Monsters are always defined in opposition to the humans that surround them, and often their differences take precedence over their similarities. A monster is an “intimate stranger,” maintaining physical and social closeness to humans while signifying a threat (Ng 4). The monster provides a space where social and cultural anxieties can be examined, controlled, and peacefully resolved. The monstrous body, above all, is a cultural body. Monsters are constructs and cultural projections, existing to be read and interpreted. In constructing the monster, each culture’s fears and fantasies are brought to life, made physical, and given uncanny independence (Cohen 4). All that is threatening and destabilizing to normal society is configured in the body of the vampire. In Le Fanu’s Carmilla, the monstrous vampire body of Carmilla is both eternally beautiful and monstrously corrupt. It is through this body that society’s anxieties of aging, beauty, and mortality are confronted and explored. …show more content…
In Western culture, women’s bodies are situated as sites for visual pleasure (DeFalco 111). Sight is granted priority over all other sense—the “noblest” of the senses (Woodward 120). As a result, representations of the aging body, particularly the aging female body, are constructed in visual terms (121). Youth and beauty is consistently granted value over age, and the woman with the ability to hold onto an ideal physical form is worthy of respect. Female aging is treated as a transgression within a culture that prizes youth, obsessed with the perfect feminine form. Visible signs of old age transform the body into the monstrous or undead, situating aging as “a scenario worse than death itself” (Bacon 21). Throughout the novel, Carmilla is repeatedly recognized for her sublime
In society, there have always been different roles in defining the boundaries between right and wrong; Monsters take a big part of that role. In Jeffrey Cohen’s “Monster Culture,” Cohen explains seven theses which provide a clearer explanation of how monsters take a part in establishing these boundaries. The oldest Anglo-Saxon story written- “Beowulf”- provides three different monsters which all connect to Cohen’s seven theses. In the older version, however, the monsters do not relate to humans in any way, except that they are enemies. The modern version of Beowulf portrays Grendel’s mother to still be evil but also have relations with the humans in the story.
An Analysis of “Alien” through the Lens of Jeffery Cohen’s “Monster Culture” The constraints of normality within today’s society often determine what or who does not fit the designated mold of behavior and character traits. Discrimination towards difference is seen throughout cinema, portraying characters that differ as dangerous and malicious in their actions, unethically predetermining their demeanor despite society’s implementation of provocation and selfish pursuits. Likewise, the antagonist extraterrestrial in “Alien”, by Ridley Scott, is misrepresented as a simple and malicious reptilian, personified as a foreigner in its own territory. The alien does not attack unless hunted first, signified by its feeble attempt to sleep within the
Cohen, Jeffrey J. “Monster Culture (Seven Theses).” Monsters. Ed. Brandy Ball Blake and L. Andrew Cooper. Southlake, TX: Fountainhead Press, 2012. 11-33. Print.
In Jeffrey Jerome Cohen’s essay, “The Monster Theses,” he analyzes the characteristics of a "monster" and explores the course in which they are created. He interprets monsters creation in six different ways; claiming initially that they are symbols and representations of culture. "The monster in an incorporation of the outside." (Cohen, 460). Cohen defines the monster as an outsider to the cultural world in which they are. "The monster is a difference made flesh" (Cohen, 459), Cohen describes how the difference are what makes us human or "flesh."
“The only motive that there was was to completely control a person… and keep them with me as long as possible, even if it meant just keeping a part of them.” Using this statement, Jeffrey Dahmer offers his insight about what made him the cruel, demented being people have known him to be for the last 25 years. Many questions still remain, however. How do we, in society, define the term “monster”? What makes a monster? What shapes our perceptions of monsters, and how do these perceptions change over time? Several centuries passed between the time of Grendel from the epic poem, Beowulf, and the Milwaukee Monster, Jeffrey Dahmer, for instance. Grendel is a creation of the Anglo-Saxons, whose culture
Do you ever wonder how monsters are created in our society? The dehumanization of individuals can cause both the perpetrator and the dehumanized to act in monstrous ways. But, why and how are they created in our world? Some monsters are created to “help us cope with what we dread most in life” (Donovan) and in turn bring communities together. Philip Zimbardo, a social psychologist, believes that anonymity and the situation a “good” person is in can cause them to act monstrously. Although the effects of a monster can be devastating, communities come together to combat them through reconciliation as well as the promotion of heroism.
Carmilla is an example of a woman who loves her food far too much. Carmilla is consumed entirely by her food, even sleeping in a coffin of blood: “The limbs were perfectly flexible, the flesh elastic; and the leaden coffin floated with blood, in which to a depth of seven inches, the body lay immersed” (Le Fanu 102). There exists a unique relationship between the vampire and their victims. Food becomes defined in terms of victimhood, distinctly separated from humanity’s general consumption of meat. The need for human victims makes hunting synonymous with courtship, as intense emotional connections are established between the vampiress and her food. As seen in the intense relationship developed between Laura and Carmilla, the vampire is “prone to be fascinated with an engrossing vehemence, resembling the passion of love, by particular persons” (105). For Carmilla, cruelty and love are inseparable (33). The taking of the victims’ blood for sustenance is a highly sexualized exchange of fluids from one body to another. The act of consumption is transformed into an illicit carnal exchange between the hunter and the hunted.
In "Monster Culture," Cohen widely talks about and investigates monsters regarding the way of life from which they climb. Keeping up the formal tone of a scholastic, he battles that monster climb at the intersection of a society, where contrasts develop and nervousness increases. The beast is an exemplification of distinction of any quality, whether it be ideological, social, sexual, or racial, that rouses trepidation and instability in its inventors. The creature or monster is habitually an irritating half breed that challenges categorization its hybridism defies nature. Yet despite the fact that there are unreliable monsters, real individuals can get to be monsters as well. Keeping in mind the end goal to bring oddity under control, the individuals who submit to the standard code of the day bestow huge personalities to the individuals who don't. Nervousness is the thing that breeds them and characterizes their presence. In this manner placing the beginning of creatures, Cohen strives to uncover our way of life's qualities and inclinations. For the larger part of the article, the monster is just the subject of our examination, an extraordinary animal under our investigation.
...rs were and still are very active, but how we decide to define these monsters is changing. As our understanding of these monsters becomes clearer, our perception of the monsters will change. In his article and book chapter Monsters and the Moral Imagination and chapter 5 of On Monsters, Stephen Asma suggests that monstrosity, as we know it, is on the rise as humans progress and how we perceive monsters can often define monstrosities in itself, providing evidence of reasons why monster cultures are on the rise, and showing how human progress has evolved our perception of how we think on the topic that is monsters.
Ladimer, Bethany. "Reconciling Femininity an Aging." Colette, Beauvoir, and Duras: Age and Women Writers. Tallahassee: University Press of Florida, 1999.
Jeffery Cohen's first thesis states “the monster's body is a cultural body”. Monsters give meaning to culture. A monsters characteristics come from a culture's most deep-seated fears and fantasies. Monsters are metaphors and pure representative allegories. What a society chooses to make monstrous says a lot about that society’s people. Monsters help us express and find our darkest places, deepest fears, or creepiest thoughts. Monsters that scare us,vampires, zombies, witches, help us cope with what we dread most in life. Fear of the monstrous has brought communities and cultures together. Society is made up of different beliefs, ideas, and cultural actions. Within society there are always outcasts, people that do not fit into the norm or do not follow the status quo. Those people that do not fit in become monsters that are feared almost unanimously by the people who stick to the status quo.
it horrifies us and reinforces our sense of boundaries and normalcy” (Halberstam 13). Assuming that Bram Stoker’s Dracula sets the archetype of the vampire, it is clear that modern vampires have demonstrated a decrease in the Gothic horror despite similarities in the Gothic imagery and themes, and such a shift is attributed to a changing value of the limit within society and postmodernism. The Count is the benchmark of the vampire archetype as the monstrous Other that “announces itself as the place of corruption” (Anolik and Howard 1). Dracula is associated with disruption and transgression of accepted limits—a monstrosity of great evil that serves to guarantee the existence of good (Punter and Byron 231).
Le Fanu’s approach using gothic tropes is obvious here, as he uses the tabooed deviations from the sexual norm, to explicitly showcase the rise of the New Woman, chasing sexual freedom. One of the main differences between Dracula and “Carmilla” is the way each author interconnects the gothic trope of sexuality. Carmilla is portrayed as beautiful and majestic (Le Faun Chapter III). Whereas, Dracula is portrayed as a horrid, hairy and harmful looking man (Stoker Chapter II). While both Stoker and Le Fanu create creatures that both hold power over there victims, Le Fanu effectively uses Carmilla’s beauty, to portray her victims as more willing. Therefore, readers’ are lead to believe that Carmilla depends more on the act of seduction, referring to the very strong lesbian undertones. By drawing on this, Dracula is predominately a more vicious attacker. This separates Carmilla from her male counterparts as Carmilla is seducing victims in a very literal sense, opposed to Dracula whose victims are just under his trance. Therefore, what has already been alluded to in Carmilla’s case, becomes explicit in Stoker’s Dracula. This is apparent during Johnathan being tempted and repelled (Stoker Chapter III) by the three vampires. However, Dracula focuses mainly on facets of male homosexuality and male hegemony, and
A common way to describe a modern day monster can be described within the soul and mind. Many people have a complex and confused mind. Stephen King states, “ I think that we’re all mentally ill; those of us outside asylums only hide it a little better- and maybe not all that much better, after all.” Monsters can overpower the mind. Many people struggle to listen to themselves, and they let their monstrous conscience take over their actions which will cause harm to them or people around them. It is common for people to battle monsters within their souls. Many people feel too weak to stand up and be free from
The author’s op-ed piece was published in 2009, the very peak of the vampire contagion, where one could find these creatures wherever they looked. This pandemonium that arose from vampires is what drove del Toro and Hogan to pen “Why Vampires Never Die.” Furthermore, the purpose behind this essay is to give an abridged description of the past of vampires for the people who had become fanatics of the creatures. Also, this essay showed how vampires have persisted in pop culture. They suggest that vampires have been remade by diverse cultures at different times, and this change echoes that society's angst and concerns. The novelist’s imply that Stroker’s Dracula may mirror an exaggerated human on a prim...