That movie will scare you back to good health
FOR those unfamiliar with the crime drama series Breaking Bad – and unbothered by a spoiler of sorts – there is a memorable episode in which a member of the Mexican cartel becomes a police informant.
When his drug-dealing associates find out, they wreak their revenge by cutting off the informant’s head and sticking it on top of a tortoise. The gruesome human/tortoise amalgam is then unleashed into the desert to serve as a reminder to watching officers and other potential traitors that the cartel is not to be messed with.
As I watched this horror unfold on my television screen I couldn’t avert my eyes. If you had told me six months ago that I would be not only tolerating but enjoying such violent entertainment I would have scoffed in derision.
Until recently I steadfastly refused to watch anything but saccharine sitcoms and predictable romantic comedies.
But then I watched Breaking Bad and my lifelong conviction of what constitutes decent entertainment shifted on its axis. Admittedly the decision to witness protagonist Walter White’s metamorphosis from placid chemistry teacher into gun-wielding drug kingpin wasn’t entirely my own.
My husband Chris had long since tired of my aversion to expanding my cultural horizons. I realised, for the sake of marital harmony, that I should at least show a willingness to branch out. To my amazement, when I did so, I was hooked.
But why? Professor Glenn Sparks of Purdue University in Indiana, US, is a specialist in the cognitive and emotional effects of the media and has found that frightening films and television shows can boost both our physical and mental health.
“They cause what is called the excitation transfer process,” he said. “When a person gets afraid they experience high physiological arousal along with fear. This makes their heart rate and blood pressure increase and their muscles tense, which takes a while to go back to normal and makes any emotion they experience afterwards more intense.”
As the brain senses danger it releases the hormone adrenalin, leaving the body in a highly charged state of combat readiness. Perversely, this fiction-induced fear also prompts the production of the feel-good chemicals dopamine and serotonin, leading to an improved sense of wellbeing.