The monster that I discussed in our first assignment was one from a very short story I was told by a friend. It goes as follows,
A girl heard her mom yell her name from downstairs, so she
got up and started to head down. As she got to the stairs, her mom pulled her into
her room and said "I heard that, too."
While a short and simple story, I feel it goes great with Cohen's third thesis, "The Monster Is The Harbinger of Category Crisis". Cohen elaborates on this title by saying, "The monster always escapes because it refuses easy categorization" and furthermore, "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 indulge them in any systematic structuration." While terribly wordy, Cohen is saying that the monster or monstrous really aren't any one "thing" they are an amalgamation of definitions, of categories that all humans feel the need to put what we see and experience into. In the short story above the monster presented really doesn't have any category that it could be put into. Is it human? Is it a shapeshifter? perhaps it isn't even a physical thing, but rather an idea that is put into the girls mind by this "thing". Monster stories are really created to make us question our constant need to categorize people, to create clear divides between you and the other. With our world becoming more and more in love with science and defining everything monster stories are there to show us that you don't need to and instead you can just accept what things are as they are. Furthermore the inability to categorize creates a situation where the reader has to start thinking in a different manner, Cohen describes this by saying, "Classical wonder books radically undermine the Aristotelian taxonomic system, for by refusing an easy compartmentalization of their monstrous contents, they demand a radical rethinking of boundary and normality.". Which i feel this demanding of radical thinking that is created from reading a monster story then can be applied to society or how one lives life. So really monster stories can consciously or subconsciously cause society to completely change by causing people to start thinking outside of the box in order to categorize these monstrous things. And the more you think outside the box or radically the easier it becomes and the more likely you are to do so in every situation you are faced with.
A girl heard her mom yell her name from downstairs, so she
got up and started to head down. As she got to the stairs, her mom pulled her into
her room and said "I heard that, too."
While a short and simple story, I feel it goes great with Cohen's third thesis, "The Monster Is The Harbinger of Category Crisis". Cohen elaborates on this title by saying, "The monster always escapes because it refuses easy categorization" and furthermore, "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 indulge them in any systematic structuration." While terribly wordy, Cohen is saying that the monster or monstrous really aren't any one "thing" they are an amalgamation of definitions, of categories that all humans feel the need to put what we see and experience into. In the short story above the monster presented really doesn't have any category that it could be put into. Is it human? Is it a shapeshifter? perhaps it isn't even a physical thing, but rather an idea that is put into the girls mind by this "thing". Monster stories are really created to make us question our constant need to categorize people, to create clear divides between you and the other. With our world becoming more and more in love with science and defining everything monster stories are there to show us that you don't need to and instead you can just accept what things are as they are. Furthermore the inability to categorize creates a situation where the reader has to start thinking in a different manner, Cohen describes this by saying, "Classical wonder books radically undermine the Aristotelian taxonomic system, for by refusing an easy compartmentalization of their monstrous contents, they demand a radical rethinking of boundary and normality.". Which i feel this demanding of radical thinking that is created from reading a monster story then can be applied to society or how one lives life. So really monster stories can consciously or subconsciously cause society to completely change by causing people to start thinking outside of the box in order to categorize these monstrous things. And the more you think outside the box or radically the easier it becomes and the more likely you are to do so in every situation you are faced with.
I had almost forgotten this story but it use to terrify me! It still gives me goosebumps. I really like how you mentioned that today science really dictates the way we think of things and sorta pushes our need to categorize what we see. I think that totally shows in today's more popular horror movies too. In today's world it's pretty easy for science to explain there's no such thing as a vampire or a werewolf but in films like Paranormal Activity it's all about what you can't see or know what's going on.
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