Monster Culture Comprehensive Notes

Monster Culture: Patricia Donavan

Introduction to Monster Culture

Monsters like vampires, zombies, and witches help us cope with our deepest fears.
Fear of the monstrous has historically united communities and cultures.
Monster narratives provide a shared experience of horror, addressing anxieties related to wars, economic disasters, political issues, and environmental concerns.

David Schmid's Perspective on Monsters

David Schmid defines monsters as tools to dismiss and demonize marginalized, deviant, and abject entities in various historical, geographical, and ideological contexts.
Monsters are not merely external threats; they can exist within our societies.
Schmid studied serial killers, like Jeffrey Dahmer, Ted Bundy, and John Wayne Gacy, as cultural monstrosities in American culture.
Schmid emphasizes the importance of recognizing the monsters we don't immediately identify, such as serial killers, terrorists, child murderers, abusers, corporations harming the planet, and banks causing financial devastation.
Schmid references Kyle Bishop, noting that horror films, especially zombie movies since 9/11, reflect anxieties about unnatural death and a grim view of the modern apocalypse.

John Edgar Browning's Research on Vampires

John Edgar Browning defines monsters as "cultural constructions of the terrible" that reflect our subconscious fears and societal biases.
Browning's research includes fieldwork in New Orleans, revealing a subculture of "real" vampires who consume blood or psychic energy.
He also notes the existence of willing donors who provide blood or energy.
Contemporary vampires may be portrayed sympathetically, humorously, or mockingly, as seen in Sesame Street's "The Count".
Browning discusses how modern vampire portrayals can evoke empathy, forcing us to recognize and accept our own monstrosity.
Browning mentions lecturing on a vampire-themed cruise to Alaska featuring a vampire movie festival and an appearance by Dacre Stoker, Bram Stoker's great-grand nephew.

David Castillo's Exploration of Baroque Horrors

David Castillo specializes in the Spanish Baroque era, which produced grotesque and terrifying literature.
Castillo's book, "Baroque Horrors: Roots of the Fantastic in the Age of Curiosities," presents a gallery of horrors from early modern literature.
Castillo considers the historical literary roots of supernatural visitations, haunted houses, and man-made horrors.
He references Maria de Zayas’ “Desengaños amorosos” (“Disenchantments of Love,” first published in 1647), in which a woman is sealed in a wall by her family and kept alive for six years until "her very flesh was eaten up to the thighs with wounds and worms, which filled the stinking place."
Castillo explains that horror awakens our curiosity about lurking monsters and their “excessive enjoyment.”
Castillo suggests that tales of mutilation, mutation, monstrosity, murder, and mayhem help us understand modern fears and their monstrous offspring, connecting political history to the modern age.

Phillips Stevens Jr.'s Analysis of Witchcraft

Phillips Stevens Jr. has extensively studied witchcraft, divination, zombies, rites of passage, and the dark side of humanity.
Stevens focuses on the evil witch as a cultural monstrosity, distinct from modern wiccans.
Belief in witches exists worldwide and represents various forms of cultural monstrosity, including vampirism, incest, child sexual molestation, bloody murder, and cannibalism.
Shared fear is functional to the social order, and witches embody the most terrible human fears.
The evil witch is the prototypical ‘other,’ the focus of conspiracy theories, causing misfortune, epidemics, and stealing children.
Cross-culturally, witches represent negative social values, often killing, dismembering, and consuming their victims.
Stevens notes that witches also serve positive social functions in pre-scientific cultures by explaining misfortune, evil, disease, and infant mortality.
Belief in witches unites people against an imagined ‘other’ and encourages social conformity to avoid suspicion.

Questions and Answers Based on the Text

According to David Schmid, what function do monster stories serve?
- Monster tales tell us the ‘truth’ about things—evil is afoot, you can’t trust what you see, the future is grim, you’re going to die. In a narrative, that permits resolution or catharsis. They help us share experiences of horror and address real anxieties, from wars and economic disasters to political situations and environmental issues.
Who are the real-life monsters, according to Schmid?
- The serial killer, the terrorist, the child murderer, the abusers of Abu Ghraib, the banks that are destroying lives while reaping record profits, and the corporations that are poisoning the planet to benefit their bottom line.
How has the portrayal of the vampire shifted through time?
- The vampire of today’s popular culture may or may not inspire terror. He or she may provoke empathy or pathos, forcing us to recognize its monstrosity as our own, to embrace what once we were taught to loathe.
According to Phillip Stevens Jr., what have been the positive and negative social functions of evil witches?
- Negative Functions: Witches cause whatever havoc they can in human society, from individual misfortune to mass epidemic, to stealing children from their beds.
- Positive Functions: In pre-scientific cultures, they explain misfortune, evil, disease, and infant mortality. They unite people in opposition to the imagined ‘other’ and, because in many societies witchcraft is believed to exist in people without their knowledge, such beliefs persuade people to mind their social manners, lest suspicion fall upon them.
What are some of the contemporary monsters portrayed in contemporary stories?
- Vampires, zombies, witches, serial killers, terrorists, child murderers, abusive figures, destructive corporations, and financial institutions.