I ran across something that reminded me of an excellent book that went around and around my circle of online friends about 5 years ago. It was The Gift of Fear: Survival Signals That Protect Us From Violence, by Gavin De Becker
It was originally recommended to me by someone who wrote for a television show that I liked. She felt that truly obsessed people could be dangerous, and she wanted the book and its message known far and wide in the online fan community. Online stalkers were a big fear and annoyance then, and the topic kept coming up in our online chats. We were always mentioning the book to new fans who “knew someone who had been stalked” or had heard a rumor about celebrity stalkers.
I’m going to have to go through boxes and dig the book out and re-read it sometime. It’s fascinating, disturbing, and gives a lot of practical suggestions that are somewhat counter to what “popular wisdom” is on what stalking is and how to stop it.
Basically, we were all online fans of the action/adventure show “Highlander: The Series.” It’s the sort of show that attracts a lot of female fans. It starred Adrian Paul, who inspired an almost insane level of devotion in some fans.
Most of us just really, really liked the show and thought Adrian was hot (I can say that even with my hubby here, because it’s really because of Adrian’s sword-wielding hotness that hubby and I met). A few, a very few people who were mostly not participating in the fan community were rumored to be a little “strange” in their obsession with HL:TS.
Those of us that got online and discussed the show incessantly eventually gravitated to a few places where the “in-the-know” people were. We had the opportunity to chat and interact with members of the HL production staff on a regular basis – and we were lucky that we got their perspective of “fame” from the other side of the screen.
As far as I recall, they never confided anything about anyone alleged to have gotten too close to one of the stars, but every time a fan got a little out of line at a personal appearance, they’d refer us to the book. After a while, we’d all read it. It made the rounds of a lot of different online discussion forums – for a while, it was everywhere in online discussions.
We were all pretty protective of Adrian and his privacy, and if anybody got too “touchy-feely” at a convention with him (there were opportunities for autographs and such, where it was possible to take unfair advantage), the outrage and anger would fuel our chats for weeks.
We knew there was something very wrong with crossing lines — anyone that was perceived to have crossed those lines came in for a lot of criticism. We were pretty sensitive to the issue because of all having the same frame of reference – the anecdotes from this book, mostly.
And so now, any time the general topics of “stalkers” or complete strangers who become obsessed come up, I’m reminded of it and think about hauling it out of whatever box it’s in.
I’m now also reminded of a student play I saw performed at Oakton Community College recently that was about a young man who suddenly became dangerously delusional about a woman he had met only once, over drinks. If the playwright ever gets it really polished up to a professional level, it would probably do well as a serious play or maybe even a movie.
One or two scenes of the play still stick with me, even though it was obviously still at the “student” level of writing and staging. In the most disturbing one, the stalker broke into the woman’s apartment when she was away, staying with a friend to escape his constant crank phone calls. He stayed for days, tearing it apart, trashing it, and messing with her clothes. The way it was staged, he was visible in the background, silently going through her personal effects while she discussed her problem with the friend in the foreground.
Creepy.
In the course of the play, the two characters never met face-to-face after that. The dramatic tension caused by the separation of the characters into different scenes became almost unbearable in the second act.
After the apartment-trashing incident, the character didn’t even appear on stage again, but his presence was always felt. The audience felt heightened dramatic tension owing to not knowing if he’d burst into her office or out of a hiding place in the apartment and confront her physically.
Interesting. Very disturbing. Potentially very scary. Hollywood would probably screw it up by having a confrontation actually happen, but it was much more frightening having him be an unseen menace that might confront her.
She broke a lot of the “rules” I knew of from reading “The Gift of Fear,” too – I bet the playwright read this book, too.
