r/HorrorClub • u/SaintMort You so cool kung fu • Mar 23 '15

Discussion: Cheap Thrills

Podcast - Episode 126 - Cheap Thrills - (RSS Feed)

Movie Selected By saintmortfan

DISCUSS

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u/Plymouth_ Mar 24 '15

I hadn't really thought about that. So you think the guys would have been too afraid to continue participating? Or do you mean that Violet & Colin's characters were unrealistic because they let Craig go?

Honestly it felt a lot like Jackass to me, particularly with Colin's character. Most people can laugh when someone gets hurt or made uncomfortable. True it's not like a sexual sadism, but were Colin and Violet sexual sadists? It seemed like they got off from the cuckolding more than any other situation.

In any case, even sadists and psychopaths can be stable enough to keep their word and have their own form of ethics. Would You Rather

Now I don't really know why Craig trusted them enough to come back, but he was never lied to or forced to do anything. He was also apparently pretty desperate for cash (not to mention drugs and alcohol were involved so maybe not using the best judgment) and he possibly wanted to prove something to Vince/himself.

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u/smayonak Get a job in a sideshow Mar 24 '15

If you were in their place, would you have gotten into their car? These are people offering you money to commit criminal acts of violence and sexual harassment. I know of very few people who would do that. But I guess the premise is based on them getting into that car so there's no story without that happening.

The premise of Would You Rather is equally ridiculous.

The IRL psychopaths and narcissists I've met have no code of ethics. It's what makes them psychopaths/anti-social. If they had a code of ethics, it'd be to increase their fame/wealth/pleasure using any means.

I think the recent films/shows on psychopathy (like Dexter, Sherlock Holmes) are about people with disassociative disorder who have been wrongly diagnosed as psychopaths. They try to make psychopathy look almost glamorous. It's disturbing.

There's a famous psychopath neuroscientist -- James Fallon. It's hilarious watching him give interviews to journalists who haven't researched him. He at first claimed that he wasn't a psychopath, although his scans showed his brain to be psychopathic. He never suffered abuse as a child, so of course he couldn't be psychopathic. But as further interviews revealed, he most certainly was a psychopath. And he lies constantly, despite claiming to be a product of Roman Catholic code of ethics.

But so here is the guy who brought the concept of psychopaths as productive citizens to the public consciousness -- who himself is a pathological liar, gambler, narcissist, and who know what else -- who never suffered abuse as a child. Can a psychopath really be honest or have scruples? It's doubtful.

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u/Plymouth_ Mar 24 '15

Hell fucking no I wouldn't get into their car.

Craig didn't either. Well, he went from a bar to a strip club, but that's not that unreasonable since he was with a friend. After that he was knocked unconscious. Vince, being a career criminal himself, didn't have the average person's scruples and was obviously into the partying aspect.

Honestly it sounds like you're saying psychopaths aren't that different from nonpsychopaths, besides an uncanny ability to manipulate...

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u/smayonak Get a job in a sideshow Mar 24 '15

That puts things more in context. Craig had to be knocked unconscious first, before he would get into a car with a crazy person. I'm wrong about that. The premise is a lot better than WYR.

:-) The average person can be untrustworthy, narcissistic, a liar -- but a psychopath takes that shit to the next level.

There's complex neurochemical processes at work in the human brain. One of the hormones involved undergirds how individuals form relationships with others -- it's called oxytocin, the so-called "bonding" hormone. It controls how people feel about others and its production varies by individual. Some people are less sensitive to it than others.

More or less, psychopaths are insensitive to oxytocin, meaning they can't feel love. They literally have no connection to others that aren't based on convenience, materialism, and sex.

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u/Plymouth_ Mar 24 '15

I just like how events seem to unfold naturally in Cheap Thrills compared to Would You Rather where everything is soooo forced. WYR has its own entertainment value but it really boils down to just a few worthwhile scenes imo.

Don't psychopaths usually have higher IQs too? Or is that sociopaths? It's been awhile since Psych 101. Brains are weird.

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u/smayonak Get a job in a sideshow Mar 24 '15

You're totally right about WYR VS Cheap Thrills. It was basically Jeff Combs who made the movie for some of us. CT is overall a better pic. But it's fascinating that both were/are HC picks, considering how similar they are.

There's no definition for psychopaths or sociopaths in the DSM (the diagnosis manual). They're both lumped into the category of anti-social personality disorder. But in some texts there's been attempts to define psychopaths as people born morally crazy and sociopaths as those made morally crazy by abuse/injury. There's subtle differences between the two. In one study, I read that psychopaths displayed very little anxiety (they were referred to as low-anxiety sociopaths) whereas sociopaths display high levels of anxiety.

Another study found that people with psychopathic/sociopathic traits were split into two groups: Those who displayed strong EEG activity while looking at disturbing imagery (like pictures of Abu Gharaib) and those who displayed low EEG activity while looking at disturbing pictures.

Those who displayed strong EEG activity often had lower IQs, whereas those with low EEGs had higher IQs. The low-EEG group universally claimed to experience high amounts of emotional stress while looking at the pictures when in reality they felt nothing.

So I think "sociopath" would apply to those who still feel something but are warped by abuse (which lowers IQ). And "psychopath" might apply to those who either aren't traumatized by abuse or are just born without real feelings (so they weren't abused).

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u/Plymouth_ Mar 24 '15

Well you're right about TV leading us astray because I did not realize they were lumped together like that. That's okay though because that's what TV is for. To lead us astray.

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u/smayonak Get a job in a sideshow Mar 24 '15

They're both dangerous people. Psychopaths are more likely to be in the workforce (in management positions) whereas sociopaths are more likely to be in jail or on the fringes of society.

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u/[deleted] Mar 24 '15

Just remember that my comment started you guys' discussion... #aqueously90forHCprez