Quick Write
Come up with a list of monster you might be interested in researching. What movie monsters come to mind? What local or regional monsters are there? What are some less heard of monsters you may know?
Monster List
Monsters are all around us. In the movies we watch, the books we write, and in every aspect of life. Monsters are fear inducing. But monsters are also cuddly like Sully, Cookie Monster, and The Count on Sesame Street.
Monsters have always been symbolic creatures, generally representing darkness and evil. The villain for the hero to vanquish.
The Latin word monstrum refers to both a monster and a sign that something momentous or calamitous is likely to happen.
In small groups, come up with a monster list of monsters to help our understanding. Do they fit into categories? What commonalities and differences can you see?
“What I will propose here by way of a first foray, as entrance into this book of monstrous content, is a sketch of a new modus legendi: a method of reading cultures from the monsters they engender” (Cohen 3).
The theses are tools for us to use to analyze monster, in the cultural studies sense. The monsters the cultures produce say a lot about that culture. We create monsters that evolve over time, sometimes purposely for whatever reason.
Monster Culture (Seven Theses)
Our purpose for today is to understand the seven theses on Monsters and Monstrosity and to develop a good resources that will help us to remember and use the theses in our writing.
Jeffrey Jerome Cohen – Monster Culture (Seven Theses) (p. 3-20)
Monster Theory
- Thesis I. The Monster’s Body Is a Cultural Body (4)
- Thesis II. The Monster Always Escapes (4)
- Thesis III. The Monster Is the Harbinger of Category Crisis (6)
- Thesis IV. The Monster Dwells at the Gates of Difference (7)
- Thesis V. The Monster Polices the Borders of the Possible (12)
- Thesis VI. Fear of the Monster Is Really a Kind of Desire (16)
- Thesis VII. The Monster Stands at the Threshold . . . of Becoming (20)
In groups, develop a list of the important points, lessons, takeaways, and examples that we need to understand in order to understand the thesis. Write a short summary explaining the points of the thesis. Make sure you label which thesis you are writing about. This is very important because we will be using monster theory to write the last two essays in the course. The better we understand the theory, the better we will be able to apply it.
Monster Thesis 1: The Monster’s Body is a Cultural Body
Each culture will produce their own monsters and their own versions of monsters. “The monstrous body is pure culture” (4).
cucuy
succubus
freddy krueger
grim reaper
demogordon
black lagoon creature
shining
r kelley
shape shifters
little monsters
ted bundy
orcs
oj simpson
aliens
predator
the joker
babadook
jason
water babies
hell raiser
redeads
zombie
devil
frankenstein
dracula
godzilla
skinwalker
pennywise
sleep paralysis
jeepers creepers
death vader
sith
fidel castro
poltergeist
exorcist
demon
cults
ghosts
it follows
voldemort
draco malfoy
corona virus
dragons
manson
serial killers
kraken
la llorona
clowns
chupacabra
werewolves
vampires
chuckie
leprechaun
pet cemetery
parasites
viruses
yeti
big food
chewbacca
lock ness
jaws
sharks
saw
jigsaw
strangers
old people
children
mankind
mass shooter
hitler
stalin
communism
nazis
capitalism
kkk
cyclopes
giants
medusa
children of them corn
robber
plastics
john wayne gacy
btk
postpartum depression
jade the ripper
hannibal letter
pirates
witches
sweeney todd
venom
cartels
lawyers
bill cosby
michael jackson
martians
abusive parents
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Thesis 2: The Monster Always Escapes
-The monster always escapes.
-The monster will always come back literally and culturally. From movie to movie, book to book, it always lives on.
-“ the monster itself turns immaterial and vanishes, to reappear somewhere else”
-“No Monster tastes death but once”.
-The modern events determine the expression of the monster. The monster may live on but culturally be different each time.
-“… the undead returns in slightly different clothing, each time to be read against contemporary social movements or a specific determining event…”
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“We distrust and load the monster at the same time we envy it’s freedom, and perhaps it’s sublime despair.”
Ex. Dracula creeping from a cave
Takeaways: Drawn to monsters for a thrill or the freedom of them to push our boundaries.
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Thesis 6
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Thesis IV.
Quotes: “Any kind of altering can be I described across (constructed through) the monstrous body, but for the most part monstrous difference tends to be cultural, political, racial, economic, sexual”. (Page 7). “The political-cultural monster, the embodiment of radical difference, paradoxically threatens to erase the difference in the world of its creators, to demonstrate the potential for the shaven tone differ from its own difference, in other words not to be different at all, to cease to exist as a system…” (Page 11-12)
Examples: Edwards Scissorhands (movie)
Points- As a society we create a monster out of anything that is different; anything we do not understands. Ignorance=fear.
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Thesis 3:
•Basically a monster is something that does not fit into what humans tend to categorize as normal.
•Monsters are beyond comprehension, making them terrifying
•Monsters change perception and open our mind to insane possibilities
•Distort reality and logic
•Non-binary polymorphism
•”The monstrous is a genus too large to be encapsulated in any conceptual system; the monster’s very existence is a rebuke to boundary and enclosure…”
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thesis 5 the monster polices the borders of the possible
• The monsters stands as a warning against exploration of its uncertain demesnes
• Anxieties that monsterized their subjects in the first place and to enact syntactically an even deeper fear.
• The monster of prohibition exists to demarcrate the bonds that hold together that system of relations we call culture, to call horrid attention to the borders that cannot- must not- be crossed.
• The monster most often arises to enforce the laws of exogamy against incest and against interracial sexual mingling.
• The monsters are representations of other cultures generalized and demonized
• The monster is transgressive too sexual perversely erotic a law breaker and so the monster and all that it embodies must be exiled or destroyed. The repressed however always seems to return.
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Thesis 7
“This thing of darkness I acknowledge mine””…. hidden away at the edges of the world and in the forbidden recesses of our mind, but they always return”.
Example:
– Freddy Cougar because he reappears in a sense of fear and being talked about today in pop culture.
Takeaway:
– We can not get rid of these fuckers.
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Thesis 3: The Monster is the Harbinger of Category Crisis
-” The monster always escapes because it refuses easy categorization”.
– Monsters are too large to be confined in order of things or a structure.
– ” They are disturbing hybrids whose externally incoherent bodies resist attempts to include them in any systematic structuration”
-Monsters are not bound by one culture
– The monster is the embodiment of fear, and fear can be or move anywhere.
– There will be different versions of the same monster. ( El cucuy / Boogie man )
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Thesis V.
Quotes: “The giants of Patagonia, the dragons of the Orient, and the dinosaurs of Jurassic Park together declare that curiosity is more often punished than rewarded, that one is better off safely contained within one’s own domestic sphere than abroad, away from the watchful eyes of the state” (page 12).
Example: Dinosaurs from Jurassic park
Takeaways: The monster serves as a warning against exploration and curiosity.
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Thesis V.
Quotes: “The giants of Patagonia, the dragons of the Orient, and the dinosaurs of Jurassic Park together declare that curiosity is more often punished than rewarded, that one is better off safely contained within one’s own domestic sphere than abroad, away from the watchful eyes of the state” (page 12).
Example: Dinosaurs from Jurassic park
Takeaways: The monster serves as a warning against exploration and curiosity.
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Thesis 6 fear of the monster is really a kind of desire
• This corporal fluidity this simultaneity of anxiety and desire ensures that the monster will always dangerously entice
• The monster is the abjected fragment that enables the formation of all kinds of identities. Personal, national, cultural, economic, sexual, psychological, universal, particular
• The habitations of the monster are more than dark regions of uncertain danger, they are also realms of happy fantasy, horizons of liberation. […] whatever land sufficiently distant to be exoticized
• The monster is always coming back, always at the verge of irruption
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Thesis 4:
•“Native Americans were presented as unredeemable savages so that the powerful political machine of Manifest Destiny could push forward westward with disregard.”
•Humans must assimilate to not be outcast, differences breed fear because of ignorance, thus creating monsters within us.
•Examples: Nazis and Jews, Native Americans and new Americans, gender, orientation, race, etc.
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el cucuy
jaws
boogie man
addams family
frankenstein
blob
kraken
babadook
chupacabra
kaiju
godzilla
handsome jack
slenderman
jooper creepers
zombies
freedy
jason
michael myers
penny wise
xenomorph
alien
zodiac
predator
darth vader
siths
ted bundy
hitler
stalin
mao
kim jung un
nemesis
blade
vampires
cobra commander
dracula
doctor jekyll, mr hyde
bowser
jigsaw
molock
mermaids
sirens
scream guy
serial killers
pin head hell raiser
goosebumps
chuckie
gremlins
el chapo
escobar
demons
edward scissorheads
beetle juice
the grudge
the ring
corpse bride
blair witch
grinch
shrek
hulk
loki
gargamel
breaking bad
walter white
dexter
wendigo
humm centipede
bloody mary
the bean family
la llorona
lady in white
manson
leatherface
twoface
ghosts
mutants
byebye man
riddler
joker
mr penguin
venom
voldemort
batman
iceman
mr freeze
the incredibles
yeti
abominable snowman
bigfoot
emperor palpatine
sidious
poltorgeist
witches
hellboy
medusa
ursula
star weirds
zeus
macbeth
alcohol
racist
racism
maleficent
coronavirus
plastics
money
satan
dragons
loch ness
unicorns
pharaoh
time wraiths
mummies
the dark
men
roman emperors
dictators
the government
lelouch v britania
slimer
gargoyles
ogres
isis
bin laden
big bad wolf
pyramid head
illuminati
mass shooters
terrorists
students
drug dealers
cartels
assassins
the mob
murderers
rapists
trump
xi jinping
elsa
kkk
weinstein
epstein
al capone
draugurs
irishman
white walkers
witchers
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