Monstrosity In Timothy K. Beal's Our Monsters, Ourselves

Monstrosity is the unknown. Monstrosity drives fears. Monstrosity is a word that people put their fears into. Monstrosity reveals that in human nature, people have a strange desire to fear. One way or another, everyone fears something, whether they know why or not.

A monster is a frightening creature, most of the time fictional or of the supernatural, but not invariably. In the passage “Our Monsters, Ourselves” by Timothy K.Beal, in paragraph six, he defines the Latin verb Monstrare as meaning “show” or “reveal”. Monsters indisputably show people what they are afraid of as human beings. In the same text by Timothy K. Beal, in paragraph eight, it states “...monsters undoubtedly reveals our desire to find a scapegoat for our fears and anxieties”

People need something to blame the fear on, that way it seems more logical to why they fear it. Sometimes just watching their fears be destroyed in a movie or vanish in real life gives off a better feeling than just using a scapegoat to blame your feelings on. People like to watch their fears be destroyed as much as they like to create the fears. They take pleasure in finding closure in their fears in order to overcome the fear for a short period of time.
Now, fear does not always have to a monster, or any object for that matter. A fear could very well be a feeling or a thought. in the passage, Frankenstein, by Mary Shelly, she tells about a scientist, Dr. Frankenstein who had failed at creating a beautiful creature, “...the beauty of the dream vanished, and breathless horror and disgust filled my heart. Unable to endure the aspect of the being I had created, I rushed out of the room…” Dr. Frankenstein could not comprehend what he had done, had created a monster. The scientist had failed as an inventor, and he was fearful of the feeling of failure.
Monstrosity is more or less based on propaganda.

Humans fear monsters because society enjoys feeding the minds of the ones who do not know any better. Causing a spreading of societies opinion on what is suppose to be the guidelines for what is frightening and what is not. Society has spread the idea that whatever surpasses the line, created by them, of monstrosity needs to be cast out as monstrous or a monster. For example, the L’Ange du Foyer a surrealist painting by Max Ernst, the painting seems to be of a creature with few human like qualities. Angel of the Home, as it is known translated, has more horse like qualities, or monstrous if you will, something that is not normal to ones everyday life. To the naked eye, this painting looks frightening, demon-like, grotesque even. But when you look at the title, it implies that it should be an angel of some sort. This further conveys how things are not always how they seem to be because people do not take time to understand them. However, when an individual does not fully understand something they look for a more eminent power to understand it for them, then proceed to have the higher power tell them what to understand and believe, and that is how our society is based on propaganda. Minds are filled with the more popular opinion, and less of ones own beliefs because they no longer try to find a different solution. Another thing that surpasses the line of monstrosity would be what people look like, and “The Elephant Man” is a

prime example. In the text “Monsters & the Tyranny of Normality” by Douglas Allchin, it states, “His head was enormous and bulbous, his right arm and left leg inflated with pendulous folded tissue” People have a tendency to judge the outward appearance before they actually understand. They did not know, nor did they have any intention of understanding, about the Proteus syndrome that Joseph Merrick (The Elephant Man) had, they just thought he looked revolting therefore cast him out as a monster.
Monstrosity reveals that human nature is easily frightened by what they do not understand, and that they are too idle to come up with their own definition so they go along what everyone else is believing. Human nature is easily manipulated by propaganda. People have had a feeling of fear since they were born, that is a feeling that everyone has, but not everyone knows what they fear until society tells them the baseline to what is frightening.