The Importance of Being Jack Skellington

[Dave 5,715]

Halloween is a good time to reflect on our relationship with fear. We have an odd give and take with the sensation of being afraid: as a child, a spooky face, something out of the ordinary, anything sinister and unfriendly and unknown can cause one to hide under the sheets and shut our eyes. As we grow older, our fears tend to become something simultaneously more concrete yet more complex: the fear of losing a loved one, death and taxes, things outside of our realm of control, and perhaps we come to hold serial killers in more trepidation than ghosts. But in maturing what we fear, we in turn change our view of the things that used to scare us. There's a market for horror movies and games because some part of us still wants to engage in the fears that plagued us as a child. Ghosts, zombies, ghouls, things that go bump in the night tend to become something of a fascination, and that which made us hide under our sheets becomes something we watch regularly on TV. But why would we want to do this to ourselves when, in general, being afraid is something that is generally regarded as unpleasant?

 

Halloweentown is a mainstay in Kingdom Hearts, popping up four titles and greeting Sora and friends with a world that quite literally has death in every corner, and is ruled over by the Pumpkin King, Jack Skellington. And Jack has a tricky job, being in charge of the holiday that is specifically tasked with scaring people, and he has garnered enough success to "be known throughout England and France." Everyone in town admires his ability to terrify people, and his reputation as being able to scare the pants off of anyone, anywhere cements his celebrity status amidst the other nightmares he lives with. Yet, the hype that surrounds Jack in itself kind of raises a few questions. The reason he is so famous is because so many live in constant terror of him. He spreads fear to people, making them jump and scream and, in general, experience emotions generally regarded as unpleasant. In many ways, his deeds are a form of antagonism, jumping out at people in order to get a rise out of them. If someone in a shopping mall were to run around deliberately scaring people and hindering their day, we would view them as something of a bully, not someone to be admired. Now, I wouldn't call Jack a bully by any stretch of the imagination: he is the embodiment of the spirit of Halloween, and as such, scaring people is part of the job. But can such a job, given that it involves making people feel troubled, have some merit to it?

 

It's worth it to consider Oogie Boogie. He's different than all of the other villains in Maleficent's bloc, in that he doesn't appear to have any long term goals. Yes, he does have it out for Jack, but there doesn't seem to be any ulterior motivations for doing so. More than the others, he seems to live for malice, and embodies the idea of fear itself. His lair is decorated with buzzsaws, guns, and not mention that he has a talent for eating his victims. There is a physical element to the fear that Oogie inspires, something that can injure, wound, kill; a fear that goes beyond just making one jump, and threatens their well being. Whether or not the frumpy bag of bugs himself can make good on those fears is somewhat besides the point, as the fear he embodies makes one worry for their well being afterwards (again, serial killers versus ghosts). The imagery of attempting to eat Santa Claus, who in his own right is the embodiment of kindness, generosity, and thinking of your fellow man, hammers home that the fear which Oogie advocates is one that specifically takes pleasure in someone else's misfortune.

 

Bringing us back to Jack. Once again, he lives to scare others, but at no point is anyone in danger as a result. In fact, it's just as likely that, after scaring you, Jack would just as soon pat you on the back and wish you the best. What we see from Jack is a soul that is inspired by the theatrical that surrounds fear. There's a certain rite and ceremony behind getting someone spooked, getting the hairs on the back of their neck to rise and getting their pulse to quicken before finally delivering the finish that causes them to jump a mile high. It's an idea that echoes throughout history into popular culture, with novels such as Dracula and Frankenstein becoming household names not only because they frighten us, but because they do it in such a way that we can appreciate the subtlety, style, and substance with which their deliver their scares. It's an idea that Jack understands: the only business he wants with the Heartless is to get them to dance so he can put on a better show, and the Limit Break of "Applause, Applause," is more than accurate for what it is that he is seeking. There's a strange, apparently paradoxical notion of mixing fear with joy, two things which don't, at first glance, appear to have much to do with one another, seeing as being afraid tends to insinuate the absence of joy, and visa versa. 

 

It's telling that, when trying to create an artificial heart, the denizens of Halloweentown can only put into it things that they themselves fully understand: emotion, fear, despair, surprise. And it's no surprise when the heart they create fails, given that it's greatly incomplete. Yet what shouldn't be looked over is that Dr. Finkelstein and Jack are not entirely wrong. Fear, surprise, terror, and all of the other things which Jack understands are indeed part of the heart. They are emotions that we feel on a regular basis, perhaps just as much as anything else we feel. Being afraid, while generally unpleasant, is not inherently a bad experience. It is an emotion we are capable of, and something that we can choose to indulge in if we so choose. It should not be forgotten that the Heartless, the greatest threat that the universe has ever known, are beings devoid of emotion, and, in seeking to consume the hearts of all worlds, look to banish emotion from all others as well. With that in mind, being afraid is just as much a defense in some ways as anything else, if for no other reason than it means that you feel. And, if tempered with other emotions such as bravery, happiness, and insight, it can be something that can be mastered and enjoyed as much as anything else that we feel.

 

The recognition of fear as being an emotion that mixes with so many others is kind of what makes Jack Skellington special. He might not understand it himself in so many words, but he is more than keenly aware that their is more to a heart than just scaring people. He shows it by being loyal to his friends, lending a helping hand whenever needed, and just generally being a really nice guy. It's possibly why he becomes so attracted to the idea of Christmas: what he deeply wants, really, is just to make people happy. But, as Santa tells him in KH2, that's essentially what he does already. In giving us the spooks and scares that make us jump, he's giving us the emotions and feelings that we seek and want, while keeping things cool enough that we're never in any real danger as a result. After all, that's his job, but he's not mean, in his town of Halloween.

[Hero of Light XIV 2,381]

Very well put.

 

I will admit, I never really understood the concept of wanting to be scared or actually enjoying it, mostly because I can be kind of a neurotic person sometimes. But I feel as though lately I am kind of warming up to the idea, and I can kind of see the benefit and the appeal that goes into it too.

 

That said though, I do believe fear does have boundaries. Like you said, there's a huge difference between giving someone a scare that makes them jump without putting them in any real danger and putting someone in a frightening situation that actually threatens to end their life. This can go a bit further too, such as the difference between general spooks and psychological phobias. A phobia is typically an irrational sort of fear, that you're in constant fear of something that more often than not can't really get you, making the sensation of constantly living in dread of it an unusual condition and a serious concern to address. Using me as an example, as I stated before for the longest time I have never really got the same joy out of getting spooked as other people did, but I'm just a sensitive guy by nature anyway, and again I feel like I'm starting to warm up to the idea. But I do have a sort of phobia of my own, being eaten or consumed alive or whole, and even though it is largely unlikely for either scenario to happen (not even the largest whale on Earth would be able to swallow a human whole without choking and suffocating to death), it's still something that plagues my imagination, it is imagery I find very disturbing, and it tends to be a huge reason that I don't watch as many cartoons that I used to watch because they tend to rely on the gimmick one or two too many times (main reason why I haven't bothered with new Spongebob anymore, it's like they're trying to give me nightmares now). So even though I know that in the real world that could never happen to me I am still disturbed by it, that's what makes it an irrational fear. Whereas something like coming across an actual ghost wouldn't disturb me any more than the average person (who doesn't have a phobia of ghosts at least). If anything, if the ghost were cool and I got to know him or her better I'd probably get over it pretty quickly. It would still spook me at first but then I would eventually start to regain my comfort to the point where I feel level again.

 

That's the main difference in fear. A spook would have you instantly reach a peak for a few seconds or a whole minute but then you would gradually calm down till you're neutral again. A phobia is more like a steady climb up to that high mark, and then if you actually get that far you might even stay up there for a while, trapped in a endless cycle of living in terror of something you know can't actually get to you but still have such a strong feeling towards it and even living with the frustration that you can't simply move past it like other things. That can be what separates giving somebody a good scare that they can laugh about with you (or slug you in the arm for) later and disturbing someone so much that you traumatize them greatly, maybe even for life.

 

And I feel that that's what make's Jack's positive role all the more clear. At no point does he ever indicate that he wants to make people afraid to go outside (on purpose anyway) or drive them insane to the point of needing psychiatric help. He wants to make them experience those brief highs of getting jumped for a moment and then slowly riding back down...only to possibly get spooked again a few seconds later, but it's still a harmless experience. His scares are all about getting an experience to make you feel more alive, not to end your life in a gruesome manner. Oogie on the other hand clearly relishes in other people's suffering, and he likely doesn't care if you're traumatized or not, if anything he'd probably get a kick out of that too. He represents the terror that comes from actually being put in real danger, his whole house is a hazard even to himself. In a sense Jack and Oogie could both represent the dual sides to the coin that is fear. Jack is the positive side, the one that strives for the experience alone, the one that makes you feel the most alive you've ever felt. Oogie however is the negative side, the one that enjoys making others suffer, the one that wishes to toy with you before you ultimately die from the self-serving peril he throws you into. This in a way represents the difference between spooking someone and traumatizing them, the difference between scare and phobia. One makes you feel alive for a moment while the other puts you in a perpetual sense of danger and threat, even if that thing doesn't really exist.

 

Jack's not a heartless monster, he recognizes and feels different emotions, and at the very least he knows the concept of joy, as he recognizes the joy that others get when they calm down after being spooked and in return gets joy from making other people feel that alive, that positively reminded of how full of life they are. Oogie however is clearly aware of how he's making other people suffer and loves every second of it and anything he does is to only to serve his own ends. That's what makes them so distinct from each other, why the Pumpkin King is a different role from that of the Boogie Man. The Boogie Man has always been used as a form of negative reinforcement on children, a haunting figure that seeks to make children suffer if they don't behave. Such a creature is one that only seeks to cause misery for others, and in that regard it would make sense if maybe that's more of a derogatory term that the denizens of Halloween Town had given Oogie in response to his misdeeds. A branding that suggests that whoever holds it can only bring suffering and misery to others, never to give them joy. With that in mind, the Pumpkin King sounds much more honorific. As festive as it sounds, that is exactly what it represents, the desire to make celebration out of something meant to make people feel more alive. Jack is literally trying to make people feel happy by making them jump and scream and shiver for a bit, the saying is "HAPPY Halloween" for a reason.

 

It is kind of a moot point to keep pointing out how those two figures are so opposite of each other, but it is an interesting thing worth considering as it kind of exemplifies how far we should go with how we use fear. Using general spooks to make people gasp, jump, or shiver for a brief while is all well and good as there is no true danger present and the act of realizing that allows that person to make a more positive association with the sensation, giving them a more positive feedback. But trying to disturb them with a phobia or personal fear that haunts them to the point where they feel nothing but anxiety and perceived dread that their life is soon going to end in a horrific manner when in reality there is no real threat present is going too far over the line. Knowing this key difference in boundaries can better help us trust one another better. Those of us who like to scare can be more considerate and have more fun without accidentally going too far in a joke, and those of us who aren't quite as enthusiastic with the thrills and chills yet can still rest easy knowing that no matter what kind of spooks we get that we can still trust others enough to not send us into a dark place we'd rather not explore.

 

May these revelations help us all know each other better and have a spooky and Happy Halloween.

[Psychic_Ketchup 367]

I have not much to add to this conversation, just that the statements above are very well thought out and put together. Thank you.