From the creature in the closet, or beneath your bed, to the whispers in the darkness in a forest, to the rumblings of ugliness in our own heads, what are the monsters?
Monsters are popular in Hollywood movies. Annabelle. Werewolves. Pennywise. The Predator. What are some monsters you know from movies?
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What are the function of Monsters in stories?
· Monsters are not simply villains, they are set apart from human understanding in motive and/or in form (physicality)
· Monsters are set outside of human society in one way or another either overtly or in secret
· Sometimes monsters will be obstacles, and other times they can be an antagonist. (In The Walking Dead the zombies aren’t truly the antagonists of the story. The real antagonists are the human beings. They are truly the walking dead (in their hearts and souls)
· They inspire awe and terror in those who are in their presence
· Their very presence change people who experience them. As Friedrich Nietzsche says: "Whoever fights monsters should see to it that he does not become a monster himself. And when you look into the abyss, the abyss also looks into you."
· Monsters wake us up to an important (and often buried truth)
The Three Kinds of Monsters
While monsters come in all kinds of sizes and forms- dragons, ghosts, demons, aliens, ancient species, serial killers. All can roughly fit in three types and sometimes are a mix.
TYPE | Description |
| The Shadow |
· The Shadow represents the darkness inside all of us.
· The untamed consciousness or emotional (Id) self without being governed by morality (Super Ego)
· Carl Jung spoke that we all have a Shadow Self that we spend much of our early life trying to discard, and much of our later life trying to integrate
· “The Victim Waiting to be Saved” from Joseph Campbell’s “The Hero’s Journey” has been rendered entirely as a shadow of their former selves
· Shadow Monsters are the hardest to detect as they are usually hidden inside “average” people.
· Movies about children (The Omen, Orphan, Children of the Damned) are good examples of monsters from within
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| The Other |
· A “scapegoat”- someone to be blamed for the sins or errors of another or society
· A “freak” or abnormal person
· “Geeks” were originally from Circus Freak Shows who bit the head’s off of bats or snakes or were involved in some kind of anti-social behavior
· Usually de-humanized by the “average” people around them The Other is often a group of human beings or a human being that has been marginalized by society and demonstrated to be something different.
· Movies about “The Other” like The Hills Have Eyes, The Purge, Stake Land represent groups of people who are considered “The Other”
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| The Message |
· The most difficult kind of monster to kill as The Message often represents a power that is either technologically, evolutionarily, or paranormally superior to average human beings
· An unrelenting force of nature/supernature. This monster can devour entire towns, villages or worlds like in The Mist, The Happening, The Birds
· Beyond justice/natural justice. This monster defies rules of civilization and has an unknown or unknowable aspect to their presence. They could just as easily be motivated by love as hate, ambivalence as vengeance. Their alien nature is what produces such terror and awe
· Most “slasher films” represent a loss of and a need for a return to justice for some slight
· Such monsters often represent a “sign” of some sort
· The value in the story is that there is some kind of universal truth that must be identified
· The Message represents either an ignored aspect of society, humanity, or nature that is responding against the ignorance of humankind
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Facing the Monster
Monsters in story have a unique position. They can be forces of nature like a tsunami. They can be the person next door who is a cannibal. They could be the antagonist in the story. Or they could be an effect of a character’s actions. Regardless, Monsters can be faced by:
· Understanding the purpose of why the monster exists
· Understanding the monster’s goal or raison d’etre
· Seeing the reflection of the monster in a character’s personality or actions
· Understanding that a monster is both indestructible and fragile at the same time
· “Giving in” or “overcoming” the Fear and Terror the monster represents
Ancient Language
The term "Monster" is as old as English itself, and remained the preferred name for freaks from the time of Chaucer to that of Shakespeare and beyond. The etymology of the word is obscure; but whether it derives from moneo, meaning to warn, or monstro, meaning to show forth, the implication is the same: human abnormalities are the products not by accident, but by design. |