of the friendly blindside startle, the old tap-on-the-shoulder routine (The Exorcist, Jaws, Halloween, The Blob [1988]
27. Aliens, Invasion of the Body Snatchers [1978], Fatal Attraction [1987], Knight Moves [1992]). Notice that most false startles are dominated by anthropocentrically significant agents: humans and animals. These categories are, of course, potentially threatening in ways vegetable and mineral are not
28. Robert Plutchik, "Emotions: A General Psychoevolutionary Theory," in Approaches to Emotion, ed. Klaus R. Scherer and Paul Ekman (Hillsdale, N.J: L. Erlbaum, 1984), 209.
29. This back-and-forth movement between jokey and frightening threat scenes can be seen in films like The Fearless Vampire Killers (1967)
30. An American Werewolf in London (1981)
31. The Howling, Re-Animator (1985)
32. and Army of Darkness (1993).
33. Robin Horton, "Tradition and Modernity Revisited," in Rationality and Relativism, ed. Martin Hollis and Steven Lukes (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1982), 201-60.
34. Horton's primary theory is also quoted in Bordwell's essay "Convention, Construction, and Cinematic Vision," in Post-Theory: Reconstructing Film Studies, ed. David Bordwell and Noël Carroll (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1996), 92.
35. The Media Equation (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 12.
36. Most startle effects rely on a sound bump, a sudden burst of sound effects, dialogue, and/or music. While many startle effects rely on symphonic bursts of sound, a few single element sound bursts can be heard, like the powerful foley bump at the end of The Stepford Wives (1975).
37. Katharine Ross slowly climbs the stairs in her own home, searching for her children, believing her husband to be conspiring with the local Men's Club to manufacture better women, and is startled by her husband (foley burst) who has snuck up behind her. Music, ominous and discordant, unquestionably contributes to the fear state that prepares the way for startle responses: Bernard Herrmann's Psycho-shower screeches, John Williams' shark motif from Jaws, "Tubular Bells" from The Exorcist. But music can do more than set the mood. It can serve as the primary or sole auditory stimulus for startle. A massive symphonic music burst in Roger Corman's House of Usher (1960) heralds Vincent Price's unexpected entry into the film. In Repulsion, Polanski uses a solo music burst in a startle effect that turns on the discovery of a skinned rabbit corpse inside Deneuve's handbag. While startle effects obviously depend on the sheer loudness of sound bursts, I suspect that the inchoate, disharmony of many sound effects (exploited by odd instruments and synthetic sound combinations) stimulates anxiety in viewers who are attempting to maintain some sense of and orientation to a film's aural setting.
38. Pages 377, 382, in Peter J. Lang, Margaret M. Bradley, and Bruce N. Cuthbert, "Emotion, Attention, and the Startle Reflex," Psychological Review 97:3 (1990), 377-95.
39. Page 487 from Scott R. Vrana, Ellen L. Spence, and Peter J. Lang, "The Startle Probe Response: A New Measure of Emotion?," Journal of Abnormal Psychology 97:4 (1988), 487-91.
40. See Scott R. Vrana and Peter J. Lang, "Fear Imagery and the Startle-Probe Reflex," Journal of Abnormal Psychology 99:2 (1990), 189-97, and, from note 19 above, "EASR," 386-87.
41. Judith Mayne, Cinema and Spectatorship (New York: Routledge, 1994), 94.
42. See page 50 of Carroll's "Prospects for Film Theory: A Personal Assessment," in Post-Theory.
43. Art and Illusion: A Study in the Psychology of Pictorial Representation (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1961), 146-91.
44. See page 14, Boo! Culture, Experience, and the Startle Reflex, by Ronald C. Simons (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996).
45. See page 104, "Convention, Construction, and Cinematic Vision," in Post-Theory.
46. Robert Howard and Rodney Ford, "From the Jumping Frenchmen of Maine to Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder: The Startle Response in Neuropsychiatry, " Psychological Medicine 22 (1992), 695-707.
47. Eddy M. Zemach, "Emotion and Fictional Beings," Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 54:1 (Winter 1996), 41-8.
48. For compelling arguments that basic perception cannot distinguish between real and apparent motion, see the work of Joseph and Barbara Anderson: "Between Veridicality and Illusion," Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism 6.2 (Spring 1992), 173-82;
49. "A Cognitive Approach to Continuity," Post Script: Essays in Film and the Humanities 13.1 (Fall 1993), 61-6;
50. "The Myth of Persistence of Vision," Journal of the University Film and Video Association 30.4 (Fall 1978), 3-8;
51. "The Myth of Persistence of Vision Revisited," Journal of Film and Video 45.1 (Spring 1993), 3-12.