Monsters In The Blade Runner

This assignment starts with notes to give you a general sense of the evolution of monsters, and some info to help you generate ideas.

The monster through time: pre-WWII, movie monsters tended to be human-sized, and human-like. A werewolf is a man transformed by a curse into a beast and back. In his beast state, he has no human inhibitions, but in his human state he feels remorse. The invisible man is transformed by science, a potion, but is still himself (though the potion begins to eat away at his sanity). He is himself but can act outside of social boundaries because he isn’t seen. The vampire is a human who has been transformed by a bite. His food is the blood of the living, and his misery is that his existence is eternal: no rest and no

death. Jekyll and Hyde: one is a doctor, one his alter ego, so really they are the same, two sides of one man, one socially proper, the other improper—lecherous and violent and crude. The mummy: a long-dead man brought back to life by a curse (like the werewolf). Ghosts: spirits of dead people who, for some crazy reason, want to keep hanging out with us live folks. Frankenstein’s monster: created from dead bodies, never alive, but with human parts, sensibilities, emotions, etc.

Sci-fi (most post-WWII): Monsters are now most likely to be technologically altered humans or things that are not at all by any stretch human (The Blob); small things/animals and insects mutated by radiation into huge things (Them!); monsters created by radiation (Godzilla); cyborgs, humans enhanced or fused with machines (the replicants in Blade Runner, Molly in Neuromancer); machines with human-like intelligence (AIs and robots like the voice in Her, or Wintermute in Neuromancer); aliens from other planets, some friendly (ET, Paul), some malevolent (the Martians in Mars Attacks, the aliens in Aliens); people who get very large (Attack of the 50-Foot Woman) or very small, or just really, really different (The Fly); spoof monsters: The Incredible Shrinking Woman, a feminist commentary, Attack of the Killer Tomatoes, a send-up of 50s radiation monsters and B movies in general, where some unknown force creates live and monstrous tomatoes!).

We went without new “monsters” for some time, before they began to be recycled, with twists. Instead monsters were humans without affect, without boundaries, without human feelings, psychopaths and sociopaths, killers without remorse, brutal murderers who fit in and appeared to be “normal”: the monster within (Think Hannibal Lector, the boy-next-door character in American Psycho, the female murderer in the 2003 film Monster, which is in part an ironic title. Charlize Theron won the best actress Oscar for her

role).

Look at what has become of our monsters now: they are more human than ever, even capable of love and regret and pain. Humans want to date them. (!) Why? What have we lost? What have we gained? Can you see a historical/cultural pattern or a trend or a reason for these changes? Can you find out more about them?

Monster stories are always, always about humans. Monsters either represent something human, even when alien, or they interact with or threaten humans, or they want to communicate with or destroy or help humans. And their reasons (when reasons exist) are varied. They might come to warn, they might be resurfaced by some new onslaught on the Earth where they are buried, they might be protecting offspring, they might simply be mad (as in insane, not angry ☺) or beyond our capability to understand on any level.

Here begins the actual assignment.

You will read W. Scott Poole’s introduction to his 2011 book, Monsters in America: Our Historical Obsession with the Hideous and the Haunting and use it as one of your sources.

I want you to look for monsters. Any kind, any shape. You choose. The only criterion is that the monster actually be a monster, not a monstrous human (like a psychopath), though your choice is also limited to what you can find actual scholarly sources on. Watch movies, read stories, read a book, read comics or graphic novels, but stick to one type of monster, or the movies, etc., that came out during one period of time. Look at the history of that monster (as I said above, they are all recycled: we got a rash of werewolf movies in the 80s and 90s, got a rash of vampire movies and TV shows in the 90s and 2000s, are still getting a rash of zombie movies today). It would be helpful to watch or read at least one earlier version of the monster you choose so you have a basis for understanding the way this monster has changed and why.

You are going to think long and hard about what ideas these monsters present and reflect.

Binge on monster movies/TV shows of a certain kind.

You’ll devise your own project, your own theme. BUT this cannot do so until you’ve done some research. You can pick the monster, but not the theme until you’ve read what other, serious, scholarly writers have written on the subject. You won’t know what direction to go in unless you do, and your final project will be vague and uninteresting. It will read like a general essay with some specific sources thrown in. Don’t do that.

So, it’s your choice. Are you a sci-fi fan? Focus on a type of sci-fi monster, an alien, or a cyborg, or a period of sci-fi. Do you like more romantic fiction and movies? Maybe you loved the Twilight series, or Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Fine. But to talk about one of those (or both), you might first want to watch one of the old original Dracula movies.

Instead of starting with the monster itself, you might want to start with a general idea or time period (not the present) to explore: maybe you’re interested in the 50s radiation monsters. Okay. Go watch and read about them. Then choose one or

two.