Monsters live inside of us. The monster underneath the bed example is classic until it becomes cliché. As children, many imagine that there are monsters in closets, cupboards, under the bed. Anywhere where the sun doesn’t shine, that’s where monsters reside. But these monsters remain in our mind. They are manifestations of our fears and the dark, unsconscious desires that tend to devour us. Monsters are inside the distorted mirrors of funhouses we go to, and they are not imagined. They are as real as they get, for they are the outer covering of our unconscious.
Monsters are staples of horror, fantasy, and science fiction. They come in many shapes and forms. And most of all, they are metaphors. Monsters are mostly defined as non-humans, cyborgs, creatures that are half-man, half-snake, or combinations of many animals. But monsters can be cleverly disguised humans who walk among us. But what makes a monster is a monster is its ability to grab its master and look at him or her, forcing his or her victim to face his or her fears.
In stories, it is always the hero who has to go on a monster slaying quest. Hercules has to slay the hydra as part of his twelve labours. In Japanese mythology, the god of the storms, Susano, has to slay the eight-headed demon orochi. The many heads of these creatures are analogous to our suppression of the hero’s anxieties. Hercules is half-god, and Susano a god. These creatures are metaphors of self-doubt, where the protagonist fears that he is not able to accept the mantle of being a god. These monsters are universal, but when women are thrown into the mix, the monster changes.
The female body is often thought as monstrous, and this is universal across all cultures. Monsters like the pontianak, for example, are a reflection of the fears of mortality that surround childbirth, and pregnancy, and a metaphor for what patriarchy has wrought upon the women of Southeast Asia. Then, there’s the Hantu Tetek, an abomination created by men, reflecting both male desire and repulsion, as a way of objectifying women. This creature shows how women are vilified—being sexy and scary all at once, condemning a woman’s sexual freedom, painting her as a disgusting creature. In our patriarchal world, these monsters haunt a man’s imagination, as are negative by-products of the patriarchy, imbued with the biases and stereotypes that have transcended centuries.
Regardless, these monsters can be slain, but they always lurk both in our landscapes and cultural consciousness. They are immortal in this way. They are always there, and confronting them is the only way to stand up to our fears and more importantly, ourselves. Even if they are slain, they are not conquered. Conquering them is not getting rid of them, as monsters will rise even if they are rid of in stories. Conquering them is accepting them as part of us, and being able to control them and keep them at bay. Like the hydra or orochi, monsters come to life and take root in one’s consciousness once they are read. It is understanding what they have come to mean and mitigating their effects in real life that will enable us to manage them.
In some perverse way, monsters are there to empower us. Shine a light and the vampire dissipates. Get to know a monster, and realise that she is more like you than you can ever imagine. Case in point—Madam White Snake. Originally told as a cautionary tale, and as a tale in which women’s agency and sexuality is vilified and deemed monstrous, it uncovers the innate humanity that is present when Xu Xian falls in love with Bai Suzhen. Our monsters are more like us than we imagine, and when are enlightened to this, we have nothing to fear. Madam White Snake’s monstrous appearance is replaced with vulnerability once it became a love story, and that the monsters we see in the mirror are more like ourselves, once you delve deep and look beyond the fangs.
Give someone a torchlight to shine the truth on their monsters, and you can pick apart their psyche. Victor Frankenstein’s monster is much like him, wanting recognition, validation, and love. Our obsession with zombies is an allegory for what we are in our office jobs, shuffling around and longing for something more. Trolls are nothing more than the self-loathing within us, and Stephen King’s character in The Shining, Jack, does not conquer himself, becoming more and more monstrous as he turns to drink. In Bladerunner, or Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, we are forced to take ourselves apart as androids, and to discover if we have any inner empathy left.
Each of these represents a facet of humanity we must confront, and this is why monsters are necessary. Monsters are the fuel that empowers us, for we all have to find that magic trick that enables us to defeat them. Regardless of whether it’s a light, a potion, or a magic mirror, the reflections of monsters are humanised, and perhaps, even loved. When Xu Xian falls in love with Bai Suzhen, he develops an empathy for her, and the sexy and perhaps even grotesque temptress falls away, revealing a person with thoughts and feelings. However, Bai Suzhen is not made human by Xu Xian—she is accepted by other readers and tellers as a hero, and suddenly, she is not so monstrous after all. She is human, just like us. In this way, she is accepted as part of society. She belongs.07
If we stood in the middle of a puddle on a rainy day, we would see our reflections. They are, in a sense, our monsters—who we could be on the flip side of the coin. They are everything we try to keep in the darkness, only to be revealed when there’s a chance. Be it darkness, a reflection, or even an incantation, our monsters are here to stay. We have to confront them, see their humanity, and accept them as a part of us every day, which is why we need to read fiction to equip ourselves with the tools to chain Fenrir the Wolf, show Medusa her reflection, before finally going to sleep with the lights off.
Featured image by darkday