Effects Of Film On The Humanization Of Monsters

Film is a great attribute to the modernization to our society. We use film to make words into actions. The visual aspect of a story, makes the story more like what we see every day through our own eyes. In the excerpts edited by Brandy Ball Blake and L. Andrew Cooper, they explain the ideas behind films effect on monsters. Information from Frankenstein, An American Werewolf in London, and Psycho help support the effect of film on the humanization of monsters. Film shows the audience of how certain characteristics effect who monsters are. Emotion is a characteristic that film uses to humanize monsters.

In today’s society, the perception of monsters is taken so many ways. Personal opinion puts a definition on the term monster. According to

Most of what we do it based on how we feel. We love one another through emotion and we do monstrous things through emotion. Monsters, also, have a soft side. Victor Frankenstein’s monster needed the love and affection from his creator. However, Victor did not give in to this emotional state. Anne Mellor explains Frankenstein’s denial of this, “Frankenstein’s failure to embrace his smiling creature with maternal love, his horrified rejection of his own creation, spells out the narrative consequences of solitary paternal propaganda” (Mellor 47). Our need for affection leads us to problems of insignificance. In relation to how us humans need love and support to strive in society. This makes Frankenstein’s monster portray humanistic traits. Also, in John Landis’s werewolf story, the scary, human killing werewolf still has some of his human characteristics. Andrew Cooper summarizes Landis’s film, “… the creature’s refusal to attack the woman standing helpless before him hints that there’s more human in the monster that its looks might suggest” (Cooper 96). The werewolf knows that woman he loves is before him; his love emotion overrides his animal instincts. In love, we choose to honor and be compassionate to our partner; therefore, the humanistic side of the monster comes out. On the other hand, emotion can cause despair and harm to people associated with the monster. Cooper acknowledges the slasher monster in which I choose to fit this characteristic. The main character from the movie Psycho, Norman Bates, causes harm to young women. Women that he finds himself attracted to, sexually, are his victim of choice (Cooper 212). In the movie Psycho, Bate’s chooses a woman in his hotel, “… enjoys the shower in her room at the Bates Motel until the shadow of a womanly form approaches, yanks back the shower curtain, and stabs her repeatedly with a kitchen knife” (Cooper 212). However, Bate’s isn’t just himself; he portrays his