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Religion, Culture, and the Monstrous: Of Gods and Monsters, Edited by Joseph Laycock and Natasha Mikles (Lexington Press) , 2021

Cryptozoology is the term used to denote the vocation of “monster hunting” in which various seeke... more Cryptozoology is the term used to denote the vocation of “monster hunting” in which various seekers set their sights on such legendary beasts as Bigfoot and the Loch Ness Monster. Typically, cryptozoology has been seen as a 20th-Century practice having originated in the mid-to-late 1950s and early 60s.

However, during his lifetime Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) spent much of his energies arguing for the existence of monstrous creatures living somewhere in the still unexplored American interior. These beasts included living mastodons, elephant-sized lions and a moose so large an adult man could walk beneath it. Jefferson’s conviction that such creatures existed was based off a combination of fragmentary fossil evidence, Native American legends and tall-tales told by early pioneers – the same sort of evidence marshaled by cryptozoologists today. Such convictions were so powerful that they influenced many of Jefferson’s personal and political actions including the authoring of his only book – Notes on the State of Virginia (1785) – as well as both the Louisiana Purchase and the financing of the Louis and Clarke Expedition while serving as president. For Jefferson, the existence of such monsters was a matter of national pride for the fledging Americas; a way of refuting the libelous accusations made by certain European academics that the New World was zoological inferior to the Old.

For these reasons, this essay will argue that Thomas Jefferson can be viewed not only as a Founding Father of the U.S. but also of cryptozoology. While some may see such a claim as anachronistic, I contend that it can provide valuable insight into the reasoning and impetus behind cryptozoology and what motivates some people to go monster hunting. In particular, this essay will suggest that cryptozoology can be seen as a nationalistic enterprise in which monstrous creatures become totems for local towns, cities, states and even entire countries.

Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts Vol. 26 Iss. 3, 2015

This essay seeks to illuminate a fascinating aspect of global popular culture - fandom - by devis... more This essay seeks to illuminate a fascinating aspect of global popular culture - fandom - by devising an original analytic frame based in Religious Studies which demonstrates that fandoms not only provide their devotees with new mythologies and communities but also succeed in creating subjunctive 'as-if' worlds for their adherents, thus providing a real alternative to traditional religions rather than simply a crude imitation of them. The fandom being examined here is devoted to the Cthulhu Mythos, a series of short interwoven sci-fi horror stories about monstrous alien gods and their dealings with human beings. Born of the pen of pulp author H.P. Lovecraft during the 1920s, this unique brand of "cosmic horror" survived its author's death by continually mutating to this day, attracting a wide ranging group of individuals who have "consecrated themselves" to Lovecraft's literary legacy and "long for the return of the monster gods" he dreamed up.

Giant Creatures in Our World (McFarland), 2017

A round table discussion between the contributors of the 2017 book Giant Creatures in Our World (... more A round table discussion between the contributors of the 2017 book Giant Creatures in Our World (McFarland) about how best to define the term "kaiju."

The Paranormal and Popular Culture: A Postmodern Religious Landscape (Routledge), 2019

Cryptozoology is a term that generally denotes the vocation of “monster hunter” with the most pri... more Cryptozoology is a term that generally denotes the vocation of “monster hunter” with the most prized quarries being such legendary beasts as Bigfoot and the Yeti, the Loch Ness Monster, sea serpents, various “living dinosaurs,” gigantic thunderbirds, and such decidedly weirder and less biologically plausible sounding creatures as the vampiric Chupacabra and more recently so-called Dog-men. The beginnings of cryptozoology are typically traced to the mid-1950s/early-1960s and the activities of two men: Scottish naturalist Ivan T. Sanderson and French-Belgian zoologist Bernard Heuvelmans. Both men originally hoped that cryptozoology would eventually be recognized as a legitimate science; however for a variety of very good reasons this dream has never come to pass and today cryptozoology is regarded as a pseudoscience by the scientific and academic mainstream. This labeling of cryptozoology as a pseudoscience has led some critics, like Donald Prothero, to characterize self-professed cryptozoologists as being fundamentally anti-science. However other researchers such as Darren Naish, who has spent considerable time interacting with cryptozoologists in the field, dispute this claim writing that cryptozoologists largely have a very positive view of science and want themselves to be considered part of the scientific establishment. The problem however, as outlined by Sharon Hill who has conducted ethnographic research on cryptozoological communities, is that very few cryptozoologists have any formal scientific training and instead draw their ideas about how science works from pop-culture. While Hill primarily focuses on popular TV shows like Finding Bigfoot when making this claim, this essay will argue that cryptozoology as a whole is largely patterned after the kind of “two-fisted tales” which once dominated turn-of-the-century pulp-magazines and later men’s magazines of the 1970s in which strapping, square-jawed, bare-knuckle white men would travel to exotic locals and contend with savage ape-men and marauding dinosaurs. And while stories of this nature have largely fallen out of favor with mainstream readers of fantastic literature they nevertheless remain popular among cryptozoologists via the work of dedicated “crypto-fiction” writers like Dallas Tanner, Roland Smith, and Steve Alten. Drawing on the work of scholars including Tanya Luhrmann, Lynn Schofield Clark, Peter Dendle, Joseph Laycock, Andrew May, John Miller and others I will show how stories of this type were a key component in the formulation of cryptozoology as a lived practice, not only serving as sources of inspiration but also as templates for the kind of monsters cryptozoologists would peruse, the kind of theories they would endorse about what such creatures might be, and how they – the cryptozoologists – should conduct themselves. Moreover I will discuss how cryptozoologists used the language and imagery of pulp-fiction to make their claims attractive and how in more than a few cases stories that were originally pieces of science-fiction became re-contextualized as actual events by cryptozoologists! In doing all of this I will endeavor to show that rather than being anti-science cryptozoologists instead long for an enchanted, comic book-style version of science which would allow them to fulfill their desires to be heroic explores of the unknown in a world which often seems too small and too well trotted.

The Myth Awakens: Canon, Conservatism, and Fan Reception of Star Wars, 2018

This essay charts the history of Star Wars fans’ tumultuous relationship with franchise creator G... more This essay charts the history of Star Wars fans’ tumultuous relationship with franchise creator George Lucas. Drawing on the theories and insights of writers and scholars such as Bruce Lincoln, John C. Lyden, Andrew Briton, Hiroki Azuma, Jonathan Z. Smith, Tom Shone, and Ben Brazil, the argument is made that the relationship between Lucas and his fans can be understood as comparable to that of the relationship that exists between a hierophant and their devotees in a traditional religious setting. However, Lucas’s subsequent decision to tamper with the sacred
canon of Star Wars with the Special Editions re-releases, and his altering of core elements of Star Wars mythology via the poorly received Prequel Trilogy, made Lucas guilty of sacrilege, leading to his eventual rejection by Star Wars fans. This rejection in turn opened up a position of power that would eventually be filled by J. J. Abrams, whose film successfully returned the saga to a more conservative status quo.

The Retro-Futurism of Cuteness, 2017

This essay will approach the topic of cuteness by examining the controversial subject of erotic a... more This essay will approach the topic of cuteness by examining the controversial subject of erotic and pornographic fan-art featuring the cute characters of the hit animated television series My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic (2010-Present) created by adult male fans, popularly known as Bronies. A fascinating phenomena in the history of pop-culture fandoms, Bronies, who The Washington Post characterizes as the “unusual demographic of mostly 20-something, mostly [heterosexual] white men” who unabashedly love a show about big-eyed, candy-colored ponies made for elementary-school aged girls, have sustained an astounding amount of media coverage in the past five years following their emergence. Such widespread and long term media coverage has thrust the Brony fandom into the public eye and transformed them, as journalist Emily Manuel of the Global Comment puts it, into “figures of fascination and derision in equal measures.”

Among such commentators the most popular assertion, made by both supporters and detractors, is that these adult male fan’s affection for My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic should be understood as an indication of shifting and generally more egalitarian attitudes among young men with regards to the gendering of pop-culture media.

However, I will argue that such a view is at best naïve being derived from wishful thinking and an inadequate understanding of Brony fandom, its origins, influences, history, and practices – most notably the creation, circulation, and “use” of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic erotic and pornographic fan-art featuring the show’s cute female equine characters. In making this argument, I will adopt an intertexual approach thinking alongside a combination of American and Japanese scholars including Hiroki Azuma, Henry Jenkins, Setsu Shigematsu, Joanne Hollows, and Toru Honda, contending that Bronies’ explicitly sexual attraction to the cute characters of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic is better understood as an American manifestation of a cultural phenomenon previously recognized in Japan as moé (萌え); originating in 1970s and 80s otaku (i.e. geek) culture in which adult male fans become sexually attracted to the cute fictional female characters found in various pop-culture media such as anime and manga. Like the ponies from My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, the cute female characters who inhabit “moé culture” are often anthropomorphized versions of such things as animals, machines, or even world nations and typically originate from children’s anime and manga, thus necessitating fans who wish to explore sexual encounters with such characters to do so through the medium of fan-art or fan-fiction.

Moreover I will contend that it precisely the “animesque” style of Hasbro’s current My Little Pony series which has made it a prime target for such erogenous imaginings as evident by both Bronies’ summary rejection of all prior non-anime influenced iterations of the My Little Pony brand outside the current Friendship is Magic incarnation and manga critic Itō Gō’s contention that it is only the cute aesthetic unique to manga and anime which possesses the natural eroticism necessary to titillate the imaginations of these fans.

Furthermore this understanding of Brony fandom also explains the media’s persistent interest in and often conflicted embracement of the Bronies since any manifestation of “moé culture” can be seen as acting in opposition to what queer theorist Lee Edelman identifies as the all-pervasive American ideology of “reproductive futurism” which views the ultimate aim of adult life, love, and marriage as the production and upbringing of children. However as psychoanalyst Tamaki Saitō notes, because fans, like Bronies, maintain a “persistent attraction to [the] ‘transitional objects’” of childhood – such as cute characters in the form of cartoons and toys – such individuals effectively blur the lines between the cultural categories of childhood and adulthood resulting in them being viewed as an impediment to the narrative of “reproductive futurism” with the logic being that since such individuals are, for all intents and purposes, still children themselves they are clearly neither capable nor prepared to have and properly raise children of their own.

Using the theoretical insights of the aforementioned scholars in understanding Brony fandom as an American manifestation of moé in conjunction with the statistical analysis of psychologists Patrick Edwards and Marsha H. Redden (“the nation’s premiere bronyologists”), and my own ethnographic research into the Brony community along the East Coast and from Texas to Chicago, I will argue that what one finds at work amongst Bronies is not an embracement of a more egalitarian view of pop-culture media but rather an attempt to establish what cultural anthropologist Patrick W. Galbraith calls “a space of autonomous [male hetero-]sexuality” via the colonization and sexualization of a show originally intended to empower young girls, an aim which can be seen as both sexist and fundamentally narcissistic in nature, though the question remains if this is necessarily a negative.

Conference Presentations by Justin Mullis

YouTube, 2020