"We live in an age of monsters".
—Jeffery Jerome Cohen
In today's popular culture, especially in the visual culture represented by movies and TV series, the "monsters" have firmly grasped our attention: at the beginning of this year, the Korean zombie comic drama "Zombie Campus" was once called "the hottest Korean drama during the Spring Festival"; and in the upcoming March, the once-popular "Kingdom" series will also launch a third season...
Stills from the TV series Kingdom.
From faltering zombies to "beautiful" vampires; from the barbaric beast "King Kong" to Godzilla, which is closely related to modern civilization; from the mythical god Cthulhu to the technological predator... We feel repulsive and frightened at the same time deeply fascinated by their madness and weirdness.
Scholars engaged in physiology often cite Freud's interpretation of the "uncanny" to portray how people feel when they face monsters: "strangeness" originates from the return of the repressed, and is a kind of fear and horror that arises from it. But at the same time, Jerome Cohen also pointed out that the fear of monsters is actually a desire, and in the disgust of monsters people are also attracted to them and experience a taboo freedom and sublimity. Therefore, when facing the monster, people feel the seemingly contradictory emotions of "rebuke" and "proximity" at the same time, which makes the monster image a unique "puzzle".
In this issue, we will get closer to the "mysteries" surrounding "monsters": why we feel both "weird" and attracted to the screen image of monsters, why these two seemingly contradictory emotions are intertwined, and how these emotions affect people's attitudes towards "monsters" and even how they interact with philosophical thinking about monsters.
Attraction in "Weird":
As a threat to the "normal"
Film critic Robin Wood, in An Introduction to the American Horror Film, proposed a fundamental narrative of monster movies: that is, "normality" is threatened by "monsters." In fact, the relationship between "monsters" and "normal" is also emphasized in contemporary physiology studies: in a lecture at the Institut française in 1974-75, Foucault argued that "humanoid monsters" violated both social and natural laws—in other words, they broke the social normal as law and the natural normal as law.
Film critic Robin Wood.
Thus, when we claim that monsters in monster movies pose a threat to "normalcy," this claim also implies both "natural" and "socio-cultural": "monsters" are both weird creatures that cannot be accurately recognized and classified under the epistemology of "normal" and a metaphor for groups of humans who are suppressed or manipulated under social norms. It is with this understanding in mind that Robin Wood analyzes the correspondence between "monster images" and "repressed or manipulated groups" in American horror films:
For example, the "leopard girl" in "Island of Lost Souls" is a metaphor for repressed female sexuality, and the deformed people who are crossed between humans and beasts are symbols of minorities; in "Texas Chainsaw Killer", proletarian workers who are retired at home but are still engaged in slaughtering work appear; the bridge section of the invasion of Chinese and foreign star creatures in a large number of science fiction movies in the 50s reflects the threat of the Soviet And Eastern camp...
Poster for the movie "Island of the Dead" (see the words "Panther Woman" at the top of the poster)
This is the mechanism by which people feel "repulsed" and "approached" in the face of monsters at the same time: on the one hand, the screen image of the monster not only "breaks through" the "normal" that people are accustomed to, but also reveals the manipulation and repression mechanisms in the "normal", which will make people feel "strange" and "frightened"; on the other hand, as the "normal" is "broken", the manipulative forces and taboos in it are also impacted, which in turn makes people obtain a kind of "release" and "liberation". As Robin Wood puts it: It "fulfills our nightmarish wishes and breaks the norms that oppress us." ”
This mechanism is most prominently reflected in the popularity of zombie movies. Some scholars have pointed out that the popularity of zombies in the United States stemmed from the American occupation of Haiti from 1915-1934. There is a legend in Haitian voodoo that a sorcerer can cast spells on a person and turn him into unconscious "soul corpses", and these "soul corpses" will become the master's slaves and perform endless labor for him.
It is not difficult to find that becoming a "zombie" means the loss of individual consciousness and dignity, a typical materialization process that resonates with the experience of the American general public during the Great Depression: the Great Depression made thousands of laborers aware of their materialized, manipulated situations and life without dignity and meaning. Thus, when people are afraid of the fate of "zombies" and becoming "zombies"—this is actually a shift in fear of the process of objectification in reality. Zombies reveal the process of materialization that is "repressed" and "normalized" under "normality", which in turn evokes fear.
In Dawn of the Dead, George A. Romero attempts to respond to the new normal of the advanced capitalist era with zombies—the raging consumer culture. In the film, zombies are attracted to shopping malls because they vaguely remember that "this is an important place in life" They instinctively shop, try on clothes... The zombie's unquenchable desire to eat human flesh makes it suitable for characterizing the endless consumption and ever-expanding accumulation of capitalist society. The era of advanced capitalism has emerged from the "depression" of the past and replaced it with a consumerist culture that is deeply embedded in everyday life. People have become so accustomed to this that it is difficult to see that this is a manipulative force. With the help of zombie images, Romero re-makes it grotesque, frightening and shocking in a "distancing" way. At the same time, in Romero's films, we can also see that the onslaught of zombies makes the oppressive forces of patriarchy, racial discrimination and other norms ugly and will collapse, which echoes Robin Wood's explanation of the attraction of monsters, that is, it breaks the norms that oppress us.
Poster for the movie Dawn of the Living Dead.
In the 21st century, there are also many zombie movies whose content and popularity are related to the issue of immigration in the era of globalization. Romero, for example, portrayed Pittsburgh under a zombie siege in his fourth zombie film, Land of the Dead, released in 2005. Some scholars have pointed out that pittsburgh's defense measures in the film are easily reminiscent of the prevention and control of illegal immigrants at the US-Mexico border:
To ensure the status quo, Pittsburgh's leaders built the world's most extreme border security system — blowing up bridges, erecting barricades, protecting the area from intruders with power grids and armed guards; under the domination of xenophobia, soldiers would shoot any intruder. These security measures are reminiscent of the recently erected fence at the U.S.-Mexico border and the fact that it occurred in the case of George W. Bush. During W. Bush's presidency, there was a discussion about the deployment of the National Guard to guard the southern border of the United States.
In the 2006 Canadian film Fido, there was a setting in which walls and power grids were erected: inside the walls, zombies were "domesticated" and collared to perform various labors for humans (such as housekeeping), while outside the walls were wandering "wild" zombies, who were seen as potential threats and eliminated and prevented.
Stills from the movie Zombie Butler.
It is also highly reminiscent of the situation of migrants. Beyond the border, they see them as a threat, and when the media describes them as a "wave of immigrants," the rhetoric is similar to the "corpse tide siege" common in zombie movies. Even when they enter the border, they are also seen as potentially unstable and are therefore subject to strict control (collars). Their lives are archived and coded, and they are mainly engaged in "low-end labor" such as home economics.
In short, zombies are "living dead" who have died but still retain some of their physiological functions, while immigrants are "naked lives" who have their lives but whose lives are not guaranteed. The isomorphism of the two makes the fear of immigration, which is suppressed by civilized society, find a carrier for displacement in the zombie image. As a result, the intensifying migration crisis has found a breakthrough in the zombies to allow them to "return".
"Monsters", "Weirdness" and "Normality":
Reflections of philosophers
Above, all of our argument is based on the premise that "monsters" are a deviation from the "normal." Only when we uphold this premise will its emergence reveal the absurdity of "normal" while subverting the "normal", which in turn will make us have the emotion of "rebuke" and "proximity", and initiate the separation and reflection on the "normal". And this premise can be traced back to a series of long-standing philosophical beliefs. In "On the Reproduction of Animals," Aristotle discusses the emergence of "freaks." He said:
When something appears in the usual way and is now encountered in another way, it is called anti-natural. In fact, although the examples of freaks are contrary to the existing norms of the animal kingdom, if we try to investigate their implications, they are not all accidental, but follow some elusive way; when the natural cause (the original cause) fails to manipulate the natural material cause (raw material), the strange appearance occurs.
Four Articles of Animals (Animal Structure, Animal Movement, Animal Travel, Animal Reproduction), by Aristotle [Ancient Greece], translated by Wu Shoupeng, The Commercial Press, 2011.
In short, based on the "four-cause theory," Aristotle argued that the "formal causes" of individual species dictated their "normal form." "Monster" and "weirdness" are defined as "deviations from material causes from formal causes" – under the influence of external factors, monsters deviate from the "normal form" of the species to which they belong.
In the Middle Ages to the early modern period, people tended to think that the word "monster" derived from "monstrare" or "monere" (monere). On the one hand, they accepted Aristotle's view that monsters were a deviation from "formal causes"; on the other hand, the appearance of monsters was given more hermeneutic meaning: monsters often appeared to "show" some kind of message, omen, or warning. For example, when the Tiber River flooded in 1495, it is said that the body of a monster with a donkey's head was found on the riverbed, which was widely regarded as an ominous omen at the time. Images of this monster subsequently circulated throughout Germany, and Martin Luther and Meranchten applied it in their mutual attacks with the Catholic Church, interpreting it as a sign of the Corruption and Displeasure of God in the Catholic Church. Montaigne also wrote about a deformed child in his Collected Essays: he had only one head, but this head was connected to two torsos. Montaigne was clearly familiar with the practice of interpreting "weirdness" as a "harbinger", saying:
"This double body and these different organs, linked to the same head, really gives the king a good omen that the parts of our country will continue to be under his harmonious rule. However, leave it alone, lest the facts in the future do not coincide with this, and it is best to wait for the events to occur before making prophecies, so that the facts are in line with the omens. ”
Image of the "Pope Donkey".
However, interpreting "weirdness" in terms of specific "omens" is clearly a move in itself with great arbitrariness and uncertainty. Therefore, we can see that Montaigne also made a lot of mockery of this way of interpreting it. More importantly, are the so-called "norms" and "standards" really as well-defined as Aristotle's "formal causes"? Early modern thinkers have also put forward different views on this issue. In The Collected Essays, Montaigne argues:
"We call the violation of convention a violation of nature, but in fact everything in the world is a product of nature... What we call a teratology is not a deformity in God's eyes. God's creation is boundless, and the forms He sees are endless. It seems that the form which amazes us is but another form of the same kind, but which mankind has not yet recognized. ”
John Locke recorded a similar story in The Theory of Human Understanding. The monk St. Martin was born ugly, almost "expelled from humanity", and some even wanted to put him to death. But St. Martin eventually survived and became a respected monk. Locke thus argued that there are no definite and immovable boundaries between species in nature. The "standards" and "essences" that people use to distinguish and classify are nothing more than the "nominal essence" of "artificially formulated". Therefore, the boundaries of "normal" and "abnormal" are only human names and constructions, and do not exist in nature, and such boundaries also need to be flexibly adjusted according to the actual life experience of human beings.
The Theory of Human Understanding (Part 1 and 2), by John Locke, translated by Guan Wenyun, The Commercial Press, 2011.
It is not difficult to find that Montaigne and Locke's views are quite similar to those of "monster movies"; both use the existence of "monsters" to reveal the irrationalities in "normality" and advocate reflection and adjustment of normalcy. In contrast, contemporary posthuman thought is more radical. In the view of a considerable number of post-anthropologists, it is not enough to reflect and adjust only on the difference between "normal" and "abnormal", which needs to be completely "abolished". In Harawi's work, she advocates the coexistence of multiple species (including so-called "monsters") that distinguishes between each other, without distinction between differences and advantages and disadvantages. As she put it:
"In the best sense, the Cthulhus are monsters: they demonstrate and fulfill the processes of the species of the Earth and the multiple meanings of living things on the material level... In the Monster Age, being born and dying together is the fiercest response to the commands of man and capital. ”
Staying with the Trouble, Donna J. Haraway，Duke University Press Books, 2016.
In Aristotle and Montaigne and Locke, the monster still appears in the form of the other, which is a "shocking" and even "frightening" existence: the difference between the two is only that in Aristotle's eyes, weirdness is diametrically opposed to normality; in Montaigne and Locke, weirdness constantly impacts normalcy, forcing normalcy to adjust and change. But in Harawi's eyes, the monster has completely lost its "otherness" and is no longer terrifying. As the scholar Jiang Yuhui commented: In this romantic picture of "heaven and earth coexist with me, and all things are one with me", the terrible power and violence of the monster that made Aristotle exhausted have long disappeared. Even the ultimate monster of Cthulhu, who is so appalling in Lovecraft's case, is invisibly transformed into the gentle mother of creation mythology (Chthulu) under Harawi's brilliant brushwork.
Cthulhu monster image.
When monsters are no longer "scary"
Is the result of coexisting with "monsters" really desirable? In this regard, another zombie movie, "Shaun of the Zombies", released in 2004, may give a perspective to answer this question.
Like many zombie movies, Shaun the Zombie tries to use "zombies" as a metaphor for people's objectified and numb living conditions: the protagonist Shaun does not become a zombie, but his life is no different from that of a zombie: the four bodies are not diligent, there are no interpersonal relationships worth mentioning, spending every day in a mechanically repetitive way, and the only pleasure is playing games with fat friends... But unlike previous zombie movies, the "normal" that brings about this kind of materialized life has not been subverted with the outbreak of zombies. On the contrary, at the end of the film, the army turns the tide, life returns to normal, and the "inhuman" zombies become part of daily life. People find that zombies still retain the habit of "living before they die", so: "Zombies who like to be supermarket salesmen continue to tidy up carts outside the supermarket door; a woman sleeps with her zombie husband every day, and Sean can even continue to play games with his fat friends who have become zombies..." The vigorous zombie outbreak is just a small stone thrown into the backwater of "ordinary life", and after the ripples are dispersed, people continue to numb and objectify their lives.
Sean plays games with fat guys.
In a sense, the end of Shaun of the Zombies is the fulfillment of Harawi's ideal of "coexistence." People really live with the "non-human" of "zombies" without distinction. But with this "coexistence" is the loss of the possibility of criticizing the "normality" of their own lives. The existence of "zombies" should have brought "weirdness" and "fear", making people realize that "I lived a life no different from zombies", and then "exposing" the materialization mechanism behind life; but in "Zombie Shaun", instead, the materialization mechanism pulled the "zombie" into this state of stagnant water, and people accepted the zombie as a member of life without fear.
It is not difficult to see that we must not be too attached to the distinction between normal and abnormal, which can easily lead to a rebuke of the other. However, when people think about their own lives, they also inevitably need to use the other as their reference. From this point of view, the complete abolition of the distinction between the self and the other will make people lose the possibility of reflecting on their own lives. Moreover, this kind of behavior is often not really tolerating the other's other's otherness, but to pull the other into its own "normality"—just as in "Shaun of the Zombies", people quell the zombie riots and let the zombies continue to participate in human life. This seems to be dancing with others, but in fact it transforms zombies into screws on the huge machine of human society, pulling them into the same tyranny of human life.
Sean plays games with fat guys who turn into zombies.
In Monsters of the Market: Zombies, Vampires and Global Capitalism, the author quotes Adorno as saying that in psychoanalysis, only exaggeration is true. In a world so "bland" and "banal" that everything seems to be "normalized" and "naturalized," the horror of "monsters" may be one of the few ways in which a distancing can be created and the subject gains a distance to reflect on life. Because of this, retaining the perception of "monsters" as "abnormal", and thus maintaining the "terrifying" energy of monsters, may also be defending our critical potential in the face of capitalist society.
Author | Xie Tingyu
Edit | Li Yongbo Qingqingzi
Proofreading | Wang Xin