I’ll try to keep this short, since I do a terrible job of updating. There’s so many distractions here! Mostly because I’ve gotten sucked back into R. Scott Bakker’s The Second Apocalypse series, tearing through The Judging Eye and The White-Luck Warrior the last couple of weeks. So when I should be writing, I’m actually reading.
Or watching the Scary Snowman scare people on Youtube.
And that’s what I want to talk about tonight. See, I think the Scary Snowman is actually able to reveal something profound about human nature. Indeed, I quite literally think he’s doing God’s work. Don’t go away! I’m not crazy! Here, I’ll explain.
I started watching the videos as I was gathering material to teach a class on Halloween to my students. I thought it would be fun to show a video of people being pranked as like a warm-up. Now, the video I found was fully 31 minutes long, but, I thought, I might be able to grab a few clips from it. So, I went ahead and started my viewing.
The Scary Snowman is a very simple formula. The fellow behind it dons his costume and locates a suitable street corner, where he sits, utterly motionless. Passersby mistake him for merely a slightly creepy statue – aided by the snowman’s hostile expression. Then, at an opportune moment, he suddenly swivels his head to glare at them or starts forward as if he was charging them. Cue shrieks of surprise.
I found myself drawn in. In fact, I couldn’t tear my eyes away. Far from gathering a few clips, I watched all 31 minutes of it – and didn’t begrudge a single second.
See, the Scary Snowman filled my heart with a warm glow, one I hadn’t felt in a long time, I think: pure, unadulterated joy.
Not from the laughter at people being startled, although I did laugh, a lot. No, it was from something else. It was joy from watching what people did after they got over their initial fear.
Everyone’s first reaction was to scream, or start in surprise (or, in one case, to punch him in the head).
But after they get over their fear, every single person’s response is to laugh. Any friends they have with them, laugh even harder.
And that’s what I love.
As normally-socialized humans, we follow certain rules in our every day lives. We carefully control ourselves, careful never to display too much emotion in front of strangers. We wall ourselves off from the world behind layers and layers of deceit and pretense. The street is mostly a place to be endured on the way to our next destination, yet another trial we must suffer through in life.
But when we’re afraid – even for just a heartbeat – those walls drop. The pretense doesn’t matter. “What will others think?” doesn’t matter. All that matters is our lizard-brain seizing the helm, initiating our fight-or-flight reflex, while we focus on survival from the unexpected threat.
THen that threat is revealed to be gone. But something remarkable happens then.
The walls don’t go back up. People – friends, strangers, idiots like me watching on Youtube years later – smile, and laugh. For a few minutes, we’re all bonded together. People’s whole faces light up in delight and, yes, joy. The dismal winter’s day walk in the street suddenly becomes a treasured thing, a moment you share with people who were before total strangers, one you’ll enjoy telling to your friends and family afterwards.* You don’t have to be anything other than what you are. No more deceptions – for a few brief moments, everyone is totally honest.
That’s what swelled my heart, watching the Scary Snowman. Person after person after person – hundreds of them. A moment of fear, followed by many more moments of laughter and joy. And so the Snowman is literally bringing joy to people’s lives. He is taking them out of the mundane – just for a little bit – and giving them a better day than they had. Their world is better because they crossed paths with a prankster in a snowman costume. And I think that’s the type of work God would approve of: making the world a more joyful place.
It was a good way to spend 31 minutes. In case you’d like to do the same, here’s the video:
*Maybe. Some people might prefer it never be mentioned again.
Gwangju Dreaming 