Cohen, Monster Culture, 7 Theses

monster's body = cultural body -never just a monster - always signifies something else -reflection of fears/anxieties and projection of them -tied to time/place/feeling of when they were created

monster always escapes -either gets away and comes back or you kill one and it's replaced by more -need to be examined in the culture and time that creates them (same monsters are used over and over again, but they have different meanings each time) -becoming more good-accepting (blending lines between good and bad, not black and white - grey)

monsters are the harbinger of category crisis -don't fall into neat/easy categories that are known to us (don't fit into our known world, simply unnatural) -dangerous because "disturbing hybrid" (zombie = dead human but alive) -defy logic and our current knowledge -how did it start? what causes it? how do we stop/kill them?

monster dwells at gates of difference -embody "the other" - that's what scares us -how it scares us now: bad guy = Russian = alien from outside us -history itself becomes monster -heterosexuality vs. homosexuality, black people

monster polices borders of the possible -every monster lives 2 stories: how it came to be cultural use it serves -borders we cannot cross -it's always outside society -threat of it keeps you in your place or from going somewhere -not only physical, also social/cultural borders -borders of knowledge - don't ask questions or figure out what is going on (protection vs. powerful control

fear of monster is really a kind of desire -forbidden places -attracts and replaces - freedom, alter ego, release (Jekyll and Hyde) -dangerously entices - we're scared, but we need them -do they really exist? if not, how could we? -part of escapist fantasy (Halloween) -we love them (scary movies, but you're safe)

monster stands at threshold of becoming -always return -bear human knowledge from outside -ask us how we perceive world -ask us to reevaluate cultural assumptions on race, gender, sexuality, perception toward differences and tolerance toward its expression -ask us why we have created them -we create them from imagination -they're always there, but we need them