Deep-sea-ted phobias.

[athelind]

A discussion of deep-sea fish and a friends phobia of them prompted the following revelation:

Deep sea fish play on on the "creepy AAAUGH" threads of the human psyche in the same way that puppies and lemurs play on the "cute AWWWWW" threads.

Big heads and big eyes and li'l button noses and other neotenic features on the one hand; big heads and big eyes and BIG EFFING TEETH on the other. It's the Uncanny Valley, amped up. Instead of being merely a deformed, "wrong" version of a human, we register angler fish a deformed, twisted, versions of babies, with teeth and fangs that promote fear reactions.

I could go off on a Freudian  tear about how that triggers anxiety about how one's offspring will symbolically devour one's life and individuality, by directing the selfish self-directed energies of the ID into something Other. I could probably back that up with a Jungian discussion of similar threads appearing in folklore throughout the ages, in culture after culture.

Instead, I'll just sum it up by saying that ANGLER FISH ARE EVIL BABY CHANGELING DEMONS.

Comments

[reveille-d.livejournal.com]

But I like fishies, even fishies who've been crushed under obscene amounts of pressure and look like demons as a result!

[foofers.livejournal.com]

Or maybe it's that babies are toothless angler fish.

They scare the hell outta me. Babies, that is.

[ladyringo.livejournal.com]

Would you think I was strange if I told you that I have a stuffed angler fish?

It used to make noise too.. its the cutest damned thing! ;)

[cpxbrex.livejournal.com]

*snickers* I was gonna say you could de-creepy-fy deep sea fish if you made fuzzy-wuzzy plush animals out of them, but apparently it's already being done.

Poor Freud. Poor Jung. Modernity is destroying the whole fabulous construct of their studies, hehe.

[ladyringo.livejournal.com]

Mine is bright orange. And frickin' adorable. Fuzzy teeth and everything... the little lantern on the end of the lure used to light up too.

[athelind.livejournal.com]

I have a gulper eel plushie.

I mean, you gotta love something that regularly consumes prey twice its size -- whole.

[araquan.livejournal.com]

Indeed. }:>

[cpxbrex.livejournal.com]

I didn't know what a gulper eel was, so I used teh intarwebs and I thought, "Oh, how cute!" Until I read that some of them were six feet long and might, therefore, regard *me* as a meal.

On the up side, if I'm 3000 feet down, I'm already dead. ;)

[ebony14.livejournal.com]

Well, look at it this way: if you were 3000 feet down and not dead, you would most likely be in a bathysphere or similar heavy steel, pressurized apparatus, and therefore not capable of being devoured by the gulper eel. :)

[velvetpage.livejournal.com]

Carl Sagan would probably postulate that this fear was related to our deep-seated fear of snakes, and for the same reason - our distant amphibian ancestors had something to fear from deep-sea fish, or some such.

[athelind.livejournal.com]

As a psychologist, Unca Carl was a terrific astronomer.

[araquan.livejournal.com]

I dunno. I kinda like things with big eyes and big teeth myself.

*peers at his userpic*

Can't imagine why... }:>