pondering the creepiness of severed doll heads

Last night, I was bopping around online (as I have a tendency to do) and came across a couple of pictures of severed doll heads. I thought, damn those are scary. And then I started to ask myself why a severed doll head is often perceived as a creepy object. It's just a hunk of plastic, after all. Why does it become disturbing just because it was disjoined from the other parts of the doll?

I came up with some plausible theories.



1. Resemblence to an mutilated self? Do we see ourselves in that severed doll head?

2. Symbolic of lost innocence? Dolls associated with childhood associated with an infinitely less complicated way of life before stress, before romantic relationships and such.

3. Loss of security? Another childhood thing. Some children take comfort in toys. That's why firemen supposedly give out teddy bears, right?



4. Or maybe it looks a little too much like a deceased child? We probably should be disturbed by the image of a young member of our species who suffered such a grave trauma, even if it wasn't real. If we have survived this long, we must be hard wired to regard this image as unsettling.



hmmm...perhaps I spend too much time thinking about strange things.

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