#spicymangoman

[counttwinkula]

@spicymangoman this is such a thought provoking question (re: my jeffrey jerome cohen's monster culture (seven theses) post)

i think the shortest answer is that the monster is polysemic; it is a sign with multiple simultaneous interpretations and meanings. ocean vuong writes that a monster is a "hybrid signal"; any contradictions it may hold are, in some way, part and parcel of being a monster.

the monster does often introduce category crisis regarding the difference between self and Other! this is an extremely common monstrous trope:

the hivemind is the most obvious example of a monster that blurs the boundary between self and Other

the blob also comes to mind, as an Other which quite literally threatens to incorporate the self into its body

through the same logic as the blob, we can see this same threat of the self being annihilated and incorporated into the Other through any monster that engages in cannibalism or consumption

(i'm currently researching The Haunting of Hill House and boy howdy is that theme present)

infectious monsters (vampires, zombies, werewolves) pose a similar threat, the Other whose influence may cause a loss of selfhood and subsequent incorporation into a noncontiguous monstrous body

frankenstein's monster and shapeshifters both challenge the stability of the self, or the self as a singular, knowable body, thereby posing a problem for the self/Other binary

we must also keep in mind that the Other represented by the monster is quite often a coded representation for the racialized, gendered, sexed, classed, etc. other. i think that here we find a general anxiety of category crisis with regard to "you look like me but you're not me" and the differences then being exaggerated through the monster's nonbinary and excessive body

so, while the creature from the black lagoon or guillermo del toro's amphibian man do not pose these same threats of losing the self to the monster, they still represent a sort of me/not-me problem through their anthropomorphism alone (while simultaneously standing in for the racialized, "savage" other)

cohen also writes that "one kind of alterity is often written as another", meaning that not only do the metaphors within the monster often overlap, but the monster often troubles multiple binaries at once. he gives the example of the cynocephalus, a human with a dog head and intersex characteristics, thereby sitting at the border of human and beast as well as the border of male and female

regarding category crisis, cohen writes that the monster "defies easy categorization" and continues:

This refusal to participate in the classificatory "order of things" is true of monsters generally: they are disturbing hybrids whose externally incoherent bodies resist attempts to include them in any systematic structuration. And so the monster is dangerous, a form suspended between forms that threatens to smash distinctions.

i would say that the monster's nonbinariness stems, in some ways, from the fear of the unknown, and more specifically the fear of the unknowable. by existing across binaries and disrupting systems of classification, the monster presents a challenge to defining it and knowing it

knowledge is typically the antithesis to fear. Alien and Child's Play both rely on the audience not catching full glimpses of the monster, utilizing a half-seen, in the shadows, out of the corner of your eye aesthetic to maximize fear. the first step to solving a monster of the week episode is mulder or giles defining the monster. the longer the monster challenges knowledge, the longer it remains a threat, a danger, and an object of horror

similarly, the fear of the Other is a fear of the unknown, because the body outside the self can never be wholly, comprehensively, reliably known. in my opinion, this is probably the source of that overlap in the metaphor: the monster embodies category crisis and the dread of difference due to their common roots in the fear of the unknown