Reflection
Keeping the grading criteria in mind, reflect on the Rhetorical Analysis. What grade do you deserve and why?
Quick Write
What is a monster? Define the term Monster in your own words.
Comment below.
Monster Culture (Seven Theses)
Our purpose for the first half of class is to understand the seven theses on Monsters and to develop a good resources that will help us to remember and use the theses in our writing.
Jeffrey Jerome Cohen – Monster Culture (Seven Theses) (p. 3-20)
We read Cohen’s Monster Culture: Seven Theses for today. Jeffrey Jerome Cohen argues that we can read “cultures from the monsters they engender” (3). This is chapter one of his book Monster Theory: Reading Culture.
From the editor/author’s website:
We live in a time of monsters. Monsters provide a key to understanding the culture that spawned them. So argue the essays in this wide-ranging and fascinating collection that asks the question, What happens when critical theorists take the study of monsters seriously as a means of examining our culture?
In viewing the monstrous body as a metaphor for the cultural body, the contributors to Monster Theory consider beasts, demons, freaks, and fiends as symbolic expressions of cultural unease that pervade a society and shape its collective behavior. Through a historical sampling of monsters, these essays argue that our fascination for the monstrous testifies to our continued desire to explore difference and prohibition. JeffreyJeromeCohen.com
Monster Theory
- Thesis I. The Monster’s Body Is a Cultural Body (4)
- Thesis II. The Monster Always Escapes (4)
- Thesis III. The Monster Is the Harbinger of Category Crisis (6)
- Thesis IV. The Monster Dwells at the Gates of Difference (7)
- Thesis V. The Monster Polices the Borders of the Possible (12)
- Thesis VI. Fear of the Monster Is Really a Kind of Desire (16)
- Thesis VII. The Monster Stands at the Threshold . . . of Becoming (20)
In groups, develop a list of the important points, lessons, takeaways, quotes, and examples that we need to know in order to understand the thesis. Write a short summary explaining the points of the thesis. Make sure you label which thesis you are writing about. This is very important because we will be using monster theory to write the last two essays in the course. The better we understand the theory, the better we will be able to apply it.
Fallacy Group Presentation
Group 5
Vampires
What makes vampires monstrous?
Activity: Still-Life Writing
- List as many concrete details as you can see.
- List as many unique observations as you can.
- Write as descriptively as possible about the text.
- Use Adjectives – a word that describes, identifies or further defines a noun or a pronoun.
- Adverbs – Kindly, slowly, here, often, and very are examples of adverbs. Adverbs modify verbs, adjectives, or other adverbs.
- Descriptive language – appeals to the reader’s five senses: taste, touch, sight, smell, and hearing.
- Metaphors – a figure of speech that is used to make a comparison between two things that aren’t alike but do have something in common.
Use this strategy for your primary sources. Build on your concrete observation and evoke the image for your reader.
Dracula is the most famous vampire in literature and film.
Here is the latest film in Dracula’s long history. Dracula Untold (2014)
Finally, the last image to analyze.
mon·ster noun 1. an imaginary creature that is typically large, ugly, and frightening.
To me a monster is subjective. Different people are scared by different things, some things we are all somewhat fearful of though it may be for simple reasons. The misshapen face / body, the unknown of a sound in the dark, or a sudden noise will startle anyone, but a monster can be specific to a culture or a person. Many monsters play off of primal fears but there are also monsters that arise from folklore or to explain the death of cattle for example. In my own words, a monster is perceived danger manifested.
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A moster is someone or somebeing that lacks morality at which they cummit brutal and immoral acts with an intent to hurt others and cause emotional or physical pain.
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Monsters are defined as…demons, monstrosities, an inhumane creature, those with a large capacity to hurt others, those with animosity towards others. In monster movies, the monster is really quite obvious. But in other horror, the monster doesn’t actually have to be inhuman to be a monster.
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A monster is a someone or something that does horrible and terrible things to innocent people. To me I see monster as the fictional character you heard about growing up as a kid. The characters are meant to scare you and keep you from doing things that you aren’t supposed to do, like walk outside after dark by yourself. Parents use these fictional characters as learning tools for their kids because what better way to keep your kid in bed at night, if he thinks somethings gonna come get him?
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A monster is something that is feared either because of how it looks or for what it did, for example a monster can be a animal that you didn’t know existed and scared you because the way it looks or a monster can be a person that did a horrible act like kill someone or a animal.
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A monster to me is the thing that everyone wants to be, but not have the repercussions that accompany the actions of a monster. It is vicariously experiencing the dark side in all of us. Who wouldn’t like to lash out and destroy, kill or maim at times. All of us would, but our rational mind intercedes to keep our desires in check. That is the terror of a monster.
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A monster is a creature that is demonized and comes to include abnormal characteristics. A monster is feared by most of society and different from society.
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A monster is something or someone who commits unspeakable acts without remorse. People are afraid of them, afraid of their power to do harm, even sometimes afraid of their appearance. Sometimes a monster has a reason for their act of terror but sometimes they don’t.
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A monster is a scary and ugly figure. When I think of a monster it looks like a devil like creature.
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Monster is a creature that we believe it’s huge, scary, and does harmful things to us, it usually a weird looking to makes us afraid from their power
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A monster is a hideous creature and can be described as a bad person.
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A monster is someone or something that is purly negative and wants nothing good to come to them and only cause fear to others. They also have morals that are corrupted.
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A monster is something that is labeled as ugly and scary, many people get frightened by it.
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The monster is Born naturally and not man made into a different specie. It reveals that a monster has several adaptions and personality that usually it carries itself which is fear, desire, anxiety, and fantasy. Also it mentions that that a monster is mysterious, mysterious that keeps people wondering what is the next move for a monster. Monster are usually secretive that they plan for the next move and vanish into the night, into the unknown.
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Theory: Monster is a cultural body that is not just a monster, it means other significance.
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Thesis III:The Monster is the Harbinger of Category Crisis:
-Harbinger means a person or thing that announces or signals the approach of another
-The monster escapes because it refuses easy categorization
-They defy every natural law of evolution
-The refusal of participating in the “order of things” is true for monsters generally
-They are distrubing hybrids that resist to be included in any systematic structure
-Monsters famously appear in time of crisis
-A monsters existence is a rebuke to boundary and enclosure
-Overall they rebuke the traditional methods of organizing knowledge and human experience
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Thesis II: The Monster Always Escapes
*Examples: The Yeti vanishes to appear somewhere else
King Arthur and Mount Saint Micheal , it reappeared in another chronicle
Ripley and the alien (Sigourney Weaver)
*Vampire = Gay (Anne Rice)
*Women who wrote Vampire book was working on AIDS campaign (Carmilla)
* “Monster Theory” concern itself with strings of cultural moments conected by a logic that always threatens to shift invigarated by change and escape
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Thesis V: The Monster Polices the Border of the Police
“Every monster is in this way a double narrative, two living stories: one that describes how the monster came to be and another, and it’s testimony, detailing what cultural use the monster serves”(13).
“The monster stands as a warning against its uncertain demesnes the monster prevents mobility delimiting the social spaces in which people may move”.
“The monster of prohibition exists to demarcate the bonds that hold together that systems of relations we call culture, to call horrid attention to the border that cannot must not be crossed” (13).
“Primarily these borders are in place to control the traffic in women, or more generally to establish strictly homosocial bonds, the ties between men that keep a patriarchal society functional” (13)
“Because they live without a system of tradition and custom, the Cyclopes are a danger to the arriving Greeks…” (14).
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Thesis four argues that monsters are created from those perceived different from the norms of society, as the article states, “part monstrous difference tends to be cultural, political, racial, economic, sexual”. By dehumanizing people of other cultures, it justifies harm on these people when perceived as monstrous. Furthermore, it is created by society in order to erase difference in the world, the article states the monster is , “embodiment of radical difference, paradoxically threatens to erase difference in the world.” This is because society is terrified of difference.
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Thesis VI Fear Of The Monster Is Really A Kind Of Desire
-The co-optation of the monster into a symbol of the desirable is often accomplished through the neutralization of potentially threatening aspects with a liberal dose of comedy
-The simultaneity of anxiety and desire ensures the monster will always entice
– The monster can act as an alter ego of one’s self.
-The genre usually follows the same script, regardless of the size of the monster or how scary, the good guy is always the victor.
-Monsters awakens ones pleasures of being frightened and or frightening
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Emmanuel Guerra
Quick Write
Keeping the grading criteria in mind, reflect on the Rhetorical Analysis. What grade do you deserve and why?
I believe I got a B+ on the essay on rhetorical analysis because I felt that I met the criteria and requirements that I they asked for. However, I didn’t fully gave a full well explained essay that took me days and hours to do. This essay approximately took me 8 hours to do in total yet however I split it every day for 1 hour due to managing time.
What is a monster: A creature that is scary and ugly looking usually that wants to do harm to people.I think that monsters usually have to be ugly looking that defines a monster and that does evil in the world, such as murder, rape, violence, and immoral acts.
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Monster isnt an imaginary creature. Its a frightening thought which can be ugly, huge , violent etc. To me bad people in the society are monsters. Monster isnt just a person either, its in our mindset. And that mindset makes us do terrible things.
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A monster is something that is a abomination to society’s eyes, it is something that might be misunderstood by society and turn toward evil acts as a result.
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A monster is something that can invoke fear or anxiety in a person through various means. Monsters are considered scary from the point of view of the interpreter. They may invoke fear by showing something that is different, or a deviant. Sometimes the deviations are physical and sometimes they are personality characteristics. Some monsters invoke fear by showing the viewer something about themselves or society that they do not like or had not thought of in that perspective before the encounter. Monsters are usually classified as being terrorizing in some fashion.
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Monsters can have no gender. They can be a group or an ideology. The Nazis were monsters. They did human experiments on the Jews. They did something that went against the norms of society.
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Thesis 1: The Monster’s body is a cultural body
important quotes:
” 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.”
this is a time when we have to choose between taking the monstrous path or a moral one.
” The monster’s body quite literally incorporates fear, desire, anxiety, and fantasy”
these are the feelings that we are projecting when we are choosing what road we are going to go down.
we are created as monsters but most people choose the moral way. It is always there waiting “to be born again. “
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GROUP 7
Thesis 4
WHAT?
“The monster is an incorporation of the outside” differences can be :
– cultural , political, racial, economical, sexual, and national difference can be transformed into sexual difference
HOW?
ex) transforming Muslims into demonic caricatures, native Americans were presented as nonredeemable, accusing Jews of crimes like the plague, dark skin was associated with the fires of hell
WHY?
– The monster threatens to destroy not just individual members of society but the very cultural apparatus through which individuality is constitutes and allowed.
– The monster embodies radical differences, threatens to erase difference in the world.
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Fear of the Monster is Really a Kind of Desire
-Distrust and loathe monster while envy freedom
-Safe expression
-Alter ego(projection)
-Knowing cinema is temp.
-Predictability of genre
-“Monsters eradication functions as an exorcism”
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Thesis III: The Monster is the Harbinger of Category Crisis
-They’re hybrids that do not fit into a specific category.
-Refuse to be normal
-“And so the monster is dangerous, a form suspended between forms that that threatens to smash distinctions.”
-Ever changing, not static
-“A mixed category… resists any classification built on hierarchy…”
-Too large to be categorized. A counter to the norm.
-“In the face of the monster, scientific inquiry and its ordered rationality crumble.”
Summary: Monsters are an amalgamation of ideas. A monster is not a containable being. Any attempt to categorize or organize them is fruitless. Monsters change with the times. They are abnormal and indifferent to fundamental science.
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Thesis IV The Monster Dwells at the Gates of Difference
-In the United States, Native Americans were presented as unredeemable savages so that the powerful political machine of Manifest Destiny could push westward with disregard.
-The Middle Ages accused the Jews of crimes ranging from the bringing of the plague to bleeding Christian children to make their Passover meal.
-Rene Girard has written at great length about the real violence these debasing representations enact connecting monsterizing depiction with the phenomenon of the scapegoat. Monsters are never created ex n
“The woman who oversteps the boundaries of her gender role risks becoming a Scylla, Weird Sister, Lilith, Bertha Mason, or Gorgon.”
Deviant sexual identity is susceptible to monsterization.
From the classical period into the twentieth century, race has been almost a powerful catalyst to the creation of monsters as culture. gender, and sexuality.
The denizens of mysterious and uncertain ethiopia were black because they had been scorched by the too-close passing of the sun. Roman naturalist Pliny assumed nonwhite skin to be symptomatic of a complete difference in temperament and attributed Africa’s darkness to climate; the intense heat he sai burned african’s skin and malformed their bodies
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Thesis 2
Eric, Ug. Okoro, Alex
“No matter how many times king Author killed the ogre of Mt St. Michael the monster reappeared in another heroic chronical…” Monsters always comes back to life within the story. This element exists throughout monster stories. The very essence of the monster reflects the current cultural and societal phobias. “Anne Rice has given the myth, a modern rewriting in which homosexuality and vampirism have been conjoined
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“The monster prevents mobility…” Which tells people to stay in line, act in order.
“The monster of prohibition… interdicting through its grotesque body some behaviors and actions, envaluing others.” i.e. Nazis policing streets
“The monster of prohibition exists to demarcate the bonds that hold together that systems of relations we call culture, to call horrid attention to the border that cannot must not be crossed”
Because they live without order, government or tradition, they are seen as “barbaric” or monsters.
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