Ted Dekker
By Ashley Andrews-700 Club Interactive
CBN.com –AND RESEARCH SHOWS...
Every person recognizes fear - the sweaty palms, the shaky hands, the stomach butterflies and the racing pulse. Fear can come in almost any size or shape. It can be as miniscule as germ or as common as a jumping spider. But one thing is for certain, everyone fears something. And while a few become obsessed with their fear, many are becoming obsessed with the feeling of fear. In fact, it's becoming somewhat of a trend.
Fear-seekers are the kind of people who relish a nail-biting horror movie. They revel in a good spine-chilling story, and they are the first to prowl through a dark-as-night, haunted house on Halloween. They are the reason why Stephen King is so popular, why there are twelve movies based on Friday the 13th and why the premiere of Paranormal Activity 3 was a trending topic on Twitter.
Studies have shown that, "When people watch horrific images, their heartbeat increases as much as fifteen beats per minute...Their palms sweat, their skin temperature drops several degrees, their muscles tense and their blood pressure spikes...The brain hasn't really adapted to the new technology...We can tell ourselves the images on the screen are not real, but emotionally our brain reacts as if they are..." What's more, research has proven that, for men particularly, if the technology is better and the violence is gorier then the thrill is greater. "There's a motivation males have in our culture to master threatening situations...It goes back to the initiation rites of our tribal ancestors, where the entrance to manhood was associated with hardship. We've lost that in modern society, and we may have found ways to replace it in our entertainment preferences" (WebMD).
On the other hand, other researches suggest that violent entertainment may also be a coping mechanism for its viewers. Women especially seem to fit this theory in that they use thematic or hostile material "...as a sort of safety valve for cruel or aggressive impulses. The implication of this idea, which academics dub 'symbolic catharsis,' is that watching violence forestalls the need to act it out." Of course, media researchers also warn that, "Consuming violent media is more likely to make people feel more adverse, to view the world that way, and to be haunted by violent ideas and images." In any case, there are lingering effects directly linked to consuming violent media. One study revealed that roughly 60 percent of adults reported that, "something they had watched before age fourteen caused disturbances in their sleep or waking life" (WebMD).
Looking over 2012, you would find one horrific thriller after another. Silent Hill: Revelation, The Devil Inside, The Cabin in the Woods, The Woman in Black, The Possession, Don't Be Afraid of the Dark, The Innkeepers, Entity, Smiley, Chernobyl Diaries, Silent House and Sinister are just a few of the horror films released this year. So far, horror films 2012 have grossed over 330,000,000, vending tickets to more than 42,000,000 moviegoers. And the much-anticipated 4th installment of Paranormal Activity is expected to out do the third, which chalked up record-setting numbers for it's opening weekend at the box office ($54 million - the most ever for a horror film) (The-Numbers). And then there are TV shows like American Horror Story and Walking Dead that continue to grow in ratings (3.83 million for AHS and 10.9 million for WD) (The Marquee Blog).
Still, the question remains - why? Why do people like to be scared? Why do they seek out entertainment for the sole purpose of feeling fear? For best-selling author Ted Dekker, the answer is obvious.
FASCINATION WITH FEAR
Ted Dekker is quite familiar with fear. In fact, you could say that he was born into it. "I was always an outsider," he admitted. "I'm anomaly wherever I go. I can't seem to fit in. I'm strange." His childhood, he shared, "was a very unique and dark setting." And is a large part of the reason why he is who he is today. After all, being raised in the Indonesian jungle among cannibal tribes will do that to a person. For him, the only way he could adapt was to observe, to tap into that culture, and find out what made them unique. "What insight I have comes in part from being bounced around the world as a child. I've never been rooted in any particular culture, and this has allowed me to peer into various cultures from the outside. They say that a good writer is first of all a good observer...My upbringing did that for me." And this coping strategy only strengthened as he got older. "By my teenage years, I had become a very astute observer." It was only a matter of time before he put his keen observation skills to paper.
Every writer has a process, but for Dekker, his work is much more of an experience. "The two most important things to me when I set out to write a book are 'What's the question?' And secondly, 'Who's the character?' I want to discover life vicariously through the eyes of a character. It's a very safe way to go to a very dangerous place. I really do enter into that very emotional journey of the character. It's an obsession of mine. It's often a disturbing experience." And that is understandable, especially since the majority of his themes revolve around psychotic serial killers, or something of that sort. But for Dekker, it's worth it to create a story that will evoke real emotion from his readers. "When I write stories it really does take part of me away. I want writers to feel great emotion. I want them to feel something magnificent. I want your heart rate to double, and I want you to feel a certain amount of fear and trepidation, and then when the conflict is resolved, I want you to feel a great sense of elation."
While some question the extremity of his suspense thrillers, Dekker is undeterred in his style of writing. "My books boil down to God's pursuit of man, and man's pursuit of God. My protagonists are rarely Christians, but rather people thrust into extraordinary situations that ultimately lead them to God. Fiction allows me to put flesh on dogma and make this pursuit real." And in dealing with any real human pursuit, there are extreme emotions and extraordinary situations. As he explained, "All of my stories are extreme in some ways. They don't fit into a particular genre. They are primarily driven by a thirst for understanding and a thirst for escape and excitement. That's why I write mostly thrillers. I do it to find something new - isn't that why people read thrillers? They want to explore something that's not mundane to them. They want to escape. I have an insatiable appetite for fresh experience. And you can hardly blame me - I grew up in a jungle with all kinds of experiences that would be seen as extreme."
Now writing aside, Dekker has recognized that culture today is rather infatuated with being scared. Americans, especially twenty-somethings, are fascinated with fear. But as far as Dekker is concerned, those in the U.S. have no clue what real violence looks like, let alone what it is like to live in fear. "Western culture tends to be more afraid of portrayal of violence then those culture which are steeped in it. Our obsession with non-violence comes from an unhealthy fear of death. We call ourselves a very violent culture, but it's not true at all...in America, we are so enamored with this life. We are so obsessed with clinging to this life, extending this life every single moment we can...that anything that threatens it, we shove into the corner. We say, 'No, no, no no, no..." And we say this to death itself...We are just terrified of death. But we should not be, because (as believers) death has no sting in our lives."
For him, violence for the sake of violence is senseless. There has to be a reason, a motive. There has to be some development or some sort of journey that the viewer or reader can take and grow from. That's why for him, the driving force within his stories is confrontation. "My stories are about a great confrontation between good and evil," he shared. "They come from my passion to discover, and explore this struggle that we all have...I write essentially modern day parables where I take the struggles and I put them on the canvas in big, bright, bold, colors...I am characterizing good and evil in a very, a extreme way...My stories are born out of a desire to answer what good and evil really look like? It came from the passion I have to characterize the battle between good and evil in a very unique way...That is a battle that resides in all of us or is waged within all of us."
THE SANCTUARY
The stats are staggering and horrific: America has the highest rate of incarceration in the world. One out of every thirty-one men here is either in jail today or under the supervision of corrections. Since 1970, our prison population has risen 700%. Seventy percent of those released from prison will return to prison.
The Sanctuary, an upcoming novel by New York Times bestselling author Ted Dekker, explores this issue, questioning the very concepts of crime, punishment and rehabilitation in America today. "The sheer number of people imprisoned in this country becomes truly alarming when you consider that, although the United States makes up only five percent of the world's population, it has twenty-five percent of the world's prison population," writes Dekker. "This is an incarceration rate five times higher than the rest of the world. Few realize it, but America is becoming a penal colony."
Slated for publication on October 30th, the book's gripping plot follows a vigilante priest, Danny Hansen, who is serving a 50-year prison term in California for the murder of two abusive men, and Renee Gilmore, the woman that Danny loves, who is on the outside. Filled with remorse, Danny is determined to live out his days
by a code of non-violence. That is, until Renee receives a mystery box containing a bloody finger, and Danny is confronted by a rogue warden running the prison in a terrifyingly ruthless manner.
Dekker writes, "In the American prison system, the weak were often forced to become strong to survive the preying wolves, too often becoming wolves themselves. Nonviolent offenders often learned violence; young prisoners who had been caught on the wrong side of their pursuit of pleasure often learned that aggression and anger were required to survive. Some called the American prison system a monster factory..."