Textual Analysis Of The Movie X-Men

First Thesis pretty much says that monsters always are symbols and representations of culture. “The monster is born only at this metaphoric crossroads, as an embodiment of a certain cultural moment of a time, a feeling and a place.”(Monsters

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

Citizens throughout American history have often presented the “home of the free” and the “land of the brave” as the perfect nation, filled with perfect families, and more extreme examples of how impeccable the nation truly is. No time presented the United States of America in a more splendid light than the 1950’s. The 1950’s are remembered as a decade of prosperity but as with every time period, multiple historical issues marred this time. The United States encountered political, diplomatic, and social issues throughout this decade (Hewitt and Lawson, 832). Hairspray, the 1988 film by John Waters, was set in the 1950’s and reveals depths of racism and stereotypes during this period, while presenting smaller examples of the issues of sexism, religion, and inequality.

He gives more explanation of the pop culture refe rences, however, than he does of his more esoteric and academic precursors. This means that he expects that his audience is more familiar with the theory surrounding monsters than with m any of the pop icon monsters that have appeared throughout history. Cohen builds a strongly logica l argument that monsters are symbolic of the marginalized groups at the outer edges of c ulture, and in doing so he makes it clear that he feels his audience is well-rounded, academic , well educated and as interested in the theory of monsters as he is himself. Logos is not the only rhetorical device Cohen uses in this article, however. He also uses ethos to connect with his audience, and to differentiate bet

The 1930’s was a time period in which discrimination played a vital role in the lives of minorities. In the 1930’s, men were in search for jobs on the ranches and women were generally working inside the house. Although the 1930’s seems pretty far back, discrimination still occurs in society today and can either be intentional or nonintentional. There are several different forms of discrimination: racial, disabled, age, and sexual. Any type of discrimination is harmful to the individual and often times leaves them feeling alienated and lonely. All of these types of discrimination are seen in the characters of John Steinbeck's novel, Of Mice and Men. Past history of discrimination has influenced him to display it in his novel. Each person’s type

Imagine living in The Great Depression on a ranch where you work for a boss who pays you $50 a month and provides you with your daily meals. Sounds like a good deal right? That is where things become a little controversial especially in the novel Of Mice and Men. Multiple characters within the novel are treated differently due to their gender, race, and mental ability. Discrimination is a terrible thing and Of Mice and Men provides examples why this is.

Asma states, "Monsters can stand as symbols of human vulnerability and crisis, and as such they play imaginative foils for thinking about our own responses to menace.” This means that human weaknesses and fears are represented through monstrous figures, and these fictional situations provide perspective into how we react in fearful environments. In our current society we fear many things, including but not limited to failed or corrupt governmental systems, the afterlife, the unknown, and captivity, which makes this claim valid. Although we may not realize it, these fears are embodied by the horror monsters we see in popular culture. Society shares common fears, and often times the most prevailing fear is reflected in the most popular characters at any given time. Monsters are the fictional representations of society’s dark subconscious, exploring not only why the author’s statement is accurate but what we actually fear.

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

Imagine the world is invaded by aliens. Some of them eat humans, some live among humans, and others live outside of our world. You don’t know it, but many of the people who have shaped our lives and our culture aren’t even human themselves. This is the world of the 1997 film Men in Black, directed by Barry Sonnenfeld. Men in Black is a sci-fi comedy about a group of enforcement agents defending and regulating aliens from invading Earth. But if you take their costume off, Men In Black can be seen as far more than a comedy about space aliens. Under the lens of postcolonial criticism, the film reveals itself to be a veiled, political commentary on immigration. A lens is a way for us to look at a piece of literature in a whole new depiction that we may not have thought of the first time we had read or watched a piece of literature. Through the postcolonial lens, I can see the movie as a biased contrast between the immigrants and the immigration police. Interpreting the movie through this lens allows me to see that the Men in Black are the immigration police, and are considered to be the protagonists of the film. On the other hand, the aliens, or immigrants when looking through the lens, are the antagonists of the movie; The Men in Black protect the US from bad aliens, giving immigration police the positive reinforcement of the brutal evictions immigrants received in the 90s.

In Susan Stryker’s “My Words to Victor Frankenstein Above the Village of Chamounix: Performing Transgender Rage”, Stryker creates an intimate linkage between Frankenstein’s monster and the transsexual body. Like Frankenstein, a transsexual person owns an “unnatural” body and an identity defined completely by medical practice. And like Frankenstein, a transsexual person encounters countless challenges, discrimination, and hatred from normal people. Normal people deem transsexual existence as the embodiment of a monster which possesses “an unassimilable, antagonistic, queer relationship to a Nature” (Stryker 5). However, instead of running away, Stryker chooses to embrace co’s transsexual identity and lives in darkness with an identity of a seemingly cruel and despise-able monster. Stryker starts to pose a question that demands an answer: “Is monster really inferior than a human being, and does a natural body actually exist?”.

In the literary work Of Mice and Men, the reader is introduced to the ranch as a world of its own, within which prejudice plays a significant part. The characters in this novel act as a community in a world of their own, having no connections to any other type of society. A strong point, enforced through many examples in the book, is the constant ability of the stronger to overcome the weaker. The prejudices of the majority towards the minority, at the ranch are the white-males, who retain power over the lesser groups of people. This inequality, as well as the influence of the time period, causes discrimination against people of color, women, and those that are disabled, either mentally or physically.

In this essay I will examine how the monster’s looks and actions reflect the predominant cultural feelings that those who look different are bad, evil or incapable of normal feelings. That somehow because one may look different from the rest of us there must be something emotionally as well as physically wrong with them.

What is a monster? The word "monster" causes one to imagine a hideous, deformed or nonhuman creature that appears in horror movies and novels and terrifies everyone in its path. More importantly, however, the creature described generally behaves monstrously, doing things which harm society and acting with little consideration for the feelings and safety of others. "Thus, it is the behavior which primarily defines a monster, rather than its physical appearance"(Levine 13).

Monsters have proven to be more than just the fiendish appearance or the evil within such creatures – their monstrosity symbolizes, more or less, the characteristics that define mankind and/or our innermost fears. Prior to this Exploration of the Humanities course, I have interpreted monsters for what they are: heartless and destructive creatures that generate fear. However, I never bothered what the true cause of such fear is – only associating the gruesome presence with a psychological reaction of horror. But taking this class allowed me to broaden my perspective on monsters and monstrosity: humans fear the “Other” because we as individuals have an “Other” within us (subconsciously) that we are not willing to show to those in our

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