Last week we asked for your most traumatising TV or film moments – those scenes that kept you up all night as a child, eyes wide as saucers, and have stayed with you ever since. We got such a big reaction that, in semi-regular Guide fashion, we’ve decided to devote the majority of this week’s newsletter to the subject. It’s no surprise we had a big response – TV shows and films really have a way of sticking around in the squishy, still-developing brains of young people, particularly in those early teenage years where they first encounter things that they definitely aren’t old enough to comprehend.
A case in point: I remember watching The Silence of the Lambs, or a portion of it, when I was 11, for reasons unknown or since forgotten (it was probably while staying round a friend’s house or evading a curfew). In truth, a lot of the heavy psychosexual elements of Jonathan Demme’s film seem to have gone completely over my head, and I think a parent might have intervened before we reached some of the gnarlier moments – Hannibal Lecter biting a guard’s face would have definitely stayed with me! Still, Lecter himself definitely found his way into my subconscious – the soft speech patterns, the slight wry smile, the intense, unblinking eyes. Even without the whole brain-eating element, he was the stuff of nightmares.
