Curiosity

Don DeLillo chills his audience with his piece "Videotape". He depicts the series of events that start out with a small child innocently recording a man in his car and end with the man being shot in the head by a serial killer, also caught on camera by the small child. As Don narrates these events he also adds in his own analysis of the human obsession with suspense and oblivion. 

Humans keep watching footage and wait for something to happen that they weren't expecting. We chase the unknown when we know it can't harm us. However when we are encountered by the very same thing we chase after, we claim to fear the unknown. 

I suppose this is why reality TV, however ridiculous, seems to enrapture their viewers. Since we know that the footage is raw, it's real, it's what happens on a daily basis but thrown in with surprises that neither the viewed or the viewers are aware of. We see the first hand reaction of someone else's first hand reaction and are appalled with the fact that whatever happened was not staged or scripted, it was real and it was caught on camera. 

There is a certain thrill that we get from experiencing the unthinkable and dangerous, experience the smell but not the taste, the heat but not the flames, the deadly but not death. 

As DeLillo ends his piece; "the horror freezes your soul but this doesn't mean that you want them to stop"