Analyzing Cohen's Monster Culture

To start off, Jeffrey Jerome Cohen who wrote Monster Culture is Professor of English and Director of the Medieval and Early Modern Studies Institute at the George Washington University in Washington, DC. He is known for researching strange mysterious things that connect to an imaginative mind. He finds interested in monsters, foreigners, queers, inhuman forces. In Jeffrey Cohen’s essay Monster Culture Cohen discusses and effectively covers important reasons on how monsters connect with the cultures from which they rise from. I believe that Cohen’s theories are valid and that monsters are a good window into a certain culture.

In the article “Monster Culture (Seven Theses)”, writer Jeffrey Jerome Cohen touches on seven different aspects or theses, concerning the connections of monsters and culture. Cohen reaches out to the reader’s mind by introducing theories of how monsters can impact many cultural categories. He explains the connection between culture and the fact that monsters never appear to truly die the first time around. They always come back to life, and seem to be more capable of adaption and escape than some realize or care to remember. Monsters are characterized as those third party creatures that cause an imbalance and disruption of the typical order or nature of things, in almost an intruding way (Cohen 14-15). It is not in their nature to simply

The next thesis proposed by Cohen is that a monster is the harbinger of category crisis. In order to feel comfortable about places, people, and things in the word, we tend to group things into categories. All of these are placed in categories typically by physical appearance and certain traits that tend to stick out. Well, what’s scary about monsters is that they tend to be unnatural and not just fit into one category, but rather many different categories. One of the most common characters described by this thesis is Count Dracula, a monster that is neither dead nor alive. When one cannot be distinguished into a basic category this tends to frighten us because it goes against one of our common norms. He breaks our human-made laws of nature. Along with the violations of our norm groups, monsters also tend as an act to forewarn our cultures of crisis. The creator of Frankenstein can be seen as an act to

In the article “Monsters and the Moral Imagination,” Stephen Asma, a professor of Philosophy and Distinguished Scholar at Columbia College Chicago, argues that the existence of monsters have a purpose in our lives. It is not only to reveal our deepest fears, but to question our moral instincts. Being attacked by fictional monsters seems impractical, however, chaos and disasters do happen and exist in the real world. The creation of monsters is due to our reaction of our fears and the inability to control the world we live in.

What defines a monster? Is it their grotesque, unnatural appearance that separates them from the rest of mankind, or is it their lack of remorse and compassion that makes them different? The word monster conjures up figures from gothic horror of exotic peoples with horrifyingly exaggerated features, and the kinds of impossible delusive beasts inhabiting the pages of medieval bestiaries. Well at first I thought exactly that. When I used to hear the word “monster”, my mind immediately pictured the petrifying beast that took residence under my bed for a substantial portion of my childhood. It had demonic beating red eyes, razor sharp teeth that glistened with fresh blood and amphibian like scales covering every inch of its enormous body. However, as I got older, I started to realize that there was no such thing as monsters and that it was all just a figment of my imagination. Accordingly, the fear of the monster under my bed slowly dissipated. Nevertheless, it wasn’t until after reading a quote by my favorite author, Steven King, that I was finally able to fully comprehend what the true definition of the word “monster” really was. “Monsters are real, ghosts are real too. They live inside us, and sometimes they win”. It had taken me awhile to truly grasp what King had meant, but then it clicked. Everyone has a monster inside them, dormant or not. That monster is the voice we hear in the back of our heads, urging us to cheat or to steal, and in some instances, worse. That monster

The Monster Culture Seven theses written by Jeffrey Cohen discusses seven areas of monstrous aspects that have appeared in our culture due to a number of reasons by society. The story of the immortal cells of Henrietta Lacks can be intertwined in several of the thesis on monsters. Four areas I found to most correlate are Thesis I: The Monster’s Body Is a Cultural Body as it relates to Night Doctors, Thesis II: The Monster Always Escapes comparing to the HeLA bomb chapter in the book, Lastly, Thesis IV: The Monster Dwells at the Gates of Difference reflecting on the race of Henrietta and the concept of black genes/cells running thru all of mankind regardless of color. The Monster concepts in Jeffrey Cohen’s article interrelate to the story of Henrietta Lacks based on her story reads like science fiction and

Cohen claims monsters are a cultural body in the first thesis, by stating the concept of “that which reveals” (12). For example, the imagery of Dracula, Lucy, and Mina, having fangs is an obvious indication that they are vampires. Coppola’s use of religious artifacts plays a heavy role in the movie. With these artifacts, the audience can easily comprehend that the monsters in the story are vampires. Jeffrey Jerome Cohen’s “Monster Culture” applies to the film,

When monsters are thought of a very distinct picture comes to mind. An ugly creature that is out for blood, born into a life where causing misery is his driving force. Do these features really define what a monster is; works of literature like Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and Shakespeare’s Othello tell quite a different story. Monsters are not born but made just as people are not born evil but can sometimes end up there. Othello and the Monster start of as good men looking to be part of society but were pushed out because of what others perceived them to be. This caused them to mentally and physically isolate themselves from everyone allowing hatred to take over. Iago and Frankenstein also helped to instill thoughts

When we were kids we were told of many imaginary monsters, but as you grow up we learn what the real monsters are. A monster is defined as a badly behaved or cruel person, something that is absurdly large, or a fictional and frightening creature. The monsters that we know of today are nothing like the ones when we were little kids. When you realize things like the monster under your bed isn’t real is when you come to know that society is the real monster. Jennifer Lynn Barnes gives us insight on who the monsters really are when she tells us that, "They told him he was killing monsters, and then they made him kill people. He thought it was just me who was different, and he didn't go through with killing me. He

To begin, monsters are created during a cultural moment such as a time, feeling, and a place (Cohen, 4). Monsters can be in our house, within us and even in our schools. They symbolize fear, desire, anxiety and fantasy, therefore, giving them life and unlimited access to independence (Cohen, 4).Therefore, monsters can be something we make up in our mind because we don’t want to face in reality or be something that is actually real in life such as a killer. For example, in the film Pan’s Labyrinth, Ofelia, creates this imagination to escape the horror that she faces in her new home. Even in the story of Alice in Wonderland, Alice escapes her reality because she doesn’t feel satisfied, and also creates an imagination of a wonderland that would be better in reality. Alice and Ofelia were willing to reject

What is a monster? Before taking this class, my understanding of a monster was a person or thing with truly heinous intentions such as murder or torture. A true monster has no empathy or sympathy they seek to hurt or destroy for the mere enjoyment and pleasure they seem to receive as a reward for fulfilling there desires. The motivation of a real monster is to show their power over the weak and to establish absolute control. Monsters have no definitive appearance; they can fall anywhere on the spectrum from beautiful to deformed. The fear should really come from the fact that you never know who or what could be a monster. Does humanity create monsters? In reality, yes whether it

Examples of the monsters that fit into Cohen's first thesis can are found in "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight," and "Dante's Inferno." At the time of its conception, a monster is a social commentary or a reflection of societal issues.

Monsters represent the opposite of what we want to be. There is a line of what should and shouldn’t be done and our monsters question that line. In fiction and reality, monsters push the limits of acceptance. The borders are in place to control the limit, and when someone pushes the limit, it creates fear. Fear of unknown (13-14).

Monsters, the creatures of the night who prey on our fear. The ones who have no sense of emotion and lack the ability to show remorse. The big, the bad, and the ugly that lurks within all of us. The term “monster” has been around for centuries, throughout the years the view on monsters has changed, but the one thing that has stayed the same is the fact that we have always viewed them as something negative. We view monsters as evil and scary. Personally, I think of blood and murder when I hear the word monster. A monster brings out our darkest and weakest sides, whether it’s the anger that they cause or the fear they bring upon us. The term monster can be defined in many different ways, depending on how we view them, but I feel like the

The word “monster” means a being of unnatural size with unnatural features that is sometimes imaginary and often causes fear due to wickedness, ugliness, and cruelty. In literal terms, the Creation is a monster. Based on the definition, he is of unnatural size and features as the Creation is characterized by “its gigantic stature, and the deformity of its aspect” (50). Further, people fear the Creation due to his deformity as stated “the unnatural hideousness of [his] person was the chief object of horror with those who had formerly beheld [him])” (94). In further explanation, the Creation can also be considered monstrous because he was responsible for the death of many people such as William, Justine, and Henry. In figurative terms, however, the Creation is not entirely a monster. Though he did intend to cause harm as he declares war against humans (97), much of his spite a cruelty spurs from his lack of maturity and the environments he was faced with. The Creation came into the world and was immediately faced with rejection. His own creator “turned from him in disgust” (93) and the villagers he grew to love “struck [him] violently with a stick” (97). He had no friend and no one teach him that killing was wrong no matter how much emotions get the better of one. Much of this violent