# When Demystification is a Bad Thing **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [September 5, 2004, 10:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-demystification-is-a-bad-thing/263200 "2004-09-05T10:48:26Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Miller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/miller/32/481_2.png) [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2004, 12:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-demystification-is-a-bad-thing/263200/21 "2004-09-08T00:06:02Z")
> [@Otto](#): > > But men _are_ evil! Evil to the core! Or perhaps it’s just the ones I date. > > Anyhoo, I think the “Slayer as victim” motif was sort of in the series all along, starting as early as “Prophecy Girl.” I’m set to go back to my crappy temp job in about 20 seconds so I’ll expand on this more later if anyone’s interested (and perhaps even if no one is). I think there’s a significant difference between “Slayer as tragic hero,” which was the theme of the earlier episodes, and “Slayer as victim,” as the theme mutated into in the last two seasons. The whole Slayer mythos lost a lot of its mystique when it was revealed that Slayers were created by uptight men to punish uppity girls. Worked better when it their origin was mysterious and maybe somehow divine. ---
**Author:** ![kaylasdad99](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kaylasdad99/32/3398_2.png) [@kaylasdad99](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kaylasdad99)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2004, 12:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-demystification-is-a-bad-thing/263200/22 "2004-09-08T00:49:24Z")
If your computer gets infected with a virus that erases your MYST files, then demystification is a bad thing. 😛 ---
**Author:** ![iwakura43](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/9de0a6/32.png) [@iwakura43](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iwakura43)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2004, 1:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-demystification-is-a-bad-thing/263200/23 "2004-09-08T01:06:50Z")
[QUOTE=bienville] **The Demystification of the Force:** Probably the best example. All the fanboys howled over this one, and I have to agree it was really lame. The Force used to be a mystic spiritual connection with the universe achieved through discipline and understanding. We were fascinated by it precisely because we would never fully comprehend it. “Bah!” says Lucas, “It’s my universe, there’s nothing about it I can’t explain in full!” So, he gives us Mitichlorians. Now the Force has basically been reduced to a fungus. Lame. /QUOTE] Huh? When did this happen? Assuming I’m not being whooshed, that’s some mindblower… ---
**Author:** ![Jenaroph](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/e8c25b/32.png) [@Jenaroph](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jenaroph)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2004, 1:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-demystification-is-a-bad-thing/263200/24 "2004-09-08T01:17:23Z")
Episode One. It wasn’t just for Jar-Jar that it was disliked. ---
**Author:** ![Miller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/miller/32/481_2.png) [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2004, 1:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-demystification-is-a-bad-thing/263200/25 "2004-09-08T01:24:15Z")
> [@iwakura43](#): > > Huh? When did this happen? Assuming I’m not being whooshed, that’s some mindblower… Either you didn’t see _Phantom Menace_, or you’ve succesfully blocked the worst bits from your memory. I both salute and envy either your taste and foresight, or your remarkable powers of denial, depending. ---
**Author:** ![Winston\_Bongo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/a9adbd/32.png) [@Winston\_Bongo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Winston_Bongo)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2004, 6:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-demystification-is-a-bad-thing/263200/26 "2004-09-08T06:23:34Z")
Speaking of Star Wars, why oh why did Lucas have to go and show us the origin of **Boba Fett**? Here was a minor character about whom we knew next to nothing – not even what he looked like under that mask – and everybody was just fine with that. Everybody thought he was cool _because_ of that. Well, everybody except King Dork George, who decided, “Hey, why don’t I take away the entire appeal of the character by explaining his origin, connecting it with everyone else’s in a ridiculous fashion, showing his face, and depicting him as an adorable little boy! Just like I did with Anakin! Mwa-ha-ha-ha-ha! I am EVIL!” (And yes, the only real explanation for the prequels as a whole is that George has gone nuts and is actively _trying_ to ruin it.) ---
**Author:** ![Blake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/a9a28c/32.png) [@Blake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Blake)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2004, 7:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-demystification-is-a-bad-thing/263200/27 "2004-09-08T07:26:33Z")
Not quite on the same level as the SW cockup, but I have thgree pet hates of this kind. The first is the Brian Lumley Cthulhu mythos. Lovecraft created a mythos where the monsters were ultimately mysterious. Many times they aren’t even described in more than a few sentences at the end of the story. The history is simply ‘ancient’. Their geographic origins are simply ‘beyond the stars’. The motivations of the monsters are completely obscure to human reason, they can’t be understood. The only help available to humans is themselves, we are alone in a cold and hostile universe against unbeatable monsters of ti\otal evil. Numerous other authors after an contemporary with Lovecraft continued the theme. Them Brian Lumley decides to do his own version. The mythos creatures turn out to be basically space aliens who were imprisoned by their own kind. Worse yet the beings who imprisoned them are still free, far more powerful than the bad guys and actively helping humanity. Bang goes the whole mythos. We aren’t alone. The bad guys aren’t the ultimate eveil. If the heroes fail it won’t matter much because the good elder gods will simply step in and dispose of the monsters. Blech. Lumley’s storytelling is actually quite good but the demystification of the mythos both sucks and blows. The next complaint is ‘Night Watch’ by Terry Pratchett. Ankh Mprpork is populated by a great many mysterious characters, and the characters work because they are mysterious. Vetinari is a man without a past which just adds to his mystique, he isn’t just an ultra-competent politician he has a carefully cultivated mystique surrounding him. Rumours have always been there about his past but it was never made perfectly clear that he was even human. Reg Shoe is a zombie without a past. He works better because he is a walking corpse and not a dead man. And so on through an whole cast of characters. The history of Ankh Morpork itself also worked well because we don’t know too many details. At some point it had a king, at some points it has been governed by insane patricians but we were never quite certain how long ago it was or how things worked then. Then Pratchett writes a prequel on a what is a fairly slim premise IMO. Suddenly we have Vetinari as a teenage boy with family, we have Reg Shoe as a living person, we have specific dates for when these insane Patricians ruled and so forth. Suddenly Ankh Morpork seems like a bad copy of London. Suddenly the characters somehow don’t; fit their own histories. We really could have done without this mystification of the past. I appreciate that the Discworld evolves over time, but it should only have gone forward. And finally I would add “So long and thanks for all the fish” in which Douglas Adams provides a perfectly sensible answer to numerous obscure references in the first few books and resolves the entire storyline irretrievably. Not only an incredibly unfunny book, but one that managed to totally demystify the entire series and make it equally unfunny. ---
**Author:** ![Spiny\_Norman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9de0a6/32.png) [@Spiny\_Norman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spiny_Norman)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2004, 10:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-demystification-is-a-bad-thing/263200/28 "2004-09-08T10:16:20Z")
One of the reasons that Alien was such a freakin’ scary movie was that we only saw all of Giger’s creation in one short scene. Every other scene it was a shadow, a jaw, a tail… The alien was sudden death jumping at you from the shadows and you wouldn’t even live to comprehend what was happening - that sure as hell triggered something in my primate brain. It must have been what our forefathers thought of the big cats on the Savannah. In Aliens, we have a herd of monsters and we get to see them full-figure. Now it’s war, not a predator hunting down it’s prey. It’s of course necessary to tell the story of Aliens (and it’s a pretty good story, so it was probably worth it), but it does retroactively pull the rug out under some of the suspense in Alien. ---
**Author:** ![Spiny\_Norman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9de0a6/32.png) [@Spiny\_Norman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spiny_Norman)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2004, 10:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-demystification-is-a-bad-thing/263200/29 "2004-09-08T10:26:57Z")
> [@Ethilrist](#): > > _Highlander._ “We’re mystical, immortal beings, with incomparable powers, style, and fashion sense. We live forever and can’t be killed unless you cut our heads off.” > > _Highlander 2._ “Actually, we’re aliens.” Yes, that would have been pretty bad, wouldn’t it ? Good thing it never happened. Nuh-uh. No such movie. You can’t prove it. LALALALALAH - I can’t hear you! Zeist ? ZEIST ?? \ ---
**Author:** ![Ethilrist](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ethilrist/32/4604_2.png) [@Ethilrist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ethilrist)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2004, 1:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-demystification-is-a-bad-thing/263200/30 "2004-09-08T13:22:27Z")
> [@Winston Bongo](#): > > Speaking of Star Wars, why oh why did Lucas have to go and show us the origin of **Boba Fett**? Here was a minor character about whom we knew next to nothing – not even what he looked like under that mask – and everybody was just fine with that. Everybody thought he was cool _because_ of that. Actually, I believe there have been several novels in which Jango and Boba Fett played prominent, and popular, roles (just not in the same novel, of course). I haven’t read the books, but several friends of mine were hopping up and down and squealing with glee in anticipation of seeing the two live and on screen. Okay, I have some weird friends. ---
**Author:** ![well\_he\_s\_back](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/3ab097/32.png) [@well\_he\_s\_back](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/well_he_s_back)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2004, 1:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-demystification-is-a-bad-thing/263200/31 "2004-09-08T13:22:34Z")
The author of the book “The Giver” wrote 2 sequels recently, which absolutely ruined the lovely ambiguous ending of the first book. Why oh why do authors (and movie people) do this?? Money, perhaps? ---
**Author:** ![Lamia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/8e7dd6/32.png) [@Lamia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lamia)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2004, 1:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-demystification-is-a-bad-thing/263200/32 "2004-09-08T13:46:59Z")
Others have given specific examples of this already, but in general I think it’s a bad idea to de-mystify a monster unless you’re _trying_ to make it not scary anymore. The more we know about a monster, the less monstrous it becomes. Once we understand its behavior, motivations, strengths, and weaknesses, it’s not much of a monster at all…just a dangerous animal/person that could be neutralized by taking the proper steps. ---
**Author:** ![HPL](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/3da27b/32.png) [@HPL](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HPL)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2004, 7:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-demystification-is-a-bad-thing/263200/33 "2004-09-08T19:46:51Z")
> [@Blake](#): > > Not quite on the same level as the SW cockup, but I have thgree pet hates of this kind. > > The first is the Brian Lumley Cthulhu mythos. Lovecraft created a mythos where the monsters were ultimately mysterious. Many times they aren’t even described in more than a few sentences at the end of the story. The history is simply ‘ancient’. Their geographic origins are simply ‘beyond the stars’. The motivations of the monsters are completely obscure to human reason, they can’t be understood. The only help available to humans is themselves, we are alone in a cold and hostile universe against unbeatable monsters of ti\otal evil. > Numerous other authors after an contemporary with Lovecraft continued the theme. Them Brian Lumley decides to do his own version. The mythos creatures turn out to be basically space aliens who were imprisoned by their own kind. Worse yet the beings who imprisoned them are still free, far more powerful than the bad guys and actively helping humanity. Bang goes the whole mythos. We aren’t alone. The bad guys aren’t the ultimate eveil. If the heroes fail it won’t matter much because the good elder gods will simply step in and dispose of the monsters. To be fair, I think Lovecraft actually does say they were aliens in some of the later stories “The Shadow out of time” and “Moutains of Madness” spefically. > [@Blake](#): > > And finally I would add “So long and thanks for all the fish” in which Douglas Adams provides a perfectly sensible answer to numerous obscure references in the first few books and resolves the entire storyline irretrievably. Not only an incredibly unfunny book, but one that managed to totally demystify the entire series and make it equally unfunny. It did? I must have totally missed it. All I remember is that mind-numblingly boring romance Arthur has with what’s her face that just goes ON AND ON! The only part I can remember that was even remotely like the other books was the ending. ---
**Author:** ![Merijeek](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f05b48/32.png) [@Merijeek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Merijeek)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2004, 9:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-demystification-is-a-bad-thing/263200/34 "2004-09-08T21:49:09Z")
> [@HPL](#): > > To be fair, I think Lovecraft actually does say they were aliens in some of the later stories “The Shadow out of time” and “Moutains of Madness” spefically. Depends on what you mean by the Mythos, I guess. Mountains of Madness invovled the Elder Things, which were aliens. IIRC, they set up shop in Antarctica, fought the Flying Polyps, and the war ended with Australia and Antarctica being seperated. The Colour Out Of Space was an alien as well. Cthulhu, Azathoth, Hastur and the like COULD be considered aliens, I suppose, in that they come from _someplace else_, but they always were more of a hulking source of pure evil. They weren’t exactly cruising around in their '55 Chevy UFOs. -Joe ---
**Author:** ![Reloy3](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c68b51/32.png) [@Reloy3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Reloy3)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2004, 9:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-demystification-is-a-bad-thing/263200/35 "2004-09-08T21:56:14Z")
> [@bienville](#): > > **The Demystification of Gonzo:** For over 25 years Gonzo, of the Muppets, had always been described as being a “Whatever”. No one ever had clear idea what Gonzo was and Gonzo was FINE WITH THAT! That’s what made him so singular. He was never going to fit neatly into anyone else strictly defined categories for anything and he wouldn’t have had it any other way. He was a true individual who needed no explanation. Then, in _Muppets from Space_ (the worst of the Muppet movies), suddenly Gonzo is really sad and lonely and wishes there were others like him and he’s oh so distraught over questions of his origins and wishing for a place where he belongs. Surprise, surprise: Yes! There is a neat convenient explanation for Gonzo’s identity! He’s an alien and there are lots more like him and they left him on Earth by accident and have come back to show him who he truly is. Lame. I partially disagree - yes, _Muppets From Space_ was a sorry excuse for a Muppet movie, but I thought the alien-Gonzo connection was set up from the first _Muppet Movie_ when Gonzo was staring into starry space in the desert singing “I’m going to go back there someday” and about flying on invisible strings. It also explained his longtime love of flying. ---
**Author:** ![tracer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tracer/32/20578_2.png) [@tracer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tracer)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2004, 10:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-demystification-is-a-bad-thing/263200/36 "2004-09-08T22:33:44Z")
> [@bienville](#): > > The Force used to be a mystic spiritual connection with the universe achieved through discipline and understanding. We were fascinated by it precisely because we would never fully comprehend it. “Bah!” says Lucas, “It’s my universe, there’s nothing about it I can’t explain in full!” So, he gives us Mitichlorians. Now the Force has basically been reduced to a fungus. Lame. To be fair to George Lucas (ack!), the midi-chlorians didn’t demystify the Force, they merely demystified why some people are more sensitive to the Force than others. Qui-Gon said that midi-chlorians “communicate” with the Force and “speak to” their owner about the Will of the Force, but they do not actually _create_ the Force and are not synonymous with it. ---
**Author:** ![Fern\_Forest](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/71c47a/32.png) [@Fern\_Forest](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fern_Forest)\ **Post date:** [September 9, 2004, 4:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-demystification-is-a-bad-thing/263200/37 "2004-09-09T04:16:19Z")
> [@HPL](#): > > It did? I must have totally missed it. All I remember is that mind-numblingly boring romance Arthur has with what’s her face that just goes ON AND ON! The only part I can remember that was even remotely like the other books was the ending. I believe **Blake** ’s referring to God’s final message to mankind at the very, very end of the book. ---
**Author:** ![Miller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/miller/32/481_2.png) [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)\ **Post date:** [September 9, 2004, 6:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-demystification-is-a-bad-thing/263200/38 "2004-09-09T06:47:57Z")
> [@Merijeek](#): > > Cthulhu, Azathoth, Hastur and the like COULD be considered aliens, I suppose, in that they come from _someplace else_, but they always were more of a hulking source of pure evil. They weren’t exactly cruising around in their '55 Chevy UFOs. I agree with you about “good” gods being a dumb move, but I disagree with you on both the non-extraterrestrial nature of the old ones, and on their being a source of “pure evil.” The creatures of the Cthulhu mythos are among the best horrorific aliens ever written in science fiction. They aren’t evil, because evil is purely a human concept. They aren’t gods for the same reason.\* They are absolutely, utterly, incomprehensibly alien. And not because they come from some other plane of exsistance, or alternate dimension, but simply because they were born on another planet. What makes Lovecraft’s aliens so unique is that the gulf between them and humanity is every bit as vast as that between the stars. I suspect that, if there is life out there, it will be just as incomprehensible to us as Lovecraft’s Old Ones. Although hopefully, not as dangerous. \*Hastur is an exception to these, but he’s not one of Lovecraft’s creations. He was actually more of one of Lovecraft’s influences, whom he later borrowed for his own stories. > [@Spiny Norman](#): > > One of the reasons that Alien was such a freakin’ scary movie was that we only saw all of Giger’s creation in one short scene. Every other scene it was a shadow, a jaw, a tail… The alien was sudden death jumping at you from the shadows and you wouldn’t even live to comprehend what was happening - that sure as hell triggered something in my primate brain. It must have been what our forefathers thought of the big cats on the Savannah. > > In Aliens, we have a herd of monsters and we get to see them full-figure. Now it’s war, not a predator hunting down it’s prey. It’s of course necessary to tell the story of Aliens (and it’s a pretty good story, so it was probably worth it), but it does retroactively pull the rug out under some of the suspense in Alien. I disagree with this one, too, although I agree with a lot of the reasoning behind it. _Alien_ worked because you didn’t see the monster. But that could only have worked for one movie. James Cameron, whom I normally dislike, did the smartest thing he could possibly have done: he decided to make an entirely different movie from the first one. Instead of a monster you never see, that’s hiding and could be anywhere, like the first movie, the aliens in the second movie are right there. You can see what they look like, you can see where they are, you can see how many of them there are. And there’s not a damn thing you can do about it. Instead of trying to use the aliens to scare the viewer (which would have been pointless, since by the time the second movie came out, a good chunk of the audience already knew what the alien looked like, from magazines, toys, “making of” documentaries, etc.) Cameron uses the situation to scare the viewer. It’s the sense of being trapped, while your doom relentlessly marches down on you, unstoppable, no matter how much you struggle, that makes _Aliens_ a terrifying film. Moreso, for me, than the first. This is, incidentally, why none of the sequels have worked. They keep trying to be either the first movie (Alien 3) or the second (Ressurection), instead of being something different. And why would you want to watch either of those when you could just go back and watch one of the originals? ---
**Author:** ![HPL](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/3da27b/32.png) [@HPL](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HPL)\ **Post date:** [September 9, 2004, 7:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-demystification-is-a-bad-thing/263200/39 "2004-09-09T07:01:09Z")
> [@Fern Forest](#): > > I believe **Blake** ’s referring to God’s final message to mankind at the very, very end of the book. Really? I thought that was the best part of the whole damn book. It was the only thing that seemed remotely like it belonged there. ---
**Author:** ![smiling\_bandit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e9a140/32.png) [@smiling\_bandit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/smiling_bandit)\ **Post date:** [September 9, 2004, 4:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-demystification-is-a-bad-thing/263200/40 "2004-09-09T16:09:50Z")
> [@](#): > > Speaking of Star Wars, why oh why did Lucas have to go and show us the origin of Boba Fett? I kind of liked this one. > [@](#): > > Then Pratchett writes a prequel on a what is a fairly slim premise IMO. Suddenly we have Vetinari as a teenage boy with family, we have Reg Shoe as a living person, we have specific dates for when these insane Patricians ruled and so forth. Suddenly Ankh Morpork seems like a bad copy of London. Suddenly the characters somehow don’t; fit their own histories. We really could have done without this mystification of the past. _Strongly_ disagree. There’s nothing to be gained by not giving a character a past, and the ones they have are exactly where they would be. IIRC, Vetinari was actually apprenticed to the Assassins and didn’t have a family. But its irrelevant. Did you think he sprung from the oily banks of the rivers? 😉 [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-demystification-is-a-bad-thing/263200.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-demystification-is-a-bad-thing/263200.md?page=3)