This week we will be learning about monster theory. For the journal, look for something related to monsters, or the theory we are talking about. It can be a Halloween post, or it could be related to a movie, book, show, etc. Get creative. Whatever text you choose, try to connect it to our monster theory. How is it connected? What reminded you of the theory?
Requirements are still the same. About 250 words, summary and response to the article/tweet/post/news/etc; aka text.
Comment below with a link to the text and your summary and response.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/is-america/201611/monsters
This article deals with some partial and general psychology of why we, as humans, visualize monsters in our head. The author has a PhD in psychology and emphasizes why we think of monsters the way that we do. It delves into the realm of how we often paint pictures of what we dread seeing. Monsters today are often pretty generalized, and is a representation of what a lot of humans fear. We and a lot of other people look at monsters and creatures in horror films and often think that it is scary. It is because it is very foreign to us, the author states. Our knowledge in the fictional genre of horror is what makes us fear the imaginative things we see and the monsters we create in our heads. The author believes that spirits are real though.
I chose this article because I want to know the thought process behind how we create these scary looking beings in our head. Altscheuler claims that our culture and the generalized industrialization influences our picture behind the monsters. The supernatural mind is separate from the conscious and unconscious mind. I also chose this article because the time period also influences the type of monsters we have. Since it’s 2020, the new terminator can be considered a nano-mite monster and Dracula can be considered a very old and formal monster in the 1900’s. King Kong can be considered a monster from the realm of nature.
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https://screenrant.com/it-movie-pennywise-clown-origin-explained/2/
This article discusses the IT clown Pennywise. It talks about the origin of the monster, and its powers in shapeshifting. IT is not a clown, but likes to manifest itself in that form. IT believes that clowns scare children the most, so by scaring the children can eat them. Pennywise’s real name is Bob Gray. It also influences the adults by making them passively ignore the children’s disappearances. There are hundreds of missing children, but the parents don’t care and keep posting missing posters.
Pennywise is a shapeshifter, and in both the books and movies can become different based on what the person fears the most. Pennywise took on the shape of a homeless man when he was chasing Eddie, and the terrifying woman in the painting. Pennywise can also control what people see, one example is that he prevented Beverly’s dad from seeing the blood in the bathroom where Beverly had been murdered.
However, IT loses all these powers when people overcome their fear. After the amount of physical damage pennywise took from all the Losers combined, IT was forced to go back to sleep.
I chose this article based on what we were talking about in class. We were naming different monsters and trying to brainstorm which to research on. I still have not decided the monster I would like to write about, so I chose Pennywise the clown to learn about.
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https://www.buffalo.edu/ubreporter/archive/2011_10_27/monster_culture.html
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https://www.buffalo.edu/ubreporter/archive/2011_10_27/monster_culture.html
Why we Create Monsters written by Patricia Donovan is an article I found off Buffalo State University’s website. Donovan explains that we cope with what we are afraid of most in life, by creating monsters that scare us. The author mentions many UB faculty members that research and specialize in what certain cultures find scary. John Edgar Browning, PHD for example has written several books on vampires specializing in Dracula and did extensive field work in New Orleans. While some of the other faculty members study a variety of things including spirits, witches, spirit possession, voodoo, satanism, and sorcery. The writer’s theory on monsters is that they are a way for us to understand our own modern fears and their monstrous offspring, and new ways to think about broad questions of political history and relate them to the modern age.
This article was related to our class on Monday since its focus was on monsters & vampires. We had watched the short video on how Dracula came to existence, and Browning (one of the faculty members at UB) is someone who specializes in Dracula. I’ve never really thought about why monsters exist prior to this class, so I’m very interested in writing a paper on a monster. It does make sense that we develop monsters out of certain fears in order to cope with those feelings. Monsters can range in so many different varieties, and the hard part will be having to pick just one to write about.
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Rebecca Ramos
In class, we discussed the 7 different monster cultures. We discussed fantasied monsters and real life monsters such as murders, serial killers, and more. The article I chose was “The Morningside Review: Monster culture in Post 9/11 America.” The article states, “Terrorist exists solely in the minds of Americans; while the threat of terrorism is certainly a reality, our fears and imaginations, fueled by media sensationalism and presidential rhetoric, have transformed the human terrorist (specifically that of militant Islam) into the superhuman…” The article references Jeffery Cohen’s seven theories of monster culture created by cultures and societies.
Reading the article the first theory that stood out to me was the second monster theory “the monster always escapes.”
Throughout history we have had extreme pivotal moments in history altering our future such as 9/11. I. In our past history we have experienced great turmoil from people such as Hitler, Stalin, and many others effecting our culture. The 9/11 reference trade in the article shows how evil, or monsters always come back in a different shape of form. They somehow always come back but never exactly as it was before.
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i chose the article “Chupacabra: facts about the mysterious vampire beast” written by Benjamin Radford on October 16, 2012. this article elaborates the origins of the Chupacaba and gives its origin which can be traced back to a puertican woman named Madylne Tolentino. she had been watching a scary movie at that time and related a manged coyote to the monster in the movie “species” she admitted to watching the movie and seeing an unprecedented resemblance to her monster in real life. this animal/ alien like creature was known to drain the blood of goats, chickens, birds, dogs and any animal it could get its fangs on. although the mystery of the Chupacabra has been solved the fear it has instilled still lasts throughout time.
in choosing this article i can relate it to the thesis 5 on monster theory the monster does police the borders of the possible. a fear induced person can influence hundreds of people if they are persuasive. the woman making a simple claim that she had seen a monster allowed for others to exaggerate her lie and create a mass hysteria. in doing so it caused people to maintain their property in a more efficient manner as well as maintain their live stock. whether this was an act of fear or a way to control the surrounding areas the woman was very effective in implementing her fears onto those in her community and allowed it to spread rapidly. although the myth has been solved many still fear the chupacabra, its legend will never die in the hearts of those who still believe.
https://www.livescience.com/24036-chupacabra-facts.html
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https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.salon.com/2011/12/03/the_evolution_of_monsters/amp
In an article that I found for this weeks journal was an article about why we created monsters in the first place. Monsters fill the mythic landscape. The article talks about what makes us want to create the monsters the way they are? Evil, animal form, alien, morphing from human to animal, etc. For example the dragon was used as a monster and evil whereas but with time people began to see the dragon in other ways rather than just evil creatures. Monsters were created to be the cause for typhoons, hurricanes, eruptions, etc. The monster was created to give fear a face. Others also believed some monsters were created to reflect on certain animals that were believed to have been extinct but somehow were able to survive in remote areas of the world. It was also believed that dinosaur fossils found by people were also a reason for people to start creating ginormous flesh eating monsters. Some monsters were believed to be what was inside a person, people made monsters out of their own personalities, alter egos, or perceptions people had of others.
I believe this article is extremely helpful on helping us see how monsters are created. And it really is true! People make monsters out of dreams they have or how they portray a person. Monsters are putting a face on fear, sometimes even our own fears that terrify us. Everyone has their own thought of a monster and what makes it a monster. Sometimes we may even see a monster inside ourselves and we can manage to create our very own monster. Monsters keep us on edge and though fear is spine chilling and nerve wrecking there also seems to be something intriguing about fear and we want to put a face on it.
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https://www.scaryforkids.com/el-cucuy/
El Cucuy is a scary Mexican urban legend about a creature who kidnaps children who don’t behave themselves. He is the Mexican Boogeyman. According to Mexican folklore, El Cucuy is small hideous, hairy creature with glowing red eyes.
Another name The Cucuy is Coco is a mythical ghost-monster, found in many hispanophone and Lusophone countries. It can also be considered an Iberian version of a bugbear, as it is a commonly used figure of speech representing an irrational or exaggerated fear.
The Legend says it that once upon a time a father was really angry at his kids for misbehaving. As a matter of punishment, he decided to lock his kids in his closet to learn their lesson. After a while, he decided to go to town and run some errands but he forgot to take his kids out of the closet. When he came back from the town he saw his barn and his house caught on fire which killed the kids and the father was cursed. In disbelief, he decided to look for his kids in many closets. It has been years from look for his kids and started growing an appetite for them. Now he hunts kids and hides in closets at night waiting for the right moment to pounce. The only way to kill the El Cucuy is to get a iron blade and pierce its brain with it.
I think this relates to our lesson because he is a monster, growing up I remember my parents would tell me that El Cucuy is coming to get you because your acting up. I don’t think parents should frightened there kids with this monster its not realistic for them to be afraid.
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For this week’s journal response I chose to write about a docu-series that I saw on Netflix. This docu-series was titled Myths & Monsters and the episode that I am specifically referring to is episode 2 entitled “The Wild Unknown”. Within the second episode of talks about how before this could be explained through modern science has people tried to explain things with Fantastical reasoning giving birth to God, fairies, and monsters. One of the stories that this episode discusses is one from Greek mythology about Actaeon. “To the Greeks the Wilderness was a frightening place, where the laws of society held no sway. It belonged instead to the Divine, to the Monstrous, to the mad… it was everything a city was not.” The Greeks at this time want you to remain in their cities and feared what could happen if someone would wander beyond the saftey of what is known. Actaeon wandered too far into the forest during a hunt with his dogs and intruded on the goddess Artemis bathing and she was angered and turned Actaeon into a stag and his own dogs hunted him down and killed him.
The way that the story correlates to our classes with the monster theory that was discussed. The first piece of states that a certain monster is born in a certain place, time, and feeling. This is to say that monsters are created with the feelings and concerns of the societies and people of the time. They came from. The Greeks were afraid of and didn’t understand the Wilderness that surrounded their cities so they created Tales of monsters and angry gods and goddesses to explain why people shouldn’t venture too far outside of the cities. Actaeon’s tale specifically tells of how people could have been punished by the divine powers that are in the unknown wilderness.
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This article dives into the moment Infamous killer Jeffery Dahmer was arrested in his house to later police discovery more horrible acts. This took place in Wisconsin when police saw a boy running from Dahmers apartment saying he was gonna kill him. Yet when policed asking Jeffery what had happened at the apartment they spotted polaroid pictures of dismembered bodies. Then once searchers searched the full house they found evidence of heads in the refrigerator to a barrels containing body parts melting in acid. This shows a time in our history at it markets moments that shows the capture of a man who took many souls and is finally caught.
Many people think a monster at face value is supposed to be scary and thats not always the case any one can be a monster. From the outside Jeffery looks like just an ordinary person like you and me yet the actions he’s committed is truly horrible. Which is why we can just perceive monsters at face value every thing from books, movies and in real life has it own different monster. Just as we discussed in class the culture and problems occurring at the time could effect how it is seen.
https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/cannibal-and-serial-killer-jeffrey-dahmer-is-caught
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Who is this creature that has an insane love for the dead? why non other then Rob Zombie . Frontman of the industrial metal group White Zombie turned soloist, Robert Bartleh Cummings , famously known as Rob Zombie is known for more than just his spooky music about the undead, heavy metal’s king of horror and Charles Manson fan also directed three movies. It began with 2003’s cult classic House of 1000 Corpses followed by it’s sequel , the Devil’s Rejects in 2005. Zombie grew up in Haverhill,Ma just 20 miles from Salem , home of the witch trials. His monster obsession began with tv and watching movies such as “King Kong” where creatures were provoked to attack and felt he could relate to that.When asked in an interview by David Everley, Jan 17,2019 Metal Hammer newsletter,what actually scares him Zombie stated that he does nothing in term of been scared , what scares him is that people are becoming so easily manipulated by bullshit , the new thing where someone can say something that makes no sense but because they said it it has validity .That is something i personally can agree with.
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video by Rob Zombie for above post titled “Living Dead Girl”
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