You are here:

The Great Fear

Name: The Great Fear
Director: Dušan Vukotić
Released: 1958
Duration: 7 min

Representation Score

1.8/10

Minimal

1958

Director

Dušan Vukotić

Runtime

7 minutes

Average Rating

No ratings yet

New Showbiz Analysis

Dušan Vukotić’s work prioritizes modernist, surrealist abstraction over social representation. Using non-humanoid designs, the film avoids mid-century racial stereotypes or rigid gender roles but strips away specific identities. The film excels as a psychological study, exploring mental health through sensory distortion and irrational fear. However, these themes are used to drive a horror narrative rather than advocate for progressive social visibility. Ultimately, the film is a study of universal human vulnerability. It lacks intentional demographic inclusion, resulting in a low score for multi-layered or social advocacy.

Watch this, not that →

Category Breakdown

Does The Great Fear have LGBTQ+ representation?

Minimal

The film uses stylized, abstract character designs that don't show sexual orientation. There is no critique of the idea that everyone is straight or cisgender.

How does The Great Fear portray gender?

Minimal

Non-humanoid characters prevent the reinforcement or subversion of traditional gender hierarchies. The narrative focuses on universal psychological triggers rather than gendered social roles.

How racially and ethnically diverse is The Great Fear?

Minimal

Surrealist animation removes characters from specific racial or ethnic categories. While this avoids racial stereotypes, it lacks active, characters who reflect more than one aspect of diversity.

How does The Great Fear represent religion and culture?

Fair

The film focuses on the fragility of the human psyche rather than political messaging. It studies mass hysteria through a modernist lens.

Does The Great Fear include disability representation?

Limited

The protagonist experiences heightened anxiety and sensory distortion, showing psychological distress. However, this is framed through horror rather than lived experience or control.

Present on Screen

Avoids traditional racial stereotypes through abstract, surrealist animation styles.
Focuses on psychological relativism and the fragility of perception, subverting mid-century moralistic storytelling.
Explores mental health and neuro-psychological vulnerability through the protagonist's anxiety.

Limited or Absent

Lacks intentional demographic inclusion, resulting in a lack of characters who reflect more than one aspect of diversity.
Doesn't depict specific gender identities or non-cisgender sexual orientations due to abstract character design.
Frames psychological distress through horror rather than exploring lived experience or control.

Official Synopsis

A man reads a horror novel late at night. His imagination runs away with him; he thinks some dripping beverage is blood, is frightened by his own bear-skin rug, and faints when he sees a shadow of himself in a noose-like tangle of his phone cord. The ambulance arrives and finds the most threatening thing is a kitten in a sock and a shelf of horror novels. They cart off the novels and leave the man.

How are these scores produced? →