Monsters and the Monstrous: Myths and Metaphors of Enduring Evil

237 Pages·2007·5.67 MB·English

by  Niall Scott

Monsters and the Monstrous
Myths and Metaphors of Enduring Evil
At the Interface
Series Editors
Dr Robert Fisher
Dr Margaret Sönser Breen
Advisory Board
Professor Margaret Chatterjee Professor John Parry
Professor Michael Goodman Dr David Seth Preston
Dr Jones Irwin Professor Peter L. Twohig
Professor Asa Kasher Professor S Ram Vemuri
Dr Owen Kelly Professor Bernie Warren
Revd Stephen Morris Revd Dr Kenneth Wilson, O.B.E
Volume 38
A volume in the At the Interface: project
‘Monsters and the Monstrous’
Probing the Boundaries
Monsters and the Monstrous
Myths and Metaphors of Enduring Evil
Edited by
Niall Scott
Amsterdam - New York, NY 2007
The paper on which this book is printed meets the requirements of “ISO
9706:1994, Information and documentation - Paper for documents -
Requirements for permanence”.
ISBN: 978-90-420-2253-9
©Editions Rodopi B.V., Amsterdam - New York, NY 2007
Printed in the Netherlands
Contents

Introduction 1

Section One
Monstrous Origins: Histories from the Deep and Transformed
Humans (Where ever they come from, they keep coming)

Chapter 1
“Monster Sewers”: Experiencing London’s Main Drainage System 9
Paul Dobraszczyk

Chapter 2
Ontological Anxiety Made Flesh: The Zombie in Literature, 33
Film and Culture
Kevin Alexander Boon

Chapter 3
The Zombie as Barometer of Cultural Anxiety 45
Peter Dendle

Section Two
The Monster and the Political
(Once they get into politics you can’t get rid of them)

Chapter 4
Dracula as Ethnic Conflict: The Technologies of “Humanitarian 61
Intervention” in the Balkans during the 1999 NATO Bombing
of Serbia and Kosovo
Neda Atanasoski

Chapter 5
Kultur-Terror:The Composite Monster in Nazi Visual Propaganda 81
Kristen Williams Backer

Chapter 6
The Anarchist as Monster in Fin-de-Siècle Europe 103
Elun Gabriel
Section Three
Familial Monsters
(Maybe some of them are regular folk like you and me)

Chapter 7
Family, Race, and Citizenship in Disney’s Lilo and Stitch 123
Emily Cheng

Chapter 8
The Enemy Within: The Child as Terrorist in the Contemporary 133
American Horror Film
Colette Balmain

Chapter 9
‘Monstrous Mothers’ and the Media 149
Nicola Goc

Chapter 10
Of Monsters, Masturbators and Markets: Autoerotic Desire, 167
Sexual Exchange and the Cinematic Serial Killer
Greg Tuck

Section Four
Miscellaneous Monsters
(They can be evil, male, female, but most importantly beware,
they can be cute.)

Chapter 11
Nobody’s Meat: Freedom through Monstrosity in Contemporary 187
British Fiction
Ben Barootes

Chapter 12
God Hates Us All: Kant, Radical Evil and the Diabolical 201
Monstrous Human in Heavy Metal
Niall Scott

Chapter 13
Monstrous/Cute: Notes on the Ambivalent Nature of Cuteness 213
Maja Brzozowska-Brywczyńska
Welcome to an At the Interface Project

This is a volume emerging from the Monsters and the Monstrous: Myths and
Metaphors of Enduring Evil project. This inter-disciplinary and multi-
disciplinary project seeks to investigate and explore the enduring influence
and imagery of monsters and the monstrous on human culture throughout
history. In particular, the project will have a dual focus with the intention of
examining specific ‘monsters’ as well as assessing the role, function and
consequences of persons, actions or events identified as ‘monstrous’. The
history and contemporary cultural influences of monsters and monstrous
metaphors will also be examined.
Indicative themes for research and development will include;
• The “monster” through history
• Civilization, monsters and the monstrous
• Children, childhood, stories and monsters
• Comedy: funny monsters and/or making fun of monsters (e.g.
Monsters Inc, the Addams Family)
• Making monsters; monstrous births
• Mutants and mutations; technologies of the monstrous
• Do monsters kill because they are monstrous or are they monstrous
because they kill?
• human ‘monsters’ and ‘monstrous’ acts? e.g, perverts, paedophiles
and serial killers
• Revolution and monsters; enemies (political/social/military) and
monsters
• Iconography of the monstrous; the monster in literature; the monster
in media (television, cinema, radio)

Dr Robert Fisher
Inter-Disciplinary.Net

http://www.inter-disciplinary.net

Introduction

Niall Scott

The monster is perhaps one of the most significant creations serving
to reflect and critique human existence. Whether it has its etymological roots
in a demonstration of something (monstrere) or a warning (monere), the
monster as a metaphor continues to be a powerful expression of the
imagination and the rational. Through the imagination monstrosities are
brought into being while the rational seeks to control and explain such
manifestations of literature, art, cinema and biology. The monster gives a
space in which perspectives can be adopted and the permissible and
impermissible can be played with.
Although much can be found on the origins and descriptions of monsters in
histories, cultural theory and bestiaries, the opening chapter of this volume
gives us quite a special view on the evocation of the monster from the
imagination and subterranean depths. This is followed by two contributions
on one the most relentless of all monsters, the zombie, which by contrast
emerges from the human rather than an other-worldly place. The monstrous
that was illuminated in the caverns of the sewage systems of Victorian
London, Paul Dobrazszcyk brings to our attention that there are different
ways of looking at sewers. Providing an analysis of press accounts on the
development of the drainage system and pumping stations, he focuses in on
the metaphorical language used to describe this subterranean world. As an
opening to this volume, Dobrazszcyk demonstrates how the metaphor of the
monstrous can function linking the real and the imagined. He sees this as
generating a ‘stream of monstrous oppositions’ in the dialectic of the visible
and invisible, the real and imagined. However the monstrous accounts are
conflated with the later presentation of the system’s spaces as rational and
magical as well. Dobrazszcyk ‘s analysis shows how these varying
conceptions sit together and questions whether the accounts serve in some
way to manipulate the public’s response to a sewage system that carries with
it the monstrous attachment to stench and disgust through to the architectural
marvel and rational goals of sanitation and progress.
In the movement between the imaginary and the real, Kevin A.
Boon, in the Ontological Anxiety Made Flesh, explores the role that the
Zombie plays in the origins of the monster and monstrous as a transgression
of the boundary between being and non-being. Starting with some useful
definitional insights into the monster, Boon like Dobrazszcyk, treats the
relationship between the human and the monstrous as dialectical. Probably
one of the most terrifying monsters, the zombie epitomises the other
presenting a range of oppositions to the human, in giving animation to death,
absence of the self and expressing the opposite of what defines the human as