A question for the masses...

[dashrippington]

Last Night, I was interviewed for the 3rd time by the Univ of Maryland Journalism Undergrad. During the interview, he asked a question that I couldn't really answer other than by giving him 2 POSSIBLE reasons and one doesn't even come with/as an explanation

Comments

[javasaurus]

I think part of it is an adrenaline high from the anticipation, before the action itself. Would you rather see a show where a guy walks on stage and cuts off his thumb, or one where a guy comes on stage, shows how sharp the cleaver is, describes in great detail what he will do, warns the audience in the first row about possible splashage, then fumbles the knife once, simply misses his thumb the second time, then hits it on the third.

Or in a good horror movie, the best rush is when the music gets eerie, and the creature is just out of sight, and we see the victim looking the wrong way. Anticipation creates adrenaline, then the event creates the release, which is a natural high.

Another different kind of thought is that some people will always be sure that it's just a trick, and they want to see it so they can use their cleverness to figure it out. It's a puzzle.

[dashrippington]

excellent answers. Thank you.

[sabine42]

I agree with the train wreck and the anticipation theory.

I think another thing is an appreciation for a really developed and specialized skill. Many of the things you see have taken years of practice to perform, and, as with the anticipation, take a huge amount of showmanship to really pull off. So sideshow performers have put extensive time into both their skill and its presentation. That in and of itself is truly impressive, to my mind.

AND, this is all the more important given that it is sometimes seen as a dying or lost art. There are communities supporting it, obviously, and there are still sideshow performers, renaissance festivals where many do their shtick, and a few other outlets, but in a highly technical, digital time, with movies, dvds, video games, watching that level of skill, and feeling that live anticipation sometimes gets lost.

[dashrippington]

ooooooo... yer gonna GET it!

[queenmaggie]

I'm one of those who won't look at either train wrecks or side show style acts: make me feel sick and give me nightmares.

If there were something I could do to help, or if I needed to do it for a show I was in, that's a different story: then I can do what's needed and only get the shakes afterwards. But otherwise. no.

[dashrippington]

very valid... I should have mentioned that there are many like you. My wife won't watch me do my acts... nor has she ever seen the end of Reloaded when Jim and I shoot each other.

[terribleturnip]

You watch so that the next time you do something really stupid or painful or both, you can think "Hey, I could get PAID to do this. But I have too much respect for my art."

Nah.

You watch for the same reason people read my journal. So they can think "wow, I'm not that dumb, clumsy" or "okay, my job might suck but it beats a rat trap on the tongue"....

[kudrasslipper]

I heard an NPR story right around Halloween about why we still go see scary movies, which has some similarities with viewing side-shows, I think. They said it had to do with the basic human fascination with the macabre, the grotesque, the fuzzy, twilight region between life & death... reality & fantasy. On a more biological level, it has all to do with the adrenaline rush that comes with being scared.

I like to go because that's where all my friends are. :-)