The horror movie Chucky probably changed how you looked at dolls for the rest of your life. Horror film watchers may find dolls creepy, but most people do not worry that they will harm them. Some people, however, have an intense and irrational fear of dolls. Many traumatic events can trigger this fear, called pediophobia, such as popular culture, horror movies, or other events related to dolls.
Megan, the highly infamous evil robot doll from the recently released movie M3GAN, will be famous in 2022. There’s also Billy the puppet from the “Saw” franchise and Slappy the dummy from “Goosebumps.”
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The relationship between humans and dolls is tricky, complicated, and worth mining for content. As part of our spooky season series, we asked experts why dolls scared us.
Pediophobia Is The Fear Of Dolls
Pediophobia is the fear of dolls. People who have pediophobia anxiety dolls intensely. Seeing a commercial for the new Chucky show or an old porcelain doll may trigger nausea and lightheadedness. Some people have a mild phobia of dolls, but it’s enough to avoid watching a killer doll movie or looking too closely at a cabinet of porcelain figures.
Uncanny Valley: Life-Like Dolls
The creepy quotient of dolls might also have something to do with what’s called “the uncanny valley.”
Masahiro Mori coined the phrase in the 1970s when human-looking robots started looking too much like humans. Mori used the term to describe the uncomfortable feeling people experience when human-looking robots appear too human.
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What Makes Dolls So Popular?
The Smithsonian published a fascinating article on pediophobia in 2015 about visiting Pollock’s Toy Museum’s room full of porcelain dolls. It is also symbolic of innocence to collect porcelain dolls, at least the kind your grandmother collected. The fascination adults have with creepy and killer dolls in horror movies could be related to our relationship with children, says Kupferman. Despite knowing beauties are lifeless, we still feel uncertain about them, creating tension that horror film creators like Leonetti love.