My wife and I had planned to go out this past weekend and see Breaking Dawn – the latest movie in the Twilight juggernaut – but she came down with a little bug (and I say little bug in the same way that I’d say that Mt. Kilimanjaro is a little hill.
She’s on the mend now, and we’ll reschedule our wee trip to the movies for another day. Still, the very fact that we’re planning to see the movie sparked some thoughts that I find interesting. I recognize that you might not find them interesting, but that’s a chance I’m willing to take.
Here’s the short version of what I’ve been thinking: it seems to me that our cultural idea of monsters has evolved – and I think that’s a positive sign.
That was the short version. If I’ve piqued your interest, I’ll wait a moment while you grab some coffee and settle in for the long version. … … … All set? Are ya comfy? Ok, let’s see where my meandering thought train takes us.
It seems that monsters have enjoyed a bit of a resurgence lately. Even if you aren’t a card-carrying member of Team Edward-or-Jacob, you may have noticed just how much monster-related stuff is out there: books, TV shows, movies, games, comics, toys, t-shirts, breakfast cereals, etc.
But the fact is, monsters have been a part of our cultural landscape for millenia. Ghosts and goblins, dragons and giants, sea monsters waiting for sailors to wander too far from land… monsters have been part of our literature since the beginning of… well, literature. Beowulf, the Odyssey and Iliad, Anubis, Quetzalcoatl … our earliest writings are replete with monsters.
And with good reason: monsters served as warnings. From the scary story told to children to keep them in line, to the epic horror that awaits the evildoer, monsters were effective tools for behavior modification.
As you might have guessed, the word monster has its roots in Latin… monstrum is something that is outside the natural order. And it shares a root with the verbs monstro and moneo (“show” and “warn”, respectively – think of the English word “demonstrate”). So classically, a monster is something unnatural that serves as a warning.
However, as you may have read recently – say, in the short version of this post – the concept of monster has been evolving.
Historically, monsters are evil. It’s their nature. It’s not something they choose, it’s who they are. On an cellular, existential level, monsters exist to torment the rest of us.
Why is that? Because we made them that way.
Deep in our cultural DNA is the idea of Other. Whether you think of it as a result of our pack mentality, or a product of tribalism, or a residue of religious purity, we have a powerful tendency to split people into “us” and “them”. It doesn’t really happen on a conscious level, but it’s everywhere – and the context varies with our circumstance. The “us” can be our family, fans of our favorite team, citizens of our country, adherents to our religious group… in each of these arenas, we subconsciously relegate people into the “them” category. As a result, we subconsciously (and sometimes even consciously) see these others as inferior in some way.
We justify this effortlessly. We call it in-group loyalty, or supporting our team, or patriotism, or faithfulness – which weakens those terms considerably. When we say that doing bad to “them” is equal to doing good for “us”, we are participating in one of humanity’s oldest pastimes: infrahumanization – a fancy word for the idea that our ingroup is somehow more human than any other group.
Infrahumanization is the root of many of our evils: genocide, racism & sexism (and many other isms), discrimination, bullying, class warfare, political stupidity… the list goes on. It’s not just saying “We’re number 1!” It’s actually believing that “we” are inherently better than “they” – and thinking (and acting) accordingly.
And here’s the rub: we have no control over most of the things that separate “us” from “them.”
Psychologist and experimental theologian Richard Beck calls it moral luck. Author Rachel Held Evans calls it the cosmic lottery. Some call it chance – others call it providence. However you look at it, we had no say in the major factors that make up most of the causes of “otherness”. We didn’t choose our parents or the gender of our birth. We didn’t choose our skin color or ethnic identities. We didn’t choose where we were born, or which religion was predominant in our geography, or how much money our family had when we came on the scene, or whether our parents were “good” people. We were born when and where and how and to whom we were born… and that was that.
From this concept, we developed the idea of monsters. Since there aren’t that many real differences between us, we needed to find ways to rationalize our demonization of the “others” – so we actually made demons of them. We made creatures who are inherently evil as a way of distinguishing “them” from “us”. Monsters are analogs of “others”. Think of it as a societal defense mechanism. We don’t need to feel guilty about hating “them” because they deserve our hatred – simply by virtue of their existance.
This idea went along smoothly… for centuries.
And then, gradually, changes started to appear in our societal landscape. The roots of this change go back to the Enlightenment, but the momentum for the change really picked up in the 1950s.
When WWII ended, there was an enormous cultural upheaval – and its echoes continue to reverberate. Rock and roll, the rise of the Civil Rights and anti-war movements, the Summer of Love and the Sexual Revolution, Watergate and the resultant changes in our view of government, the boom and bust bubbles of our economy, environmental consciousness, the Information Age, globalization… on and on and on. So many epic changes in such a relatively short period of time – these changes impacted virtually every aspect of our society.
Our view of monsters wasn’t exempt from these changes. Previously monsters were objects of fear and loathing simply because they existed. Suddenly, that’s not the case. Monsters were still to be feared, but they also deserved to be understood.
Look at King Kong… sure, we had to kill him. But on a very real level, it was our fault. We went to his island and kidnapped him. We brought him to our land to be humiliated and tortured. He was just being him. Consider Godzilla… sure, we needed to bring out the big guns to protect our cities from him, but it was our fault that he existed at all. He wouldn’t have been a problem if we hadn’t been messing with nuclear forces that we didn’t understand.
Then we move forward into our time… our monsters wouldn’t even be recognizeable to folks from previous eras. Trace the chain from Lon Chaney’s Wolf Man to Michael J. Fox’s Teen Wolf to Taylor Lautner’s Jacob. Follow the line from Bela Lugosi’s Dracula to David Boreanaz’s Angel to Robert Pattinson’s Edward. Couldn’t be much more different…
We’ve even changed the origins of these monsters. In the past, monsters were cursed, or the result of some malevolent occult practice, or the product of some twisted black magic. Now, it’s biology. Werewolves and vampires aren’t cursed – they simply have a disease that’s trasmitted by a bite… like rabies or malaria. Zombies aren’t summoned by some evil necromantic ritual – they’re the result of a plague, or chemical warfare.
So they aren’t cursed. They aren’t inherently monstrous at their core. It’s no longer who they are that’s evil… it’s what they do. And this is a HUGE difference. It means that, like us, they can choose to be bad… or they can choose to be good.
As a result of this conceptual evolution, it’s no longer a “good” thing to hate monsters simply because they exist. Now we’re forced to judge them by what they do – or don’t do.
This is a very good thing.
Remember, monsters are analogs for “others”. In the past, it was acceptable (or at least understandable) behavior to hate “others” simply for their “otherness”. Infrahumanization was commonplace. Even the US Constitution codified just how much less human a slave was than a free person. And it continues. Consider the treatment of minorities, women, immigrants, the disabled, the mentally ill, the homeless, the LGBT community, Muslims, either the Tea Party or the Occupy folks (depending on which side you’re on), etc. etc. etc. We are still woefully ignorant and stupid in the way we treat “others.”
But there has been progress. There are growing pockets of people who are choosing to see “others” differently, who are trying to put a stop to infrahumanization. We’re starting to see reactions to some of the hatred that comes from religious fundamentalism (on both sides of the Atlantic). We’re starting to see attempts to lessen the vitriolic rhetoric on both sides of our political landscape. We’re starting to see calls to lower the volume of the childish shrieking coming from talk radio and cable “news” pundits. We’re starting to see “other” people as people.
We aren’t done, by any stretch of the imagination. Society’s narrative is informed by our monster stories, but there is a time lag there. And there is still significant resistance. Look at our national conversation about bullying. We have some people who are putting some serious effort into the noble goal of eradicating bullying – or at least working to protect our children from it. But we also have people who are working just as hard to preserve their heritage of bullying by appealing to religious freedom or free speech.
I don’t think we’ll ever get rid of irrational hatred altogether – we’re still human. But a quick look at American history shows that these kinds of changes are possible. In general, America has changed for the good. For the most part, we don’t burn witches. Slavery is mostly gone. Women can vote. Institutionalized workplace discrimination is increasingly illegal. Certainly other parts of the world are behind in many of these areas, and we still have a long way to go, but progress has been made.
That gives me hope.
And there we are. Lots of thoughts (that I, at least, find interesting!) that were sparked by the fact that my wife and I at some point are going to feed even more money to the Twilight beast. If you made it to the end of this essay, I don’t know whether to offer you my congratulations, apologies, or thanks… I suppose some mix of all three would be appropriate.
I do hope, either way, that it made you think a little about who fills the role of “other” in your life – and whether they deserve to be in that role. And maybe stock up on garlic… just in case!
