The Reality of Monsters
With the approach of October, comes the slow march of monster season - my favourite time of year. As I’ve done in the past, each blog post in October will be a review of a monster. So I thought I’d lead into the world of monsters by thinking about the reality of monsters.
By reality of monsters, I do not necessarily mean the human monsters in our world, like serial killers. No, the reality of monsters also includes the monsters we typically think of as fun narratives to tell - the vampires and werewolves are real too.
When we read about previous ages in our world, we hear about belief in monsters: in demons, and werewolves, and hideous creatures crawling through the forests. We think of this as being irrational beliefs that mark the pre-modern world. But as David Stannard wrote in 1977:
We do well to remember that the [pre-modern] world… was a rational world, in many ways more rational than our own. It is true that this was a world of witches and demons, and of a just and terrible God who made his presence known int he slightest acts of nature. But this was the given reality about which most of the decisions and actions of the age, throught ehe entire Western world, revolved.
I think often we think of the reality of monsters as being something that demonstrates they are inherently manifest somewhere physically in the world. Belief in actuality is one thing, but that is set apart from the reality of monsters. The existence of the phenomonon is not what gives the monster its strong force in the world. In fact, people still believe in monsters in the way they have in ages beforeTo see the reality of monsters is not to observe the monster, but rather to observe the people who belong to the monster. A monster is not known through its bright eyes in the dark of the night, but rather in the effect it has - its impact on society and individuals.
A monster shows us what a culture or a society finds horrifying. It shows us what they view as possible and impossible. It shows us how a culture marks out its boundaries - how categories are marked out as well as who is included in it, and who are the outsiders. A monster shows us a reflection. Through the monsters eyes, we see how a culture views itself. What is respectful and “normal”, and what is filled with scorn and disgust.
Monsters are not just figures of the past. They exist now, and while many talk about the physical existence in one dismissive way, the impact and effect their stories have demonstrates how monsters are inherently real.
Media studies scholar Patricia MacCormack writes about monstrosity, and how monsters are often seen as that which marks difference. She writes: “in the most reduced sense then, through concepts of adaptability and evolution itself, all organisms are unlike - we are all, and must be monsters because nothing is ever like another thing, nor like itself from one moment to the next”.
I think this is what I love the most about looking at contemporary monsters. It shows us the impacts of society, and more importantly it shows us ourselves. The reality of monsters is not in the footprints left behind in the mud, but in the way we treat the people around us and think about the world we move through. Its in the way we recoil at certain thoughts that seem so undefinably terrible to us, and more importantly in the way that we do not question these responses.