SEEING (WITH, THROUGH, AND AS) MONSTERS — AN INTRODUCTION TO THE SPECIAL ISSUE (original) (raw)
Related papers
Beyond the Crisis in the Humanities: Transdisciplinary Transformations of Contemporary Discourses on Art and Culture. Collection of Papers, 2016
Since the second half of the twentieth century we have been witnessing an overwhelming proliferation of monster narratives in contemporary art and visual/textual culture. With prime time TV shows like Dexter, True Blood or Hannibal, this trend peaked at the beginning of the new millennium when wider audiences completely succumbed to a fascination with monsters, horror, grotesque, serial killing and bodies turned inside out. Although monstrosity entered popular culture as early as at the end of the eighteenth century, a consolidated critical discourse on the topic appeared only with the emergence of cultural studies of the 1970’s and 1980’s. Today monster studies present themselves as that which transcends academic, national and disciplinary boundaries, merging biology, evolutionism, disability studies, Marxism, psychoanalysis, material culture studies and media studies, while treating ‘high art’ of Oscar Wilde as structurally no different from a performance of Lady Gaga. The main premise of the monster studies in the last century was that the marginal is the ‘constitutive outside’ of an identity, that the monster populates ‘zones of uninhabitability.’ But what happens with these studies when the monster stops dwelling on the margins, and enters the very core of identity, like in aesthetics of Lady Gaga? What happens with the monster studies when the monster stops being an abject and becomes a subject, like in so many contemporary narratives? The paper has two distinct intentions: 1) to present the academic underground called the ‘monster studies,’ that, like mycelium, spreads its object of study across contemporary cinema, literature, and material art; 2) to suggest that this conglomerate of ideas, academic disciplines and objects of study reflects (or responds to) contemporary practices (needs and desires) of globalization and consumerism.
The Cultural Links between the Human and Inhuman
Monsters of Film, Fiction, and Fable: The Cultural Links Between the Human and Inhuman, 2018
Monsters are deeply embedded in our cultural fabric, moving across epochs from ancient mythology to folk and fairy tales to literature, and then film and television. The collected essays in this volume will explore the cultural implications of monsters, particularly those of the 20th and 21st centuries, delving into the various social, economic, and political issues that these monsters reflect. Long tied to ideas of the Other, the inhuman have represented societal fears for centuries. In fact, the dawning imperialist age saw a resurgence of these gothic horrors, particularly in fiction such as Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Civilized Victorian society reinvented the monstrous myths, projecting their fears about those they were colonizing onto the monsters that populated the pages. This resurgence expanded during Modernist times with the advent of radio, film, and television. Society quaked in terror over the reported aliens in War of the Worlds and Count Dracula floated eerily across the screen— just as ideas related to eugenics and racial purity permeated the Western world. The monster fiction and media of the postmodernist eras still reflect societal unease when it comes to issues of race, gender, sexuality, and other cultural issues. Yet, a transformation has occurred in contemporary works, a cultural shift, so to speak. In his essay “Monster Theory (Seven Theses),” Jeffrey Jerome Cohen says, “[t]he monster is . . . an embodiment of certain cultural moments—of a time, a feeling, and a place. The monster’s body quite literally incorporates fear, desire, anxiety, and fantasy . . . giving them life and an uncanny independence. The monstrous body is pure culture” (1996, 4). What we see as we move across the 20th and 21st centuries is a reclamation of the monstrous and an exploration of, as posthuman critics posit, the “us” in “them.” Rather than provoking only fear, many of these monsters now inspire sympathy, forcing audiences to question ideas related to the different social, political, and economic issues contemporary monsters represent as well as ideas about human nature.
Editorial: Making Monsters, Building Terror
Journal of Adaptation in Film & Performance
This is the editorial for the Special Issue Making Monsters. The Special Issues comes out of my own academic interest and a two-day symposium. This editorial outlines the need for research around the practice of making monsters, placing the production processes needed to make the creatures in horror media as central to the adaptation of monsters into various media forms. It also will introduce the contributors to the Special Issue and briefly lay out their specific approach to this broad and engaging topic, whether that be looking at the practical effects used to bring monsters to the stage and screen or new ways we conceptualize the monstrous in the digital forms.
Big, Bad and Ugly – The concept of “the monster” in western culture
Aesthetics in Turkey: Turkish Congress of Aesthetics Proceedings
In this essay the concept of “the monster” is analyzed (a) as an augury for some notable fact such as a catastrophe or a divine message in order to bring about human repentance, (b) as a being escaping the physical borders of human dimension and (c) as a person responsible for a dreadful crime. All of these definitions have in common the fact that they correspond to a type of being whose hybrid form is somewhere between the human and the inhuman.
De•monstra•tion: The Monster and the Demonization of Other
2016
In this dissertation paper I aim to put in words what I artistically express in my thesis exhibition de-monstra-tion. The exhibition includes paintings, drawings and an installation imitating the national elections atmosphere in Turkey. It offers an artistic response to aggression and violence in different forms prevalent throughout the world. It does this by “demonstrating” how we can artistically criticize cruelties through re-politicizing politics in a manner as to neutralize all kinds of moral degradation associated with the demonization of other. I consider different connotations of the monster as expressed and elaborated in the literature to discuss how I use it as an artistic tool to humorously subvert moralized politics dominant in society and media. Then, I build my exhibition on neo-expressionism and graffiti with particular emphases on the works of Spero, Basquiat and Haring. Finally, I elaborate on how in my exhibition I used Artaud’s theatre of cruelty to re-politicize ...
The Making of Monsters: Constructing the Sexual Terrorist
Gonzaga Charter Journal, 2009
Throughout the term in "Monsters and Evil" we've studied different forms of monsters. In Othello, Iago invokes an image of a devilish deceiver who seemingly only wants to destroy beauty in an act of vengeance. Frankenstein's monster depicts a purely constructed other only capable of creating havoc, despair and death. In the "Island of Dr. Moreau," H.G. Wells paints a picture of a lunatic doctor that challenges assumptions about the "unique" nature of humankind. Possibly more important than the monsters themselves, the social reaction to an intrusive and destructive force has been at the forefront of most of our discussions. In studying the relationship between society and a monster, understanding important themes meant continually questioning the characters in the story. What about Beowulf killing monsters makes him heroic? Why does Othello fall victim to Iago's deception? Was there anything wrong with what Dr. Moreau did? Our culture conveniently provides a new application of these ideas. Unfortunately, monsters now extend beyond the confines of story. Monsters are not just for kids anymore-the effects of creating the divide between what is right, what is human, what is normal and the corresponding creation of an outsider have tangible political consequences. The culture of the monster and "us" extends beyond just a destructive xenophobia. Instead, the image of the monster more importantly reveals the internal psyche of those who wish to normalize a naïve populace. In response to terror, fear, and trepidation society has succumbed to normative enforcements of otherness, specifically using sexuality to justify the separation between the "innocent" civilian and the monster.