A common theme in horror is isolation. Some times it’s geographical (The hero is trapped in the woods with a broken ankle), other times it is from society (Who’s going to believe the hero that there are demons infesting the homeless?), and sometimes it’s a combination.
With cellphones, satellite phones, the internet, real isolation is becoming less and less common for your average American. Places that did not have cellphone coverage 10 years ago are covered, and coverage has gotten to the point where even combat zones have coverage (My brother once called me during the push into Baghdad) and people keep it pretty much in mind that the chance of them being outside of coverage is slim.
To get around that, more and more horror is taking place where the cellphones are broken quickly, the cellphone is jammed (Quarantine), they are outside of cellphone range (Hills Have Eyes), or the cellphone battery runs out.
Supernatural horror accomplishes the isolation by making it so that the protagonist cannot tell anyone for fear of being labeled insane by his friends, or perhaps is afraid of putting his friends in danger. Now and then you have the odd one that makes it so that the supernatural itself keeps the person from communicating with others.
Most science fiction gets to this by having the setting take place on a ship, or a location that does not have instant communication. Cue the ion storm, proton storm, or tachyon hurricane.
Fantasy has it easier, but not always. Still, in fantasy, it’s pretty easy to cut the communication. Either just bust all the crystal balls, or give the bad-guys the ability to listen in on the magic whatever. Of course, modern stories use this where the protagonist is worried about whoever listening in on their phone calls.
Isolation is pretty important for horror, since it reduces the allies that the protagonist can call on, ramps up the danger for the protagonist, and reduces the protagonist to only their own skills and resources.
Another common thing for isolation is having the law enforcement either ineffective (often used for the military), or unwilling to assist the protagonist, often making light of the danger presented, that way the protagonist is isolated from the social constructs that are present to help the common man. Even if the law enforcement does believe, either they are totally ineffective, do not take the threat seriously, or are working with the threat. (Jason Vorhees has killed how many teenagers? Yet if some teenager calls from Camp Crystal Lake, shrieking that a hockey masked killer is hacking his way through the counselors, the kid’s blown off as a crank? WTF? Call the goddamn FBI and the Army, fucking Jason is back!) After awhile, when you read/see that in a story, you just roll your eyes. The military might arrive, but are totally wiped out, in what, 30 seconds? Take 28 Weeks Later. Somehow the ragers were able to disable armored vehicles despite the fact they were buttoned up, the plans that the military had made to deal with the ragers were totally ineffective and downright fucking stupid. To me, that breaks my suspension of disbelief, as now I’m expected to believe that a horror that could destroy a trained special forces crew is going to get killed by some retarded teenager?
The person’s friends don’t believe them. Somehow this person has no friends who are willing to at least entertain the idea that the threat is real? This person has shitty friends. If a friend does believe the hero, that means that person is about to get horribly murdered, will be completely useless, or finally “sees the light” in an effort to show the audience just how right the character is. (Groan) Occasionally you have the hero who doesn’t have friends, for whatever reason. Great, the hero I’m reading about is an unlikeable loser. Great. Sometimes you read where the hero lost his family, and we’re supposed to believe that he doesn’t have at least one friend? Great.
Of course, we have to admit there is a problem. If the military gets called in and they’re effective, then the story is pretty damn short. If the police get involved, and are effective, then the hero is kind of cut out as the cops fix everything. Now you have the stories where the police believe the hero, and try to guard them, and the threat gets through them. (Have you checked the children?) Then there is when the police are part of it (Long Kiss Goodnight’s end scenes) and going to the police has worse consequences for the hero than if they’d stayed silent. Of course, some people don’t think that the police would answer a 911 call that there was a demon killing people. Sadly, this isn’t true. There are 911 calls that are made that a demon is killing someone, or that someone is possessed, or a monster is in the house. The police answer these calls because of insanity could be causing someone to kill people who that person thinks are possessed or are demons, and sometimes children who have been left alone by neglectful parents call because they are terrified, and other times, people intoxicated on street drugs call in, and to ignore these calls can end in tragic results. So the police do answer 911 calls where someone is claiming a demon is present or is killing people. A little research really opened my eyes on that point.
As talked about previously, we have geographical isolation. Now, this can be a rural area where there is no cellphone coverage (becoming less and less each year), or jamming by an outside source, or perhaps the only person with a cellphone has let their coverage lapse or the cellphone has gotten damaged. Or another twist is that the cellphones are missing. This can also be used if the hero is trapped in a building (Quarantine/Saw) and have no way to call out. This restricts the author to a particular location, as well as making the story time dependent, both of which are perfectly fine if approached right, but overuse has this beginning to feel contrived.
Now, I know I’ve missed a few common ways to achieve isolation, after all, I am pretty well doped up with pain meds. (Ahhh, dislocated shoulder + ER == Fun fun fun)
So, how does one fix the problem and still address that most useful tool of horror, isolation?
The simple answer? You can’t, not without hitting what is quickly becoming a modern cliche. Now, just because it is a cliche, doesn’t mean it is bad, it just means that you have to take care to make sure that the story isn’t just the same damn thing as everyone else has done, or at least mix it up imaginatively. There’s nothing wrong with having a story that features isolationism due to one of the prior reasons. Now, this can be not so simple in how you go about addressing these cliches, from the cellphone getting dropped to the hero dialing his cellphone only to find out that the villain of the piece has swapped their SIMM chip with a different chip and now their phone only calls the villain’s. (Yes, we’re sending the police right away, ma’am <snicker>) Entering a cave system, where obviously phones aren’t going to work, only to find the last remnants of an ancient Native American tribe who have been existing in the caves for dozens of generations are no inhibited by the darkness (Yeah, like that movie).
So having the maid steal the phone, a car wreck where the phone is lost or destroyed, an out of area locale, or some other way to eliminate the cellphone is the first thing that authors reach for. The common thought that ALL phones have a GPS chip in them are in error, of course, they do have the IMEI protocol, which allows the phone to be tracked to within a roughly 2 mile diameter area. Now, we can always claim that the hero doesn’t own a cellphone, but if someone like me has actually gotten one as a gift, about the only people who don’t have them seem to be hipster snobs, paranoid maniacs, Luddites, or old people. Hell, nowadays, even Grandma has a cellphone, and that ugly woman down the street who is on welfare has like 2 of the latest Boost Mobiles.
So how do we get around the cellphone to add in isolation when a person’s first reflex, even in the face of a car wreck, forest fire, flood, or other threat, is to whip out the cellphone and punch in 911? Even the deaf use cellphones. (Texting, duh!)
Well, you can decide not to. The person could be getting advice from friends or even police? Why aren’t police arriving? Well, if it’s time dependent, maybe the police and SWAT are doing something else (particularly believable if the main threat is a Magnificent Bastard performing a Xanatos Gambit), and don’t have any available officers to send (unlikely), or perhaps the hero doesn’t know where they are, and they are in the city, which means that they can’t be located. Add in that they have to keep moving to stay ahead from the BBEG, then they can stay lost. Of course, we all know that if you don’t know where you are, the first thing that the 911 operator asks is for you to look around and try to identify any landmarks that they might be able to pin down the area on. Staying mobile can keep the police from rendering aid, and an ambush by the BBEG on police who just pulled out can cause the cops to pull out the heavy artillery, which might be dangerous for the hero.
Is the hero framed for the crime, and can’t go to the police? (A nice Xanatos Gambit variant) That works, which means the professionalism of the police works against the hero, creating an isolation of its very own. This can even rob the hero of his friends, as going to a friend could result in the police tracking them down easier, and some friends might even turn the hero over to the police (for the hero’s own good, of course) when the hero makes contact. This is a tried and true isolation technique that also helps ramp up the drama and action. It’s often used when the law enforcement or government are corrupt too in a standard fight the power story.
Insanity can always work, with the character being paranoid, and thus unable to reach out to other people. BUT, you often run into the problem of “Hollywood Dementia”, where the insanity is used just for the story, and the rest of the aspects of the insanity never being approached. This is most common in fan-fiction and Hollywood, where insanities make someone merely quirky and interesting. Of course, this also has a little to do with the plethora of self-diagnosed internet attention whores. A lot of authors (and screenwriters) forget that paranoia doesn’t just make you vigilant and alert, it makes you hyper-vigilant and hyper-alert, and also makes you see threats where none exist as well as over react to <strong>perceived</strong> threats. Of course, the light treatment is mainly because mental disease is ugly and debilitating.
So, how do we isolate our hero, who is well adjusted, has friends, lives in a place with competent and honest law enforcement, has family, and is being threatened by a supernatural menace?
That’s my question. I have a few ideas, but in my currently drug-addled state, I’m having a hard time with them.
Cell-tower failure, power failure (which can effect cellphone towers), thunderstorm (which as was demonstrated last week to me, can effect cellphone usage), windstorm, flood, all of these can help with the isolation…
But how about some non-standard?
Or does it really matter, because the tried and true can carry us through any situation?</snicker>
