Research: This is my house by Jordon Walker + Meta Fiction
- willikoms
- Mar 13, 2019
- 3 min read
Updated: Mar 14, 2019
This is my house by Jordon Walker
This short film was made by Jordon Walker, whose previously known persona was Jordon Underneath, an avid fan and reviewer of horror related content such as videogames and tv shows.
This was considered his first alternative video from his reviews, a short narrative surrealist horror film using puppetry and painted illustration.
The narrative is simple. A strange purple creature invites the audience into its home, where he shows us around. We come to see that he's been keeping two children hostage as he eats one of them, the other escapes however only to get eaten by another creature.
I chose this as a good reference point for taking similar aesthetics of pre-school children entertainment and twisting it into surrealist horror.
One key aspect of the video which ties into the vibe of a children’s show is not only the use of a primary puppet character but the simple dialogue and the fourth wall breaking.
Does anyone notice the slight similarity between this puppet and Oscar the Grouch from Sesame Street?
A fourth wall break is commonly described as the act of a character performing a metafictional act. Metafictional would mean addressing outside elements of the fiction such as the audience, story conventions or even the fact that this is all fake.This is usually to comedic effect, breaking the rules to subvert audience expectation.
It has been used in other ways to entertain audiences, or create the illusion that what we are seeing more alive and real from the text telling us that it is in fact just a piece of text.
The most common type of fourth wall break isn't even that bombastic, it can be a character simply talking to the audience. My own guess is that its an evolved trait from one medium to the other.
Audience Participation and involvement has always been a factor in pantomime and theatre. It's all about making the participants more invested.
So it’s not unsuprising to think that really early, naive children could be convinced by an illusion such as this.
Not only does it encourage participation but can be used to educate.
Example: Dora the Explorer turns to the camera and suggests to her audience of toddlers which way she should go. The audience becomes participants and yell out their answers. Dora will go as the creators of the show decide but the audience is convinced that dora is a real person.
It is when we grow up later however we become smart enough to know how patronising it is. We see through the fakeness and it throws us off.
This is where we get different form of the uncanny, taking something as simple as characters talking to a camera and make it frightening.
When I wrote down how much the lion and the bear frightened me as a toddler, it was not just the creepy voices or the designs, but the feeling that they were looking at me. That these incomprehensible creatures were talking to me through the TV screen, they knew who I was…and that terrified me. Enough to the point it gave me anxiety.
We notice a similar thing in Jordan Walkers film. A creature made of in-organic materials talking to its audience at the start…inviting them to its home.
Doesn’t sound bad, but it is designed in such a way with its visuals and sound to evoke discord and unease, enough for us to question and worry at the back of our head.
It's also reminiscent of classic fairytales, except there isn't an exact moral. This one is a pure psychological dream like experience. A reality where children are captured by in-escapable beasts, where the colours are reversed and theres almost no way out of the nightmare. I think thats what I ultimately want to capture, a fake yet seemlingly harmless world that turns into a nightmare. Another thing that is key to notice is the use of pre-existing props and altering them. That would be a good way of being low budget but adding onto something of good quality, maybe I could get dolls to make puppets or something?
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