Disfunctional equals to monsters - Essay Example

The monster is a part of the human psyche, a manifestation of what is not the same, threatening to the status quo, or oppressive. Human pain is the central core to identifying and defining the concept of the ‘monster’, and in the relationship that is between the monster and victim, it is not always the perceived monster that holds the true evil. It is the fear of the unknown that is the core of the relationship between the monster and the victim. In the film, Snow White and the Seven Dwarves (1937), the dwarves determine that the creature under the sheet, which is actually Snow White, is a monster, and they determine before knowing what is under the sheet that they will kill it and chop it to pieces.

All they knew was that the creature was an invader with an unknown intent, and the instinctual response was to destroy it without prejudice. This is the relationship that the unknown has with culture, representing something to fear and to despise without understanding anything of the motivations that have brought the creature into existence. It is the fear of what it represents that gives the monster power while at the same time stealing from it its humanity, regardless of the level of humanity on which it relies.

A monster may be a creature that is more animal, which would then deserve the compassion of humanity, or it may be a humanoid who seeks to belong and in its rejection, rebels with violent retribution. Regardless of its form, the monster/human relationship is one of the unknown as it threatens the known. According to Briefel “It is the monster’s pain that determines audience positioning in the horror film” (16). Take note it is the monster’s pain, not that of the victims who has creates the relationship.

Briefel goes on to discuss the series of masochistic acts that are the predecessors to the eventual acts that the monster commits against victims. As an example, in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1931), the doctor administers a potion that gives him both extreme pain and satisfying pleasure, enough so that he takes the potion repeatedly as he turns into the monster. Freddy Krueger in the Nightmare on Elm Street series created by Wes Craven self-mutilates throughout the series, horrifying his potential victims with the pain that ripping of his own flesh, removing fingers or slicing open his own head (Briefel 17).

In the case of Freddy Krueger, the self-mutilation serves as a point of alienation, his apparent lack of feeling in contrast to the threshold of pain that has been far exceeded by the average audience member. In the case of the character of Dr. Jekyll, his monstrosity is in his addiction to the power that is created when he is Mr. Hyde, the alienation from the audience created through the contrast he makes to the choices that the audience might make, but his allure through the temptation that he represents.

In this way, the connection becomes one of both revulsion and fascination, the desire to give into darker impulses fulfilled by the conscious, hideous choices of the monstrous representation. For many monsters, however, being a monster is not a choice but something that is imposed upon them and the true monstrosity is in the reactions of those who must cope with the presence of a creature that is