In episode 4, it the narrator starts off by playing a clip of her conversation with Dr. Strand during one of their meetings. During said clip, it can be perceived that someone says “He’s not who you think”. As she presents this message to Dr. Strand, he quickly dismisses this idea and reasons that we hear what we want to hear. Instead, he points out that it could have been one of the kids sitting next to them that day who accidentally hit record on her phone. In any case, by introducing the podcast in this fashion, it helps engage the listeners and creates suspense throughout the rest of the episode as they delve into this mysterious clip’s true meaning and origin.
In the next scene, the narrator and Dr. Strand watch a video in which a 23-year-old woman named, Fiona, suddenly faints and dies due to a heart attack, which is unusual for her young age, after a woman in a black-hooded outfit walks by her. This leads Dr. Strand to explain the origin story of the Festival of the Upside Down Face which is essentially based on the Sarah Benning’s murder of Catherine Williams. However, this wasn’t just a normal murder. Not only was her throat slit open, but her face was also cut off and then stitched back on upside down. The retelling of this story, with sharp, almost piercing, and eerie music in the background, made me physically cringe at this image.
As Dr. Strand and the narrator decide to go to the festival, more information is revealed regarding the death of Fiona, and it is supposed that her sister knows more about it. In this way, suspense is created through the narrator’s own curiosity and uncertainty regarding Fiona’s death who supposedly died of a heart attack. Even though the narrator wishes to talk to Fiona’s sister, Dr. Strand immediately explains how the conversation can only end up two ways: the first being that her sister wants attention and, therefore, will try to claim that the ghost of Catherine Williams was associated with Fiona’s death, or she’ll simply explain that her sister died due to a heart attack.
The dichotomy between the narrator’s curiosity and openness to supernatural ideas and Dr. Strands logical and deductive reasoning creates an element to the podcast that enables the listeners to resonate with either side. Those who firmly do not believe in ghosts are able to side with Strand and those who do are able to support the narrator. By having characters that hold up beliefs on opposite sides of the spectrum, the podcast is able to develop a growing argument throughout the different stories that is able to gain backing for both positions. In this way, the structure of the podcast is able to entice a wide-variety of different listeners and maintain its identity.
The narrator decides to talk to Fiona’s sister to find out some interesting details regarding her grandmother’s past. It is revealed that her grandmother was involved in the taunting of Sarah Benning that caused her to eventually murder Catherine and that her grandmother, one day, supposedly saw Catherine and her upside-down face in her garden. However, it wasn’t the ghost of Catherine that was standing there, but instead, it was Sarah Benning herself wearing Catherin’s face upside down. As more information is revealed regarding this mysterious ghost figure, the podcast implements more suspense by adding a plot twist to the story. The suspense keeps the listeners on its toes and is heightened as we follow the narrator who knows as much as we do about the whole mystery. By viewing the different Black Tapes through the lenses of the narrator, the audience is able to get a fresh perspective as she uncovers the stories as if the listeners were investigating them with her. This is similar to how the readers feel when they read the Sherlock Holme’s stories and follow the perspective of Watson, who generally doesn’t know what is happening.
At the end of the episode, the podcast returns back to the discussion of Dr. Strand’s true identity and character. The narrator brings up his past relationship with his missing and presumed to be dead wife and ends up calling the wife’s parents. During their conversation, the parents are obviously upset her death and even believe that she could be alive and that Dr. Strand was involved in her disappearance. By analyzing Dr. Strand’s character in several episodes, the podcast is able to tie together episodes and put together different facets about him to construct a clearer representation of his true identity while also creating suspense. Furthermore, by ending the episode inconclusively and adding extra information regarding the disappearance of Strand’s wife, the podcast ends on a cliffhanger, causing the listeners to want to see what happens next.
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Hi Josh,
I really enjoyed reading your podcast blog. Since this is the first time I am reading your post, I wish you included a brief summary of what the whole podcast is about followed with a recap of the previous episode. That would help ease me as well as other readers stumbling upon your post into your summary and analysis of it. However all is good because I went back to read your others to familiarize myself. I like how your narrative introduced the episode in this fashion. It seems to really captivate the listener from the start, something I with my narrator did in her episodes. In contrast, by narrator began each episode with a recap of the last along with basic details about Holmes and the story, which I must admit, did get a little boring and repetitive. Her hook was usually placed at the end of the previous episode to act like sort of a cliff hanger, rather than starting off each episode with something juicy. I also like how your broke down each “scene” or part of the podcast into different pieces and analyzed it that way. It made reading it a lot easier since I was able to match up your analysis with what you were analyzing right above it. Yet you also maintain a chronological order of ideas presented in the podcast which made following the events make much more sense. I really liked your analysis of the dichotomy between the narrator and Dr. Strand. It really did encompass all types of listeners which makes it something for everyone to listen and able to relate to. I think it was a strong and smart podcasting element to use by the narrator to purposely propose his insight and opinions so readers can relate to him if they didn’t quite resonate with Dr. Strand.
Overall, I thought you provided a well constructed analysis regarding the different techniques and elements of the podcast that helped link the episodes together in a way that produced a consistent identity.
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