Steve Prentice - The Future of Workplace Fear: How Human Reflex Stands in the Way of Digital Transformation

Steve Prentice

The Future of Workplace Fear

How Human Reflex Stands in the Way of Digital Transformation

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To Henry and Bryana

The movie Jaws came out in the summer of 1975 and, to this day, it remains an unmatched case study of fear in its deepest, simplest, and most sublime form. There have been scary movies for as long as there have been movies, but in most of these, the monster, or the bad guy with the knife, comes into view very quickly, and the enjoyability factor of the film is the suspense the viewers feel while they wait for the inevitable confrontation. But few films can make something scary out of nothing. Jaws was one of those.

Hold on, you might say, a 25-foot great white shark is hardly nothing. And you would be right. Except that the shark, whose name was Bruce, by the way, named after Steven Spielbergs lawyer, did not actually appear until one hour and twenty-one minutes into the film. Considering that the movies running time is two hours and four minutes, thats a heck of a long time to wait to make an entrance.

The secret to the success of Jaws was that the fear had no true shape until long after it had radiated its contagious energy to every character in the movie. It was the fear of what we couldnt see that grabbed theater-goers and held them in a truly primordial trance.

Then there was the two-note signature theme music that penetrated our senses, sounding like the growling of something big, something predatory and stealthy.

Master storyteller and director Steven Spielberg built up the movies suspense factor consistently as the story unfolded, layer by layer. He employed perfect wordless imagery: a child playing innocently in the sand, telltale ripples passing by in the water, and the bobbing yellow buoys.

One of the films most iconic representations of this invisible yet tangible fear was undoubtedly the silent expressions of mutual alarm between the people in the know eye contact held just a little too long, transmitting and compounding a shared and mounting panic that no one dared openly admit to.

Spielberg staged the vacationers swimming scenes by placing the camera at treading water level where the swimmers faces were barely above the surface, their peripheral vision limited, and where any errant wave would have been able to quickly engulf mouth, nose, and eyes. This is a place of extreme vulnerability for humans.

Anyone who has ever swum in the ocean knows the special fear that comes with it. Deep inside the recesses of your brain and nervous system lies an awareness that from the chin on down, you are exposed to a world you cannot control one that is no longer ours containing unseen creatures that possess millions of years worth of steadily evolving survival skills, and who might right now be all-too-close. It is a world made up of waves and water that can quickly envelop and eliminate any air-breathing creature of the land.