Monster Theory

The monstrous body; a metaphor for the cultural body. The physical shape of cultural unease, constraints, fears and taboos. Cohen asserts their connection with places and periods of times. The monster is a projection of the society that engenders them, revealing and waiting to be read. The fact that it is made up of a society's fears and anxieties means that it will be ever-present, never to fully disappear though it might have been seemingly defeated. Society will always fear something.

So what makes a monster monstrous? Difference. It is within human nature to fear what is different. To think of it as danger. Those who are most likely to be turned into monsters are those who are different and threaten the society set by white men; women and those of another ethnicity. Whether it be Native Americans (turning them into monsters within stories to fuel the political machine that was Manifest Destiny), black people (whose only difference was skin color, yet were seen as savage and inferior), or homosexuals. Monsters are scapegoats of what society shuns. A strict Christian society with hard values and morals will have many monsters enumerating anything from sexuality to interracial marriage. When a society is well (financially speaking), and popularly conservative like it use to be, most monsters tended to be vampires; the opposite of what a society is (order, monogamy, laws, rules, morality). Vampires represent a breakdown of traditional morality and sexuality, a rejection of religion (there's a reason you can ward off a vampire with a cross), and the seduction and corruption of the innocent. Part of the whole concept of vampires is that they're not just sexy as hell, but aren't too picky about which warm hole they decide to probe. Zombies, popular during times of societal and economic turbulence, represent anything that threatens the survival of civilization, whether it be viruses or consumerism; it depicts the fall of civilization to that of mindless walking corpses that consume and assimilate everything in their way.

Monsters also represent repressed desires. Monsters are free and oppose all the laws that society imposes. The monster's very existence is a refusal of boundaries. Sometimes we love monsters. We WANT to be the monster. And while speaking of boundaries it is imperative to note that monsters have always existed outside boundaries to ward off curiosity and exploration as well. Monsters were always charted and depicted in drawings of maps where land and sea was uncharted and unexplored- warning off others through fear of death or worse. One risked attack by monsters guarding borders. Monsters are a tool to limit society and, in a way, controlling it. Monsters punish people for not following society.

It is easy to see what people in a certain society or time tough and feared. It is reflected by the monsters they create; by the “children” they gave birth to.

So why does difference (ergo, monsters) equal fear? Cohen wrote that "Difference outside the system is terrifying because it reveals the truth of the system, its fragility, its relativity, and its morality..." Monsters show us how easy it is to break down the structured societies we've built to feel safe. In order to understand and decode a society, one look at the monsters they've created will be revealing enough.