Wilhelm Screams (and the frenzied permanence of creativity) · 1:53am Jun 5th, 2020
As usual, we consider our scattered thoughts overall incomprehensible and impossible to navigate. We put them on the internet anyway because we have nothing better to do.
If you're familiar with the Wilhelm Scream, please comment instantly with your feelings towards it.
If you're not, you can check the Wikipedia article, or have our compressed explanation: at some point in an old movie, someone needed a scream sound, so they recorded a silly take of a yell/scream and used it for a scene of a guy falling off a horse when he got shot. From that point forward, whenever a movie needed a 'guy screaming' sound effect, they had the option to either record an entirely new sound effect, or use the existing template of the Wilhelm Scream. As time goes forward, you find it popping up in all sorts of places, and spotting it becomes something of a meta-game or medium-dependent engagement with film. Some people hate it because hearing a sound effect that's over fifty years old and has been used to death yanks them out of the experience of immersing in a narrative. Other folks consider it a sort of 'film-buff easter egg', something a keen ear can spot even if it's well hidden, and can be appreciated in all its reappropriated contexts—sort of like The Lick in jazz. There's no correct opinion here, as with most things.
What's peculiar is that, while we find ourselves staunchly in the camp of folk who enjoy the scream and don't feel it negatively impacts their viewing experience, this same philosophy in us is inverted when applied to other disciplines. 'The Lick' is funny, but not Wilhelm Scream funny. And the closer the cliche or meme or trope drifts to home, the stickier and uglier it becomes. The Hero's Journey could, at this point, be considered the Wilhelm Scream of storytelling, but we find it inherently repulsive and are unable to find the switch in ourselves that requires toggling so that we can enjoy it on a meta-cognitive level.
Where this existential stirring eventually lands us is in an only slightly-related pot. That being, if we can appreciate the Wilhelm Scream in its absurd variety and longevity, and we can grow to appreciate other things of this type, like drum fills or old jokes or catch-phrases that reappear through history, then why shouldn't we? Or, maybe more accurately, why can't we? No matter how good the philosophical argument on paper, if you hear that scream and your body shudders you out of the moment of participation in narrative, what are you meant to do to defend yourself?
Lastly, this all becomes part of the same particular puzzle. XKCD is always relevant. The premise that an intense, arbitrary focus on any activity yields sublime dividends seems tested and true. The more we speedrun Super Mario 64, the more hype we get for tiny movements and camera tricks a novice wouldn't notice. The closer we study the instrumentation of our heroes, the more humbled we become holding our stupid bass guitar and plucking one of the dumb strings to make a stupid note. We feel the world in the hands of a babe.
And everything is like this. No matter where we look, no matter where our passions have driven us, it all equals up to this same equation: you must be ready to struggle, again and again and again, and if what you truly want is truly worth wanting, you will know the longing for it more truly than you will ever know the thing itself. You will die at the bottom of the mountain a million times. And then you will get tired of dying, and you will stand up, Arjuna.
If we make the decision, consciously, now or ever, that we would finally consider ourselves worthy to step in the same path as the shadows of the heavens, to play on the same field as giants and consider every melody that leaks from our brain one that must stand against the oldest and most sacred in the world—with that irrevocable, looming standard, how can we ever be worthy to succeed or create or attempt to create again?
We feel this in games, where our decision is either to grind for world record or abandon our favorite thing forever. We feel this in music, where the compositional equivalencies of mathematics discern in hidden ways that we must create in a way what has never been stacked in a pile of dice. We feel it in stories, where they must end and begin, they must have characters or they must not, they will either be read or decay endlessly in our giant pile of paper and blood.
This turned into a bit of a poem at the end. Hopefully you get the point. If not, we'll still probably be here tomorrow.
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Well, if you say so. You're the boss!
It's one of those things that I love to hate. You ever go back and watch movies that had CGI that, while impressive for the time, seems terrible now? I'm not talking "eh that alien that's supposed to look unnatural looks a bit unnatural" but "listen I saw that jet plane explode and the explosion was literally a fucking 2d gif just with good resolution, lmao what is this". The sort that's so terrible and it does break immersion, but in a way that lets me laugh at it and enjoy one of the longest-running jokes in history. That's the Wilhelm scream to me.
5276902
our feelings are v. similar. can you identify a response in yourself that's like this for any other trope or medium? :eyes:
5276908
Oh boy. Well, musically, as you alluded to with THE LICC, I've taken to finding the intervals "ascending minor third, descending minor third, descending major second, ascending perfect fourth" as a sort of double-take whenever I hear them in the right outline. To put it more simply, E-G-E-D-G - the MLP theme. You'd be surprised where you can find that sequence of intervals and just sing "my little pony~" in your head to yourself.
Dunning-Kruger. I'm not talking about what it represents, but just the mere mention of this study and the involved psychologists is almost like a spot on a bingo card in Internet arguments where someone tries to purport that the other one's an idiot. There's better ways to do it, not to mention what they think the Dunning-Kruger study is, is usually ironically demonstrative of what they think it is. In short: they know just a little bit and think they know everything about it.
Memes. Or rather, memes outside of their meme context. I still have trouble hearing certain songs out of meme context and not thinking of a meme. I have a lot of examples, but the most prominent is O Fortuna. It's a lovely piece of music but I can't help but think of all the times it's been shoved into a video where something dramatic is happening.
That's all that comes to mind for me right now. I'm sure you've experienced some of this or at least can see where I'm coming from, right? :P
The season 6 finale has one of the weirdest, or maybe just out of place, instances of a Wilhelm scream, but that also makes it one of the most memorable examples of that scream to my mind.
5276922
the show's definitely used it a few times, we caught it in part two of 'Our Town' as they're cutting away to a crowd-scene. it's only half the scream, and it makes even less sense because there's nopony on screen screaming, but noticing it gave us a moment of joy we'd be unable to have without it existing
5276921
really good answers, hitting at the root of what we're trying to get to:
there are ideas, and then there are memetic qualia and/or 'thought-shapes'. is it the case that those inbetween ideas will eventually fall away like chaff, and we'll be able to communicate entirely in memetic qualia? that seems like it would make the inherent immediacy and emotional impact of communication more effective. no idea what it would look like all.
also wonder if you've ever encountered this in human interactions. like, if you've been a customer service rep, or seen one, and know the 'Karen' encounter, do you watch them and go "oh, here's the start of the diatribe... they're gonna drop 'rights' at some point, because they don't understand them... yep, probably gonna threaten to call the police... yep, there that goes as well...". Like something you've seen a thousand or a million times before playing itself out in slow motion. And instead of responding like a human being whose inside the simulation, you pull your brain out the back of your head and go "uh, hey, you're aware you're being a cliche right now, right? if you don't break away and choose to exert free-will, you're going to repeat the loop again. and again. and again."
?
5276943
I don't see the chaff falling away. If it had, we'd be speaking like the stereotypical Caveman English - "me throw rock. Rock hit bug. Bug die." No need for tenses when ideas and context gets it all across, right? Well, not quite. There is still use for "is" and "the" and conjugations. I don't know what it is objectively, but subjectively, it seems we like having those little extra words, even if we do smash them together. "I'm going to go to the store" does become "Immuh gunnuh guh tuh the store" after all. But nobody says "I go store" (unless they're texting and in a hurry).
Fortunate enough to have not worked in customer service yet. But yeah social interaction does have a flowchart. Say hi, ask how they're doing, etc, maybe a cool thing or two happens, "okay so here's why I really talked to you". I do sometimes just jump right to it, but that takes more mental strength than just following the chart.
One of the greatest screams to have ever been screamed.
You will never change my mind on this.
I invariably hate the use of it in any case I come across. But it's been awhile since I had to hear it.
I believe the Wilhelm scream is an inorganic sound effect to use (because it is in everything). It is relatively cancerous, but it is always amusing to hear when it pops up.
Love it, and trying to find it in media is fun. Sometimes it's the third time through that I consciously hear it, and then I'm gladdened to know that tropes are so cherished as to be used, no matter how old they are.