Welcome to Monsters Part 3: The Monsters That Just Need a Hug

Who didn't have that one friend who absolutely loved Remus Lupin in the Harry Potter series? Or maybe I really was the only person surrounded by his fan girls.

I swear that this picture is relevant...

Regardless, Remus Lupin made Harry Potter fans everywhere sympathetic to werewolves in a time when werewolves were still seen as evil creatures that needed to be destroyed (basically before there was a Teen Paranormal Romance section at Barnes and Nobles). He is probably one of the first examples J.K. Rowling gave us of someone who chooses to be "good" despite what society defines them as.

The fact that J.K. Rowling created characters who made choices and weren't evil because of who they were born as is a major theme of the Harry Potter series. This message is made extremely clear in book 4 (Goblet of Fire) when Dumbledore says to the Minister for Magic, Cornelius Fudge "it matters not what someone is born, but what they grow to be." This stands in sharp contrast to a lot of fantasy troupes that were seen all over the place in popular culture before these books. The best (and most well known) example of evil by virtue of birth are the Orcs from The Lord of the Rings trilogy.

The scene where we discover that Lupin is a werewolf (at least in the books) shows the extreme prejudice he faces every day. Harry is noticeably the only member of the Golden Trio to not react badly at the declaration that Lupin is a werewolf. Both Ron and Hermione show open distrust and hostility once the secret is revealed. They quickly change their minds about Lupin, but their initial reaction still stands as pretty normal when a wizard meets a werewolf. The only reason Remus Lupin might be considered a monster is because he turns into a werewolf once a month.

Remus Lupin isn't the first example of a sympathetic "monster". There's also the Beast from Beauty and the Beast, David in An American Werewolf in London, and an argument can even be made for Tony Stark from the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Each is put in a position where they are seen as a villain or monster to someone else, but are just trying to make the best of a bad situation.

The character David from An American Werewolf in London (much like his predecessor Larry Talbot from the 1941 The Wolf Man) is bitten by a werewolf. However, unlike the situation Remus Lupin found himself in, David has zero resources to help him during his transformations. He spends a good chunk of the second part of the film seeing hallucinations of the people he has violently killed while a werewolf. The hallucinations tell him what an awful person he is and that he should kill himself before he can kill anyone else.

(Next paragraph contains spoilers for An American Werewolf in London. This is your only warning!)

By the end of An American Werewolf in London, I sincerely wanted David to have a happy ending. I really did. Though, his mental health had significantly deteriorated and he knows he is responsible for the murders he commuted while transformed, it is still very clear that he wanted to live. But (spoilers) monsters don't get happy endings in these types of stories. Much like Larry Talbot before him, David is cornered in his werewolf form and shot to death. What is most tragic is that David seems almost relieved to die.

I may or may not have cried...a lot.

Werewolves seem to have a much more sympathetic representation in our popular culture than say vampires or zombies. Maybe it's because it's easy to identify with the werewolf condition. J.K. Rowling has been quoted as saying she used Lupin's condition as "a metaphor for those illnesses that carry a stigma, like HIV and AIDS." And unlike the vampire and zombie condition, which is constant, werewolves typically look and act like normal people until their affliction takes control.

That's not to say that vampires or zombies can't be sympathetic. The scene in Shawn of the Dead where Shawn has to kill his mother, is incredibly sad. Thankfully that movie has a somewhat happy, and pretty ridiculous, ending. But it does drive home the fact that the zombies were once humans who were loved.

Then there are monsters like The Beast from Beauty and the Beast. As a human, The Beast (or Prince Adam as dubbed by his adoring fans) had a personality that was severely lacking in empathy and charity. This leads to his curse and monstrous form.

I know that if I were in Belle's shoes, I would have screamed bloody murder. The Beast looks terrifying, especially since we first see him in the shadows of a dungeon. Though Belle reacts to his terrifying looks by shirking away from him with a gasp, she is able to look past his appearance (and he stops being a jerk to her) to fall in love with him. However, when Belle shows the image of The Beast to the villagers, they immediately form a mob and go off to "kill The Beast!"

This sequence of events leads to one of my favorite lines in the Disney version of Beauty and the Beast: "we don't like what we don't understand, in fact it scares us, and this monster is mysterious at least." Society judges The Beast to be a monster simply by how he looks. The Beast is tired and thinks he is doomed to spend the rest of his existence as a monster. At this point, he doesn't care if Gaston and the villagers are going to kill him or not. It isn't until Belle reappears that The Beast is able to find the will to live.

The villagers panic over the fact that The Beast looks scary even though he has never actually done anything to them. They have zero reasons to try and kill him.

There's actually a real life example of people hiding away from society due to a scary appearance. Raymond Robinson (1910 - 1985), also known as the Green Man, became horribly deformed in a childhood accident. To prevent people from panicking when they saw him, he would only go out at night and stay away from the main parts of his hometown. He eventually became a local legend known as the Green Man. Some people in his local community were shocked to discover that he really did exist and had an unfortunate even in his life take place.

But what about the monsters who don't look like monsters? Or, more specifically, what about the people who do terrible things because they think they have to?

I mentioned Tony Stark from the Marvel Cinematic Universe (I'm not as familiar with his other media) earlier in this post and some of you might be wondering why. To be honest, Tony's ego is his biggest weakness and is what qualifies him to being a monster. It's because of Tony that Ultron destroyed the capital city of Sokovia. If Ultron hadn't had done that, we wouldn't have had half the plot of Civil War.

Speaking of Captain America: Civil War, I backed Captain America during that whole movie. What Tony was asking them to do was to essentially give up their freedom, especially Wanda. Yes, I understood his point about someone keeping the heroes in check and making sure someone was held responsible for when innocent lives are lost (a topic for another time), but Steve Rogers made some really good points too. It also didn't help that Tony locked up half the Avengers after they rebelled against the agreement in the movie.

Tony has some good arguments and tries to do the right thing, but his actions tend to be way too extreme and hurt the people he is closes to. He is the type of monster people don't realize is a monster until they are in his crosshairs. Locking up Wanda instead of trying to help her was a really bad thing to do and stands in sharp contrast to Steve seeing the best in everyone. By the end of the movie, I did feel bad for Tony. He wasn't necessarily wrong with his arguments, but his actions were and he could very easily end up alone because of that.

At the end of Civil War, I saw someone who was devastated by their own actions, even though they still thought they were doing the right thing. I wasn't sure if I wanted to smack him or hug him. Hopefully James Rhodes will be able to get Tony to see where he went wrong.

So not all monsters are the Orcs of Middle Earth. Some have been cast out of society due to things that are entirely out of their control. Others wanted to do the right thing, but instead hurt those they care about most. These characters are important because not everything in life can be put into a "good" or "evil" box.

Life is complicated and tough to figure out. Sometimes it's the monster that needs saving.

If you enjoyed this post (or it really pissed you off) please like, share, and/or leave a comment. I love hearing from my readers and I hope you guys like hearing from me.

Until next week.

Welcome to Monsters Part 1: Evil Predators Under the Bed

So I wanted to get a few things out of the way before really diving into this week's post. First, everything that I am writing is my opinion which is based on my own experiences and (occasional) research. How I interpret something could be entirely different from how someone else does. Second, I am aware that there are people out there who have done a much better analysis than I am about to do on this topic. That's not going to stop me. Third, I enjoy writing and (to a lesser extent) reading horror. This series has been buzzing in my brain for a while and I'm not entirely sure how long it will go for. You've been warned.

An image from my sketch book... 

The monsters of my childhood were simple. They hid in the darkest shadows of my bedroom, waiting for me to peak out from under the safety of my covers and spirit me away. Only my army of stuffed animals kept the evil creatures at bay.

Or at least that was what my childish logic told me.

They are the predators and we are the prey.

Humans have it pretty good right now from an evolutionary stand point. We've somehow managed to populate every continent on Earth and it's only a matter of time before we start looking at colonizing the moon or building underwater dwellings deep on the ocean floor. There isn't anything on our planet that uses us as a primary food source (bacteria don't count). We are the dominate species.

But we weren't always the top dog and I think a part of our instinct subconscious remembers that.

Many of the scariest and most evil of monsters in our classic and popular culture (at least the western  culture which I am most familiar with) are terrifying because they prey on humans or want to cause serious harm. Manticores are known for consuming their victims whole, leaving no shred of evidence behind. Vampires want to suck the life right out of you. Zombies will tear out your throat and start eating you, while you're still alive. 

All pleasant images right?

Here there be monsters!

Explorers used to write on maps "here there be monsters" to indicate unexplored or extremely dangerous areas. It would be far from civilization where a lot of things that were unknown about these places. Those who went there, sometimes didn't come back. 

Creatures such as the kraken, manticore, siren, and harpy supposedly inhabited these area. They were blamed for shipwrecks, strange disappearances, and unexplained deaths. They preyed on humans in the same way that humans preyed on other animals.

Off the edge of the map, we weren't special anymore. 

I think the ones that can talk and easily mimic human speech are the scariest. They trick their victims into thinking they're in distress, but when the hopeless sap gets too close, it's too late. Human is eaten. The creepiest example that I have come across while doing research is from the Philippines's mythology. The tiyanak is sometimes depicted as a vampire like creature that makes the same sounds as a baby in distress to lure its victims to their deaths. 

I feel that is one monster I would easily tricked by.

The Odyssey had a lot of anthropomorphize creatures that tried to lead our heroes astray. The sirens in particular stand out. Their beautiful voices enchanting anyone who gets too close to their island, leading them to a horrible shipwreck. I was never certain if they did this to amuse themselves or if they ate their drowned victims too. Either way, they are hunting humans with hypnotic singing.

They were human once...

I've always thought that the most tragic monsters are the ones who started out as human. They are twisted into the evil creatures that haunt our nightmares instead of just being born to cause us harm. Vampires, werewolves, wendigos, and zombies are all creatures that (depending on source material) started out as perfectly ordinary people. 

And they need to eat us to survive.

There are different degrees to these types of stories. There's sometimes a shred of humanity still in them. But the need to survive nearly always wins. Dracula might have at one point been a human, but by the time he makes his way to London, he is perfectly fine eating an entire ship's crew. 

Zombies probably scare me the most in this category. Zombies were really popular when I was in middle school and I read a couple books and saw a few movies starring them. The heroes in these films were always under threat of being eaten or turned. Inevitably, one of the members of their party would get bitten and a morality crisis ensued. Did the group kill the infected individual before they could become the zombie or did they wait and hope the person didn't actually turn? Could they look into the face of their family/friend and kill them while they were still human? Could they do it after their family/friend became a zombie?

I don't know which is a worse feeling, the idea that I'm about to be eaten by a monster or that I might become the evil monster. Knowing that you're about to die is one thing. Knowing that you might be the cause of your friends and family's death is another. Would you rather die or become the monster?

Of heroes and monsters.

Monsters are typically vanquished by a hero. 

In the western classics, we are taught about how Hercules slayed the hydra (as part of his penitence for murdering his family) and how St. George saved a princess from being eaten by a vengeful dragon (and perpetuating a horrible cliche). The hero is either tasked to kill the evil monster to prove his worth or redeem himself from some horrible sin. It's not a matter of who will win the fight, but how the hero will succeed.

It is the classic good versus evil narrative. 

These types of stories continue exist in our modern culture. Tolkien told us about how a hobbit along with thirteen dwarves traveled to The Lonely Mountain to reclaim a treasure from a dragon (Hobbit). Buffy and her friends (Buffy The Vampire Slayer) protected us from the vampire apocalypse. The Winchester brothers (Supernatural) are still "saving people, hunting things" (you all knew I was going to work this in eventually).

The monsters are the evil that need to be destroyed and the hero is the good we root for. Good always wins the day.

We humans might be food monsters prey upon, but we are also the hope that keeps their evil at bay.

Alright that last line is a little sappy, even for me. 

If you enjoyed this post (or it really pissed you off) please like, share, and/or leave a comment. I love hearing from my readers and I hope you guys like hearing from me.

Let's see what kinds of monsters we'll meet next week.