The Meaning of Monsters

So I keep coming back to monsters. I know I do, but - I hope this doesn’t come as a surprise to anyone - I do love monsters. In fact, I am quite literally an expert on the Slenderman. Like legitimately. I’ve analysed other monsters on this channel, most notably the Babadook and the Pale Man. And, depending on your definition of monster, we also have GLaDos. And believe me, there will be more of them.

But I thought, today, instead of diving into the study of one particular monster, we should, instead, look at monsters more generally. I think it’s important to think about what these analyses of monsters actually means and why its important. Because, at the heart of all discussions and studies of monsters is an inherent truth: monsters are real.

Now, when I talk about the reality of monsters, I do not necessarily mean the human monsters in our world, like serial killers. The reality of monsters also includes the monsters we typically think of as really fun narratives to tell - the vampires and werewolves are real, too.

And before you call me crazy, let me explain. I think often when we talk about the reality of monsters, we think we mean things are physically manifest somewhere in the world. Like if I say vampires I real, I mean that I have witnessed or have seen vampires hanging around the world and walking around and looking at me.

We often think of this belief in actuality as something from ages long past. People long ago who did not know any better believed in monsters. Its associated with old world irrationality. But, as historian David Stannard wrote in 1977:

We do well to remember that the [pre-modern] world… was a rational world, in many ways more rational than our own. It is true that this was a world of witches and demons, and of a just and terrible God who made his presence known in the slightest acts of nature. But this was the given reality about which most of the decisions and actions of the age, through the entire Western world, revolved.

In other words, we only think of things as irrational because they seem so in comparison to the way we think. Our rationality is the basis of how other rationalities work in our eyes. But this is an ethnocentric way of viewing the world and history, meaning we are basing things off of our own way of life as the bar of “normal” even though it may be incredibly not normal, and potentially irrational, when others from areas of the world are looking at us.

The goal of anthropology, at least for anthropology that I like, is to try and see the world through the eyes of others. We want to understand the way they understand, not to judge it. One of the first Western anthropologists to talk about the rationality of other peoples was E.E. Evans-Pritchard, whose study of the Azande was focused on their thought process of being something based in rationality. Despite witchcraft being a focus of their attention and way of understanding the world, there was a rational system in place that also echoed elements of Christian England that Evans-Pritchard originated.

Belief in actuality is one thing, but that is also not necessarily the same thing as the reality of monsters, though it can be. Thinking of it this way is a kind of simplistic view of things, and not really how belief in general works, let alone monsters. And in reality, people still believe in monsters in the way they have in ages before.

Because, to see the reality of monsters is not to observe the monster, but rather to observe the people who belong to the monster. A monster is not known through its bright eyes in the dark of the night, but rather in the effect it has - its impact on society and individuals.

A monster shows us what a culture or a society finds horrifying. It shows us what they view as possible and impossible. It shows us how a culture marks out its boundaries - how categories are marked out as well as who is included in it, and who are the outsiders. A monster shows us a reflection. Through the monster’s eyes, we see how a culture views itself. What is respectful and “normal”, and what is filled with scorn and disgust.

Examples of the various ways monsters can be viewed and studied in this way can be seen through Jeffrey Cohen’s Monsters Thesis. In this chapter, Jeffrey Cohen sketched out his seven approaches to what it is monsters show us. One example is that a monster is a hybrid - think like the griffin who is half eagle and half lion. In more pop culture elements, a good monstrous hybrid example is the dog-daughter chimera from Full Metal Alchemist.

These hybrid monsters demonstrates a wider element of the thesis, what Cohen calls a monster as a “harbinger of categorical crisis.” In the simple form of the griffin, it’s not just combining eagle and lion, but also the categories of land and sea. Sometimes these categories are massively obvious, like in the case of the griffin. Hybrid monsters like the griffin, or our chimera from Full Metal Alchemist, are good examples of how the actual depiction of the monster is a combo. Other aspects of hybridity can be more structural, like the land/sea element of the griffin. In something like the vampire, its in the fact that its both alive and dead at the same time, two things that seem contradictory and cannot be present at once.

Jeffrey Cohen’s seven thesis of monster studies is not the idea that a monster is only one of the ideas presented, but rather is multiple at once, if not all three. The first one, for example, is that the monster is a culutral body - meaning that monsters represent the cultures they come from. Studying the monster gives us a look into the cultural system they come from. The hybridity found, for example, can also be paired with the monster “dwelling at the gates of differece” as well as policing the borders of the possible.

We can look into some of the foundations of these using a primary example from pop culture. Let’s actually use the example of the chimera from Full Metal Alchemist. I probably would do a seperate video on just this moment, because it’s one of the most horrifying and depressing moments most of us have had as young people. But I think there’s other things to say about Full Metal, so we’ll be covering that on another video. But for the moment, let’s talk about the chimera.

So a quick background, our primary character Ed goes to visit Shou Tucker, the “Sewing-Life Alchemist”. His daughter becomes, four year old Nina, becomes an important figure for Ed and Alphonse, representing the childhood innocence they both feel they had lost. In the anime, she calls Alphonse “big-big brother” and Ed “little-big-brother”, which is also, notably, one of the few characters to call Ed little that he does not get mad at.

She was a happy child, playful and excitable, and a representaiton of childhood joy and innocence. She is always embracing and playing with her large pet dog named Alexander. The brothers grow very attached to Nina, seeing elements of themselves in her lonely story, but in a way that is still protective and innocent.

What becomes clear far later, is that the brothers have come to learn from an alchemist who has turned to unwilling test subjects, including Nina’s mother who died in the process. While Al and Ed are away, Shou’s frustration and worry about his upcoming assessments which puts his license into jeapordy triggers his interest in human experimentation.

When attempting to pass her off as a speech-capable chimera, Ed realises what exactly happened and who is that chimera.

So there are a few elements of the monster happening here in the chimera. Obviously, we have what we have already discussed: the monster as a harbinger of categorical crisis. We have the hybridity, an obvious aspect of the monster that is present. The chimera is a combination of Nina and Alexander, a dog and a young girl. Therefore, the hybridity of the monster is pretty inherent in its existence.

Another important position that the Nina chimera embodies is the fifth thesis: the monster polices the borders of the possible. One verison of this example of monsters is that the monster borders what is known. Think of the “here be monsters” demarcated on old maps. This was mostly as a controlling mechanism, for example Cohen points out that merchants could have used this demarcation to discourage exploration into their etablished trade routes in order to maintain monopoloies. But it can also represent other things, primarily the risk of venturing into thoughts and actions unknown.

Shou Tucker represents the danger of pushing into the worlds of the unknown. The obsession with wanting to advance knowledge without any concern of what that might mean results in a lack of care or concern for those around him and what that may mean. In essence, the Nina chimera is a monster which demonstrates the boudaries that cannot - must not - be crossed. It is more than the categories of girl and dog that are crossed, but rather the boundaries of what knowledge and information is bordering scientific advancement. Scientific advancement may be great as an idea, but if it comes at the sacrifice of human life, particularly of the life of innocence, then is it truly worth the advancement that it produces? Shou was successfully able to make a chimera which was capable of speech, but at what cost?

What is truly scary about the chimera as a monster is not just that is a cross of a young girl and a dog, but rather the idea of how it came to be. Its the demonstration of what scientific advancement could do, what monsters border the boundaries. But more importantly, it shows us what monsters humans themselves could be. It is not just bordering the possible of scientific advancement, but also bordering the possible of humanity. It demonstrates how a man could turn against his love and his family for the sake of his own advancements.

This is how studying a monster can reveal much about what a story is telling us. Deep in the story of Full Metal Alchemist is the questionings of the morality of science - a hefty debate between science and religion in terms of what should be or should not. The show demonstrates regularly, both in the background of our main characters Ed and Al, but also in each alchemist they encounter, that there is great cost to doing massive advancements in alchemy. While cases like Ed’s limbs and Al’s body shows a personal sacrifice, Shou represents as selfish sacrifice - one that is inflicted on others rather than on the self.

In this sense, the chimera monster in Full Metal Alchemist a very real monster. The life destruction of many scientific advancements are historically noted, most obviously being the atomic bomb. While we can praise what advancements this showed us in scientific endeavours, it came at a great cost of life. Such sacrifices are frequently bordering the possible of our knowledge, and therefore the chimera is not exactly an unfamiliar consideration.

Monsters are amazing. They’re amazing because they scare us, they show us what categories we hold dear and don’t want to blur. They show us what boundaries we want to protect. They show us what we want to protect and care for, but also what we secretely desire, deep inside the worst recesses of our souls. The things that, some part of us, would sacrifice anything to achieve.