Reading log #4

Pretty little liars tv show episode – episode 1

Pretty little liars carries the theme of fear throughout the episode, with the initial scene being the disappearance of Alison right before the eyes of her four friends – Aria, Spencer, Hannah, and Emily. The theme music and opening intro hold a dull tone with notes of higher-pitched beats, this adds the sense of fear for the watchers that correlates with the missing person theme, the simple fact that somebody is lost draws out your sense of fear that lingers within your body, everyone has the characteristic of fear buts its not often Brought out. The episode carries on to explain the lives of the four girls a year later without Alison in it, they grow apart and develop completely different lives, fear of the mystery remains constant. The girls individually begin to receive messages in many forms from an unknown person, they identify themselves as A, these messages all propose threats and information about them. The fear of this is brought from the unknown, A has information on them that no one else knows, where does A get it? One of the messages received says ” poor spencer, always wanting Mellisa’s property, but remember if you kiss i tell” because this happened in the comfort of her own closed home, how would A know? this is where spencers fear begins. Questions arise from each of the girls and they wonder if they have stalkers. Fear can be a simple or complex thing, both are shown in Pretty Little Liars, through the fact that their best friend went missing with questions not yet answered, and that someone unknown to them is getting into their heads. Alisons body is found buried in her backyrad, but the texts still carry on, A seems like they will remain anymous forever.

My initial reaction to the episode was also fear, but a different version, you know when you were younger and you would watch a scary movie before bed, then have nightmares? – that is the kind of fear I held, the fact that someone had control over her emotions and had inside knowledge of her life, do the people we think are our close friends betray us? most movies show the missing person coming back into their lives fairly quickly, however after a year eyebrows start to be raised. Each girl’s lives are complex enough but the added mysterious person pushes it over, sympathy comes over me watching this but also the drive of curiosity, this is one of the reasons you want to keep watching. I started to think about the episode, that’s when I started to think that maybe fear came also in the context of trust, the fact that you never know who someone really is, whether they are close to you or not. This is where the quote “My enemies are everywhere. And sometimes, those we least suspect turn out to be our biggest threats.”  fits in, we really can only trust ourselves, the fear of others is a real thing.

Everyone in the world holds a fear, whether its a missing person or not. Fear is often dormant until an event happens that triggers it, no-one can control when its going to happen or stop it. According to an article written by BBC 300,000 people go missing in the world yearly, this creates a relation with pretty little liars as its theme is based on Alison, the girl who went missing. Family is a huge value in the eyes of many in our society, often we don’t realise how much we appreciate someone until they are gone, then the fear of loosing someone comes into your mind. Alison’s four friends lost her and the fear of them being next suddenly was a possibility – this is where they started to value each other and realise that even though Alison wasn’t always nice to them, she was always there for them.