code for the stalk-and-mutilate set.”54 Michael Myers, Jason Voorhees, Ghostface… Watching masked neighbors on a nighttime stroll, their expressions unreadable and intentions unclear, can feel reminiscent enough of The Purge55 to talk yourself into drawing the blinds. An uptick in “maskaphobia” has become a documented concern in 2020, particularly among children who have not yet fully developed their facial recognition capabilities.56 Our fear of masks may well stem from the much-utilized conceptual framework known as the “uncanny valley.” This hypothesis, created in the 1970s, states that objects or creatures that appear almost human elicit an unnerving psychological response.57 “Creepy dolls, badly animated CG characters, and slow-toreact androids … dwell at the boundary between an object and a person”58 explains psychology Ph.D. candidate Stephanie Lay. The uneasy sensations that masks can provoke operate under the very same principles: “Masks distort the wearer’s appearance, causing him to look strange and unusual. Also, most masks do not feature moving mouths, so when the wearer speaks, the sound appears to come out of nowhere.”59 In addition to the sudden face-
lessness 2020 has wrought, another horror movie feature has taken center stage. Mental health has suffered during lockdown, especially among young people, who have reported feelings of acute claustrophobia, of being prisoners in their own homes.60 In 1816, Mary Shelley must have felt much the same way. According to the preface of Frankenstein, during their fateful vacation to Lake Geneva, “incessant rain often confined [them] for days to the house.”61 The peculiar conditions of that summer might have put a damper on their sightseeing plans, but confinement indoors clearly awoke an impulse to write. Lord Byron believed that their circumstances “might stimulate them all to ‘find room/And food for meditation, nor pass by/Much, that may give us pause, if pondered fittingly.’”62 One wonders if the interminable quarantine of 2020 could present the same opportunity — an inadvertent and unconventional writer’s paradise. The hours spent trapped in our bedrooms might give us a chance to ruminate on the moment we are all living through and the fears that this year has unearthed. It is not difficult to imagine that the next great, era-defining monster might have been typed on a laptop in a hell-
54. Lyne, “The Purge: Anarchy.” 55. DeMonaco, The Purge. 56. Klass, “Children May Be Afraid.” 57. Mori, MacDorman, and Kageki, “The Uncanny Valley.” 58. Herman, “The 10 Scariest Movies.” 59. Fritscher, “Tips for Dealing.” 60. Pierre-Bravo, “‘Untethered,’ ‘Claustrophobic,’ and ‘Stressed.’” 61. Shelley, Frankenstein, 9. 62. Frayling, Vampyres: Genesis and Resurrection, 18.
100