Horror 101, Monday

[chosehumanity]

"One of the main cornerstones of horror as a genre has always been demons," Mitchell began, tapping his fingers against the couch. "Inside and out. What we are going to be focusing on over the next few weeks is the 'out' part - or the more visible kind, at least. Some of you may have worlds where these creatures are real, crawling around in the dark or lurking elegantly in the shadows. Some of you might only know them as stories. But monsters are a thing of every time and every place."

"Most sources will tell you the start of it was Mary Shelley's meta for Frankenstein. The creation of a monster. It's poetic, in a sense, but it might as well have been science fiction. Is it our fear of being monstrous, or our fear of the monster, when the story talks about how much he was misunderstood? How much of it is about fear of the other, and how much is fear of ourselves, of what we're capable of if one day, we wake up as something not quite human? The name of the book is the name of the doctor who came up with the monster to begin with. So who's the center of our story, really?"

He considered the class. "We'll be watching some of that for a film today, just to start you off light," he said, finally, "But afterwards, I'd like to know. What is monstrous to you? What's the scariest monster you can think of, and why does it frighten you? Do you feel like this guy," he tapped the monster on the front of the DVD case, "Or the blokes chasing him around with pitchforks? What's the anatomy of your monster?"

Beat.

"Oh, and it's in black and white. Just to get you Philistines adjusted to real film."

Comments

Re: Discuss

[vanillajello]

"But are they still monsters if they do that?"

Re: Discuss

[wantstodirect]

Tony remembered being cornered in a alley by three pimps and watching Henry kill two and disable a third. "Don't know," he said. "I guess it depends on your definition of 'monster.'"

Re: Discuss

[vanillajello]

"Which just gets us back to what Mitchell asked," Kate noted. "'Monster' is a totally relative word." She was kind of coming to the conclusion that most words were. "Kind of hard to discuss without concrete examples." 'Cause she didn't consider Frankenstein's creature an example, no.

Re: Discuss

[wantstodirect]

"Yeah," Tony said. "And is someone a monster 'cause of what they do or 'cause of what they are?"

Re: Discuss

[vanillajello]

"I'd go for what they do." There was a thoughtful pause. "Or actually, why they do what they do."

Re: Discuss

[wantstodirect]

"So, like, hunting to eat is okay but killing for fun is not?"