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KS322 Notes Monstrum: an unnatural portent (a sign that something is wrong.. Off, odd, uncanny) Monstro (the root of monstrum and monster) means to show  Monsters show us something, demonstrate  We will look at when and how monsters show us things (metaphors, allegories) o Ex, what the monster from stranger things means outside of the show,  We will explore where monsters live (myths, stories, popular culture, genres) 

Monsters share more than the words root with the verb to demonstrate. Monsters signify.

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Monsters have been, and continue to be, pivotal to folk tales Hybrids of living creatures and otherness inhabit ancient and modern imaginations, they are often markers of the times into which they are born. Blending of the monstrous with the heroic .. Ex, teen wolf, tyler posey (scott mcall) Monsters embody our fears and anxieties, they are a manifestation of that part of ourselves that we find difficult to articulate

Seminar reading facilitation: Briefly talk about the article, then spark a broader discussion (scene from movie, image, song, youtube video) 15-20mins  show how the reading resonates, explains, contradicts, or intersects with pop culture  Get the whole class to get some stuff from the reading and apply it to pop culture Email a picture of a monster by jan 15th  Then write an entry on the blog by jan 19 1. Cultural significance of this monster 2. What it tells us about being human 3. Why this monster is a monster In class make connections to other peoples monsters "I like my monster because" DO WEEK 2 READINGS JAN 11

Myth  A shared/social/collaborative story (often formulaic)  An explanation (of something inexplicable) - adopted a belief that there are scientific reasons for things  Mythic characteristics an include nostalgia, yearning, enchantment (response to disenchantment)

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o Characteristics that repeat, has a past, yearn for a world before scientific explanation We can ask "what is a myth" but we might also want to ask "what is the function of a myth"

Numinous 1. Of or pertaining to a numen; supernatural 2. Filled with or characterized by a sense of a supernatural presence 3. Inspiring awe and reverence: spiritual Semiotics - patterns of our communication, Function of myth (J Campbell)  The metaphysical function' mysteries (complexities/unknowable's) of life cannot be captured directly in words or images  Myths are "being statements"  To understand myths we need to participate in mythic rituals or contemplate mythic symbols that point beyond themselves  Mythological symbols touch and exhilarate centres of life beyond the reach of reason and coercion… the first function of mythology is to reconcile waking consciousness to the mysterium tremendum et fascinans of this universe as it s (fearful and fascinating mystery) The cosmological function:  Explaining the shape of the universe  Myth can function as a proto-science; renders observable (physical) world synchronous with metaphysical meanings rendered by myth (missing sheep = hungry giant)  Campbell argues that the modern dilemma between science and religion on matters of truth is actually between science of the ancient world and that of today  Origin myths?  Myths critique contemporary notions of science (scientific experiments gone wrong are critiques or scientific technology going too far) The sociological function:  Validate and support the existing social order  Mythologies confirm social order and enforced it by reflecting it in the stories themselves  Often, social order (monarchy for example) is described as having arrived through divine intervention The psychological function:  Guide the individual through the stages of life  Myth may serve as a guide for successful passages of life stages  For example, most ancient cultures used rites of passage as a youth passes to the adult stage. Later on a living mythology taught the same person to let go of material possessions and earthly plans as they prepared to die Myth today  campbell believed that if myths are to continue to fulfill their vital functions in our modern world, they must continually transform and evolve because the older mythologies, untransformed, simply do not address the realities of contemporary life  Open-endedness is also a characteristic of mythology that also acts as a cliff hanger

Monster culture (7 theses)  Thesis 1: the monster's body is a cultural body  "monsters are the embodiment of a cultural moment"  Ex, Frankenstein-- conveyer belts, scientific experimentation, emerging of the machine and scientific  "monstrum: a sign "that which reveals" "that which warns" --> about what we are un-easy about in society  "a glyph (mark) that’s seeks a hierophant/interpretation (interpreter of sacred mysteries)"  "the monster signifies something other than itself: always inhabits the gap between the time of upheaval that created it and the moment into which it is received, to be born again"  Cohen states: You have to interpret the monster more than the white picket fence   

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Thesis 2: the monster always escapes  "the monster itself turn immaterial and vanishes, to reappear somewhere else" "no monster tastes of death once." he always comes back and has the "propensity to shift" "monsters must be examined within the intricate matrix of relations(social, cultural and literary-historical) that generate them Thesis 3: the monster is the Harbinger of category crisis Cohen explains that monsters typically "escape" because they are so difficult to classify/categorize "they are disturbing hybrids whose externally incoherent bodies resist attempts to include them in ant systematic structuration… a form suspended between forms that threatens to smash distinctions Thesis 4: the monster dwells at the gates of difference "the monster is an incorporation of the outside, the beyond" "for the most part monstrous difference tends to be cultural, political, racial, economic, sexual" Muslims during the times of the crusades native Americans during period of manifest destiny Thesis 5: the monster polices the borders of the possible " the monster prevents mobility (intellectual, geographic, or sexual) delimiting the social spaces through which private bodies may move. To step outside this official geography is to risk attack by some monstrous border patrol or (worse) to become monstrous oneself" "Every monster is in this way a double narrative, two living stories: one that describes how the monster came to be and another, its testimony, detailing what cultural use the monster serves" Thesis 6: fear of the monster is really a kind of desire " this simultaneous repulsion and attraction at the core of the monster's composition accounts greatly for its cultural popularity" "the habitations for the monsters (Africa, Scandinavia, America, Venus, the delta quadrant -whatever land is sufficiently distant to be eroticized) are more than dark regions of uncertain danger: they are also realms of happy fantasy, horizons of liberation. Their monsters serve as

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secondary bodies through which the possibilities of other genders, other sexual practices, and other Imagining ourselves in non normative relationships Thesis 7: the monster stands at the threshold… of becoming "they can be pushed to the farthest margins of geography and discourse… but they always return. And when they come back, they bring not just a fuller knowledge of our place in history and the history of knowing our place, but they bear self-knowledge, human knowledge -- and a discourse all the more sacred as it arises from the outside" "they ask us why we have created them" Why are we attracted to and engender the creation of these monsters These monsters are a unit of meaning that can tell us a lot about our society - just ask why we create them?

Seminar facilitation  Connect a reading to a pop culture example  Apply theories of the reading to any example

Godzilla signifies  Not just a metaphor for the atomic bomb  Represents a societies desire to claim its deepest tragedies for itself, to assimilate thema s elements of its historical identity  Remember that godzilla himself pre-exists the atomic energy/tests that anger him and cause him to terrorize japan  He has a pre-existent status as a legendary beast, a myth: he is of mythology  Not just fear from outside/external threats, but a fear of what is within

Spoke about star wars Barney  First connection w media  Developmental program  Different, huge, purple, dinosaur  Teaches peace, equality, good values, friendship, love, family,

WEEK 3 JAN 18

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Myth System of communication A type of speech “everything can be a myth provided it is conveyed by a discourse” like speech, myth is a mode of signification “myth is not defined by the object of its message, but by the way in which it utters this message (form)

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myth is a type of speech chosen by history

Semiotics Language (according to Saussure) is made of signifiers, signified and signs Sign = signifier + signified (in relation) Sign must have both a signifier and a signified (you cannot have a totally meaningless signifier or a completely formless signified) A sign is a recognizable combination of a signifier with a particular signified Example:  Signifier = word “open” on a plaque for a store  Signified = shop is open for business Signifiers are made up of symbols The signifier is made up of letters (symbols) Symbols are arbitrary, but come to have particular meanings over time (these meanings are naturalized = the workings of ideology)

Myth as a second order (complicated) semiological system Myth is larger than language (a metalanguage) “a second language” the sign of language becomes the signifier of myth Except… in the metalanguage of myth, the signifier and signified get transformed into form and meaning myth is a double system constituted by an alteration between meaning and form, language and metalanguage For Barthes… …myth is a distortion of history, a metalanguage that can give the image of a whole without any explanation as to its roots, formation or mystification  Myth is seen as the appropriation of a historical image that survives in gesture as a mode of signification, rather than as a shared memory Myth has a double function: it points out and it notifies, it makes us understand something and it imposes it on us”

Darth Vader

JAN 25

Zombies and Haunted Houses

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Zombies Like all monsters, have a history or, more specifically, a historicity: Names have "a historicity, what might be understoos as the history which has become internal to a name, has come to constitute the contemporary meaning of a name; the sediment of its usages as they have bcome part of the very name, a sedimentation, a repetition that congeals, that gives the name its force" (J Butler - excitable Speech, 1997) Historicity- the first view of the zombie is a single zombie not the hoard Historians see things through a specific set of eyes, there is no one definite historic narrative Historiography: the study of a constellation of events- complex and ever changing historical narrative Voodoo Often used to refer to voodoo science/economics - used as an adjective for something that is not real/fake Vodou Haitian religion Decreased in recent years because of Christianity A religion that has multiple gods Post colonial religion - formed after colonization of haiti - contact of black slaves and the indigenous population French revolution - to overthrow the monarchy - slogan: equality/fraternity Haitians curious as to why the french wanted freedom for their people but not others Vodou A religion (although non-institutional) The majority religion of Haiti A religion closely tied to the history of Haiti (slavery, colonization, revolution, resistance) An initiatory religion Sometimes called a syncretic religion - religion that blends elements of other religions 'of gods and saints' The connection between religion and horror, monsters and 'otherness' suffuses western pop culture imagination Both of these pairings come into play in pop culture representations of voodoo/Vodou Zombies, born in Haiti, are at once memories of their own historicities and agents of forgetting We have expectations of our monsters. They often follow certain conventions (typical or normative ways of acting; common characteristics; etc Vampires usually bites. Zombies usually eat brains Afraid of the political implications of haitians on the US, comparing apocalypse to the freedom of haitians Hell house Haunted house with acts in it to scare the bajesus out of you To recruit, gain new followers to the religion, make you more of a Christian, scare you into not sinning so you want to go to heaven not hell

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Hell houses depend on an audiences familiarity with the horror genre and the secular haunted house They are 'wilfully hybrid' experiences, which combine secular culture and Christianity to extend a Christian message Evangelical christian religion Engagement with pop culture creates a communicative practice that can compete for attention within an increasingly commercialized public square A response to the thriving nature of monstrous pop culture Good ways to think about the connection between religion and the monstrous Hell houses (like haunted houses and horror movies) tap into an audiences desire for a bounded, "safe" experience of being afraid Hell houses (like haunted houses) are about affective feeling, not factual transmission Unlike the haunted house or horror film, however, you are not meant to simply return to the mundane world at the end Hell houses ask us to think about how formal of systematic beliefs are embedded in and arise out of, concrete relations and experiences The goal of a hell house is for you to come out changed unlike a haunted house where when you leave, you go back to your normal life Draw from contemporary events in order to create their morality plays Speaking to politics Hell house creators do not see themselves as promoting hateful messages towards individuals or groups. They hold fast to a "love the sinner, hate the sin" mentality We may disagree with what constitutes "sin", but should also be aware that this mentality has animated public discourse about abortion, same-sex marriage, and other social issues In some ways, hell house creators amplify, exaggerate and remix this broader public discourse Hell houses (as in the documentary) are porous public performances where performers and audiences each come with their own feelings, prior experiences, and expectations that govern hoe they "take in" a hell house Methology of family Talked about star wars Godzilla and how it might be an underlying meaning for FEB 1 Presentation max 15 mins

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Practices of looking Dante and Virgil in hell (1850) by William Adolphe Bougeureau The characters that are the subject of this painting are not what we immediately feel impelled to look at The odd, the transgressive, the abnormal, the weird, the monstrous arrests our attention When the monstrous slides out of the realm of fantasy into the realm of reality, we must become hyper-attentive Freak Noun, any abnormal phenomenon or product or unusual object;anomaly, aberration A person or animal on exhibition as an example of a strange deviation from nature; monster

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Talked about how the freaks and geeks show is a portrayal of types of freaks They're different in the sense that they don’t do what normal highschool students do, they smoke, skip class, hangout behind the portables, wear heavy makeup, are never home, always out with friends, do drugs There is a heavy pressure to have normal kids Society makes a set of decisions about what is and isn't normal, which change over time  How do we make those social decisions? Freakshow Is both a powerful symbol and a mode of entertainment. It is arguably (also) a hybrid cultural form Newitz argues that these shows performed important cultural work, allowing people to confront forms of otherness they found "extreme and terrifying" Like other forms of monstrousness, freakishness is a historically variable quality (women in pants) This should remind us that freak is a constructed term (a floating signifier) and not an essential or immutable identity category HBO's Carnivale Body and/as difference Subversion of hetero-normativity Celebration of physicality Exploration of class, economics, social issues Ethics of the gaze (relationship of audience and performer)...