My Thoughts on Using Infants and Toddlers in Certain Movies

When an award nominee wins and accepts the prize at the podium, he/she typically thanks the various other participants in the relevant film’s creation. For me what’s always conspicuously lacking in the brief speech is any mention of the infant or toddler ‘actors’ used in filming negatively melodramatic scenes, let alone any potential resultant harm to their very malleable psyches, perhaps even PTSD trauma.

It’s hard to imagine any viewer being entertained by infant and toddler ‘actors’ potentially being traumatized.

Cannot one logically conclude by observing their turmoil-filled facial expressions that they’re perceiving, and likely cerebrally recording, the hyper-emotional scene activity around them at face value rather than as a fictitious occurrence?

Contemporary research reveals that, since it cannot fight or flight, a baby stuck in a crib on its back hearing parental discord in the next room can only “move into a third neurological state, known as a ‘freeze’ state … This freeze state is a trauma state” (Childhood Disrupted, pg.123).

Also known is that the unpredictability of a stressor, rather than the intensity, is what does the most harm.

If allowed to continue unhindered, it causes the brain to improperly develop. It can be the starting point towards a childhood, adolescence and adulthood in which the brain uncontrollably releases potentially damaging levels of inflammation-promoting stress hormones and chemicals, even in non-stressful daily routines.

March 27, 2024 

One can only hope an infant or toddler was not used for any melodramatic scene of horror. It’s hard to imagine any viewer being entertained by infant and toddler ‘actors’ potentially being traumatized.

When an award nominee wins and accepts the prize at the podium, he/she typically thanks the various other participants in the relevant film’s creation. For me what’s always conspicuously lacking in the brief speech is any mention of the infant or toddler ‘actors’ used in filming negatively melodramatic scenes, let alone any potential resultant harm to their very malleable psyches, perhaps even PTSD trauma.

Also, it’s hard to imagine any viewer being entertained by infant and toddler ‘actors’ potentially being traumatized. …

Long before reading Sigmund Freud’s theories or those of any other academic regarding very early life trauma, I began cringing at how producers and directors of negatively melodramatic scenes — let alone the willing parents of the undoubtedly extremely upset infants and toddlers used — can comfortably conclude that no psychological harm would come to their infant/toddler actors, regardless of their screaming in bewilderment.

Contemporary research reveals that, since it cannot fight or flight, a baby stuck in a crib on its back hearing parental discord in the next room can only “move into a third neurological state, known as a ‘freeze’ state … This freeze state is a trauma state” (Childhood Disrupted, pg.123).

If allowed to continue unhindered, it causes the brain to improperly develop. It can be the starting point towards a childhood, adolescence and adulthood in which the brain uncontrollably releases potentially damaging levels of inflammation-promoting stress hormones and chemicals, even in non-stressful daily routines.

Also known is that the unpredictability of a stressor, and not the intensity, does the most harm. When the stressor “is completely predictable, even if it is more traumatic — such as giving a [laboratory] rat a regularly scheduled foot shock accompanied by a sharp, loud sound — the stress does not create these exact same [negative] brain changes” (pg. 42).

Admittedly, I’d initially presumed there had to be a reliable educated consensus within the entertainment industry and psychology academia that there’s little or no such risk, otherwise the practice would logically and compassionately have ceased. But I became increasingly doubtful of the factual accuracy of any such potential consensus.

Cannot one logically conclude by observing their turmoil-filled facial expressions that they’re perceiving, and likely cerebrally recording, the hyper-emotional scene activity around them at face value rather than as a fictitious occurrence?

Meantime, in his book The Interpretation of Dreams Dr. Freud states: “It is painful to me to think that many of the hypotheses upon which I base my psychological solution of the psychoneuroses will arouse skepticism and ridicule when they first become known.

“For instance, I shall have to assert that impressions of the second year of life, and even the first, leave an enduring trace upon the emotional life of subsequent neuropaths [i.e. neurotic persons], and that these impressions — although greatly distorted and exaggerated by the memory — may furnish the earliest and profoundest basis of a hysterical [i.e. neurotic] symptom …

“[I]t is my well-founded conviction that both doctrines [i.e. theories] are true. In confirmation of this I recall certain examples in which the death of the father occurred when the child was very young, and subsequent incidents, otherwise inexplicable, proved that the child had unconsciously preserved recollections of the person who had so early gone out of its life.”

I could understand the infant/toddler-actor usage commonly occurring during a more naïve entertainment industry of the 20th Century; however, one can still see it in contemporary small and big screen movie productions.

Yet, in January of 2017 a Vancouver dog-rescue organization cancelled a scheduled fundraiser preceding the big release of the then-new film A Dog’s Purpose, according to a Vancouver Sun story, after “the German shepherd star of the film was put under duress during one scene.”

The founder of Thank Dog I Am Out (Dog Rescue Society), Susan Paterson, was quoted as saying, “We are shocked and disappointed by what we have seen, and we cannot in good conscience continue with our pre-screening of the movie.”

This ‘scandal’ managed to stay in the news for the following week.

While animal cruelty by the industry shouldn’t be tolerated, there should be even less allowance for using infants and toddlers in negatively hyper-emotional drama — especially if contemporary alternatives can be utilized more often (for example, a mannequin infant and/or digital manipulation tech).

________________

Post Script

JODIE COMER TOLD TO STOP COMFORTING CRYING NEWBORNS MAKING HER NEW FILM

By Celebretainment Jan 8, 2024

Jodie Comer was ordered to stop soothing crying babies during the making of her new film.

The 30-year-old ‘Killing Eve’ actress, who has no children, plays a petrified mum who flees her London home with her newborn amid an ecological flooding disaster in the upcoming survival movie ‘The End We Start From’.

She told The Sunday Times about the experience of handling different babies during its production: “It’s such a lesson. The smallest baby was eight weeks. At first my hands were visibly shaking. My younger cousins have grown up now, so I’m not around babies an awful lot.

“It felt like a huge responsibility. I thought, ‘Wow, they’re so fragile’.”

Jodie added she became more confident with the babies on set and would try to calm the children during shooting — but was told to let them cry.

She said: “I became more comfortable, sometimes to my detriment! There are scenes where we needed a baby to cry but I was soothing him instead.

“The crew would shout, ‘Stop!’ …”

THE SIMPSONS: Morality from the ‘Immoral’ & Truth from the ‘Absurd’

Public opinion, both as individuals and societally, can be conflicted and even contradictory, which likely is revelatory of human nature.

In a Simpsons episode, Mrs. Edna Krabappel, Bart’s Grade 4 schoolteacher and the head of the teachers’ union, is at considerable odds with Principal Seymour Skinner over teachers’ pay and the school’s serious lack of instructional supplies.

The students’ parents meet with the teacher and principal in the school’s auditorium, and there the parents are led back and forth like sheep to the points made by Krabappel and Skinner. “We’re doing it [teachers seeking more money] for your children,” Krabappel emphasizes to the parents, who all mutter in agreement to one another.

To this, Reverend Timothy Lovejoy’s wife, Helen, makes her typical and somewhat-hysterical exclamation, “Won’t somebody PLEASE think of the children!”

But, responds Skinner, “We [the school employers] have a very tight budget — in order to give the teachers a raise, we’d have to raise taxes”, a prospect against which the parents mumble in discomfort. However, Krabappel reminds them all that, “It’s your children’s future,” again to which the parents all concur.

Skinner then lifts his hand in view of the parents and simply rubs his thumb, forefinger and index finger together, and the parents again mumble with grumble: “Oh, no — more taxes”. And so forth it goes, to and fro. It’s quite clear that the parents indeed want it both ways — to have their proverbial cake and eat it, too.

TheSimpsonsEssayPDFDownload

Like A Virgin (Part 1)

Place: “Inspiration Point”—a hillside in West Vancouver

Time: Present; about 10 p.m. on a mid-October Friday night

Characters: Lenny, 24; Roxanne, 25

______

LENNY is a very good-looking but reserved heterosexual male, who is also a virgin. A half-dozen of his female university classmates—attracted to Lenny, however weary they are of his apparent disinterest in them all—had taken the initiative in asking him for a date. After politely turning down the fifth young woman within a three-day period, Lenny finally gave in to the pressure (and his sudden attraction) and accepted the sixth woman’s request for an evening out. He had first talked to the woman, Roxanne—a provocative, attractive dirty-blonde in his Chemistry class—four weeks earlier on the second day of the semester, when she tried to start a conversation with him after class. Later, at the end of their date, Roxanne insisted that she and Lenny drive to Inspiration Point, “just to go look at the beautiful lights in Vancouver”.

ROXANNE, aside from her good looks, is the antithesis of Lenny. She is very out-going, fully understands and accepts her intense sexuality, and is, to say the least, not a virgin. The moment she saw Lenny on the first day of Chemistry 100, she was attracted to him and wanted to get to know him much better. She can easily tell that Lenny is reserved and finds him all the more alluring because of that trait. She, however, is convinced that once (not if) she decides to make a pass at him, Lenny will love it, just as did all of her other dates.

Scene: Lenny and Roxanne walk onto the stage, the latter carrying a wool blanket and the former holding a six-pack of canned beer. They settle amongst some opaque, seven-foot-tall bushes, which leave them surrounded, except for the audience’s view of the couple. Roxanne spreads out the blanket (approximately 10-by-10 feet) onto the ground and sits down close to the blanket’s centre; Lenny remains standing while looking at the surrounding bushes, appearing uneasy. He peers around the bush and off to the side of the stage.

________________

LENNY: There’s a better spot over there (With a nod of his head towards the spot he’s indicating, then looks at ROXANNE).  

ROXANNE: (Looks at LENNY) Why? What’s wrong with this spot?

(Takes a can of beer and opens it. Having been shaken from before, beer springs from the can and onto her blouse) Oh, shit! I knew I shoun’t’ve thrown them into the back seat (Carelessly wipes the beer off with her hand, then takes a sip of beer).

LENNY: (Sits down on the edge of the blanket, leans back onto his hands, stares straight forward into the audience and tries to appear confident) Yeah, it’s good enough.

ROXANNE: (Takes another swill of beer, then looks at LENNY) Aren’t you going to have one? (Begins twisting a can from the plastic grip rings).

LENNY: (Looks somewhat puzzled at ROXANNE) No, I don’t drink. Remember?

ROXANNE: Oh, I thought you meant hard stuff, like whiskey, rum …

LENNY: No; all alcohol. (Looks straight ahead, then nervously jokes) I’m so clean of alcohol, I’d probably get drunk just from sniffing your empty can.

ROXANNE: (Giggles. Looks straight ahead into the audience. Pause. Looks aside to LENNY) Haven’t you ever gotten drunk, or even just buzzed?

LENNY: (Does not return her look) Once; and that was it. The first day of final exams in eighth grade. Me and a friend were mixing different kinds of liquor from his dad’s mini bar at his place. It tasted horrendous. Nick was drinking faster than me and was already drunk by the time mine hit me. It was like, I’m totally sober, then all of a sudden—boom!—it hit me like a rock. We had great fun for about twenty minutes before I passed out. When I came to, Nick was forcing black coffee down my throat. He wanted me sober by the time his dad came home from work. “My dad’ll thrash me if he catches you here— drunk or not!” He would’ve, too. (In an incredulous tone of voice) And he’s a social worker—can you believe it?! (Pause; he then dares to look aside back at her) Do you drink much?  

ROXANNE: (Caught staring, and rather absent-minded) Hmm? What?

LENNY: Do you drink much?

ROXANNE: (Briefly looks away, then back at him) Not really. Mostly on dates; mostly beer (Looks straight ahead and takes a couple gulps of beer before looking back at LENNY) Have you gone out with any of the other girls in the class?

LENNY: (Looks straight ahead; appearing and sounding rather nervous) No.

ROXANNE: (Brushing her shoulder-length hair back with her hand) I see them flirting with you, but you don’t seem interested (Looks straight ahead and takes another couple mouthfuls of beer).

LENNY: (Does not respond. Pause. He looks at ROXANNE) You sure handle that beer like a pro (Pause. ROXANNE looks at him; he looks away and begins scanning the audience) Man, those lights must suck-up a lot o’ power (Pause) Don’t you think?

ROXANNE: (Looks into the audience) Yeah … (Takes a couple mouthfuls of beer) … A lot of power (Finishes her can of beer with a final gulp, crunches the can in her hand and throws it onto the stage in front of her. Looks at LENNY, who continues scanning the audience).

LENNY: (Uncomfortable with ROXANNE’s staring at him, but tries to conceal it) They’re something (Forces himself to look at her) The lights?

ROXANNE: Yeah, they are (Scans the audience, then looks down at the section of blanket on front of her; she then looks down at her blouse as she starts unbuttoning it). I’d better get this beer out before it stains.

LENNY: (Somewhat alarmed, he looks at ROXANNE’s blouse as she opens it. He then looks straight ahead and tries to appear calm) Maybe … (Looks at her, then nods his head towards her side of the stage) … Maybe I should go over there while you …

ROXANNE: (Looks at him; then looks down and undoes her blouse’s bottom and last button. Takes off blouse, and puts it on her lap) Don’t worry about it, I’m wearing a bra. It’ll only take a second to wipe it off (Pulls a handkerchief from her purse, dabs it on her tongue and wipes the beer spot for about ten seconds). Good enough for now (Stuffs the blouse, along with the handkerchief, into her purse).

LENNY: (Becoming visibly uncomfortable. Looks at her) Maybe we should get going. I had a hard time concentrating in class today because I got to sleep late … (Pushes himself forward as if to get up).

ROXANNE: (Looks at LENNY with a slight smile) What for? It’s Friday—remember?—you can sleep-in tomorrow (Takes another beer, opens it and takes a swill. Looks into the audience) Plus we just got here.

LENNY: (Looks straight ahead, and settles back down onto the blanket. Pause. Looks at ROXANNE, then down at her chest, then back up at her, as she takes another swill of beer) Aren’t you cold? (Looks ahead. Quietly, takes a slow deep breath and lets it out; he looks aside back at ROXANNE. Talking quietly) Could you …?

(Roxanne puts her beer down, places her hand on LENNY’s leg and kisses him on the neck, cheek, then on his mouth. Her kiss turns into necking as she attempts to pull off his shirt over his head. He forces himself from her).

LENNY: What’re you doing! (Gets up abruptly, resulting in her grip on his shirt slipping, her long finger nails accidentally scratching his bare abdomen, leaving noticeable red marks. He pulls his shirt back down).

ROXANNE: (Stunned; looks up at LENNY) What’s the matter?

LENNY: I barely know you, for Chris’ sake!

ROXANNE: (Pulls her shirt out from her purse, puts it on as she gets up and quickly begins fastening the buttons; neither she nor he notice that an opened can of beer accidentally toppled over. She says quietly, almost as if to herself, in regards to his offence by her sexual advance) Sorry.

(LENNY squats and grips onto his blanket to take and notices ROXANNE is still standing on it, still somewhat stunned. He gives her a “do-you-mind?” expression; she, having just fastened the top and last button, promptly steps off the blanket.)

LENNY: Thank you.

ROXANNE: (Bends down to retrieve her remaining four unopened cans of beer and notices the spilt beer) Ah, damn it! (Wipes beer off the blanket).

LENNY: (Much more calm) Forget about it.

ROXANNE: (Looking at LENNY as he gets up and quickly folds the blanket. Says quite sincerely) I really am sorry, Lenny. If I’d known you’d feel this strongly ’bout it, I’d … (Pause) Oh, no.

LENNY: (Finishing folding the blanket; he’s interested in ROXANNE’s sudden alarm) What?

ROXANNE: (With a rather worried expression) Are you gay? ’Cause if you are, I really didn’t …

LENNY: (Looks at her with a disenchanted expression, while holding the folded blanket in his hands. Sarcastically) No, I’m not gay (Pause) Just because I’m not into making out with you on a first date doesn’t mean I’m gay (Brief pause) Man, who do you think you are?!

ROXANNE: (Shrugs her arms and shoulders. Asks sincerely) Then what’s the matter? (LENNY shakes his head, turns and walks around the blueberry bush and off the stage; ROXANNE follows him. Lights dim and curtain closes).

Citizen Lorne & His Stare Dare Challenge Rule

SIMPLY unable to resist a ‘stare dare’ challenge, or on occasion initiating one himself, Lorne always kept an eye out, while walking around town, for the rare guy with that particular appearance which screamed out the Hollywood cliché, machismo motto, “make my day.” Furthermore, Lorne did so regardless of knowing that practicing such a habitual, dangerous, foolhardy game would eventually, perhaps even imminently, get him or the other guy severely injured or killed, all for his dose of adrenalin rush to which he was accustomed to receiving from such stare dares. But there was no sure way of knowing in advance if the potential stare dare challenge walking towards him would be his last—only after the dare had been initiated and carried out to its conclusion, whatever it may include.

Lorne felt that reacting to a stare dare involved common sense and was straightforward enough using man’s naturally built-in ‘tough guy’ instincts. To avoid inadvertently initiating a stare dare also involved common sense yet there still was the one rule typically easily understood.

Although it all could still result in one guy nursing a bruised ego and/or eye if (even well intentioned) conduct is misconstrued, quite simply if two guys approaching each other, say, on a city sidewalk, are destined to imminently pass right by one another (with a typical couple of feet in between them), the guy who supposedly just intended to glance towards the other guy however catches the guy already staring at him, the latter is to be allowed to stare back until the other guy looks away.

But Lorne often didn’t play by the rule, and he wouldn’t feel any more compelled to do so had it been written in a large, hardbound book available to read at any bookstore and public library. In fact, he would often initiate a stare dare, then he’d audaciously maintain his glare at the other guy (who, by the rule, had the ‘right of way’ to stare back and maintain such until the initiator himself looked away). As the guy would briefly glance at Lorne, who was still staring at him, and felt intimidated into avoiding a verbal, perhaps followed by a physical, confrontation, the guy would then look away as the two passed each other—all occurring just before Lorne, as a finale, turned his head and continued eyeing the guy, just for good measure.

All of Lorne’s friends and worried family members could clearly see that he was really pushing his luck by recklessly stare dare challenging big guys through his blatant breaking of the rule—very dangerous behavior, especially given his extreme nearsightedness, which is crippling without his expensive glasses. For, someday, the other guy may simultaneously brazenly break the rule, or simply respond in kind to Lorne’s open contempt for his targets’ own sense of self-esteem. As luck would have it, Lorne came upon just such a match while spending an afternoon downtown.

CONCEIVABLY, one might consider such a potentially precarious situation as ‘the perfect storm,’ this case being that in which two anomalous yet equally intense conditions (i.e. two guys who are very angry over unjust treatment) collide together at a crossing in a very bad point in space-time.

To avoid confusion, for many years Lorne was aware that his hazardous anti-social behavior was the result of the Rubic’s Cube sized chip on his shoulder, with itself being directly linked to his compulsion to over-compensate—i.e. aggressiveness, plus interest—for the large quantity of bullying that he barely endured in his youth. Even worse, if Lorne happened to also be in a bad mood on the same day that he initiated a stare dare challenge, he allowed his bad mood to considerably exacerbate the confrontational situation—all regardless of knowing that such a dish as the stare dare challenge was one best served cold.

On this one ‘bad day,’ Lorne strongly felt that he was unjustly verbally assaulted by an unruly, female fellow bus passenger; even worse, one against whom he knew that he could not physically retaliate, for it was against his congenital nature to ‘hit a girl.’ Indeed, Lorne, especially as a boy, was always the kind to take fisticuffs from the girls, doing naught but his best to manoeuver around or deflect their swings.

Thus, that afternoon, Lorne was left with only burning bitterness and frustration.

The other, significant condition was the approaching guy who was slightly larger than Lorne in all three dimensions, though his size didn’t act as a ‘fear factor’ problem for Lorne, who simply psychologically compensated for the guy’s extra size by setting his ‘efforts meter mark’ a bit higher. Inside the fast approaching guy’s mind was an infestation of fury over a cheating common-law wife, who also took him for virtually everything he had, including every penny that he put towards their joint bank account.

Hence, he was stuck in an enraged state of mind and more than willing to teach a good lesson to the next guy who just looked at him sideways—or atypically of the societal norm of a quick glance before returning to looking straight ahead.

With only a few meters away from passing right by each other, Lorne—once again willing to break the stare dare rule thus pushing the envelope of his luck—initiated a stare dare challenge with the other guy, who quickly noticed Lorne’s unwarranted glare and in just turn connected his glare with Lorne’s.

Although the game rule dictated that the onus is on Lorne to look away, both he and the other guy instead turned their heads to maintain the glare lock for as long as possible.

The other guy stopped while still staring at Lorne, then rhetorically asked agitatedly, “Do you have a problem, pal?”

“Yeah, I do,” Lorne replied, also agitatedly, as he always responded in such scenarios. “You’re staring.”

“You stared first, pal, and kept on staring,” the guy explained before stating his ultimatum. “So, either you walk away with your tail between your legs, or I bust your head.”

With the irony of his naked aggression and the crucifix’s intended symbolism of Christ-like sacrifice, compassion and pacifism apparently lost on him, Lorne grinned as he lifted his silver necklace and crucifix trinket and dropped them down the inside of his T-shirt just before doing his own explaining.

“You see, I need my specs to see the location of your face if I’m to beat it in; so, if you break them, I’m going to take out your two, upper front teeth with my ‘knuckle buster’ in recompense. I refer to it as ‘the break-even effect’.” Lorne, meanwhile, twisted from side to side a large chunk of silver ring on his forefinger; it indeed could easily enough break teeth, assuming it landed straight-on and hard enough. “Again, just so you’re clearly informed, I will not knock out your two front teeth, since they can be reinserted by any competent dentist; rather I’ll break each of the two, leaving their crooked stubs unbearably sensitive, thus you in great pain until they can be expensively capped.”

“Hey, dittos on that, pal,” the other guy responded to Lorne’s bold threat with his own smirk and twists of his gold ring, albeit clearly not as large as Lorne’s.

“Just so you’re clear, first I’m going to bust your ‘specs,’ then your two front teeth, then lastly your head.”

The guy then stepped up so close to Lorne, their faces were but five inches apart.

“It’s your move,” the guy informed Lorne, who fired back even more forcefully, “I never play white and move first. In a psychological sense, I perform far better when I play black and react.”

Each stared hard into the other’s eyes for about fifteen seconds before Lorne’s opponent chanced “playing white.” Giving Lorne a firm shove to his chest, causing him to slightly stumble backwards, Lorne quickly regained his footing position and returned the initiating assault, plus some interest.

And that was it.

Throwing a lightning headlock onto Lorne, the guy knocked his glasses a half-dozen feet to where stood gawking bystanders, which consisted of both the bloodthirsty and the bewildered. Exacerbating Lorne’s fast-paced losing status were the guy’s four blows to Lorne’s face, one of which would leave Lorne with a day-after shiner.

But that was when the winning/losing status briefly changed as do so many such fights go, for Lorne ‘saw red’—not red as in blood (not quite yet, anyway), but red as in his own blind rage. He so very suddenly forced his own head out of the guy’s oppressive arm wrap, the guy barely blinked before finding his head held down firmly in a damaging position. With the guy’s head held tight by the hair within Lorne’s unrelenting grasp and having received a steady lightening succession of seven uppercuts, all was halted by a couple of large-guerrilla Good Samaritans. Indeed, their intervention spared Lorne’s brief nemesis from receiving—besides his bloodied nose, a split lip and facial lacerations (the latter mostly due to Lorne’s huge ring—a further hammering to his entire head, accompanied by the bouncing about within his skull of his brain.

“Mind your own business, you fucking assholes!” Lorne, breathing a bit heavy, blared at the self-anointed referees, before he again bellowed, “Are you only going to stick your big noses in the ring when I’m on top with the advantage?!”

“Hey—enough’s enough,” insisted one Samaritan, holding out to Lorne his glasses, intact. “You’ve bloodied him up. What more do you feel the need to prove?”

“Well, he moved first—he shoved me!” Lorne retorted. “The next move, and maybe even the last move, is therefore rightfully mine.”

The Samaritan then went silent for a few seconds while looking down at Lorne’s T-shirt, precisely where his crucifix-trinket necklace was hanging just minutes prior.

“I noticed you hiding your ‘Christianity’ under your shirt when … ”

“I’m not ‘hiding’ it,” Lorne interrupted. “I put it there so it wouldn’t get snapped off my neck. It’s too expensive for me to fix every time I get into … whatever.”

“But why do you even wear it? You’re obviously not a follower of Christ’s teachings, especially the true pacifism.”

“I wear it first and foremost as jewelry and, secondly, as a symbol of what I’d attempt to be, had I it in me what one needs to even bother trying.”

And that was definitely one of those times that Lorne was a million miles away from being Christ-like, a great state of real humane being that the silver trinkets typically signified.

Although he insidiously motioned via his body language that he was calming down, Lorne instead leapt at the already injured guy, who was busy wiping the drying blood from his face, and sucker punched him into his temple.

However, the guy himself then instantly saw more red than the small stain of dried blood on the back of his hand. He lunged into Lorne’s lower torso, forcing Lorne’s back hard into an adjacent cement-block wall.

Immediately, the guy, armed with his 10K gold ring, powerfully thrust his fist into Lorne’s mouth, which procured a notable crack, with the latter’s head thrown backwards into the cement-block wall.

Both having stopped to catch their breath, Lorne could be seen feeling with his tongue what was left of his left, (upper) front tooth.

“Ooww! Shit !” he pretty much squealed, just before again emphasizing the excruciating hit-a-nerve pain inside his mouth. “Ooww! Fuck me!”

Lorne then felt the stub of his half-tooth with his finger to confirm what he readily expected.

“My tooth’s broken,” he noted the obvious, prior to inadvertently sucking cool air into his mouth, thus again igniting a hit-a-nerve sensation within the broken tooth’s stub like a firecracker. “Oh, fucking Moses!!” he bellowed, placing his hand over his throbbing mouth.

“Fuck this!” declared Lorne, succumbing to his ‘victorious’ foe. “I’m outta here.”

From appearances, Lorne indeed did walk away with his figurative tail between his legs; he was the one whose tooth got knuckle busted.

But I’m gone just for now, he mentally noted. I’ll swallow my pride and not focus on my anger or need for vengeance.

Actually, as it turned out, Lorne henceforth went about making stare dare challenges—or not—strictly according to such dares’ just rule.^■

The Whale Houser Vol.1 Issue 5

Click to access The Whale Houser PDF

thewhalehouservol1issue5eDownload

In Defence of the Actual Hero

The New Oxford Dictionary of English defines “hero” as, “a person, typically a man, who is admired or idealized for their courage, outstanding achievements, or noble qualities: a war hero.”

Of course such a definition fits like a snug glove on the concept of a war soldier diving onto a live grenade to spare fellow soldiers in close proximity serious injury or a bloody death; world wars instantly come to mind, especially when Remembrance Day comes around.

To me, however, more contemporary concepts of heroism and heroic acts are also warranted.

‘Heroism’ consists of a selfless act, which one is afraid to carry out or simply does not feel like carrying out, but one does so nonetheless. However, nowadays, ‘heroism’ is loosely assigned, such as if one helps an elderly and infirm or disabled person cross a busy street, the kind act can be branded as something special, noble or perhaps even ‘heroic’.

A true ‘hero’ would, for example, be a UN technician who seeks out concealed or buried explosive devices in foreign territory and defuses or safely detonates them, regardless of the danger involved. He could be afraid of inadvertently triggering off an explosive device and killing himself, yet he does it anyways, to perhaps spare some child’s life or limb.

A good example on film is the 2010 Oscar-winning action/drama The Hurt Locker, which is an excellent expose of true bravery and heroism by U.S. soldiers who seek out incendiary explosive devices (perhaps minus the odd plain adrenalin junkie IED disarmer, like the “let’s-rock-and-roll” character played by actor Jeremy Renner) in populated areas and defuse them to hopefully save the lives of almost-always Iraqi or Afghani civilians.

In an alternative form of motive for heroism, the 1992 movie The Accidental Hero (a.k.a. Hero) has Geena Davis play the ambitious award-winning TV reporter Gale Gayley who’s also a hurt passenger on a burning crash-landed DC-10 jetliner about to explode. She and other injured passengers get individually rescued by the film’s imposed-upon unintentional hero, Bernie Laplante, a pickpocketing petty criminal well-played by Dustin Hoffman. However, this hero entered the burning plane in order to steal some of the passengers’ purses and wallets but then realized to his great displeasure that wounded people also required being carted off of the flaming wreckage.

Bernie then gets a ride into town by the nomadic John Bubber (played by Andy Garcia), who easily learns from him enough facts about the incident to later fraudulently take credit for the act and the million bucks.

Before learning that by coming forward he can make an easy million dollars (offered to the real but still anonymous hero by the popular television station for which Gale reports), Bernie, the lone soul in the immediate vicinity at the time, is totally uninterested in stepping into the spotlight to take credit for his heroic act, as he’d been arrested for selling credit cards he’d stole from people he’d rescued. Even the blatant fraud Bubber has an idea what a true hero means: “Sometimes you don’t know how brave you are; and sometimes you don’t know you can do something until you … until you surprise yourself and do it.”

Childhood Education and Trauma with Undiagnosed Autism

Frank Sterle Jr shares his experiences with how childhood trauma and education has shaped life as an undiagnosed Autistic person.

Source: Childhood Education and Trauma with Undiagnosed Autism

I’m Not Entertained by Infant and Toddler ‘Actors’ Potentially Being Traumatized

JODIE COMER TOLD TO STOP COMFORTING CRYING NEWBORNS MAKING HER NEW FILM

By Celebretainment Jan 8, 2024

Jodie Comer was ordered to stop soothing crying babies during the making of her new film.

The 30-year-old ‘Killing Eve’ actress, who has no children, plays a petrified mum who flees her London home with her newborn amid an ecological flooding disaster in the upcoming survival movie ‘The End We Start From’.

She told The Sunday Times about the experience of handling different babies during its production: “It’s such a lesson. The smallest baby was eight weeks. At first my hands were visibly shaking. My younger cousins have grown up now, so I’m not around babies an awful lot.

“It felt like a huge responsibility. I thought, ‘Wow, they’re so fragile’.”

Jodie added she became more confident with the babies on set and would try to calm the children during shooting — but was told to let them cry.

She said: “I became more comfortable, sometimes to my detriment! There are scenes where we needed a baby to cry but I was soothing him instead.

“The crew would shout, ‘Stop!’ ….

________

In his book The Interpretation of Dreams, Dr. Sigmund Freud states: “It is painful to me to think that many of the hypotheses upon which I base my psychological solution of the psychoneuroses will arouse skepticism and ridicule when they first become known.

“For instance, I shall have to assert that impressions of the second year of life, and even the first, leave an enduring trace upon the emotional life of subsequent neuropaths [i.e. neurotic persons], and that these impressions — although greatly distorted and exaggerated by the memory — may furnish the earliest and profoundest basis of a hysterical [i.e. neurotic] symptom …

“[I]t is my well-founded conviction that both doctrines [i.e. theories] are true. In confirmation of this I recall certain examples in which the death of the father occurred when the child was very young, and subsequent incidents, otherwise inexplicable, proved that the child had unconsciously preserved recollections of the person who had so early gone out of its life.”

Contemporary research tells us that, since it cannot fight or flight, a baby stuck in a crib on its back hearing parental discord in the next room can only “move into a third neurological state, known as a ‘freeze’ state … This freeze state is a trauma state” (Childhood Disrupted: How Your Biography Becomes Your Biology and How You Can Heal, pg.123).

This causes its brain to improperly develop; and if allowed to continue, it’s the helpless infant’s starting point towards a childhood, adolescence and (in particular) adulthood in which its brain uncontrollably releases potentially damaging levels of inflammation-promoting stress hormones and chemicals, even in non-stressful daily routines.

We also now know that it’s the unpredictability of a stressor, and not the intensity, that does the most harm. When the stressor “is completely predictable, even if it is more traumatic — such as giving a [laboratory] rat a regularly scheduled foot shock accompanied by a sharp, loud sound — the stress does not create these exact same [negative] brain changes.” (pg. 42)

Decades before reading Freud’s theories or any others regarding very early life trauma, I began cringing at how producers and directors of negatively melodramatic scenes — let alone the willing parents of the undoubtedly extremely upset infants and toddlers used — can comfortably conclude that no psychological harm would come to their infant/toddler actors, regardless of their screaming in bewilderment. (And they’re not really actors since they are not cognizant of their fictional environment.)

Initially I’d presumed there was an educated general consensus within the entertainment industry on this matter, perhaps even on the advice of mental health and/or psychology academia, otherwise the practice would logically compassionately cease. But I became increasingly doubtful of the factual accuracy of any such potential consensus.

Cannot one logically conclude by observing their turmoil-filled facial expressions that they’re perceiving, and likely cerebrally recording, the hyper-emotional scene activity around them at face value rather than as a fictitious occurrence?

I could understand the practice commonly occurring within a naïve entertainment industry of the 20th Century, but I’m still seeing it in contemporary small and big screen movie productions. [FYI: Over the last five years or so, I’ve unsuccessfully tried contacting various actor unions on this matter.]

Meanwhile, in January of 2017, a Vancouver dog-rescue organization cancelled a scheduled fundraiser preceding the big release of the then-new film A Dog’s Purpose, according to a Vancouver Sun story, after “the German shepherd star of the film was put under duress during one scene.”

The founder of Thank Dog I Am Out (Dog Rescue Society), Susan Paterson, was quoted as saying, “We are shocked and disappointed by what we have seen, and we cannot in good conscience continue with our pre-screening of the movie.” … This incident managed to create a controversy for the ensuing news week.

While animal cruelty by the industry shouldn’t be tolerated, there should be even less allowance for using unaware infants and toddlers in negatively hyper-emotional drama — especially when contemporary alternatives can readily be utilized (e.g. a mannequin infant or digital manipulation tech).

Life’s Greatest Gift to Me — Some Day I Get to Die

In Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2, the spirit of the deceased school headmaster Albus Dumbledore says to Harry, “Do not pity the dead, Harry. Pity the living and, above all, those who live without love.”

It’s a tragic fact that many chronically and pharmaceutically-untreatably depressed people won’t miss this world if they, for whatever reason, never wake up again. It’s not that they necessarily want to die per se; it’s that they want their pointless corporeal suffering to end.

Also, I read [and any reader should correct me if I’m in error] Sigmund Freud postulated that, regardless of one’s mental health and relative happiness or existential contentment, the ultimate goal of our brain/mind is death’s bliss because of the general stressful nature of our physical existence, i.e. anxiety or “stimuli”. It’s important to clarify, however, that it’s not brain death per se that is the aim but rather the kind of absolute peace that only brain death can offer in this hectic world.

Indeed, the Sigmund Freud character in the 2011 film A Dangerous Method, muttered upon having a near-death-experience heart attack, “How sweet it must be to die.”

Quite unfortunately, some people genuinely feel the greatest gift life offers them is that someday they get to die. Perhaps worsening matters is when suicide is simply not an option, meaning there’s little hope of receiving an early reprieve from their literal life sentence. And, of course, reincarnation is therefore the ultimate and unthinkable Hell.

 _____

I awoke from another very bad dream, a reincarnation nightmare

where having blessedly died I’m still bullied towards rebirth back into human form

despite my pleas I be allowed to rest in permanent peace.

My bed wet from sweat, I futilely try to convince my own autistic brain

I want to live, the same traumatized dysthymic brain displacing me

from the functional world.

Within my nightmare a mob encircles me and insists that life’s ‘a blessing’,

including mine.

I ask them for the ‘blessed’ purpose of my continuance. I insist

upon a practical purpose.

Give me a real purpose, I cry out, and it’s not enough simply to live

nor that it’s a beautiful sunny day with colorful fragrant flowers!

I’m tormented hourly by my desire for emotional, material and creative gain

that ultimately matters naught, I explain. My own mind brutalizes me like it has

a sadistic mind of its own. I must have a progressive reason for this harsh endurance!

Bewildered they warn that one day on my death bed I’ll regret my ingratitude

and that I’m about to lose my life.

I counter that I cannot mourn the loss of something I never really had

so I’m unlikely to dread parting from it.

Frustrated they say that moments from death I’ll clamor and claw for life

like a bridge jumper instinctively flailing his limbs as though to grasp at something

anything that may delay his imminent thrust into the eternal abyss.

How can I in good conscience morosely hate my life

while many who love theirs lose it so soon? they ask.

Angry I reply that people bewail the ‘unfair’ untimely deaths of the young who’ve received early reprieve

from their life sentence, people who must remain behind corporeally confined

yet do their utmost to complete their entire life sentence—even more if they could!

The vexed mob then curse me with envy for rejecting what they’d kill for—continued life through unending rebirth.

“Then why don’t you just kill yourself?” they yell,

to which I retort “I would if I could.

My life sentence is made all the more oppressive by my inability to take my own life.”

“Then we’ll do it for you.” As their circle closes on me, I wake up.

Could there be people who immensely suffer yet convince themselves

they sincerely want to live when in

fact they don’t want to die, so greatly they fear Death’s unknown?

No one should ever have to repeat and suffer again a single second that passes.

Nay, I will engage and embrace the dying of my blight!

It Was In All Long-Over-Due Fairness

I’ve long felt that, as much as many people may try, humans are not capable of true empathy. Rather, the best we can do to cerebrally experience the suffering of others is by relating somewhat to them via our own similar experiences/pain. Oh, how much the world would be better if only we all literally/fully shared the pains — and joys, for that matter — of everyone else without exception. … The fictional account below is my reflection on that.

___________

LISTENING to her teenaged daughter’s recorded screams, the distraught mother could not contain her grief. With heaving sobs, she stood to leave the courtroom, only to have her weakened knees buckle and collapse onto the courtroom floor. Gasps came from many spectators (some others she’d suspected to be but voyeurs), as the bailiff, district attorney, and even defense council, rushing to assist the bereaved woman.

Slowly, gently facilitating the trembling frail woman to her feet, the three courtroom officials somehow misperceived stability in her pale expression and gradually pulled away their hands. But she was so shaken by the prosecution’s key evidence — that of the accused’s own trophy audio-video of her only child’s last tortured hours alive — she fell hard, flat unconscious.

The night she was kidnapped, the desperate mother had locked her daughter out of the house in an attempt to correct the otherwise average girl’s increasing tendency to breach curfew. It was the first (and tragically final) time the mother had, still with much reluctance, attempted such a tough-love measure. Only it had gone the most horribly wrong.

By all accounts, the mother had been a fine parent, as was the girl’s father; although he, until then healthy, had died suddenly of a massive coronary less than a month after his “little princess” had been prolongedly tortured, then murdered in the worst way. The girl’s assailant had caused her all the real hell any parent wishes against their child ever having to nightmare about, let alone actually instinctively enduring for the sake of surviving the atrocity, only to be snuffed out at day’s end anyway.

And that was the proverbial last straw. …

Suddenly everyone on Earth was aware of an unprecedentedly profound Great Change, and one that would become a far better existence than just moments before. The planet-wide awakening was a massive shift that would finally find favor for the most materially, physically, mentally and spiritually poor people of all.

For starters, every fortunate person was forced, as though by true magic, to empathically share in the anguish suffered by the greatest life-sentence affliction that Fate can cruelly, yet with cold apathy, reserve for a parent — a child lost to a torturous death. Now all bore a tiny portion — thus one sometimes imperceivable — of that enormous emotional turmoil otherwise suffered solely by those individuals who’d received the lottery-jackpot-odds meanest of parental luck possible.

In rehabilitative return, those most unfortunate parents who’d suffered such unjust extreme loss, inexplicably felt very great relief from their overwhelming affliction. Their trembling hands slowly left their tear-streaked faces, for their heavy hearts no longer suffered the agony alone.

With the supernatural change, however involuntary, when all shared in such a terrible personal toll, it became a literal — rather than just the common figurative — sharing of grief. It was analogous to a fiscally imprudent national government that had invested a large sum of treasury funds into an eventually losing deal; but with the shortfall shouldered by the large collective citizenry, the burden on the individual taxpayer was so much greatly lessened, if not unnoticeable.

Rather than being specific thought invasively transmitted and received, it was loosely comparable to an expecting husband’s sympathy pains suffered for his greatly laboring pregnant wife. Even academics agreed it was akin to everyone having been spontaneously cerebrally re-hardwired to literally share in others’ dreadful suffering, like so many undisturbed antennas suddenly receiving the immensely distressed signals from a few isolated agonized antennas.

Most assumed the change was implemented by a kindly sentient omnipotent source. This was defined by monotheists as God, and by polytheists as multiple powerful spirits; while others believed greatly advanced caring alien-race monitors were responsible. Many secular humanists theorized it was simply the good within humankind itself psychically coming to long-overdue overpowering conscience terms with the disproportionate injustices suffered by some but not by most others.

Of course the change was also well received by many other worldwide examples of disproportionate suffering, notably that of desperately poor citizens of developing nations wanting for the most basic of life’s necessities.

Indeed, great empathic relief was felt long before the arrival of overflowing shipments of water purification devices, as well as the exponentially larger quantities of food and medicine than ever before — all gratefully given by the prosperous nations because the planet’s privileged people were abruptly enduring what had consumed the world’s most needy for far too long. And in return, the fortunate givers felt physically and mentally so much better.

Although initially the otherwise fortunate felt indignant by the change, that they’d done nothing personally wrong to justify the unfavorable empathy they’d have to endure, soon it no longer felt like an imposition but rather a universal effect in which all were naturally wanting to treat all affliction, just as though it was in fact one’s very own turmoil.

And contrary to the usual human-history pendulum swing of ideological and political mood, the Great Change was a permanently solidified authentic sense of others’ upheaval, therefore no chance would remain of all reverting to the unjust existential norm of yore.