Stephen King’s essay entitled “My Creature From The Black Lagoon” is a piece that he has written about seeing the 1954 movie “Creature From The Black Lagoon”. It was a horror film that was set in the Amazon Basin. He recalls seeing it is a child, about seven years old and recounts how he felt during that time. He also speaks about his childhood, living with his mother and remembering her three boyfriends. It was when he first felt fear from a horror film, no matter how unrealistic it might have been – he tells of how his seven year old self reacted to something of that nature. The essay was not written how essays should be structured and if it were graded according to regular standards, it would not pass off as a well rated essay, however it did get the point through.
The introduction was a bit all over the place. It did not present a thesis statement and was not structured in a way that was easy to understand for the reader. He jumped from one thing to another with the first couple of paragraphs and did not go into detail about the movie. He spoke a bit about the movie, remembering it as a child, then he jumped to his childhood and how this was the time before he discovered the strange fiction stories about his father, to his mother’s boyfriends. If it were structured better, it might have introduced the movie, when he watched it, spoke a bit about the movie, something like a short plot, and then told relevant excerpts about his childhood that maybe had something to do with the movie. However, the stories about his mother’s boyfriends did not have anything to do at all with how he was affected by the movie. He later gets to that, after a long and droning paragraph about how he was sure of his mother’s social life. Her last boyfriend was the one who brought them to see this movie, however his presence during the time the movie was seen did not seem to matter to King and his brother.
The interesting thing about the essay is how he mentions that the creature was his creature. This is when he turns the essay into something of an analysis, which talks about how children have great imaginations. He goes into a discussion of the suspension of disbelief and how children are the best targets for horror. Being a horror writer, this might have been the reason why he started – because of his creature from the black lagoon. Even though the creature that he watched in the drive-in cinema looked fake, saying that someone could point out “See the zipper running down his back?” (qtd. King 2), a child would still be able to imagine that creature, maybe one even more terrifying. When he got into this argument, it was apparent that he was going to describe how he felt watching the movie and that night when he was trying to go to bed. Though this was interesting and a revelation as a reader, it was not introduced properly. The paragraphs did not transition well and the story was not linear. He speaks of how children’s imagination can bring out the worst in movies and that any movie can actually be terrifying for any kid, depending on the reception. Even if adults believe that they can grasp a story better, children have more power to suspend disbelief. This was backed up with a couple of arguments, however the problem is that he did not go into a deep argument about it. It was like he got into it at a shallow angle, then changed the topic and switched over to Disney films.
When talking about Disney movies, he said that the effect of the films could be quite the same if you compare it to horror films. People remember the worst part about it and some scenes can even scar a child, bringing the painful memory into adulthood. He gave examples of how people might say that Bambi portrayed the most terrifying scenes, even if it was a cartoon and was about forest animals. He could have presented this argument in better light, stating the basis for the argument and giving more solid examples. In these middle paragraphs, his idea was not very solid and was not really based on anything that the reader could follow; although he did present points that did make sense. One could understand that the imagination, or his argument of the suspension of disbelief could be carried on to this topic – that children were able to keep memories and later recall them how they want to. Such tragic, moving or terrifying scenes from when they are a child give more of an impact as compared to scenes that were seen in adulthood. Even if parents were strict and would not let their children watch movies that were rated PG13, other movies with scenes that can be interpreted by children as terrifying can scar them for life. He discusses more scenes from Disney movies and explains how children might react to them and later recall them when they are adults. During these arguments, he cuts the paragraphs into weird sections, even starting the last paragraph found on the third page with the word “perhaps”. Not only is this an inappropriate way to introduce a new paragraph, but the topic he was talking about did not end yet and was carried on to the next paragraph where the argument was on-going. During this part of the essay, it was almost as if he was trying to take up more space by giving examples, when the reader understood his point. The way he was writing it was like he was running a train of thought without any kind of direction - he was just writing about whatever popped into his head, it did not have any clear path where he would reveal the rest of the story. The reader would get lost in the Disney films and maybe even forget about his whole argument about calling the essay “My creature from the black lagoon”. He stopped talking about himself and started going on about a topic that seemed only slightly relevant to the topic he began with. It was like a book that did not have a connection between the beginning and the middle, and the reader constantly had to keep up in order to understand it all.
At the end of the page, he talks about good horror films and their ability to knock them off their feet and slide them back down to what they really fear as a child. Stephen King is definitely someone who knows what he is talking about when it comes to horror films. However, this part of the essay loses the reader. He talks about how children don’t need scary scenes to really get to them, all they need is their imagination. Adults need something such as “Texas Chainsaw Massacre” in order to feel goosebumps or really get a scare. However, a real horror film is something that can make an adult feel like a child again, hiding under the sheets and anticipating that scary dark figure to come out from underneath the bed or inside the closet. During his life, Stephen King said to have experienced a terrifying moment where he almost died (King b). Writing helped him recover from this moment, and the genre might have stuck to him. He probably felt comfort in horror films, and helped him remember childhood. This might have been why he was so confused about Disney films and why so many parents do not object to allowing their kids to watch these types of films, when they really can have as much potential to scare as any other film.
He talks about how there are movies that are outright wrong for children to watch – according to their parents. They are violent and really not suitable for children who have a wild imagination. However, Disney films, which are based on fairytales are not so great at all. The real Grimm’s Fairytales are actually quite gruesome stories about magic and olden times – they might have even had some anti-semantic themes in them. He argues that letting the babysitter read “Hansel and Gretel” but not letting them watch a film about a Mexican rugby team forced into cannibalism was strange. He did present very logical arguments about this thought of his, but he did not back it up with any theory. Therefore his thought were mostly just his opinion.
The end to the essay was just as mixed up as the beginning. There was no stable argument for any of the things that he had presented and he did not do this in a linear way. After talking about Hansel and Gretel, he jumps back to “The Creature Of The Black Lagoon” and how it had made him feel as a child. After not bringing up the topic for almost three pages, he talks about it again, helping readers remember why it was brought up in the first place. The end was a mixture of paragraphs between Hansel and Gretel, another film and a conclusion for the film he saw as a child. It was very confusing to have to keep jumping from one topic to another. The essay was more of a conversational topic than an academic piece that had real ground.
Stephen King’s essay was an exciting and interesting piece that described how he started in the horror business. It was a clear example of why King is the authority in horror, because he seems to understand the genre very well. However, the essay did not present itself as a piece of good scholarship. The entire work was all over the place, his arguments were not backed up and his paragraphs did not have unifying themes. Even though the essay presented a good argument, it was not easy to read and understand his thesis and purpose of writing the piece. It seemed more of a conversational essay rather than a piece of good scholarship.
Works Cited
Tabitha King, updated by Marsha DeFilippo,http://www.stephenking.com/the_author.html,
StephenKing.com
Stephan King (2000b). On Writing, A Memoir of the Craft. New York, NY: Pocket Books
