So here I am, watching my new favorite Horror Crack – Sleepy Hollow. The first scene is a nightmare, it is a scary scene where Ichabod is interviewing someone in an interrogation room.
Our favorite new Lieutenant enters the room, and sees that Ichabod’s eyes are clouded over.
Just like mine.
That is when I stop watching.
I am so tired of this. I am so tired of being asked if my eye is a special effects cataract. I am so tired of being asked if I’m a psychic because of my eye. I’m so tired of people thinking my eye is creepy, my eye tells them that I’m evil. I’m tired of people crossing themselves when they see me. I’m tired of children asking me if I’m an evil witch.
I am tired.
I am also tired of television, movies, and fiction reinforcing these stereotypes.
Find a better way. You can ACT like you are possessed without needing the eyes. You can be evil without them.
I have a painted shell which I can wear over my cataracted eye – I CAN wear it. But I wish I didn’t have to.
I wish I didn’t have to cover my eye up for job interviews. I wish that I didn’t need to wear that shell for auditions, so that I wouldn’t get cast as the evil people.
I am not a villain. I am not a demon. I am not a psychic.
By using these visual cues in horror films, in scary novels, in dramas, you’re affecting MY life. You’re affecting how people see me. I grew up with my classmates asking me if I was evil. I get stopped by small children asking me if I’m a witch.
The assumptions people make based on my right eye are ones which have been reinforced by fiction and media for years, and I’m tired of it.
I LOVE watching horror movies. I LOVE reading ghost stories. But it really ruins my experience when I feel like I’m being misrepresented.
I get this sinking feeling that once again, this will affect the way that I do business. It will affect whether or not someone will be able to give me full eye contact. It will affect whether or not I get to have a normal conversation, or whether someone will ask me if I can read their mind (Yes, that really happened.)
People have asked me if my hypothetical future children will be afraid of me. People have asked me if I can’t just wear an eyepatch so I don’t creep people out.
So please. Please. If you write these kinds of things, I know that you’re clever enough to find something new! I know that if you’re cast as a possessed character, you’ve got the acting chops to be creepy without special effects contacts.
Just let me be me. Just let me have my eye without the assumptions. I don’t WANT to have two eyes. I don’t WANT to cover it up.
I love my eye. It looks like the center of a whirlpool. It looks like the eye of the storm. It looks like a soft mist over green water.
What exactly makes that mean I’m a psychic, evil, possessed demoness who plans to tell you your future?
Elsa, I agree completely. I think both of your eyes are lovely, but in particular, I’m glad to hear you describe the eye in question as the eye of a storm, that was the first thing I thought of when I saw it.
If it makes any difference, Sleepy Hollow is utter rubbish. Hilarious rubbish, but rubbish nonetheless. Ichabod’s beard makes me crack up every time I see it, and his shirt makes me wonder what the costume staff were smoking. And Katrina’s witchy underwear gets a giggle every time it shows up.
It doesn’t make a difference because it’s a pervasive stereotype.
I just like watching my Horror Crack without having to feel irritated.
That always seems like lazy writing, and worse lazy design (gods damn it I want that job and I’d do it better). There are so many ways to create a demonic presence if your actor isn’t good enough, or most likely, you assume your audience is too dim to get it without special effects. Even if the producers insist on eye effects, going for anything that mimics a natural condition is such a cop out, given the vast range of full sclera contact lens that have physically impossible effects (full black, stone, flame, fremen, animal, etc). Lazy and offensive :/