Monsters exist everywhere. The exit in fiction and the real world. Their acts may spark a myth or are myths and tall tales. Whether they are used for entertainment or to show history in its darkest moments, people have used monsters since the dawn of modern human. Jeffrey Jerome Cohen writer of "Monster Culture (Seven Theses)" and "The Uncanny" by Sigmund Freud will provide a lens for analysis of some of the most well-known monsters in popular culture and a true life monster of history. These monsters are Dracula, Godzilla, Frankenstein, and Adolf Hitler.
Freud has a way to show transformation through word usage. He illustrates in his work, "The Uncanny," the term "heimlich." "What interests us most in this long extract is to find that among its different shades of meaning the word Heimlich exhibits one which is identical with its opposite, unheimlich. What is heimlich thus comes to be unheimlich." (Freud 4) Heimlich signifies belonging to the house or in other words homely. It something that appears normal or not strange. Unheimlich means strange, out of place. When Freud introduces this term in his piece, it provides what will be a form of examination of choice and action.
Freud uses the word heimlich to show an expected concept and meaning. Then Freud goes to the extreme and adds different meanings to the word heimlich making it seem as though it transforms and shifts depending on who is using it.
II. Concealed, kept from sight, so that others do not get to know about it, withheld from others, cf. Geheim [secret]; so also Heimlichkeit for Geheimnis [secret]. To do something heimlich, i.e. behind someone's back; to steal away heimlich; heimlich meetings and appointments; to look on with heimlich pleasure at someone's discomfiture; to sigh or weep heimlich; to behave heimlich, as though there was something to conceal; heimlich love, love-affair, sin; heimlich places (which good manners oblige us to conceal). (Freud 3)
It is amazing how Freud attached all these various words to "heimlich" but then used it to mean the opposite in "monster" like ways like sadism and treachery. What was deemed safe and familiar then becomes dangerous and awful.
This is very much how Hitler was during WWII. At the time of his reign he was considered by some a god. He was the one that the Germans and the German allies believed would end the plague that was the Jewish people. Various propagandas aimed at promoting Hitler showed the norm was blond hair and blue eyes, a "master race" and the ones that were Jewish were considered monstrous and something to be disposed of. After Germany lost the war and the Jews founded Israel, Hitler took the image of a monster, an "antichrist" that killed millions of innocent people.
He was the essence of Freud's Heimlich, both normal and familiar, as well as atrocious and sadistic. He epitomized what was once not monstrous but then through action, became monstrous. These interesting dynamics make Hitler such an interesting and reviled monster. He, unlike the villains of stories, was once an innocent child and to some extent, a naive adult. However, as time went on, and his power grew, he began one of the most infamous ethnic cleansing in world history.
He stigmatized a nation for decades with Germany only now feeling some distance from the aftermath of WWII. He generated a false race, the "Aryan" race that essentially is still used now to hallmark "white purity." His actions, although brutal and horrific now, was seen for a time, as lifesaving and the new "normal." For monsters such as these to come into power, and be accepted as gods and leaders, it begs the public to ask themselves what made Hitler a monster and why did people become monstrous under his influence?
Not all monsters come from real life events. Others come from fiction. Frankenstein for example, came from the creative mind of Mary Shelley. Frankenstein was an innocent creation in the beginning. He wanted to exist, he wanted, a mate, and he wanted an identity. At the time of his birth, Shelley named Frankenstein, the monster. Victor, his maker, was the real Frankenstein who played god with an inanimate object. He turned was once dead and flesh, into a living and breathing creature.
It was the way Victor and the people that encountered the monster behaved, that sparked the monstrous Frankenstein from underneath the monster's mind. People say that monsters are born. The very people that fear and hate monsters create sometimes monsters. Their dark actions towards a seemingly innocent soul,...
The article within the book proclaims a "new modus legendi" or a method of reading cultures through various monsters generated. He defies earlier and popular modes of cultural studies by proposing awareness is not local and suggests seven theses to aid the reader in understanding cultures via its monsters. Cohen includes Frankenstein in his piece as well as vampires. The theses analyze the cultural use of monsters in media and literature.
Thesis 1: The Monster's Body is a Cultural Body starts with "The Monster is born only at this metaphoric crossroads, as an embodiment of a certain cultural moment- of a time, a feeling, and a place. The monster's body quite literally incorporates fear, desire, anxiety, and fantasy (ataractic or incendiary), giving them life and an uncanny independence." (Picart and Browning 15) Frankenstein took the fear and hatred of the people that encountered him. He grew aware of his forced isolation. He knew deep down that no matter how good he was and how much he wanted to belong, his physical appearance would never allow him to do so, hence the vendetta against his maker and his mission for a bride. Much like the appearance of the monster who is violent and imbalanced in strength and sanity, so is the image of the people and the culture with which influenced Mary Shelley's book. It fundamentally signifies the same thing.
The Monster thus helps erase the past sentiments and opinions for something radical and different. By using the frightening image of the monster, Shelley provides what people expect out of monsters, but also makes the maker of Frankenstein, Victor, into a monster as well. He made something that destroys. He did so not because he intended to be a father, but simply because he was curious to see if it could be done.
Introducing another image, like that of the "crossroads" aids readers in reigning in the idea of "monster" via the analytical lens of a cultural theory. It acts as an evolution into what appears to be a distorted line from fiction to nonfiction to actuality. The vampire for example, represents the night and all that the night brings. It represents dislike of sunlight, and an animalistic appetite for blood. Many cultures and individuals commit perverse activities, crimes, and traditions, at night. Some have even sacrificed people and animals in order to satisfy their need for ritual or for viciousness.
This feature of the monster which "exits only to be read," functions as a means to highlight the violence of people all while enduring in its imagined world. In Thesis II: The Monster Always Escape, Cohen elucidates the monster destroys. Nevertheless there no negative penalties for the monster. The monster merely disappears, just to appear in a different place. Cohen uses the lens of associations to scrutinize monsters. These associations are social and cultural. Cohen uses Bram Stoker's Vampire or Nosferatu as a model. "…we might explore the foreign count's transgressive but compelling sexuality, as subtly alluring to Jonathan Harker…we might analyze Murnau's self-loathing appropriation of the same demon in Nosferatu, where in the face of nascent fascism the undercurrent of desire surfaces in plague and bodily corruption." (Picart and Browning 16)
Bram Stoker's Dracula has a homosexual context within its plot and brought awareness to illneses like AIDS that allows vampirism to become a way of restoration through torture of the body as it compared to pain. He also remarks to aid in tying in the AIDS opinion that Coppola filmed an AIDS documentary close to the same time of the film. Thus, monsters become social movements or platforms for social movements to help the public transition to the unfamiliar into the familiar.
Godzilla, the monster of Tokyo, a monster that terrorizes the city, is unlike the other monsters briefly examined. He exists as a means of chaos and destruction but is not regarded in the same negative light as Frankenstein or Dracula was. He became a sort of cheesy gag as time went on and an action figure for kids to play with. It is interesting to see how people view monsters when they come from an already perceived foreign culture. Instead of seeing it as the original culture did, countries like America saw the Japanese monster as a gag or a kid's play toy.
In conclusion, monsters…
