Interview with a Friend on the Uncanny and Doppelgängers

For this blog post I thought it would be interesting and fun to interview my best friend Averie Palmer and get an insight on her experiences and thoughts on doppelgängers and doubles as a young woman. Our conversation went as follows:

What was your first experience with the doppelgänger? 

“I think Coraline must have been my first experience seeing or understanding what a doppelgänger is.” (referring to the other mother and father/other world in Coraline)

And what were your initial feelings about doppelgängers or doubles? 

“I thought they were cool at first because it’s a new concept, but then it turned scary to me because I realized they don’t have the same thoughts or feelings [as their original]... they are from a different reality so it’s a different person.”

Averie then inserted some of her own thoughts about doppelgängers into the conversation saying, “doppelgängers are inevitable though because there are seven billion people in the world there has to be people who look exactly alike.” 

I then explained Freud’s ideas of what the uncanny is, how it’s something familiar becoming unfamiliar and giving you an uncomfortable feeling - feeling like something is off. I then asked the following questions:

What do you think about doppelgängers in relation to the uncanny?

“I definitely think doppelgängers can cause those feelings.”

What makes you personally feel uncanny feelings?

“I would say mostly in movies. Like in The Polar Express the children almost look too real even though you know they’re animated and it gives you a weird feeling. I also think certain images can cause these types of feelings like the ones circling the internet of a bunch of common objects jumbled together and you try to figure out what they are but ultimately fail… that feels familiar and unfamiliar.” 

Being a big fan of the Twilight series, I followed with these questions:

What about vampires? Do you think they cause these feelings? - specifically ones in Twilight like Edward?

“I don’t think Edward is uncanny. Maybe because of his paleness we get a sense that he’s dead so it’s like you already know something is off. And in the movies we don’t know he’s dead for a while so we think just that - that something is off.”

Did your feelings about him change when you figured out he was undead?

“Honestly no, my feelings didn’t change. I didn’t have a problem with it.”

-End of interview-

I think it was really interesting to learn the effects of doppelgängers and the uncanny on a normal person’s life. It’s really eye-opening to learn what Averie thought was uncanny and produced disturbing feelings and what did not.