Monsters
Throughout history, we have had monsters. First, they were demons and spirits that came in the dark and plagued you with nightmares and brought bad luck to your harvest. Those spirits turned into gods, which people worshiped because they did not understand and considered extremely powerful.
With each spreading culture, monsters popped up. Why? Because they are an expression of fear. Fear for the future. Fear of the past. Fear of death, Fear of pain, and one of the most relevant in this day and age, the fear of losing one’s individuality. We will always have these fears, even if we create a paradise, anxiety will remain a consistent reminder of our own humanity.
We are mere bodies, easily destroyed by a number of unavoidable circumstances. We face fear every day. As long as we have fear we will need monsters.
To assign what fear to what monster would be rather pointless as each person sees something different. For a monster is a piece of art. The majority of monsters nowadays are rather drab (but that applies to movies and books now doesn’t it?), but with the proper design, a monster can be symbolism wrapped in sheer brilliance.
As a brilliant person (sarcasm), I thought I would ignore this eventuality and thought it only fair to give my own interpretation.
Alien: Xenophobia incarnate.
Aliens were of course, most popular in the fifties when the biggest threat was Communism. The big red octopus (I got that metaphor from American propaganda I’ll have you know) that stretched its tentacles across the world. Anything they were for, we here in the United States strongly opposed. If they were coming to invade us (which made perfect sense in the average person’s mind at the time), it was in strange, foreign, ships, carrying strange, foreign weapons.
We didn’t know what technology they had access to, we just knew that they thought differently, and were out to destroy our way of life. As life progressed the alien became a more hopeful and less childishly horrific. In “The Day the Earth Stood still” an alien visited to try and save us, to show that we needed change, that xenophobia would be our undoing when attacked the wrong person. In “E.T.” we didn’t want to kill the alien, by then we had become enamored with the idea of someone who thought and acted differently but was really us.
Which isn’t to say we didn’t have more horrific aliens coming. With computer animation and advanced costume design, we quickly had Xenomorphs (from the “Alien” series), creatures which can inject their spawn into human beings, causing parasitic creatures to burst out of the victim’s body.
They have become an integral part of our culture, with whole areas and business revolving around the idea of abductions and conspiracy cover ups. All in all, they represent the inevitability of conflict with someone smarter, stronger, and different. Someone who better than you, one that will live longer. Like most aliens this person may find our existence fairly inconsequential, they may be fairly apathetic. But this is not a real person. It is a fear. People like that generally don’t exist.
Yet.
As we enhance ourselves with genetic manipulation and cybernetics, that alien may become us. I myself might grow old, and become scared at the unnatural idea of people walking around who aren’t 100% human.
And that's bigotry for you.
Demons: Of course Demons represent the worst of human nature. The chemicals which make us act without regard for consequences or sophistication.
But I’m more interested in a recent depiction of demons. Demonic possession.
Ever since the movie “The Exorcist” (Which I watched and found rather disappointing), possessed little girls have been a dime-a-dozen. A step up from having a single child possessed by The Devil himself is having a village full of children who are the Satan’s very own sons and daughters (Ala “Village of the damned” 1960 & 1995). Nowadays demons seem to be creatures preoccupied not with tempting our youth, but turning them against us without a second thought.
Our culture has long since accepted voyeurism. We fill our minds with violence and sex, we have embraced the demons. It’s ironic that we create movies with Satanic worshipers (even more ironically, responsible for some of the fewest deaths of any religion in reality) so that we ourselves can worship the violent impulses which seem to rule the average person, judging from our pop culture. We have bred the possessed children, creating a never ending loop of action for them to soak in. We have filled the world with problems, raised our children with hopes and promises, and then taken them away, exposing them to drugs, fights, and sex.
So when they turn against us, with loud music and low ambition and rage in their heart, to wonder how they became such demons, is quite inane.
Frankenstein’s Monster: It is depressing how many people simply think of this creature AS Frankenstein.
Because of course, the monster is Frankenstein himself. The scientist without morals, the man who wanted to achieve the impossible. His character and work have been diluted so much by popular culture, the lightning = life concept originating from James Whale’s 1931 movie.
No, in the original book there is no science involved. Which is why I will argue to the day that I die that it is not science-fiction, as it is grounded in mystery as to how Victor Frankenstein raises the dead. And that’s the point. People were making an awful lot of scientific discoveries at the time. The idea of life being precious, and sacred, was disappearing.
And what happens when life is no longer precious? Well, out goes morals, respect for society, individualism, restrictions (Not to mention the religious applications). And that is what the monster Frankenstein is. A monster without purpose, who plods on slowly, for no reason, except to plod along and destroy anyone that gets in the way. It is science, devoid of moral restrictions or goals beyond “In the name of science!”
In the end, our pursuit of knowledge merely causes us to become a mindless brute, with little to no care for putting dangerous technology in the hands of other brutes.
In the end, we’re all still afraid of a little fire.
Ghosts: Probably the oldest of all monsters, ghosts, like shelter, and families, are universal.
Why? Because the idea of all of our life, our personality, our quirks, simply evaporating at death, seems impossible. How, after all, can so much simply disappear so quickly? We can’t comprehend death, we can’t possibly understand NOT understanding, we can’t think about NOT thinking.
We put these spirits into the ethos, claiming that they are still with us and around us. Which they are to some degree. They exist in our memory, and in every way that they affected us, we carry part of them with us.
So why are we afraid of ghosts? Shouldn’t they bring hope, that death is not the end?
I suppose it is because ghosts are the dead, except forgotten. In out movies they usually died in some violent or tragic manner and are thus unable to find peace. In “Poltergeist” they are Native American spirits, defiled both in life and death. In “The Amityville horror” they are the spirits of those killed in by an evil cult. They are those who we have let die, and they are coming for us. We are responsible for their pain, for how much they have lost and will never be able to experience.
But at this point, I may well be grasping at straws. We have had ghosts for the longest time, but we still seem unable to explain why they are the first thing we think of in the dark, why the idea of a restless spirit is so bone chilling.
The forgotten lying in the dark, ready to take you to their realm. It is rather ironic that the things we created to make life simpler and friendlier, seem to have become our most primal fear, the one most shrouded despite being to the surface long enough.
Mummies: Aren’t scary.
They probably represent some junk about colonialism and imperialist archaeology.
End of discussion.
Robot: Robots have of course, in recent years become more prominent in adventure and action movies, rather than horror.
But not too long ago, Robots rampaged across the silver screen. First, they were giant, machines created for a war that could not be stopped by their creators once set in motion (obviously nukes as the majority of these movies were made in the Atomic and Space age). They used to be hulking and invincible brutes, armed with lasers and atomic cannons. The first SUBTLE robot was probably the infamous Gort from “The Day the Earth Stood still” who managed to remain menacing while still being less than three stories tall.
A few decades down the line and robots would become even less monstrous (in proportions). These new robotic villains were computers, advancing technology that was speculated to become incredibly powerful in the future. The Stanley Kubrick’s HAL was scary not because he could crush your house and the military couldn’t stop him. He was scary because he cared only about the mission, because humans were imperfect, and therefore responsible for the issue.
Robots ceased becoming representations of our propensity to ruthlessly invent more creative ways to butcher one another and became instead a representation of our propensity to treat human beings like cattle in the name of profit (and treat cattle like shit). The board members, the “eggheads” in marketing, the boss.
The person who doesn’t give a crap about anyone besides the bottom line, they are the computer. Because we created a system with shareholders obsessed with making more per year. So as the months pass, we become more tactical, more efficient. Corporations could easily be more eco-friendly, but they won’t because A) the average consumer doesn’t care, and B) it wouldn’t be efficient.
The soul has been removed when a person cares solely about efficiency, about “getting the job done” quicker, faster, because it’s a “push, push, push industry, straight down the line!” (Twilight zone quote right there). Slaves to routine, mind numb to the world around you and the pain you cause, this condition is most apparent in privately owned jails and schools, which are both averagely awful for anyone involved.
Why? Because human beings are in the equation and they don’t fit with us making money, unless we treat them like they aren’t human beings!
All that’s left is a fleshy computer, collecting greenbacks, not because they need them. Because that’s the “mission” and anyone who gets in the way of the mission must be exterminated.
I would note that it is strange that instead of building giant computers like suggested by our SCI-FI, our computers steadily became smaller and smaller. But of course, it isn’t strange.
It’s just much more efficient that way.
Vampire: Vampires, are almost as infamous as ghosts.
They are apparent in nearly every culture, albeit quite different in power, size, and origin. Many can shapeshift, and most are demonic or undead. But of course, one thing that makes a vampire a vampire is blood.
They all drink blood.
Ancient people understood that blood = life, the Aztecs committed sacrifices because they believed that the world and universe itself was built upon the flesh and blood of the gods. That all things were made of this life-flourishing substance. So a creature that sucks blood from humans literally sucks the life out of things. It is a carrier of death (and often plague according to legends).
So what do I think vampires represent, why are they so universal?
The life-sucker seems to reflect the basic fear of growing old and becoming useless, forced to depend on others. And back when these stories were treated as true, forty was OLD. People generally didn’t live longer. Old age was impressive to attain, but could only be done by being strong and resilient (or rich). To live that long and then lose that resilience to time itself, must have been considerably distressing.
Of course, the idea of vampires derived from rotting corpses, which bloated because of various gasses, with nails and hair that continued to grow after death. Unable to understand biology, townspeople would burn those corpses (or occasionally tear out their heart, chop it to bits, burn those bits, and scatter the ashes to the four winds. It depended on what mood they were in).
And the infirmity theory doesn’t apply to more recent vampires certainly. Since the eighteenth century, vampires have taken on a far more sex-based symbolism. The story Dracula (who snuck into women’s bedrooms and bit their necks) was in fact inspired by an earlier work of vampire fiction, Carmilla, a story about a lesbian vampire trying to seduce a woman.
As the years passed, vampires became less undead and more demonic. They ceased becoming representations of death, disease, and physical decay, and more of the moral decay which was invading the prim life of the upper class. Nowadays, vampires have become even tamer, reduced to human beings with superhuman powers. Commercialism has turned them from mysterious and powerful beings into the boyfriends of bland teenage girls for books, movies, and TV shows.
I suppose it goes back to what I said about voyeurism in the demons section. Our world is too blatant for a mysterious creature representing the temptation and the darkness of humanity, to function well. Which is rather depressing.
Werewolf: If vampires are old people than werewolves are teenagers.
And I say that with the utmost respect for both groups.
But a creature which grows to be larger, hardier, stronger, and more bestial, sounds like a teenager to me. Of course, it’s an exaggeration of the truth, but that’s what most fear is an exaggeration.
The fear of change is probably one of the greatest, and most likely plagues the most of us. In our hectic world, fear of death takes second place to seeing your job or your home change. To see your community grow or diminish is startling, and our evolution doesn’t allow us to enjoy being startled. Our muscles tense up, as our environment or opinions change.
The fear of not being able to control yourself as well is a quite terrifying one. No doubt part of the fear of werewolves is connected to our most feral state, and mental illness, a subject with a huge social stigma that prevents us from approaching or thinking about it logically.
Interestingly enough, the first werewolves were giant wolves. As time has gone on, they have become more and more human, to the point where they can apparently make adequate boyfriends. Almost as though they have evolved.
Zombies:
I say zombies of course because a singular zombie does not represent the same fear as the horde.
“The Cabinet of Dr. Cagliari” is probably the only good movie with a singular zombie in it (and it isn't even an actual zombie). All the others are low budget eighties films made in someone’s backyard (the cinema version of Frankenstein’s monster could justifiably be called a zombie, but the book version is highly intelligent).
Zombies, of course, represent reality TV watchers.
THE END
I joke of course.
Zombies represent the mindlessness of the average follower, of any particular ideology. People generally find it difficult to think for themselves, to analyze everything they’ve been taught. If they were, then the war would not exist.
Reality TV watchers are just this generation’s version of Zombies. Alongside people who live on social media, rabid sports fans who don’t care about the economic effect of their team, and those who enjoy Fox News. There are tons more, but I don’t have room or time to list them. Anyone who follows a certain thing, mindlessly, is essentially reduced to a zombie. Not psychologically of course, but Zombies could be the universe’s greatest philosophers and it wouldn’t matter.
Actions, inevitably, speak louder than words.
As the worldwide situation worsens, the “WITH US OR AGAINST US” way of thinking grows steadily more popular. And although a zombie plague or atomic war will most likely not send hordes of groaning masses at us in the future, it becomes increasingly probable that ignorance may.
THE REAL END
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