Monsters:

What is a Monster?

So in this blog I will writing about the question; What is a Monster?. To many of us a monster is something that should frighten us, a nightmare from our imagination, a horrible made-up creature etc. ' A monster is a distortion of something that has a normal, non- threatening form. The monstrous form is threatening and distrusting because it is beyond the pale of what we consider normality. A monster is a deformation of what we consider normal and therefore safe' - David Croneberg. I am writing about the study of monsters as this will give me a better understanding of what types of monsters there are and have been and why they were develop to be used in film and TV. This understanding of there background will inspire me within my work for my final design and give me a better understanding of the development of monsters over time. To start our understanding we mind maps our first thoughts of monsters and what came to mind.  

Werewolves: 

A werewolf is to first believed to be a human that has no control to changing into a werewolf when the full moon shines and having uncontrollable rage. There purpose is to kill everything in sight, regardless of their relationships as humans. The curse mean they lose all control and encounter bad attacks and events but as they wake as human they have no memory of their actions, if they do it would only be small memories thought to be dreams. However, there are other types of werewolves e.g. the original werewolf were a shape-shifting wolf that had no control over changing into a werewolf or it shape shifting power while also having human thoughts. Quoted from this blog 'Werewolves: Narrative and Symbolism in Film and Literature', she states that they are big difference in the representation of werewolves in literature and films. ' For example, in films werewolves are most often infected or cursed from being bitten or scratched by another werewolf. In Literature, they are cursed through a pact with the Devil or because they have a psychiatric illness; also in literature religious symbols are usually no protection. Whereas, for example, a pentagram was used in the film 'An American Werewolf in London'. Traditionally used as a symbol for protection, it is often misunderstood to mean something Satanic'.  This states that there are big changes in the way that werewolves(out of one of the monsters) has been represented differently through literature and film which again has also changed/adapted over time due to how people view things. 

Ghosts:

A ghost is another creature that is considered a monster it is a spirit of a dead person especially one that is believed to appear to the living bodily form or to haunt people or locations. In film and TV ghosts have always been haunting us for a very long time. I believe in some context they are meant to represents our fears, for example in Charles Dickson famous novel 'A Christmas Carol' scourge is being haunted by three ghosts; Past, Present and the future who are there while he is supposedly dreaming to warn him of his behavior and what this has done to his life. I believe the ghost firstly represent our fears or conscience to things we have done which in fact 'Haunt' over us until we solve it, making it go away. Another theory I have gathered about the representations of ghosts is that they represent greive and the idea of letting loved ones go after death. Ghost in most novels or films tend to come to us in dream making it almost show its a made-up imagination of another fear of death and letting go. Over all ghost I believe represent our fears of our inner conscience but on the other hand films are now portraying them as comical monster e.g. in 'Harry Potter', 'Sir Nicholas, the Gryffindor House Ghost.   

Monsters:

As we know already monsters are of all different kinds like shown in examples above but I will now be talking of monsters of a different kind that have been constructed by science which is more of a new theme when the industrial revolution happened. Monsters like this e.g. Frankenstein who where constructed by science from lots of different body parts and then released into a world that judged him. This was a main theme in a lot of films and novel with monsters like 'Edward Scirrorhands' as he was abandon very young and had to find his place in the world while being very different. A main theme consists in these films of trying to 'Fit-in' with society and its rules while being very different. Relating back to the industrial revoloutin was that when it happened science was a very new concept to explain why things happened instead of religion and people find this very difficult to understand. Therefore as human are people that don't take kindly to 'change' we always have found it hard to except new things we usually don't understand, like shown in these films and novels.   

Vampires:

A vampire is commonly known for being a dead corpse that reanimate to suck blood of sleeping victims at night. Which is what they were mostly first known as but this concept has changed a lot over time. The 'Vampire' first started off as an ugly and hideous rat like create that would crave for human blood in some of the original films and novels. However, today they are portrayed more as humans in disguise while appearing incredibly sexy and glamorous. A lot of the Vampire films gave a greater meaning to what they first portray to the eye, they tended to reflect the problems of the time e.g. in the 80's vampires where shown having sex, biting and blood giving the warning of AID's as this was a big problem then. The love, blood and boldly fluids where to represent that with lust there can be consequences like with AID and being killed by vampires. Therefore a lot of fears of the time of production was reflected through popular TV and Film. Not relating to vampires but the same concept of influence by time are the many apololictic and Zombie films and TV shows due to big events of death e.g. 9/11.   

Psychoanalytical approach to monsters:

In this part of the blog I will be writing about a piece of writing that I read which was about the 'Psychoanalytical approach to Monsters'. When reading this piece of writing I have to admit that I found it quite complex and that I had to re-read it to fully understand the kind of concept it was trying to portray. Some points that I gathered from this writing where that it used the representation of birth, not as a beautiful symbol of life but quite the opposite. The process of birth being more horrible as we have seen all the insides, guts, blood etc and stating that even though no-one remembers their own birth that we all have experienced this. Relating this to horror films and monster when we all watch horror films we all have a psychological relation to gory films as we can all relate even if we don't relies.