Ms. Poiesis

(image by Melinda Beck)

By Stephen T. Asma

Monsters are on the rise. People can’t seem to get enough of vampires lately, and zombies have a new lease on life. This year and next we have the release of the usual horror films like Saw VI and Halloween II; the campy mayhem of Zombieland; more-pensive forays like 9 (produced by Tim Burton and Timur Bekmambetov), The Wolfman, and The Twilight Saga: New Moon; and, more playfully, Where the Wild Things Are (a Dave Eggers rewrite of the Maurice Sendak classic).

The reasons for this increased monster culture are hard to pin down. Maybe it’s social anxiety in the post-9/11 decade, or the conflict in Iraq—some think there’s an uptick in such fare during wartime. Perhaps it’s the economic downturn. The monster proliferation can be explained, in part, by exploring the meaning of monsters. Popular culture is re-enchanted with meaningful monsters, and even the eggheads are stroking their chins—last month saw the seventh global conference on Monsters and the Monstrous at the University of Oxford.

The uses of monsters vary widely. In our liberal culture, we dramatize the rage of the monstrous creature—and Frankenstein’s is a good example—then scold ourselves and our “intolerant society” for alienating the outcast in the first place. The liberal lesson of monsters is one of tolerance: We must overcome our innate scapegoating, our xenophobic tendencies. Of course, this is by no means the only interpretation of monster stories. The medieval mind saw giants and mythical creatures as God’s punishments for the sin of pride. For the Greeks and Romans, monsters were prodigies—warnings of impending calamity.

After Freud, monster stories were considered cathartic journeys into our unconscious—everybody contains a Mr. Hyde, and these stories give us a chance to “walk on the wild side.” But in the denouement of most stories, the monster is killed and the psyche restored to civilized order. We can have our fun with the “torture porn” of Leatherface and Freddy Krueger or the erotic vampires, but this “vacation” to where the wild things are ultimately helps us return to our lives of quiet repression.

Any careful reading of Bram Stoker’s Dracula, for example, will reveal not only a highly sexualized description of blood drinking, but an erotic characterization of the count himself. Even John Polidori’s original 1819 vampire tale The Vampyre describes the monster as a sexually attractive force. According to the critic Christopher Craft, Gothic monster tales—Frankenstein, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Dracula, Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles—rehearse a similar story structure. “Each of these texts first invites or admits a monster, then entertains and is entertained by monstrosity for some extended duration, until in its closing pages it expels or repudiates the monster and all the disruption that he/she/it brings,” he writes.

A crucial but often-ignored aspect of monsterology is the role those beasties play in our moral imaginations. Recent experimental moral psychology has given us useful tools for looking at the way people actually do their moral thinking. Brain imaging, together with hypothetical ethical dilemmas about runaway trolley cars, can teach us a lot about our real value systems and actions. But another way to get at this subterranean territory is by looking at our imaginative lives.

Read the rest here.

See a claymation animated clip of a segment of Plato’s Allegory of the Cave here.

When I was a child, I loved Halloween. My mother had lots of talent and, being a frustrated artist, exercised those talents on making Halloween costumes for her four children. I can remember several of them very clearly, even though that was eons ago: gypsy, the Queen of Hearts, the Mad Hatter from Alice in Wonderland, and Alice herself. When I grew up, every family I knew had at least four children and some many more. On Halloween night the neighbourhood was full of costumed children, large and small. Since this was before anyone had ever thought of poisoning chocolate bars or putting razors in apples, it was all fun and games and no worries. On a crisp, dark, end of October night, running costumed through the streets was thrilling fun. Actually, I still love it.

A few years back skaters from the Vancouver Torrent Inline Skating Club skated through the Vancouver streets in costume for Halloween, monster mash music blaring from a rolling boom box pulled by Winson. Another year, Ty, Tracey and I dressed up, and, with Brubin as a small superfly, attended All Hallows Night at the Mountain View Cemetery.

This year I am continuing to play with my workshop mannequin shrine in honour of the witching night …

See more here.

Vancouver artist Nicole Dextras’ wonderful nature art:

Read more about these dress works here.

She also has done some wonderful installations, such as this one beneath the Burrard Street Bridge in Vancouver.

See more here.

I am once again reminded of why I don’t have a TV and don’t watch TV by the pathetic spectacle of the American “balloon boy” and his family’s antics. I completely agree with the commenter on the CTV’s story’s website, whose words I quote here:

“[Denver man Robert] Thomas [the father's associate], who sold his story to the website Gawker.com, offered email exchanges between them and said the show would feature Heene as a mad scientist carrying out various experiments.”And the nauseating downward spiral of American pop culture continues. Even with all the outrage feigned in the media at the hoax, the ugly spectre of the the fame seeking American rears its ugly head again, ironically enough through another media outlet (gawker.com)!! I don´t know what’s more astounding…the seemingly endless supply of mindless, talentless twits ready to sacrifice all for their 15 minutes, or the army who perpetuate this freak show by keeping people like this in demand and in business!!If this joker had prior knowledge to this crime and did nothing but sell his story, he should be right next to the “Mad Scientist” and his wife in the prisoners box, up on charges!!”

Say it, brother. While certainly the desire for fifteen minutes of fame is not restricted to Americans, it seems particularly the American mass media that encourages and panders to this idea.

Fun and games with mannequins on the Yellow point peninsula:

I finally had an opportunity to arrange my mannequins on the island this past week. Later in the afternoon, with the beautiful sun just starting to wane in the sky and casting a golden glow over the back of Maggie’s yard, I arranged my plastic people in various configurations next to the trees.

Later on, after dark, in preparation for Halloween, I constructed a shrine inside the workshop, using materials found around the property. I was amazed to see that the Christmas lights coming out of the headless neck of one of the mermaid mannequins actually worked – huzzah!

See more here.