It Seems So Anti-Climatic: Revisiting Cryodome

It's been a year since I first presented the Cryodome theory in this blog.  While it hasn't gone exactly viral, it has been my most read post since starting Pretty Vacant Thoughts four years ago, and the trope was well-received in venues such as San Diego's Comic-Con.

The idea that if two beautiful women characters exist in a genre setting, one must undergo a transformation where the other barely escapes the same fate is not new. My previous post included examples from various television shows and movies as well as my Pretty Vacant comic.

Dopey aliens create a zombie-like duplicate of a pretty scientist while keeping the original imprisoned in The Human Dulicators! 

Whereas I was inclined originally to just update last year’s post with new examples (1944’s Voodoo Man, 1965’s Human Duplicators, TV’s “Super Force” 1991’s episode Yo! Super Force! and many examples from acclaimed (and derided) comics writer Chris Claremont), I decided to take a different approach. I would like to ask if the trope is still viable today.

One might have imagined that in the age of gender equality the Cryodome theory might have faded into the background of popular art, yet I don’t see that to be the case. With impeccable timing, two series debuted recently on television which utilizes this technique: Fox’s “The Following” and BBC1’s “Ripper Street”. I did enjoy the complicated manners of killing women devised for both shows, but I’m unsure about the originality.

I understand that terror’s been around since biblical times (anyone for a flood or a Sodom and Gommorah?) and that great art has made around murder (M, Pulp Fiction), but Hollywood has a way of milking an idea to the point that leaves viewers jaded to the point of losing the enjoyment of the work itself. Too much of the same shared fantasies could be almost as bad as too little sharing.  People can sense when the work done is cynical or if there is a sense of fun and/or enthusiasm behind it.

I don’t believe that watching murder on the screen or reading it in a book comic or prose is a sign of the apocalypse. Sixty years ago horror comics were once seen as a danger to civilization, but civilization’s still functioning when last seen! Now I see movie producers scouring the independent comics section at comic conventions searching for new ideas with the ongoing joke that the section is Hollywood’s Research and Development department.

Yes, a good way to build immediate suspense is to start a story by placing a beautiful lady in peril, and there is a lot of glamourized killing these days, but it’s refreshing when one can use the Cryodome technique without it resulting in death. It is hard work trying to keep a pretty if secondary female character alive, but it can be done. I did it with my Mindy character in Pretty Vacant by making the plastination process reversible in order to have her available for different poses. That’s only one instance, but the other examples given earlier in this post? All of the disposable female characters lived!

A mad scientist gets a taste of his own freezing medicine given to freeze fine ladies inside his hall of beauty on "Super Force".

Where I maintain that making a mannequin out of a pretty lady isn’t original, there is always originality in how it’s presented.  That’s where the best stories are these days.  It’s not just about using tropes and storytelling techniques.  It’s how to use them in fresh and surprising ways!