What is a monster?

I have thoughts.

[ominous music] Monsters are both educational and fantastical, and we like to use them to test the boundaries of culture and humanity while also giving them fur and fangs and claws, sometimes.

But what a monster is is subject to many forces, from our cultures, our beliefs, and ourselves.

[reel clicking] Monsters serve as instructed metaphors to teach moral lessons or condemn and promote certain behaviors... and function as intellectual and emotional safe spaces for difficult topics.

Everyone is scared of something and recognizing and sharing those anxieties can form connections, positive and negative.

It's not just about what the creature looks like, but how it acts and why people felt the need to invent that monster in the first place.

So when we trace how a monster was created and for what purpose, we learn more about ourselves, our past, our present, and what we want from the future.

So while those horror movies and spooky stories by the fire aren't just there to scare us; they're trying to teach us something, about how to behave, what not to do, and who to trust.

From vampires punishing taboo desires to ghosts enforcing community rules to yeti warning you about dangerous weather, these creatures are more than hair raising stories; they're cautionary tales.

Monsters evolve with time, culture, and personal beliefs, just as we do, teaching us new lessons as we go.

Monsters help define the boundaries and shape the spaces between good and evil, human and inhuman, right and wrong.

Monsters reveal more about us than we want to admit.

Our world is full of monstrous enforcers that attempt to draw a clear line between good and bad.

What justifies their actions, or not, helps us navigate right from wrong.

The legend of Krampus famously punishes bad children, threatening them with a beating or worse.

It serves not just as a cautionary tale for children to behave, but as a lesson for adults to conduct themselves with purity and kindness.

La Llorona is a ghostly figure that snatches children who are out after dark or disobeys their parents.

The Baba Yaga, a witch-like figure in Slavic folklore, tests the morals of those who encounter her, teaching lessons about respect, greed, and dishonesty.

And if we dig into any of these monsters, we come to understand the history of each culture's spiritual traditions, class systems, politics, and values.

When we look at these things theoretically, we incorporate academic disciplines like literature, sociology, psychology, and even paleontology.

The broader study of monsters and monster theory is a field that investigates humanism around the world through a very specific lens.

Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, a scholar and professor who is widely recognized for his contributions to the field, coined the term "monster theory."

His 1996 essay, "Seven Theses," opened my eyes and I can say proudly he's now a colleague.

"Seven Theses" gave words to what I felt instinctively, that monsters in horror are born from culture and have meaning.

"Seven Theses" outlines seven central ideas that form the basis of monster theory.

To sum it up, monsters are culturally constructed and their values and purpose are specific to whatever place and time their story is created in.

They push boundaries, and in doing so, they mimic cultural values and fears.

Stories about monsters have always existed and will always exist.

Modern monster studies looks at the cultural purpose of monsters through a rash of philosophical ideas that continue to evolve in post-structuralism-- the idea that meaning is never fixed and we are always reconceptualizing and reinterpreting.

Nothing is ever stable.

So as cultures shift, monsters do as well.

The werewolf legend, for instance, evolved significantly over time.

In the 12th century, they're sympathetic creatures, a symbol of virtue and loyalty, often to God.

Over the next century, as sheep became more important to the economy, wolf attacks were a financial threat, so the church painted them as evil, demonic, and okay to hunt.

Shape-changing into wolves became an accusation of witchcraft.

It was often accompanied by charges of cannibalism, making the werewolf even more threatening.

So by the 15th and 16th centuries, werewolves were associated with criminals and a symbol of heresy.

But in the 21st century, after hundreds of years of disassociation with Christianity and movement into horror and fiction, werewolves became a perfect vessel for more tragic and misunderstood characters and metaphors, from puberty and rage... [woman screams] ...to explorations of toxic masculinity... [man screams] ...and the overwhelming demands of parenthood.

[comic music playing] Vampires too undergo significant changes in their moral teaching and purpose over time.

In the 17th century, vampires were fearsome, representing disease and plague and bad moral behavior.

They warned against improper burial and emphasized a lack of awareness about what happens after death.

By the time Bram Stoker's Victorian representation was published, vampires had taken on a terrifying suaveness, serving as a warning against foreigners and sexual deviancy and reflecting the cultural thinkings of the time.

In the more morally open late 20th century, vampire depictions began to take on more tragic qualities.

End her suffering and yours!

No.

The vampire's struggle is less about being inherently evil and more about how they balance their innate instincts with their humanity.

In "Interview With The Vampire," "True Blood," and "Only Lovers Left Alive," vampires grapple with the moral dilemmas and ethics of feeding on humans, and their otherness is sometimes sympathetic rather than always frightening.

The vampire as a monster evolved from a simple warning against evil doing and physical danger to a more complex exploration of human nature-- lessons adapted as cultures changed.

Same monsters, different meanings.

That's post-structuralism at work.

This becomes important when you consider the abject, that strange feeling we get when we are forced to encounter a breakdown of meaning between self and other, often in a negative way, like how Julia Kristeva uses it in the "Powers of Horror."

The 1980 book used post-structuralism to explore the abject.

It's something that can be scary and repulsive, but also prompts curiosity.

The abject helps us define who we are by saying what we are not.

Monsters live in that space.

The abject overlaps a bit with the uncanny, Sigmund Freud's concept of unheimlich, that unsettling feeling when we encounter something both familiar and eerie in an unnerving way.

While morality itself isn't necessarily at play in these theories, post-structuralist thought does ask us to reconsider the infallibility of traditional systems, including religion, by looking at how cultural factors and systems of power influence them.

Monsters aren't always villains.

Like Mary Shelley's creature in "Frankenstein" or Louis in Anne Rice's "Interview With The Vampire," or virtually every incarnation of "Godzilla," monsters can be sympathetic characters, protectors and defenders of humanity or nature.

Even linguistically, monster is more than "scary thing."

The word comes from the Latin monere, meaning evil or divine omen, and monstrare, to reveal.

Those words developed to monstrum, meaning a portent or warning.

Check out Dr. B's episode for the full story.

It's a little etymological reminder that we've been thinking about monsters as more than just scary stories for a really, really long time.

The monsters in early religion and mythology show us what happens when you cross a line-- spiritual, physical, or moral.

Some traditions do have creatures and deities that could be benevolent and revered, but there's usually some kind of moral system that deems certain behaviors as good and others as not so great.

A handy way to keep the moral margins clean is to create opposing monsters, like the Christian God in opposition to a monstrous Satan.

In ancient mythology, monster's physical appearance sometimes serves as a visual warning for moral principle.

The Minotaur in Greek mythology, for example, shows sex between humans and animals is taboo, but it also reminded humans of our base nature as beasts ourselves.

But deviance isn't reserved for myth.

History is full of attempts to make real people into monster-like characters.

Philosopher Pliny, for instance, held that the mere thoughts of the mother and father during the act of conception dictated the child's appearance.

In the 17th and 18th centuries, women were told to monitor their imaginations and emotions and be careful about what they ate or even looked at during pregnancy for if they deviated too much, they might have a baby born with defects.

Monster mythology isn't only about what's not human, but perhaps more crucially, what it means to be accepted.

It speaks to a deep and often troubling aspect of human behavior-- the need to differentiate ourselves from those we deem as the other.

Colonizers often labeled indigenous peoples as "savages" or "beasts" to diminish and other them.

Still today, marginalized groups are labeled as monstrous for their differences, whether that's race, religion, gender, immigration status, or sexuality.

Monster continues to be used to justify discrimination and violence.

Monster narratives not only reinforce ideas of good and evil, right and wrong, but serve as an ethical testing ground.

They ask us to consider what we would do when confronted with monstrosity, real or mislabeled.

How would we treat Frankenstein's creature today?

Are we going to join the mob, torch in hand, on the hunt for vengeance?

Hide in our homes and let others do our dirty work?

Or would we offer shelter and sympathy?

What makes monsters powerful is that they are reflections of our fears and desires.

So understanding them helps us understand ourselves.

They represent what it means to be human and what happens when we stray too far from acting humane.

Spooky stories are amazing and give us a better understanding of the world.

But remember this, as fun as monsters are, there are real consequences to monstrous narratives.

Monsters matter.

Class dismissed.

[screen rolling] -Ope!

-(crew person) Oh my God.

-Better.

-The only thing is, is... (crew #2) That was great.

This slide is driving me nuts.

I don't like the slides.

What is a monster?

[laughing] I have thoughts.

I'm sorry.