malymin | Entries tagged with monsters

Downloadable here.

“Interestingly, some scholars working within Animal Theory further argue that a certain right of access is assumed on the part of the, superior, humans when they encounter animals, so that the animal body may be touched, subsumed, or killed on the basis of the human right to do so. This also occurs in several medieval literary examples of human encounters with the dragon maiden, where the knight initially does not doubt that he is allowed access to the dragon maiden’s body in killing it. Although the dragon maiden and the knight may share their space within a literary framework, this sharing is non-mimetic; they are not considered equals. The main purpose of the stories, especially in the episodes where a dragon maiden has to be kissed, is to ascertain the worth of the human knight.”

This PDF is long - 138 pages long! I've barely even skimmed it. It was brought to my attention by a blog post on Tumblr about it. Tumblr user capricorn-0mnikorn's "monsters as disability metaphor" tag is worth a browse. The PDF itself does not compare the position of the dragon maiden (or frog king/prince, etc) to the way a disabled person's body is framed and treated relative to caretakers and loved ones - but 0mnikorn does.

Here's some of their post on the Frog King story, that draws from the analysis of the Dragon Maiden in the pdf I've linked:

First, that “Access to the dragon maiden’s body” made me think of all those times when I go out in public, and random strangers just assume they have every right of access to my disabled body – to pat me on the head, or grab the handles of my wheelchair and push me where they think I should go, or ask me really personal, inappropriately intimate, questions about my medical status or how I use the toilet.

Second: how these stories are never about the dragon maiden at all, but just about that hyper-human human knight reminded me of every “human interest” story in the news that touches on disability; the reporters never interview the disabled person (usually a kid), but always the able-bodied parents, or neighbors, or teachers. Because it’s not about the disabled person at all – just whether or not the able-bodied, neurotypical, person can live up to a symbolically human ideal, and justify the “goodness” of the social status-quo for another season.

And that’s how people can say things to me like: “But I don’t see your disability – I see your humanity!” with a straight face, and expect me to take that as a compliment. To them, my disability is some sort of magical, artificial, shape that I’m trapped inside of – like someone in a rubber Godzilla suit with a broken zipper.

If they can free me from the trap, I will be fully human (and they will prove to the world that they have God’s approval as His idea of a Perfect Person).

But if I can’t be freed of my disability, then the spirit of Godzilla will seep into my very essence, and I will lose all traces of my humanity. Superstitious toad milk soup, of course, that no amount of salt will fix, but there you go.

Unrelated, 0mnikron cites some of D. L. Ashliman's website in one of their posts about monstrous/animal bodies in folklore as metaphors for disabled bodies, and I love to see Ashliman's folklore database getting some love.

Current Mood: contemplative
Current Location: coffee shop (chain u_u;)
Current Music: i don't know the name of whats playing rn

I wonder if anyone's written anything on the evolution of the monster-as-contamination concept?

The Haitian zombie isn't spread through bites or disease; it's a spell cast on a person or their corpse; then again, the Hollywood zombie is really more an alternate branch of European vampire than it is a legit evolution of Haitian folklore. Werewolves in European folklore are usually attributed to curses cast on a person or deals with the devil; often, a transformative amulet like a strap of wolf-skin is involved with the latter. Vampires probably come the closest to being associated with bite-based transmission in their pre-literary, pre-filmic form, as their association with disease (victims falling ill and dying in attested cases) far predates their modern associations with sexual transgression.

In the modern euro-American popular culture, the trifecta of zombie, werewolf, and vampire are all so associated with bite-based transmission that not being spread like a disease is considered a subversion of expectations. The zombie is most often treated as literally a disease, with as much acknowledgement of magic stripped from their invocation as possible, but the werewolf and especially the vampire often invoke the symptoms and imagery of disease - the pale, white skin of the victorian-onwards vamp (as opposed to the ruddy faces of the folkloric vampire) is borrowed from victorian tuberculosis victims, the 80's and 90's slew of vampires weaving in anxieties about AIDs.

I feel like the slew of alien sci-fi monsters that assimilate flesh or parasitize hosts to reproduce also have some relationship to this trope complex...

The Only Good Wolf: Hunting Culture and the Medieval Werewolf

Introduction

Though werewolves are traditionally portrayed as rapacious and murderous even back to antiquity, several stories in the late twelfth century instead portray the werewolf in a sympathetic light: a chivalrous knight trapped through some deceit in the form of a wolf. Most modern scholarship interprets these unusual stories as representing medieval attitudes toward metamorphosis and hybridity, or as part of a wider cultural exploration of the boundary between human and animal. Little has been said, however, about the relationship between the sympathetic werewolf story and the increasing importance and popularity of hunting and pet-keeping during that same period. This paper redresses that gap by contextualizing three stories, “Bisclavret,” “Melion,” and “Arthur and Gorlagon,” within the broader medieval literary tradition of pet-keeping and hunting. This contextualization demonstrates that these werewolf stories are very much a reflection of medieval attitudes toward wolves and dogs. Examination of four key scenes appearing in each of these stories shows that the representation of the “tamed” werewolf in these stories parallels the representation of wolves and dogs found in a variety of contemporary sources including historical records, hunting manuals, ethnographies, hagiographical stories, bestiaries, and fables. Moreover, a close reading shows that the tamed (were)wolf is described in terms similar to those used to describe a well-behaved dog; and, in turn, the well-behaved dog is described in terms similar to those used to describe the ideal knight. The emphasis these stories place on the civility of the tamed werewolf therefore challenges traditional readings that stress the boundary these stories purportedly draw between human and animal; rather, these stories productively collapse those very boundaries.

Monster Culture (Seven Theses)

Most people have already read this one, right? I assume? If not, it's a classic. Published 1996.

Rather than provide an abstract, here is a list of the Seven Theses:

The Monster's Body Is a Cultural Body
The Monster Always Escapes
The Monster Is the Harbinger of Category Crisis
The Monster Dwells at the Gates of Difference
The Monster Polices the Borders of the Possible
Fear of the Monster Is Really a Kind of Desire
The Monster Stands at the Threshold . . . of Becoming

Not every part of the essay perfectly describes every individual instance of a monster, especially the "domesticated" monsters we might see presented in children's media, erotica, and comedy; but on the whole, they help make sense of the forces that tend to bring life to monstrous archetypes and shape their continued evolution, as well as the ways in which monsters as purely fictional beings overlap with the dehumanizing cultural "monsterfication" of ostracized groups, historical figures, etc.

For a fun application of the ideas present in this paper to a fandom context, see this Madoka Magica meta posted on Ao3 about how "witches" and "incubators" function as monsters within the context of the original show, its spinoffs, and its fan culture.

Current Mood: awake
Current Location: Liminal Space
Current Music: New Ghost - Viscera (Bit Smug Ambient Version)

Monster as Victim, Victim as Monster: Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder,Redemptive Suffering and the ‘Undead’

Abstract:

When surveying the vast pantheon of monstrous incarnations, from Frankenstein’s creation to Godzilla, it is nearly impossible to find a creature in the definitive works of fictional monstrosity that doesn’t, in some way, owe its creation to a violently traumatic event. This paper analyses the monster as victim by comparing the symptoms of monstrosity to the symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder. It would appear that monsters, most specifically the undead monsters such as vampires, zombies, and Frankenstein, are merely hyperbolic representations of human post-trauma symptoms. The persistent presence of violent trauma at the birth of the monster, as well as a violent death at his end, implies that these monsters were purposely created as a way to manage society, as examples of how not to act in the face of overwhelming personal catastrophe. The fact that we, as consumers of monster stories, do not recognize monsters as victims and cannot pity them is due to our cultural belief in redemptive suffering. We believe, innately, that all suffering results in redemption, that all stories have a happy ending. The possibility that this might not be true is may be the most horrifying thing that we as human beings could be made to face. Either the monster deserves his fate, or our long-held belief in redemptive suffering must be called into question.

I find I have, since at least middle school, had a recurring pattern of being emotionally attached to characters who are undead, or have been turned into monsters. Characters that the narrative usually says should "move on [to the afterlife]" or "be put out of their misery." If they don't get mercy killed, because this is a more escapist or cheerful story, they usually instead get restored to exactly how they were prior to The Incident. Cleaned, purified, perfectly without any trace of monstrous corruption or ghostly despair. Often even without memory of the time spent in that state, so that neither they nor their friends have to think about it. The audience doesn't have to think about it, either.

A happier ending... but one that always dissatisfied me.

One of the closest things I've ever really seen to what I want. Was an AU that Zarla made for her Left for Dead OCs, back on Livejournal, in 2010. These characters of theirs were originally designed as genderswaps of the male-only special infected enemies in that game, but became full-fledged individuals with human personalities later down the line. I was an even bigger fan of those characters than I was of Zarla's art and musings on our shared fandoms, truth be told. Even though I never cared for zombie apocalypse fiction, and certainly knew nothing about Left For Dead itself.

They explored the idea of an AU where the characters, long after having become (special) infected, were given a miracle cure for zombie-ism! But the miracle cure wasn't a cure-all; physical and mental alterations remained, even with a return to lucidity.

Anyway let's explore a slightly different idea for a bit. EchoGarrote actually wrote a bit about this basic concept in some of his fics, but I hadn't really done any drawings or exploration of it myself until recently, haha.

Anyway, basically I was wondering if, should some kind of cure be developed for the Infection, what kind of aftereffects would linger if you'd been a Special Infected first. Being mutated that severely isn't something that just goes away, after all. So these are basic notes on what state they all might be in should they be cured of zombie-ism by some kind of miracle drug or another.

(We can suspend our disbelief for a broken curse leaving no ill traces behind, for curses themselves are as fundamentally magic and imaginary things as cure-alls are; but zombie apocalypse fiction has a pretense, however flimsy, of being grounded in a modern world of biology and science. On the spectrum of treating infectious monsterhood like a demonic curse or a deadly disease, the pop-culture zombie leans as far from magic as possible, compared to its werewolf and vampire cousins.)

And then Zarla went into more detail here. Here's a transcript of one panel.

Patient: S-so, does the s-shaking ever stop? I-it's hard to focus, heh...

Doctor: Unfortunately, your version of the virus seems to do some permanent nerve damage... none of the other Jockeys have stopped. The lack of mood control is pretty common... but you are one of the first female ones, so maybe it'll be different for you. You never know, right?

Of course a zombie virus would be permanently disabling. Why wouldn't it be? Their brains can recover but they'll never be the same. Their bodies will never be the same, either.

Zombie fiction has a survival-of-the-fittest streak, at times veering towards the openly eugenicist; not all zombie stories lack sympathy for the weak and disabled, but it's in the zeitgeist of the the genre, you know? So the notion of curing zombies, instead of just gunning them down? Of accepting cured zombies, with brain damage and scars from the virus' ravages, as human beings who deserve to live? Society can barely even accept real disabled people: people with brain damage, or massive physical scaring, as real human beings. Society often doesn't. There's certainly no room in that worldview for providing treatment, rehab, and accommodations to suffers of a homicidal-urge inducing virus.

But you know... I think about that binary attitude towards disease, and mental illness, and imaginary curses and afflictions. If you're a character in these stories, there's three outcomes, most of the time:

You're cured with no ill effects.
It kills you.
It's a fate worse than death.

3 is effectively the same as 2, most of the time. You're not you once you've succumbed, there's no hope of saving you, and a bullet to your head is just finishing the job and letting your soul rest.

And I think about how it seems like people can't get it in their heads, in the real world, that Long Covid is real, and we should care about it. About how little society cares for anyone who can never be cured, whether it's as obviously physical as a lost limb or as invisible as a mental illness. You either die or you're fine, right? There's never a category in between. Nobody in our culture wants to think about a "damaged" survivor.

I want a world where we can think about this, though. The people who will never be the same again living and finding reason to live despite the things that have changed, that they've lost, that make it hard for them to live in the world. In melodramatic metaphor, as well as real and grounded truth.