Summary on Scaredycat

Scaredycat Summary

The film, Scaredycat, written by Andy Blubaugh, is a short movie about a traumatic experience Blubaugh underwent and how it has changed him. The film starts off with Andy Blubaugh walking through his apartment talking about how he is a worrier. During this time Blubaugh also shows the curious little things that he does, such as straightening a picture frame, walking a certain way across bricks, fixing papers that are too close to the edges of the tables and most dramatically, getting off the bus when a black man sits across from him. He states that he does all these little acts because they are self soothing actions that help him feel like he is in control of his world and is able to deal with his fears. Deputy District Attorney Kirsten Snowden, the one who prosecuted this traumatic experience of Any Blubaugh, and explains that this experience is relatively senseless, and that the attackers had  no motivation for attacking people. The film then brings up the call between Blubaugh and the 9-1-1 operator after Andy has been beaten and robbed at night in the middle of a metal bridge by several people. While this conversation is rolling in a voice over, the screen shows an animation of Blubaugh riding his bike across a metal bridge and getting beaten a robbed by 5 thugs. Jane Hawkin, a Clinical Psychologists who focuses on memory, gender and interpersonal violence, studied Andy Blubaugh’s response to his traumatic experience and says he does these quirks in order to maintain control. If that means he comes across a black man and if he isn’t feeling safe he can just leave and avoid any potential situation. From this he uses his excuse of “I got beat up” to be racist. From his experience Andy realizes this attitude, and that he has overgeneralized the situation into thinking it was a group of all black people who beat him up, but it was actually two whites, one hispanic and two black people. The film then shows a reenactment of a letter being written on a computer by Andy Blubaugh to one of the thugs in jail. Blubaugh then calls one of the thugs and tells him about the movie and wants to know how the thugs are and the motives behind the beating. The thug says felt nothing while he was doing it and that he is the one who went through through his pockets, and also that Andy was chosen to be jumped all because he was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Scaredycat then goes on to talk about the sentences each of the criminals received and the impossibility they have a reduced time for good behavior. Blubaugh ends of his documentary by stating that he does all these things to try and eliminate fear but that fear is always going to be around and we that should all be more accepting of fear.