Speaker 1: Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to
Speaker 1: Forward Thinking. Hey everyone, and welcome to Forward Thinking, the
Speaker 1: podcast that looks at the future and says he did
Speaker 1: the mash. I'm Joe McCormick, I'm La and our other host,
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland, is not with us today he is on vacation,
Speaker 1: but joining us in the podcast studio is a very
Speaker 1: special guest, Robert Lamb. Introduce yourself. Robert. Hey, Well, I'm
Speaker 1: the co host of Stuff to Blow Your Mind podcast, blogs,
Speaker 1: video sceries here at how Stuff Works. Uh, co workers
Speaker 1: to the two of you, and uh, it's it's great
Speaker 1: to be here to discuss the topic here. It's really
Speaker 1: great to have you. And I'm especially excited to have
Speaker 1: Robert today because I would say he is the local
Speaker 1: House Stuff Works resident expert on our topic, which is monsters. Yes. Uh,
Speaker 1: In fact, you have a show called Monster Science and
Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow your Mind. Yes and uh and actually
Speaker 1: now it's hosted on the House Stuff Works YouTube page itself.
Speaker 1: But but yeah, I always and I've always been a
Speaker 1: monster fan since I was a kid, and since my
Speaker 1: my job here at work involves looking at the scientific world.
Speaker 1: I've over time just sort of try to see how
Speaker 1: much I can I can go to the monster well
Speaker 1: and bring stuff back in and combine work and UH
Speaker 1: and passion together, and and I find that they generally
Speaker 1: go together quite nicely. So Robert's going to be joining
Speaker 1: us in two episodes, two different parts talking about monsters.
Speaker 1: In this first part today, we're going to talk about
Speaker 1: trends in monster lore, in monster thinking, in monster imagination,
Speaker 1: and what monsters are. Yeah, what monsters are, where they
Speaker 1: come from, and what relationship they bear to the societies
Speaker 1: that create them, and especially the times in which they're created.
Speaker 1: And in the second episode we're going to talk about
Speaker 1: future trends and monsters and make some predictions and prognostications
Speaker 1: and and maybe we'll find out if they come true,
Speaker 1: or maybe monsters will get us and we won't find out.
Speaker 1: But for today, we're going to talk about where monsters
Speaker 1: come from. You might be thinking, why are we talking
Speaker 1: about monsters in a show about the future, um, But
Speaker 1: the future of monsters is actually a really interesting topic
Speaker 1: that has a lot to do with both the the
Speaker 1: history and the current technology and all kinds of cultural
Speaker 1: factors going on. So what is the future of the monster,
Speaker 1: And by that I mean what are the monsters of tomorrow?
Speaker 1: Can we guess what kinds of creatures, ghoules, ghosts will
Speaker 1: terrify us in that thirty to fifty year period in
Speaker 1: the future. We so often reference what does the next
Speaker 1: generation of horror stories look like? In order to predict
Speaker 1: what the future of monsters is going to look like.
Speaker 1: I think we need to first investigate what a monster
Speaker 1: is and how monsters are made? So what is a monster?
Speaker 1: While we were preparing for this episode, Robert You loaned
Speaker 1: U is a really great book called Us Speaking of Monsters.
Speaker 1: I believe compilation shin of essays on the cultural study
Speaker 1: I guess of monster ology. Right. David J. Skull wrote
Speaker 1: a forward to this book called what we talked About
Speaker 1: When We talk about Monsters, and he went a little
Speaker 1: bit into the history of the idea of monsters in
Speaker 1: the word itself. So the word monster, he says, innered English,
Speaker 1: uh in about the time of Shakespeare. So that would
Speaker 1: put it in the late fifteen hundreds early sixteen hundreds,
Speaker 1: which is the part of the history of English we
Speaker 1: call early modern English. It's the kind of English that
Speaker 1: people today can sort of understand if you go back
Speaker 1: much further. It's hard to understand without training um and
Speaker 1: the characters of Shakespeare. Actually, he says, find occasion to
Speaker 1: speak the word more than eighty times. I looked this up.
Speaker 1: A lot of this is in the Tempest, talking about
Speaker 1: the character Caliban, the sort of fishy monster. He's referred
Speaker 1: to as a very shallow monster, a most perfidious and
Speaker 1: drunken monster, and a puppy headed monster, and a strange
Speaker 1: fish by the jester, I think, calls him all these things.
Speaker 1: But he's sort of taking pity on the monster at
Speaker 1: the same time that he's lamenting his monstrous nous um.
Speaker 1: So Skull goes on to say that the term descends
Speaker 1: from the Latin noun monstrum, which means sort of a
Speaker 1: divine important. I guess that would be like a bad omen,
Speaker 1: and that it comes to English through the French mon arre,
Speaker 1: not monary. French anyway means too worn. And he adds
Speaker 1: at the end, I love this that his favorite is
Speaker 1: the archaic adjective monster ferous monsters. Yes, yes, right in
Speaker 1: the middle. It's a good word. It should come back.
Speaker 1: So it's right there in the etymology of the word. Basically,
Speaker 1: a monster is a warning. It's a bad omen and
Speaker 1: instructive lesson. Uh Skull also says, quote, monsters are slippery,
Speaker 1: ever adaptive metaphors, but above all their natural teachers and
Speaker 1: teaching tools. Monsters demo straight things. Get what he did there,
Speaker 1: and I think that that the words actually are linked
Speaker 1: at the route they demonstrate things, usually of a cautionary kind.
Speaker 1: But also the idea of monsters wasn't always the domain
Speaker 1: of fantastical beings, right, That's another thing that he talks about, right,
Speaker 1: that these terrifying predatory creatures like vampires and werewolves weren't
Speaker 1: always the only thing you think of when you use
Speaker 1: the word monster. It was often, unfortunately, applied to regular
Speaker 1: humans who were born with physical deformities, who were often
Speaker 1: and in previous centuries, treated as sort of strange curiosities
Speaker 1: are collected in carnival shows. Even in the twentieth century,
Speaker 1: I think the association remained because the American film director
Speaker 1: Todd Browning, he was the guy who directed Universal's Dracula,
Speaker 1: the Big One Bella Legosie Dracula. Obviously he had success
Speaker 1: with that, but right after browning success with Dracula, he
Speaker 1: made the movie Freaks in nineteen thirty two, which essentially
Speaker 1: doomed his career. It was not well received at the time.
Speaker 1: To put it lightly, it focused on people who worked
Speaker 1: in a carnival freak show and featured actors with real
Speaker 1: physical abnormalities. Audiences at the time really couldn't deal with this.
Speaker 1: It shocked them, it scandalized them, and I think a
Speaker 1: lot of why they reacted negatively was the fact that
Speaker 1: the so called freaks weren't the bad guys in the film.
Speaker 1: You were asked to empathize with them. So it's really
Speaker 1: ahead of its time. Yeah, a lot of people think so.
Speaker 1: Time has been kind to it, so to say, a
Speaker 1: lot of critics now really like it. Um. But today, fortunately,
Speaker 1: I think we don't really have that association with real
Speaker 1: normal humans anymore. We we we think of the monster
Speaker 1: as a creature today in the past eighty or ninety
Speaker 1: years of horror movies in the West, I think it's
Speaker 1: been shaped into and I put this definition forward as
Speaker 1: something for us to knock down or supply with more
Speaker 1: nuanced something like a not entirely human creature that is
Speaker 1: the object of terror. What do y'all think about that? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I would say so, though I mean when you start
Speaker 1: breaking apart examples of monsters and you look to other
Speaker 1: things that exist in and just pop culture. I mean
Speaker 1: look at look at say comic book characters, look at
Speaker 1: the X Men, like so many of these creatures are
Speaker 1: essentially monsters, beasts. Yeah, they're monsters, Their monsters, creatures, their hybrids,
Speaker 1: they in their various are very simbolism um caught up
Speaker 1: in their design. But we don't necessarily think of say
Speaker 1: Wolverine as a monster. That's a good point. Maybe you
Speaker 1: would say he's not the object of terror. I don't know,
Speaker 1: there's something inherently negative about the monster. Of course, then again,
Speaker 1: you could look at all of the cute, cie monsters
Speaker 1: we have today. You know that that cute little Frankenstein's.
Speaker 1: So I don't know, it's a complicated concept, and I
Speaker 1: think because it's complicated, we need to look to somebody
Speaker 1: who has actually done some writing on this subject, who's
Speaker 1: spent time researching it. And Robert you pointed us to
Speaker 1: a professor named Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, who is a professor
Speaker 1: of English at George Washington University. How did you come
Speaker 1: across Cohen? Well, I came across his work in the
Speaker 1: book we mentioned earlier speaking of monsters. Uh, there's a
Speaker 1: uh kind of an abbreviated and cut up version of
Speaker 1: one of his essays that appears early on in that book.
Speaker 1: And and I just thought that he did a great
Speaker 1: job knocking out some of these, uh, these core areas
Speaker 1: of monstrosity, one of these these different areas where we
Speaker 1: can look at a monster and say, this is what
Speaker 1: it is, this is what it does, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: from a cultural and symbolic uh way of thinking, all right,
Speaker 1: like how we create and and portray monsters in our culture, right,
Speaker 1: And I think Cohen does an excellent job. I found
Speaker 1: this really illuminating, and I'm and I'm glad you sent
Speaker 1: it to us. So he has seventh dcs about what
Speaker 1: a monster is, what it represents, and I think we
Speaker 1: should just run through them quickly because they will help
Speaker 1: color our discussion of what the monsters of the future
Speaker 1: are going to be. So the first one of them,
Speaker 1: and I think this is sort of a good starting ground,
Speaker 1: is that he says the monster's body is a cultural body.
Speaker 1: And I think what he means by that is that
Speaker 1: the form of the monster is not arbitrary. It's a metaphor,
Speaker 1: it's a signifier. It's a distinct product of the certain
Speaker 1: time and place in which it was created, and it
Speaker 1: actually means something. Yeah, I mean it's very much like
Speaker 1: science fiction in that regard, because science fiction is is
Speaker 1: is interesting in its ability to predict what the future
Speaker 1: will be like, but it's always far more interesting in
Speaker 1: telling us what people were thinking about at the time,
Speaker 1: how they were looking into the future, what their anxieties
Speaker 1: were exactly. Yeah, and you see that that kind of
Speaker 1: those anxieties also manifested in the monster. Yeah, so his
Speaker 1: second thesis is that the monster always escapes. Actually found
Speaker 1: this the most difficult to get it exactly what his
Speaker 1: meaning was. But Lauren, I think you you read something
Speaker 1: about hopelessness into this. Yeah, i'd call hopelessness really this
Speaker 1: aspect of what monsters are, how we use them, because
Speaker 1: the thing is they're not as scary if they can
Speaker 1: be permanently defeated. So so they always come back. You know,
Speaker 1: there's always that last scare or that possibility of a return,
Speaker 1: and they always shift through that the kind of little
Speaker 1: right right, you know, so like whenever one grave clothes
Speaker 1: is another opens. Yeah. Sorry, they're they're also, um right there,
Speaker 1: they're changeable, and I think that that's part of the
Speaker 1: scary thing about monsters, like, like, you know, being that
Speaker 1: change itself is scary, So it works as that sort
Speaker 1: of metaphor too. Yeah, that makes sense, I guess, which
Speaker 1: leads us really into his next thesis, being that the
Speaker 1: monster is the harbinger of category crisis. This one, I
Speaker 1: think is really important. So basically he's saying that a
Speaker 1: monster cannot be neatly categorized. It doesn't fit into the
Speaker 1: taxonomy we create of things in existence. It implies a
Speaker 1: mixing of classes or categories. He says that monsters are
Speaker 1: quote disturbing hybrids with quote externally incoherent bodies, a form
Speaker 1: suspended between forms that threatens to smash distinctions. And I
Speaker 1: think this rings very true to me. I sat there
Speaker 1: trying to think about monsters, and almost all popular monsters
Speaker 1: I can think of represents some form of deep category confusion.
Speaker 1: So all undead creatures, ghosts, vampires, zombies, mummies, whatever you
Speaker 1: can think of, they confuse categories of life and death.
Speaker 1: They violate our taxonomy of of life. Animal hybrid monsters
Speaker 1: like werewolves confuse the categories of the sapient human and
Speaker 1: on one hand, and the mindless beast on the other.
Speaker 1: And when you start looking at this you kind of
Speaker 1: see it everywhere. I was just thinking about Ridley Scott's Alien,
Speaker 1: where the xeno morph was designed by hr Geeger, and
Speaker 1: that incorporates a kind of abstract esthetic category confusion because
Speaker 1: it appears to blend both biological and mechanical. I also
Speaker 1: read it as a little bit of our fear of
Speaker 1: the illogical or or write the uncategorical. Um, you know,
Speaker 1: stuff that we can't understand or define, which represents stuff
Speaker 1: that we can control, which sucks. Yeah, I mean the
Speaker 1: beast man is the great example really. I mean, whether
Speaker 1: you're talking about a werewolf or an eighth man or
Speaker 1: a moon beast or what have you, is that you
Speaker 1: see that, Uh, that that divide between the the so
Speaker 1: the higher functions of the mind and the way that
Speaker 1: we we want to be and then our our beasteal nature,
Speaker 1: you know. And that's something we've wrestled with forever. You know.
Speaker 1: There's how do we separate the two? How do we
Speaker 1: come to terms with the with the you know, the
Speaker 1: best deal ruttings in our heart, you know, and uh,
Speaker 1: and so in that the monster becomes this category crisis
Speaker 1: uh in in another flesh, but also within our own
Speaker 1: flesh and our within our own experience. Yeah. I think
Speaker 1: it makes sense that category confusion like that causes fear
Speaker 1: because we have these heuristics for how we deal with
Speaker 1: things in the real world. You you encounter a problem,
Speaker 1: and if you can quickly categorize it and something you've
Speaker 1: dealt with before, you probably have a set rules established
Speaker 1: on here's what I do when I meet A. But
Speaker 1: if you meet A mixed with B, you can't use
Speaker 1: either set of rules. And also, frequently our internal problems
Speaker 1: or internal conflicts are a lot less easy to ascribe
Speaker 1: to it to a single you know, to to see
Speaker 1: in the black and white kind of way. Yeah, totally okay.
Speaker 1: So Cohen's next thesis is very related to this, I think,
Speaker 1: which is that the monster dwells at the gates of difference.
Speaker 1: In other words, the monster is difference embodied. Cohen says
Speaker 1: quote by revealing that difference is arbitrary and potentially free floating,
Speaker 1: mutable rather than essential, the monster threatens to destroy not
Speaker 1: just individual members of society, but the very cultural apparatus
Speaker 1: through which individuality is constituted and allowed. So this is
Speaker 1: kind of the classic other, you know, capital oh other Yeah, um,
Speaker 1: you know, specifically persecuted segments of the population based on
Speaker 1: religion or class or sexuality or gender, sex or race
Speaker 1: or culture of origin or x cetera, like like anything
Speaker 1: about your neighbor that is different than you and therefore
Speaker 1: kind of freaky. Um and and yeah, that that it
Speaker 1: can demonstrate I think, either our fear of the other,
Speaker 1: or our fear of being the other, of being placed
Speaker 1: as that undesirable right. I think part of what he's
Speaker 1: saying is that the idea of the monster as the
Speaker 1: other sort of brings into focus the fact that you
Speaker 1: are not normal by your own virtues, that it's sort
Speaker 1: of arbitrary that you're in the normal camp, and that
Speaker 1: at a moment's notice, you could be in the other camp. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean, my mind instantly turns to some of the
Speaker 1: old red scare monsters and terrifying science fiction that you
Speaker 1: solve the day, whereas you know, the body Snatchers is
Speaker 1: that it's some sort of communist force from from outside
Speaker 1: of our world, that the Dupier version it conquered the world.
Speaker 1: And another thing I love about this is just the
Speaker 1: the idea of monsters sort of emerging these uh, these
Speaker 1: these kind of fault lines in our culture, you know,
Speaker 1: these uh, which which which brings to mind some of
Speaker 1: the theories I've I've read about serial killers, particularly in
Speaker 1: the United States, where you see that the trend rising
Speaker 1: in the sixties, obviously a time of great social change,
Speaker 1: peaking in the nineteen eighties. Uh, we're still you have
Speaker 1: change taking place, technological change, culture is changing. Everything seems
Speaker 1: to be changed. You know, we're still sort of clean
Speaker 1: to that idea that the future is going to live
Speaker 1: up to our expectations, and then it begins to fall off.
Speaker 1: And then but then at the same time, you also
Speaker 1: see you know, if you want to go with sort
Speaker 1: of the media um view on serial killers, Uh, you
Speaker 1: see fewer slasher films. You see the the the psychotic
Speaker 1: in the woods with the with the knife sort of
Speaker 1: falling out of favor. Uh, and you see the more
Speaker 1: purely monstrous ideas uh coming to light in cinema totally. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So the next thesis is that the monster polices the
Speaker 1: borders of the possible. I think we are all pretty
Speaker 1: familiar with this. It's simply that the more stir is
Speaker 1: at the edge of knowledge. Uh, it's it's border patrol. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's um exposing the danger inherent in being curious
Speaker 1: or in questioning standards are in stepping outside of convention,
Speaker 1: you know, off the path um to take the classic
Speaker 1: fairy tale kind of look at it um and and
Speaker 1: it's interesting, he says, specifically because the monster itself is
Speaker 1: transgressive and also punishes people who transgress. Right, So this
Speaker 1: could be all different kinds of transgressions. Actually I said knowledge,
Speaker 1: but it could be there's a place you're not supposed
Speaker 1: to go, and if you go there, there's a monster,
Speaker 1: or there's knowledge you shouldn't pursue, and if you pursue it,
Speaker 1: you create a monster. Or there's a way that you
Speaker 1: should be and if you are different than you're a monster.
Speaker 1: Exactly right, where do you create one? Yeah, I mean Frankenstein,
Speaker 1: which will discuss later, you know, as the classic example.
Speaker 1: This is the reason Frankenstein is an adjective now in
Speaker 1: our science headlines. You know, you can't inevitably you go
Speaker 1: through you through your science headlines enough and you or
Speaker 1: you hear enough science commentary and you'll you'll they'll throw
Speaker 1: out the the F word regarding some particular scientific advancement
Speaker 1: or another, be it genetics and cloning, the neuroscience um
Speaker 1: generally regarding the human condition. But we hear it all
Speaker 1: the time. Yeah, we post a video about something and
Speaker 1: somebody it's either the matrix or it's frankens uh. The
Speaker 1: The idea of transgression, though, leads into the next thesis,
Speaker 1: which is, the fear of the monster is really a
Speaker 1: kind of desire um for for that sort of transgression,
Speaker 1: or for escapism, or for freedom from whatever you're bound by,
Speaker 1: or for sexy sex sex if you're putting it very literally,
Speaker 1: or etcetera. Right, Cohen says, quote the monster is continually
Speaker 1: linked to forbidden practices in order to normalize and enforce,
Speaker 1: but he also says the monster also attracts, And I
Speaker 1: think the idea is that because it's linked with the forbidden,
Speaker 1: it becomes associated with the no, no pleasures. So and
Speaker 1: so you have scientific way of putting it. Yeah, there's
Speaker 1: a general association between the monstrous and some kind of titilation. Right. Yeah, absolutely,
Speaker 1: it's supposed to sexy sex sex, which is also the
Speaker 1: extremely scientific way of putting that. Like the vampire is
Speaker 1: promiscuous and uh and in his or her own way
Speaker 1: and is ultimately staked for it, you know, I mean
Speaker 1: or or all of the teenagers who blank and then
Speaker 1: get killed terribly in slasher flicks. But it but it
Speaker 1: needed in general though. With you know, you see a
Speaker 1: really great monster and you can't help but want to
Speaker 1: be that monster. There's always a freedom and being the monster.
Speaker 1: There's a monster, yeah, and and you want to you know,
Speaker 1: really good monster you kind of identify with on some level,
Speaker 1: especially when you look at the like the classic universal monsters.
Speaker 1: I feel like that's one of the reasons they appeal
Speaker 1: so much to, especially like teenagers and younger people, you know,
Speaker 1: because here are these they're all outsiders. They're all outcast
Speaker 1: that have that have also found a certain strength in
Speaker 1: their outsider status. You know. So you can't but but
Speaker 1: want to be the creature from the Black Wool, and
Speaker 1: you can't help but but see yourself as Frankenstein. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I don't anybody jumping right, I'd say even at
Speaker 1: a sort of baser level in the lower quality storytelling.
Speaker 1: Let's look at the Friday franchise. Early in the franchise,
Speaker 1: I think you are more genuinely asked to identify with
Speaker 1: the characters who are the ostensible victims to be with them.
Speaker 1: As time goes on, you can tell that the pitch
Speaker 1: to get the audience to identify with the human characters
Speaker 1: gets less and less. Yeah, it's clear that the audience
Speaker 1: is coming to identify with Jason. Yeah. Well, because the
Speaker 1: teenage characters get worse and worse is the films go on,
Speaker 1: I mean, and not not more poorly written. I mean
Speaker 1: they're terrible human beings, and so there's a they're also
Speaker 1: more poorly written. Well yes, but but so so there's
Speaker 1: a this this sound sociopathic, I know, but but if
Speaker 1: you think about it, there's really a pleasure in watching
Speaker 1: these awful people get terribly murdered. I think the Final
Speaker 1: Destination series, especially the latter ones, is a really good
Speaker 1: example of that. Yeah, I think that's totally true. Now,
Speaker 1: But when Jason goes to space and to the future X,
Speaker 1: I remember there being a lot of likable characters in
Speaker 1: one Android who who had to die at Jason's hands, though,
Speaker 1: so that one kind of breaks it altot. It's probably
Speaker 1: an inversion of its own trope. I think that. I
Speaker 1: think that's really what they were looking to do with
Speaker 1: that series. It's a very challenging film. I'll give you that. No, No,
Speaker 1: I think it is. Uh, Jason X is a smarter
Speaker 1: movie than some people give it credit for it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's what we're seeing if only to see uh
Speaker 1: Cronin Brook show up and bite. Oh no, I've seen it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I actually haven't watched it. I need to check it out. No,
Speaker 1: you were in for a treat. I mean really, once
Speaker 1: a horror franchise goes into space, like, that's where it
Speaker 1: really hits the golden you know, Golden Age Frontier. Yes,
Speaker 1: I'm really pushing for Leprechaun in space in the hood.
Speaker 1: I think that's in the hood of space, Yes, the
Speaker 1: space hood. Okay, we have one thesis left. Seventh and
Speaker 1: final thesis is that the monster stands at the threshold
Speaker 1: of becoming. He says, monsters are children, and I think
Speaker 1: this makes sense. The monster looks back on us, so
Speaker 1: it is a way of criticizing us, interrogating us, and
Speaker 1: forcing us to consider why we created it. Uh. Sometimes
Speaker 1: they are literally our children, you know, in like Rosemary's
Speaker 1: Baby or The Exorcist or all of those other parental
Speaker 1: angst horror flicks that started cropping up in the nineteen
Speaker 1: seventies um up through the you know now tropes status
Speaker 1: of that creepy little kid that shows up in every
Speaker 1: single horror flick um, I mean, portrayed frequently by different actors,
Speaker 1: because kids have this pesky habit of growing um but
Speaker 1: uh less literally. I think it's also part of the
Speaker 1: reason why um Doppelganger horror resonates so intensely, because the
Speaker 1: monster there is is literally yourself or or ourselves I
Speaker 1: suppose um and and coping with at is is really
Speaker 1: unpleasant and and it's a natural thing that we have
Speaker 1: to do kind of every day. Okay, So, as we've
Speaker 1: seen from these thess, especially the first one, that monsters
Speaker 1: don't appear in a vacuum. They are a result of
Speaker 1: the conditions in the societies that imagine them or or
Speaker 1: revitalize them whenever they become popular again. They reflect a
Speaker 1: feeling and culture, and these feelings are caused by external events,
Speaker 1: So they could be social upheaval or changes in in values,
Speaker 1: or very often changes in technology and science. And I
Speaker 1: think we're gonna especially focus on that towards the end
Speaker 1: of the podcast here but I thought we should look
Speaker 1: back at how some trends in cultural thinking in the past,
Speaker 1: and trends and technology have influenced waves of monsters human mind.
Speaker 1: Just to give you guys a few examples of the
Speaker 1: things that we were talking about in the last section
Speaker 1: and all of those theses. Um so okay. So going
Speaker 1: all the way back to tow ancient myths and folklore,
Speaker 1: you know, it's stuff that had come out of every
Speaker 1: culture from four thousand years ago and and beyond. Basically
Speaker 1: as long as people have been writing stuff down, they
Speaker 1: have been writing about monsters, and a lot of the
Speaker 1: time in the distant past, it was a lot of
Speaker 1: like force of nature kind of stuff, or that uncategorized
Speaker 1: beast sort of thing. Um Uh, the a chipicabra or
Speaker 1: the lamia, which was one of the precursors to the
Speaker 1: vampire um and and wrath of the gods kind of stuff,
Speaker 1: like people being punished by being turned into monsters and
Speaker 1: uh the arachnid tale from from Greek culture, or um
Speaker 1: or cautionary tales against stepping off of literal and metaphorical paths.
Speaker 1: I think a lot of times in ancient literature and
Speaker 1: in ancient religions, monsters are gatekeepers. So you can see
Speaker 1: that in like the epic of Gilgamesh and things like that,
Speaker 1: where where you have a monster that stands between the
Speaker 1: hero and his goal. Yeah yeah, or or you know,
Speaker 1: as as something that's a physical representation of a disease
Speaker 1: that wasn't understood at the time. Oh yeah, um or
Speaker 1: um or of course the other big one, neighboring cultures
Speaker 1: being made monstrous, like I I read somewhere, I think
Speaker 1: in one of I think in this in this book
Speaker 1: something about the cyclops supposedly being a neighboring culture to
Speaker 1: to Homer, and that he was kind of saying something
Speaker 1: really racist. Well, there's no shortage of that in the
Speaker 1: ancient world and somewhat in the modern world. So yeah,
Speaker 1: but uh, well, let's look at how sometimes the monsters
Speaker 1: actually react to science and technology. I want to start
Speaker 1: with Frankenstein, which is actually, I think sort of the
Speaker 1: monster actually not Frankenstein, the person, Frankenstein's creature. I could
Speaker 1: argue with that one way or another, but sure, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean Frankenstein, who is Frankenstein or the modern Prometheus
Speaker 1: the title of the novel by Mary Shelley, And I
Speaker 1: think there has been a long, relatively anti science streak
Speaker 1: in horror, and I think this relates to Cohen's thesis
Speaker 1: on policing the borders of the possible punishing excessive curiosity.
Speaker 1: I think this is perhaps best expressed in the concluding
Speaker 1: line of Ed woods nineteen fifty five film Bride of
Speaker 1: the Monster, where they watch Belle Lego Sie get crushed
Speaker 1: by a boulder I think, and then an octopus. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's there's an octopus strangling I think they left the
Speaker 1: motor off, so he's just throwing the arms over himself.
Speaker 1: And then they look at stock footage of a nuclear
Speaker 1: explosion and the police guy who's been shooting a gun
Speaker 1: at nothing says he tampered in God's domain. I mean, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's that's Frankenstein to a t right there. I mean
Speaker 1: it's a manifestation of our fears and apprehensions about moving
Speaker 1: forward with their technology, about where it might might bring us.
Speaker 1: And I think maybe not as much with frank Insteint itself,
Speaker 1: but in terms of of other works that have that
Speaker 1: that that Frankenstein quality to them. You know, this warning
Speaker 1: about the future. I feel like sometimes it's about that
Speaker 1: the fear of what our technology will uncover about our universe,
Speaker 1: about ourselves. So it's it's kind of that, don't don't
Speaker 1: look behind the curtain, there's gonna be something horrible behind
Speaker 1: the curtain. In our minds, it becomes the monster, but
Speaker 1: in reality it is It is the revelation about who
Speaker 1: and what we are. Yeah, I think it's strange that,
Speaker 1: at least to me, what's still resonant about Frankenstein's story.
Speaker 1: And I actually really love the novel, and there are
Speaker 1: a lot of modern criticisms of it, but I think
Speaker 1: it's excellent, and it's excellent because of the pathos of
Speaker 1: the creature. The scene where the creature is observing the
Speaker 1: family through the crack in the wall and wishing he
Speaker 1: could be one of them, but he knows he's ugly.
Speaker 1: I mean, it brings tears to my eyes. It's really
Speaker 1: beautiful story. The technophobia, I think doesn't hold up as well,
Speaker 1: at least to me. But uh, it seems like it's
Speaker 1: a reaction to the Enlightenment. Basically that it came. This
Speaker 1: was written in the early eighteen hundreds, and we just
Speaker 1: had a couple of centuries of this dominant Enlightenment thinking
Speaker 1: among the wealthy in Europe, and and that it could
Speaker 1: be very much a reaction to that kind of you know,
Speaker 1: scientific experimentation. Oh yeah, yeah. There was also a lot
Speaker 1: of a lot of very startling at the time new
Speaker 1: technology that was that was becoming more widespread electricity and
Speaker 1: stuff like that, that that everyone was kind of going, oh, oh,
Speaker 1: this is a thing, this is a thing that is
Speaker 1: going to change our world. Really hardcore. Yeah, so I
Speaker 1: think they all use the word hardcore back then. Sorry, yeah,
Speaker 1: you can understand why people then would be afraid. I
Speaker 1: think we should now move on to the sort of
Speaker 1: the early nineteen hundreds pulp sci fi and Lovecraft. Actually
Speaker 1: wanted to ask you, Robert, where do you think Lovecraft
Speaker 1: fits into this? Because on one hand, he's just so
Speaker 1: weird and out there. Do you think he actually it's
Speaker 1: in to his cultural time and place. Is the Cathulu
Speaker 1: mythos and all that actually a reflection of of how
Speaker 1: Lovecraft saw the world, Yeah, I think very much. So
Speaker 1: um stuff to blow your mind. We did an episode
Speaker 1: a few months back titled The Science of Lovecraft, and
Speaker 1: and that came out of the fact that I was
Speaker 1: just rereading a bunch of Lovecraft stories at the time.
Speaker 1: Some of them I had not read since I was
Speaker 1: in high school. And and back then, you know, I'm
Speaker 1: reading them and I'm enjoying them just on that fantastic
Speaker 1: and horror and supernatural level. And now I'm rereading them,
Speaker 1: you know, a couple of decades later, with with a
Speaker 1: little more science under my belt, and I'm and I'm noticing,
Speaker 1: you know that he's he's mentioning Einstein, he's mentioning, um,
Speaker 1: some of the scientific theories of the day, and he's
Speaker 1: and uh. And so we did this episode. We interviewed St.
Speaker 1: Joe she who's one of the world's pre eminent Lovecraft experts,
Speaker 1: just can rattle off encyclopedic information, dates and and all
Speaker 1: the fine details just off the top of his head
Speaker 1: and got him talking about science and Lovecraft. Indeed, you
Speaker 1: see a lot of science in his work because Lovecraft,
Speaker 1: in addition to writing these fantastic stories, he wrote about science.
Speaker 1: He was always intrigued by science. He kept abreast of
Speaker 1: the of all the scientific headlines popping up in the day,
Speaker 1: and um, and his work is I mean, so much
Speaker 1: of it is essentially science fiction. You have sure fantastic
Speaker 1: monsters popping out of the woodwork. But so but in
Speaker 1: many cases they are grounded in uh, in some sort
Speaker 1: of extra terrestrial reality. Um. And then as far as
Speaker 1: you know, talking about monsters being a product of the time,
Speaker 1: I mean, you see Lovecraft writing coming out uh during
Speaker 1: you know, the wake of the Great War. Um. At
Speaker 1: the same time, Einstein's theory of relativity is really a
Speaker 1: shaking up twenty century science, and so he had to
Speaker 1: wrestle with the relativity and quantum theory while trying to
Speaker 1: maintain materialist point of view. Uh. You look at works
Speaker 1: like in the Mountains of Madness, uh and uh and
Speaker 1: he are you see him drawing on his scientific fascination
Speaker 1: with the Antarctic and scientific discoveries that were coming out
Speaker 1: of what was the last genuinely unknown terrain on Earth.
Speaker 1: So so, even though it's easy to ignore the science
Speaker 1: and Lovecraft, I think it's all there. I mean, it's
Speaker 1: it's right there in the in the the foundation of
Speaker 1: most of his stories. Really. Yeah, I think that was
Speaker 1: another time of of intense intellectual turmoil, you know, the
Speaker 1: sort of the modernist period. People didn't know where the
Speaker 1: intellectual world was headed, especially with as you say, relativity
Speaker 1: in quantum theory. I mean, those are strange things today
Speaker 1: and and now they're they're very well accepted. Back then
Speaker 1: when they were new, I don't know what you'd make
Speaker 1: of them, but hey, speaking of ninety one, coincidentally, that
Speaker 1: is also the year that Um Browning and Lego Sis
Speaker 1: Dracula and Wale and Carlos Frankenstein came out, which kicked
Speaker 1: off that entire big budget monster movie treatment. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: would probably this year as the beginning of contemporary monsterdom. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So strangely enough, like I had never put that together
Speaker 1: before before I was doing the research for the show.
Speaker 1: You kind of don't think of those two worlds meeting
Speaker 1: existing on separate planes. Yeah, And and I would kind
Speaker 1: of argue that that in those very first two movies
Speaker 1: that that our monsters weren't as sympathetic to to start
Speaker 1: out with, you know, they that they were pretty monsters.
Speaker 1: They they were doing the mean stuff, and uh, and
Speaker 1: it was it was a lot easier to sympathize with
Speaker 1: their victims. Um. But it's super interesting to me that
Speaker 1: over the next few decades they would definitely, like you
Speaker 1: were saying earlier, Robert become more the heroes than the
Speaker 1: villains of these pieces. Um, you know, of course, leading
Speaker 1: to like the complete inversion of of those monstrous others
Speaker 1: with stuff like the Monsters and the Adams Family coming
Speaker 1: out in the nineteen sixties. You know, it's we were
Speaker 1: inviting them literally into our homes that Oh yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean you look at that first Frankenstein film and
Speaker 1: if you're coming into that, I mean, and I mean
Speaker 1: I obviously I think all of us here we probably
Speaker 1: saw that Frankenstein before we read the book. Uh, but
Speaker 1: if you were coming into that movie from the book,
Speaker 1: I mean, it's it's almost insulting how often it is
Speaker 1: because here's this just lumbering d basically together from corpses
Speaker 1: as opposed to this French speaking, brilliant, philosophic monster that
Speaker 1: that you encounter in the in the book. Um, and
Speaker 1: he was he was easier to identify with when he
Speaker 1: identified with Satan from Paradise Lost. Exactly. Yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: we all right, well there's the other's a strong case
Speaker 1: to be made there, and there's there's a classic monster.
Speaker 1: Yeah absolutely, yeah myself, I'm hell And like you were saying, Lauren,
Speaker 1: you see that evolution coming out of these two films,
Speaker 1: as Dracula becomes more and more um relatable, and Frankenstein's
Speaker 1: monster becomes more and more relatable. In with Frankenstein, you
Speaker 1: see that the scale tip, especially with the some of
Speaker 1: the Hammer films yea, where where Frankenstein victor Frankenstein is
Speaker 1: himself essentially a monster. It's like the films are more
Speaker 1: about how horrible Frankenstein is than his creation. Oh absolutely, yeah, yeah. Okay.
Speaker 1: So after the Universal Monster movie, and simultaneous to all
Speaker 1: of this kind of stuff that we're that we've been
Speaker 1: talking about, um, afterwards, we had, of course the atomic age, right,
Speaker 1: and I think this is a very direct response to
Speaker 1: scientific It's pretty obvious. So I mean we split the atom.
Speaker 1: And so between World War two and I would say
Speaker 1: between World War two and the Countercultural Revolution, the horror
Speaker 1: was dominated by atomic age monsters. So this would be
Speaker 1: between the late forties and the early sixties. Most of
Speaker 1: the fifties horror movies were based on fears about nuclear
Speaker 1: experimentation causing mutations. So you get movie after movie after
Speaker 1: movie about giant mutated bugs, giant mutated crabs, lizards, shrews.
Speaker 1: They couldn't get enough of this stuff. I guess people
Speaker 1: just kept going back to see what's the big animal
Speaker 1: this time? Oh, it's huge limmings. Terrifying. But you had
Speaker 1: so many movies like this. You had the high profile
Speaker 1: like Godzilla in nineteen fifty four created by nuclear weapons,
Speaker 1: you had them which was nineteen also giant mutated ants,
Speaker 1: but then you also had a zillium just cornball movies
Speaker 1: like Roger Corman's nineteen seven Attack of the Crab Monsters,
Speaker 1: which is about these people go to an island to
Speaker 1: study the effects of nuclear testing and they discover it's
Speaker 1: created giant mutated crabs, and some scientists throw grenades at
Speaker 1: the crab, and the crab tells them they are foolish,
Speaker 1: all right, speaking giant mutated crabs. I I can't get
Speaker 1: over how delicious that would be. More butter, I've just
Speaker 1: always been fascinated. Uh the Amazing Colossal Man that came
Speaker 1: out in fifty seven, um which I think I first
Speaker 1: saw some some clips of that from the movie It
Speaker 1: came from Hollywood, which was the matchup of clips with
Speaker 1: like Danackroyd and John Candy and Gilda Radner in it,
Speaker 1: which which holds up I thought really well when I
Speaker 1: rewatched it recently. But amazing Colossal Man you have, you know,
Speaker 1: an army man and just an everyday Joe. And then
Speaker 1: the atomic bomb test, uh or unatomic bomb test occurs,
Speaker 1: radiates his body and he keeps getting bigger and bigger
Speaker 1: and they have to check his growth. And it's you know,
Speaker 1: one cannot argue that it's a great movie. Uh it's
Speaker 1: it's a good monster B movie. But the monster is
Speaker 1: just a giant man. And I always found that fascinating
Speaker 1: because here he's not a lumbering, you know, mindless creature.
Speaker 1: He's a he's he's he's he's a human, and he's
Speaker 1: he's dealing. He's trying to deal with what's happening to him.
Speaker 1: And uh, it's it has a very strong Frankenstein quality
Speaker 1: to it, almost almost by accident. Huh. I'm sure it's
Speaker 1: not much like Beast of Yucca Flats where he tore Johnson,
Speaker 1: gets detonated and turns into tour Johnson without all on
Speaker 1: his face. Well, you know, it's interesting they did a
Speaker 1: sequel to Amazing Colossal Man and they couldn't get the
Speaker 1: same They didn't get the same actor to play him,
Speaker 1: to play the man and stuff to play Glenn Manning. Uh,
Speaker 1: I can't remember Glenn Manning was the character or the actor.
Speaker 1: But anyway, in the sequel, they just have half his
Speaker 1: face scarred up in like a visible skull, and he's
Speaker 1: just a lumbering monster. So they kind of revert to form.
Speaker 1: But I feel like they really had something in that
Speaker 1: that first film. I've actually never seen it. Yeah, this
Speaker 1: is a great like like possible Netflix key list. There's
Speaker 1: an MST three K version of it, and that's that's
Speaker 1: probably the best way to have to check that out.
Speaker 1: But of course, after the Atomic Age, we got the sixties,
Speaker 1: all right, the sixties and seventies and all of the
Speaker 1: social upheaval that was happening then, um, during which I
Speaker 1: think that there was a partial shift from from that
Speaker 1: fear of the other to that fear of being the other. Um.
Speaker 1: You know, through through all of that social awareness and rebellion,
Speaker 1: through the civil rights movement and feminism and the Vietnam
Speaker 1: protests and and just everything was was saying that, you know,
Speaker 1: you had to be a certain way, and the youth
Speaker 1: culture certainly was was saying, nah, y'all, we do not
Speaker 1: let us not do that. Um. So you know, there
Speaker 1: we started seeing the monster beginning to be the protagonist,
Speaker 1: especially in the nineteen eighties On with Um with Fransspard,
Speaker 1: Coupla's Dracula and and and Rice's Louis, and characters like
Speaker 1: that who were way more sympathetic than even the pretty
Speaker 1: sympathetic human characters that we're running around with them now.
Speaker 1: A horror film from that era that I've I've found
Speaker 1: really interesting is one titled Blue Sunshine. Yeah, it's that's
Speaker 1: that's a great one because it's h it's you know,
Speaker 1: it's the aftermath of of the sixties. These coming back
Speaker 1: to haunt. Yeah, the past coming back to haunt you.
Speaker 1: These individuals who took LSD during the uh, you know,
Speaker 1: the good times during during the social people in the
Speaker 1: nineteen sixties. So now they've moved on. They've a lot
Speaker 1: of them have normal jobs. They're trying to you know,
Speaker 1: trying to have a family. They're they're trying to just
Speaker 1: be a part of the system as opposed to, you know,
Speaker 1: escape from it. And uh, the the LSD that they
Speaker 1: took decades earlier is suddenly kicking back in and turning
Speaker 1: people into monsters, and you know, it's it's a it's
Speaker 1: a it's an interesting concept that that does play into
Speaker 1: our our cultural fears, and our and and and are
Speaker 1: really our scientific fears as well? You know, what have
Speaker 1: we what are we doing? And what have we done
Speaker 1: to the basic human proposition? Yeah? I can see that
Speaker 1: there's also in there something about the fear of the
Speaker 1: sort of medicalizing or pharmaceuticalizing of American culture. I mean,
Speaker 1: there's plenty of fear to go around about that. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: I feel like there's there's definitely a whole subgenre of
Speaker 1: just sort of pharmaceutical horror. And in a podcast where
Speaker 1: we're talking about what the future holds for us in
Speaker 1: terms of our answers, I feel like we're only going
Speaker 1: to see more and more of that. Yeah, Okay, I've
Speaker 1: got one more trend I'd like to talk about, and
Speaker 1: then we can shift to what's the future hold But
Speaker 1: the last trend I want to talk about is the
Speaker 1: most recent one in my mind, which is what I
Speaker 1: would call the horror. Uh. It's fairly recent, I would say,
Speaker 1: in the nineties and two thousands, though I think Lauren
Speaker 1: has a bone to pick about that, but it seems
Speaker 1: to have mostly come to America and the West through
Speaker 1: Japanese horror and the monsters of this type in one sense,
Speaker 1: I think are fairly conventional malevolent ghosts or rates. But
Speaker 1: what's unique is their association with technology and electronic media.
Speaker 1: They seem to associate themselves with and invade your safe
Speaker 1: spaces by way of electricity, radio signals, videotapes, computer networks.
Speaker 1: I would think of stuff like the Ring and things
Speaker 1: like I watched the horrible American remake of a Japanese
Speaker 1: movie called Pulse. This was recently fear dot com. Yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: the Pulses. They come get you through your cell phone.
Speaker 1: It's just unbelievably bad. But but this is a trend,
Speaker 1: at least that that we can see, because I can
Speaker 1: remember when I was a little kid, I associated ghosts
Speaker 1: and monsters inherently with things that were sort of more
Speaker 1: ancient and more natural. So the woods or an old house.
Speaker 1: Those were places that could be full of ghosts. But
Speaker 1: a computer lab was a safe place. There were no
Speaker 1: ghosts there. Something about the technology just didn't fit with
Speaker 1: the ghost scare them right off, and I just never
Speaker 1: would have thought that they would be there. But now
Speaker 1: I feel like that line has been successfully blurred. I
Speaker 1: can be afraid of a ghost in a computer lab now,
Speaker 1: I'm still really upset about the ring if I've never
Speaker 1: mentioned it on this show before, like I am, I'm
Speaker 1: still completely terrified of of that character. Um. Though. Though, Yes,
Speaker 1: my my bone to pick with this is that I
Speaker 1: don't think it's a wholly new thing, but rather an
Speaker 1: extension of of a bunch of pre vious technophobia kind
Speaker 1: of stuff, like like going back to what you were
Speaker 1: even saying, Joe about Frankenstein, um, and also looking at
Speaker 1: what sci fi horror writers in particular we're doing with
Speaker 1: like intelligent and monstrous machines like like Bradbury back in
Speaker 1: the nineteen forties, or Harlan Ellison in the nineteen sixties,
Speaker 1: or Stephen King in the nineteen eighties. Let us not
Speaker 1: forget maximum overdraft, um, or let us forget it entirely. Um.
Speaker 1: You know, Plus what what writers like William Gibson and
Speaker 1: Cronenberg we're doing with the whole uh soul in the
Speaker 1: machine more than ghost in the machine kind of kind
Speaker 1: of concept starting in the nineteen eighties. So I think
Speaker 1: I think this e horror trend is more of a
Speaker 1: just just a new twist or a new combination of
Speaker 1: that good old anxiety about death with anxiety of these
Speaker 1: specific new technologies. And once you get into the virtual
Speaker 1: realm and even just the Internet itself, you just see, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, a transposition of the sort of same idea
Speaker 1: of we have these accepted pathways in life and in
Speaker 1: culture and in technology, and if you you stray from
Speaker 1: that path, at your peril. You know, the guy walk
Speaker 1: in between towns at night, if he gets off the
Speaker 1: beaten path, he might be maybe eaten by a monster.
Speaker 1: And when you see that with the Internet, you know,
Speaker 1: the secret forbidden webs to the dark web, then yeah,
Speaker 1: and then something out there might come for you. So
Speaker 1: it's uh, yeah, indeed. I mean there's there's a lot
Speaker 1: there's a lot of shadow. There's a lot of room
Speaker 1: for the monstrous, even just on the modern Internet. And
Speaker 1: then when you start looking ahead, you know, imagining the
Speaker 1: so called Internet of Things and imagining we are giving
Speaker 1: potentially giving all the horrors of the Internet the ability
Speaker 1: to actually crawl out of our machines and come, you know,
Speaker 1: slavering out of our three D printers and find its
Speaker 1: way into our bed. Yeah. Yeah, and you know, not
Speaker 1: even to mention the fact that we are inviting all
Speaker 1: of this technology that most of us on a personal
Speaker 1: base is don't understand how it works into our homes
Speaker 1: and into our beds and into our our very private lives. Now,
Speaker 1: one thing I want to I want to just throw
Speaker 1: in here, uh that that I think is key to
Speaker 1: understanding monsters and thinking about monsters, is that you can
Speaker 1: you can have a monster like Frankenstein's creation that is
Speaker 1: just you know, superbly crafted and has a lot of
Speaker 1: thought put into it and is really just the philosophical
Speaker 1: entity and and you can learn a lot from it.
Speaker 1: You can you can sort of hold it up to
Speaker 1: the light and re examine uh, you know, human culture
Speaker 1: and your own role in it in the future of humanity.
Speaker 1: You can write many deep essays about it. But you
Speaker 1: can also hold up a really bad monster, like a
Speaker 1: monster just made on the fly for no money with
Speaker 1: limited fects budget. Yeah, and then that monster can be
Speaker 1: just as fascinating. And and a part of that is
Speaker 1: just because you know, we've talked about already about the
Speaker 1: the the myth, the folklore, the the the the the
Speaker 1: cultural crisis that's bound up in the creation of all
Speaker 1: these monsters, and you end up with all this symbolism
Speaker 1: and so you can just accidentally or create and almost
Speaker 1: subliminally create a monster that is just you know, stupid
Speaker 1: as all get out, or just or based on every
Speaker 1: cliche in the book, but of its turn, just the
Speaker 1: right way, it can just be so fascinating just as relevant. Right,
Speaker 1: absolutely okay, And so unfortunately we're gonna have to stop
Speaker 1: there for today, but join us again next time on
Speaker 1: our next podcast with Robert when he will help us
Speaker 1: predict the future of monsters and take what we've learned
Speaker 1: this time and see where we're gonna go down that
Speaker 1: dark and scary path. Make some terrifying extrapolations. If you
Speaker 1: want to get in touch with us, you can search
Speaker 1: for us on Facebook or Twitter. We're on there on
Speaker 1: Google Plus also, or you can email us at f
Speaker 1: W thinking at how Stuff Works dot com and we
Speaker 1: will talk to you again really soon. For more on
Speaker 1: this topic in the future of technology, visit Forward Thinking
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