Photo by Francesco Ungaro on Pexels
For some reason, I’ve been on a spooky show-watching binge this week. I know that there has been all of this outrage about Warner Brothers Discovery’s rebranding to Max (jettisoning its well-known HBO standalone app/brand). There has been much gnashing of teeth and wailing about the sky falling (though it doesn’t seem to have done too badly in its transition), but I’ve been having a blast browsing through all of the documentaries on the new site.
One of those is the documentary film directed by Irene Taylor Brodsky, “Beware the Slenderman.” The film follows a court proceeding involving two 12-year olds who planned the stabbing of their close friend. The proceeding was seeking to determine whether the two should proceed to an adult trial.
How did we get to a trial involving the attempted murder by two 12-year olds? It is a sad and bizarre story that involves the creepypasta Internet meme, Slenderman. This tall, thin, and faceless figure wears a black suit and haunts photos and videos that people post online in creepypastas -- scary stories that are so good and terrifying that people paste them and share them with others.
Two girls, Morgan and Anissa, are fully immersed in this dark world of shared scary Internet memes, and the film shows haunting police interviews with them right after they had stabbed their friend Payton (who thankfully survived the attack). It intersperses these interviews with interviews with their parents, who seem shell-shocked that their daughters could have done such a horrific thing.
Of course, the documentary doesn’t have any interviews with Payton’s parents, and that is the biggest fault of the documentary, in that it spends so little time on the poor little girl that was the actual victim of the brutal attack.
The film does go into the nature of Internet memes; the responsibility the parents had, or didn’t have, to monitor what their children were checking into online (something that truly scares me, since I know that I find it beyond impossible to monitor every possible thing my own daughter witnesses online without being a strict authoritarian that doesn’t allow her any independence whatsoever); the nature of Internet memes; and the problems that can occur with undiagnosed mental illness.
I too have watched scary movies and listened to creepy podcasts (like the No Sleep Podcasts that dramatizes stories and creepypastas from online), as have countless others. But what happens when you're ill or susceptible to violent impulses? This podcast aims to shed light on that question; whether it accomplishes that, I don’t know. If you’ve seen it, let me know your thoughts in the comments below.
Comments