Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Series Editors
Dr Robert Fisher
Dr Margaret Snser Breen
Advisory Board
Volume 38
Edited by
Niall Scott
ISBN: 978-90-420-2253-9
Editions Rodopi B.V., Amsterdam - New York, NY 2007
Printed in the Netherlands
Contents
Introduction 1
Section One
Monstrous Origins: Histories from the Deep and Transformed
Humans (Where ever they come from, they keep coming)
Chapter 1
Monster Sewers: Experiencing Londons Main Drainage System 9
Paul Dobraszczyk
Chapter 2
Ontological Anxiety Made Flesh: The Zombie in Literature, 33
Film and Culture
Kevin Alexander Boon
Chapter 3
The Zombie as Barometer of Cultural Anxiety 45
Peter Dendle
Section Two
The Monster and the Political
(Once they get into politics you cant get rid of them)
Chapter 4
Dracula as Ethnic Conflict: The Technologies of Humanitarian 61
Intervention in the Balkans during the 1999 NATO Bombing
of Serbia and Kosovo
Neda Atanasoski
Chapter 5
Kultur-Terror:The Composite Monster in Nazi Visual Propaganda 81
Kristen Williams Backer
Chapter 6
The Anarchist as Monster in Fin-de-Sicle Europe 103
Elun Gabriel
Section Three
Familial Monsters
(Maybe some of them are regular folk like you and me)
Chapter 7
Family, Race, and Citizenship in Disneys Lilo and Stitch 123
Emily Cheng
Chapter 8
The Enemy Within: The Child as Terrorist in the Contemporary 133
American Horror Film
Colette Balmain
Chapter 9
Monstrous Mothers and the Media 149
Nicola Goc
Chapter 10
Of Monsters, Masturbators and Markets: Autoerotic Desire, 167
Sexual Exchange and the Cinematic Serial Killer
Greg Tuck
Section Four
Miscellaneous Monsters
(They can be evil, male, female, but most importantly beware,
they can be cute.)
Chapter 11
Nobodys Meat: Freedom through Monstrosity in Contemporary 187
British Fiction
Ben Barootes
Chapter 12
God Hates Us All: Kant, Radical Evil and the Diabolical 201
Monstrous Human in Heavy Metal
Niall Scott
Chapter 13
Monstrous/Cute: Notes on the Ambivalent Nature of Cuteness 213
Maja Brzozowska-Brywczyska
Welcome to an At the Interface Project
This is a volume emerging from the Monsters and the Monstrous: Myths and
Metaphors of Enduring Evil project. This inter-disciplinary and multi-
disciplinary project seeks to investigate and explore the enduring influence
and imagery of monsters and the monstrous on human culture throughout
history. In particular, the project will have a dual focus with the intention of
examining specific monsters as well as assessing the role, function and
consequences of persons, actions or events identified as monstrous. The
history and contemporary cultural influences of monsters and monstrous
metaphors will also be examined.
Dr Robert Fisher
Inter-Disciplinary.Net
http://www.inter-disciplinary.net
Introduction
Niall Scott
The monster is perhaps one of the most significant creations serving
to reflect and critique human existence. Whether it has its etymological roots
in a demonstration of something (monstrere) or a warning (monere), the
monster as a metaphor continues to be a powerful expression of the
imagination and the rational. Through the imagination monstrosities are
brought into being while the rational seeks to control and explain such
manifestations of literature, art, cinema and biology. The monster gives a
space in which perspectives can be adopted and the permissible and
impermissible can be played with.
Although much can be found on the origins and descriptions of monsters in
histories, cultural theory and bestiaries, the opening chapter of this volume
gives us quite a special view on the evocation of the monster from the
imagination and subterranean depths. This is followed by two contributions
on one the most relentless of all monsters, the zombie, which by contrast
emerges from the human rather than an other-worldly place. The monstrous
that was illuminated in the caverns of the sewage systems of Victorian
London, Paul Dobrazszcyk brings to our attention that there are different
ways of looking at sewers. Providing an analysis of press accounts on the
development of the drainage system and pumping stations, he focuses in on
the metaphorical language used to describe this subterranean world. As an
opening to this volume, Dobrazszcyk demonstrates how the metaphor of the
monstrous can function linking the real and the imagined. He sees this as
generating a stream of monstrous oppositions in the dialectic of the visible
and invisible, the real and imagined. However the monstrous accounts are
conflated with the later presentation of the systems spaces as rational and
magical as well. Dobrazszcyk s analysis shows how these varying
conceptions sit together and questions whether the accounts serve in some
way to manipulate the publics response to a sewage system that carries with
it the monstrous attachment to stench and disgust through to the architectural
marvel and rational goals of sanitation and progress.
In the movement between the imaginary and the real, Kevin A.
Boon, in the Ontological Anxiety Made Flesh, explores the role that the
Zombie plays in the origins of the monster and monstrous as a transgression
of the boundary between being and non-being. Starting with some useful
definitional insights into the monster, Boon like Dobrazszcyk, treats the
relationship between the human and the monstrous as dialectical. Probably
one of the most terrifying monsters, the zombie epitomises the other
presenting a range of oppositions to the human, in giving animation to death,
absence of the self and expressing the opposite of what defines the human as
2 Introduction
___________________________________________________________
living, self reflective and conscious, and sentient. Boon outlines the history of
the zombie in Haitian folklore and the lower Congo through to its place in
literature and cinema. In these fields, he gives the reader seven categories of
zombies as they appear in these art forms and although changing in their
characteristics being responsive to social changes, the essential quality of
monstrosity in the zombie remains, which Boon states is antithetical to
human identity.
Where Kevin Boon has laid out the nature and origin of the zombie,
Peter Dendle proceeds with the demonstrative aspect of the monster, the
function of The Zombie as Barometer of Cultural Anxiety. Taking a journey
through cinematic history, Dendle illustrates the moments at which the
zombie has reflected and measured the temperature of more than 75 years of
American social, cultural political and economic history, most importantly
tracking the anxieties that result from encounters with social change. Like the
preceding pieces he shows the effect of the imagination on the interpretation
of events, such as labour and race relations, the depression, war, and
consumer capitalism to name but a few. A lengthy discussion of one of the
masters of the Zombie cinema, George Romero, follows the updating of the
zombie, becoming more monstrous and violent, re-emerging after a period of
rest to critique the current fears concerning terrorism and possible
apocalyptic futures. With this, Dendle notes that what is to be feared changes
from the homogeneous equalising entity to a creature that is aimless,
uncontrollable and always seems to return from the dead, relentlessly
satisfying its consuming appetite.
A strong current running through this collection is the relationship
between the monster as metaphor and the political, which occupies the
central sections of the book. We move from the directly political with
critiques of the role of the monster in political histories and what can be
learned from these critiques in section two, into the political and the media in
section three. Neda Atanasoski takes the fairly recent Balkan conflict and
draws parallels between the gothic narrative of Dracula and the discourse of
balkanism in NATOs bombing of Serbia and Kosovo. Reading the vampire
as an eternally existing figure that periodically emerges to drink and spill
blood as Atanasoski puts it, so the ethnic Balkan conflict is presented in
western media as constantly re-emerging. Taking Bram Stokers Dracula as
an imperial gothic narrative, Atanasoski argues that certain features of
Western history have not died, such as slavery, imperialism and
institutionalised racism. Indeed the figure of Dracula emerged in the violent
conflict of a culture fearing decline, the novel containing strong overtones of
blood, land and racial purity. The monster of Dracula threatens modernity, in
that it originates in modernity, but reflects the limits of it. The technologies
of documentation have their roles too, cementing monstrous acts and horrific
Niall Scott 3
___________________________________________________________
otherness as a central to the gothic and in the journalistic involvement in the
Balkan war.
The Monster as other, as a deviation from an idea of acceptability is
the monster of Kultur-Terror, Kirsten W. Backers study of Nazi propaganda
in posters that reject all that is not National Socialist. With examples of the
propaganda posters provided, Backer provides us with a shift in emphasis;
the monster becomes an icon and an accusatory figure, and identifier pointing
out otherness. The complexity of these images presents a challenge in itself,
which Backer likens to the composite monster creation of Dr Frankenstein.
On the other hand the anti German propaganda is much more simple in its
depiction and message as are the German anti Bolshevik images. The
composite monster represents in the other, all that is opposed to national
socialist ideals, especially diversity and pluralism-of for example the Klu
Klux Klan, African Americanism and the Native American amongst some of
the many conflations depicted in Leest Storms Poster/image. Above all,
Backer concludes and probably most insightfully, the monster (of American
diversity) and the production of monsters starkly opposes the eugenic ideals
of removing difference from the human population in the creation of the
master race.
Proceeding on a similar theme of monstrous representation, Elun
Gabriels target is damage done to anarchism in the depiction of the anarchist
as monster at the end of the 1800s in Europe. The image of the anarchist as
monster is generated by the imagination at work, and interacting with, the
newspaper media, fiction and the expert. These centre around views of the
anarchist as criminal and views of Russian degeneration at the time. Gabriel
pays special attention to the general fear of anarchism in Europe and the
German case of how the metaphor of the monster was employed. The
elements that Gabriel describes bear a similar relation to Boon and Dendles
chapters on Zombies, where the anarchist is presented as being in total
antagonism to humanity. Although the uncontrollable, prolific nature of
anarchism and its persistence too, has much in common with the zombie,
Gabriel rather, highlights the metaphorical use of the Hydra and this monsters
multiplicity of heads with new ones emerging after one had been severed.
The aim of this metaphor was to be able to encompass anarchism as part of
the German socialist movement. On the one hand the liberal response to
anarchism through academic and expert work laid the blame of the French
and German philosophy of anarchism as having been infected by eastern
violence. On the other hand, the German conservative response to such a
monster, Gabriel points out is to slay it.
Although themes of the political feature strongly in section three,
two additional areas unite these series of chapters, that of the cinematic
media and that of the family. With cinematic art being one of the main arenas
where the monster is communicated to a broad public, Emily Chengs
4 Introduction
___________________________________________________________
analysis of Disneys Lilo and Stich focuses on the alien as monster
encompassing race, adoption and otherness. It gives a study and insight into
narratives of nationhood and family on film. The Conservative Disney
corporations output is tempered by the liberal agenda in this cartoon of
inclusion and multiculturalism, but one where the threatening alien is
domesticated. The source of the threat which is Asian and Asian pacific is
balanced by Hawaii conceived of as paradise and as a component of the
multicultural U.S. that extends into the pacific. The childrens cartoon
monster here transformed into a rather likable figure, a long way from the
child as an agent of horror, the most innocent becoming a metaphorical
terrorist. The notion of the other is juxtaposed with the threat coming from
within in the post 9/11 terrorism era which, Colette Balmain demonstrates, is
reflected in the reactionary interpretation of the family of recent horror films.
The child as monster and agent of horror, has of course a longer history, a
history condensed by Balmain in the opening pages of her work. Balmain
argues that the child as terrorist can be interpreted as having several
functions: it is a monstrous offspring of the Bush eras attempt to return to
family values: it functions as a reactionary it is a figure of progressive change
signifying the demise of patriarchy or it is a figure of becoming. A wonderful
complement to the monstrous child is the monstrous mother. According to
Nicola Goc, mothers have been receiving a bad press. The media image of
the celebrity mother treats maternity as a fashion accessory placed under a
voyeurs gaze, whereas certain features of motherhood remains taboo. These
include breastfeeding, or the experience of postnatal depression. The
contradictions presented of the mother needing to, or showing it even
possible to return to her pre pregnant figure against the real physical
phenomenon of retaining fluid and having stretch marks leads Goc to criticise
unattainable ideals presented in the media to the majority. Goc explores the
monstrous mother- the mother as murderer, as crack addict to expose the
media presentation of mothers at extremes- from the ideal to the monstrous,
such that the regular mother is overlooked in the societal construction of what
motherhood is.
The consumerist market driven forces that exploit and pervert the
image of the natural mother in Gocs article receives further critique in the
context of anxiety of the self pleasuring individual. The social solitude of the
masturbating serial killer that is the subject of Greg Tucks contribution
displays a monster in opposition to community and family. Tuck breaches a
subject that he notes has taken much longer than other sexual behaviours to
become established in cinema. The appearance of masturbation in modern
cinema reflects according to Tuck, changes that have occurred in sexual
attitudes and representing post-modern capitalist experiences of pleasure as a
commodity. This sets the scene for an understanding of the cinematic serial
killer as a masturbatory monstrous metaphor for an anxiety of modernity and
Niall Scott 5
___________________________________________________________
the market economy. Unlike previous presentations of the monster as other,
Tuck suggests that the monster is monstrous in its sameness, in this case very
close to our contemporary experience of promoting autonomy in
consumerism.
In the final arrangement of monster metaphors chapters are brought
together looking at the woman as monster in British fiction, the male as
monster in Heavy Metal and monstrosity and a the surprise of the monster
capable of dispensing a decent hug. Ben Barootes look at monstrosity being
a route to freedom displays that rather than the free woman being demonised,
the embracing of being a monster leads to liberation. This liberation through
an analysis of British fiction is grounded in self acceptance of monstrosity.
That is, the monstrous female is able to exist beyond the constraints of
societal norms. The She-devil can live exiled from, yet within society,
unaffected by male chauvinisms and pacification of women.
The Monstrous male as the main protagonist in Heavy Metal culture
seems to be rather different kind of monster. He is one trying make sense of
being exposed to a world that represents the evil and the satanic, frequently
encountered in Heavy Metal lyrics. Niall Scott explores the question of
whether the pursuit of evil and the diabolical is possible at all by a reading of
the German philosopher Immanuel Kants interpretation of radical evil. The
celebration of the monstrous in Heavy Metal Culture is a route to affirm
identity, yet also appears to try and imitate ideas of identity in religious
histories of evil. Where the songs of bands such as Slayer deal with some
fairly unpleasant views of human behaviour, Scott concludes that it is more
likely that the diabolical monster can only be aimed at. If it were possible it
would likely present the same kind of threat feared in the zombie or
autoerotic serial killer that Tuck writes about- a monster that is able act with
the same self control and conviction as a purely moral being would, but
through a complete and utter subversion of human morality.
It is reassuring to know though that where Chengs work on Lilo
and Stich hinted at the monster as a likable entity, the final word is given to
the monster as a cute and cuddly. However this is not all- the association of
the monstrous and the cute signifies a warning. The profound treatment of the
monstrous cute presents a significant challenge- that cuteness can grow out of
malformation in the exaggeration of desirable physical features, eliciting an
aesthetic response. Yet it can also be a way of tempering things that are not
so easy to accept, providing a sugar coating. Its meaning is ambivalent. Maja
Brzozowska-Brywczyskas argument takes us back to the role of the
monster as a warning- the possibility of associating the cute and the
monstrous opens opportunities for to change and revolution.
This collection of teratologous studies awakens the monster from
being not only myth and metaphor but in a strong sense an accurate
description of features of a world we are not altogether comfortable living in.
6 Introduction
___________________________________________________________
The Monster as Metaphor has transformative power and is ignored at the
readers peril.
Niall Scott
University of Central Lancashire
& The Dog and Partridge, Preston
Section One
Monstrous Origins:
Histories from the Deep and Transformed
Humans
(Wherever they come from, the keep coming)
Monster Sewers: Experiencing Londons Main Drainage
System
Paul Dobraszczyk
Abstract
Writing in London in July 1861 - at the peak of activity in the construction of
the citys main drainage system - the journalist John Hollingshead (1827-
1904), in All The Year Round, stated that there are more ways than one of
looking at sewers.1 This small but significant observation forms the key to
this paper, which considers press responses to the main drainage system,
focusing on accounts describing the public ceremonies held at the Crossness
(1862-1865) and Abbey Mills (1865-1868) pumping stations, which marked
the opening of the system south and north of the river Thames respectively.
Historians of the main drainage system have conventionally regarded these
responses as uniformly homogenous and celebratory.2 By focusing on a wide
variety of press accounts - illustrated and otherwise - documenting the same
events, this paper will question such a sense of apparent uniformity. Rather, it
will be shown that these accounts embody a complex variety of responses,
characterised by the interplay of the rational, the magical and the monstrous.
The structure of the paper will be as follows: first, I will briefly
outline the function of the pumping stations and their role as important sites
for public awareness of the main drainage system; second, I will examine the
press accounts themselves, drawing out their commonalities and differences
and discussing in turn aspects of the rational, magical and monstrous; finally,
I will assess how the sense of the monstrous relates to the wider context of
mid-Victorian ideas about sewers and interpretations of these ideas by
contemporary scholars.
Keywords:
Rational spaces, Magical spaces, Monstrous spaces, Drainage systems,
Sewers, Victorian, Press accounts, History
2. Londons Press
In the days following the ceremonies at Crossness and Abbey Mills,
voluminous articles appeared in London's newspapers. In April 1865, most of
the citys thirty-or-so daily and weekly newspapers drew directly for their
articles on four accounts: the Standard, the Morning Post, the Times, and the
Daily Telegraph, with the Times forming the main source in 1868. Such
obvious plagiarism was common practice in a highly competitive and
burgeoning market for news. Throughout the 1850s and 1860s, particularly
after the repeal of Stamp Duty in 1855 and Paper Duty in 1861, Londons
press, until then dominated by the Times, witnessed a dramatic increase in
competition as new, cheaper newspapers broadened their audience to the
wider middle-classes.7 By the mid-1860s, Londons press consisted of three
distinct types of publication: established and new daily newspapers, such as
the Times and the Daily Telegraph (founded in 1855); weekly newspapers,
published on Saturday or Sunday, including illustrated weeklies like the ILN;
and specialist journals, like the Builder, published weekly or monthly. The
reduction in prices - many to one penny - after the tax repeals stimulated
intense competition, especially amongst the daily newspapers, where the
dominance of the Times, which maintained its price at three pence after 1861,
began to be challenged.8 By the mid-1860s, four main dailies took the
largest share of the market: the Times, with approximately 50,000 readers
every day; the Standard with 60-70,000; and the Daily Telegraph and Daily
News with upwards of 100,000 each.9 In terms of their ideological stance,
both the Times and Standard were largely conservative and appealed to a
more respectable middle-class audience, while the Daily Telegraph
articulated a more radical agenda with vigorous and versatile writing that
had a broader appeal, with the Daily News falling somewhere in between.10
In the context of responses to the ceremonies at Crossness and
Abbey Mills, accounts in the Times and the Standard were the main sources
for other press accounts, with the Morning Post representing a significant
minority wanting a more aristocratic tone to their news;11 accounts in the
Daily Telegraph, the other significant source, lived up to the newspapers
reputation with their florid language and poetic embellishments, as will be
seen below. In the following discussion of the content of the press responses
to the ceremonies, it is important to stress at the outset the key role of these
source accounts, which formed the basis not only for countless articles in
other newspapers, but also for the text and engravings in the ILN, whose
editors, writers and artists would have gleaned descriptive details from these
source accounts. Consequently, that which most widely represents a press
response is embodied in these key source articles.
12 Monster Sewers: Experiencing Londons Main Drainage System
______________________________________________________________
3. Rational Spaces
Large sections of the press articles describing both ceremonies were
effectively technical accounts of the main drainage system and the pumping
stations, drawn from descriptions by the engineer, Joseph Bazalgette (1819-
1891). During the ceremony at Crossness in 1865, Bazalgette gave a lecture
in one of the workshops, drawn from another talk he gave at the Institution of
Civil Engineers in March 1865.12 On 4 April 1865, articles in the Times,
Standard, and Morning Post included long extracts from this lecture, mostly
in the form of a series of precise but impressive facts and figures, such as the
82 miles of new sewers, the 318 million bricks and 880,000 cubic yards of
concrete used, or the three and a half million cubic yards of earth excavated.13
When the ILN published its own account of Crossness on 8 April
1865, it also included a long technical description of the site as well as three
wood-engraved illustrations: a plan of the site (fig. 1); a general view (fig. 2);
and a view of the interior of the subterranean reservoir (fig. 3).14 In its article,
the ILN told its readers that it would be illustrating the ceremony in its next
issue, the engravings still in the process of being prepared. The three
engravings in this issue relate very closely to the technical clarity of the
article, which corresponds with Bazalgettes lecture and accounts published
in the Standard, Times and Morning Post. Indeed, the ground plan of the site
(fig. 1), embedded within the text of the article, is actually a modified version
of one of Bazalgettes contract drawings showing the precise functional
arrangement of the site and its various components: the engine house, boiler
house, the outfall sewers, and the giant sewage reservoir.15 In setting this
precise engineering drawing within the text that describes it, the page layout
suggests an immediate correspondence between text and image, enhancing
the educative and technical role of both. The general view (fig. 2) is a three-
dimensional version of the plan with picturesque additions, such as the
dramatic sky and figures in the foreground, presumably visitors being
transported to the site. The image is rendered along the same axis as the plan
so that the two images can be easily read together, in order to give the
reader/viewer a more comprehensive educational picture. The engraving of
the interior of the reservoir (fig. 3), although much darker than its
counterparts, is nevertheless an image that brings out technical, rather than
dramatic, aspects of its spaces, which, like fig. 2, also complements and
expands upon the plan view: the image emphasises the precise forms of the
brick arches and concrete piers and, prominent in the left foreground, one of
the penstocks, or gates, that separated the four compartments of the reservoir.
All three engravings relate closely both to the text and also to each other with
figures 2 and 3 giving a comprehensible visual form to the technical details
given in both the text and the plan view.
After the ceremony at Abbey Mills in 1868, such technical details
made up the bulk of the press accounts; these were drawn more directly from
Paul Dobraszczyk 13
___________________________________________________
a descriptive account of the building written by Bazalgette especially for the
occasion and printed and distributed to all the visitors.16 Much of the long
article published in the Times after the ceremony on 31 July 1868 was
directly copied from Bazalgettes account; this article formed the basis for
most of the other press coverage of the event.17 Bazalgettes description of
Abbey Mills focused on the buildings qualities as an engineering
achievement and, despite precisely describing its architectural details, gives
no suggestion as to any symbolic meaning or aesthetic considerations.
Rather, it reinforced, to those who visited its spaces, the notion of Abbey
Mills as a rational, functional building, precisely tailored to fulfil its
engineering duty. In relation to the accounts of the Crossness ceremony,
which were only partly informed by Bazalgettes own descriptions of the site,
press responses to Abbey Mills were much more in line with the engineers
viewpoint. Certainly, there seems to have been a more direct intention on the
part of Bazalgette to inform the press as to the rationalistic principles
underlying his system and, as a consequence, to direct attention away from
the aesthetic impact of the building.
When the ILN published its article describing the ceremony on 15
August 1868, its long description of Abbey Mills was drawn almost entirely
from Bazalgettes account.18 It also included two engravings of the building,
arranged on one page - one showing a general view of the engine-house and
the other, directly below, picturing the interior (fig. 4). Whilst these
engravings highlight the extravagance of the design, both inside and out, their
dramatic visual impact is offset by the technical and prosaic tone of the
accompanying article on the adjacent page. Indeed, such exterior/interior
image combinations were commonly employed by the ILN to
comprehensively depict a particular scene or event in order to educate its
readers/viewers. This documentary role of the images both reflected the
ILNs attitude towards wood engraving as a medium suitable for technical
exposition and Bazalgettes attitude towards Abbey Mills, expressed in his
rationalistic description of the building.
4. Magical Spaces
However, such rational description cannot be considered in
isolation. Alongside, and often because of, such facts and figures, some press
accounts of the ceremonies related a sense of the magical quality of the main
drainage system. The extraordinary statistics19 provided by Bazalgette led
some journalists, especially in 1865, to compare the new sewers with the
wonders of the ancient world.20 According to the Daily Telegraph, the main
drainage system was a project alongside which even the Pyramids of Egypt
and the sewers of Rome paled into comparison.21 In 1868, the Marylebone
Mercury made similar comparisons: the main drainage system is described as
the representation of a mighty civilization - a civilization nobler than
14 Monster Sewers: Experiencing Londons Main Drainage System
______________________________________________________________
ancient Rome because it lacked its despotic power.22 Such comparisons
transformed statistics into myth: the impressive facts and figures provoked
wonder at what many saw as a monument to the future when London,
especially compared with its main rival, Paris, would become the cleanest
and most magnificent city the world had ever seen.23
In relation to the events at Crossness, there were two aspects that
brought out this magical quality most insistently: the interior of the engine-
house and the subterranean sewage reservoir. If, according to the Standard,
an enchanters wand had touched the whole site at Crossness, the interior
of the engine-house - with its elaborate, brightly-painted decorative ironwork
and giant steam engines - was described as a perfect shrine of machinery.24
According to the Daily News, the beautiful octagon in the centre of the
engine-house resembled the interior of a Byzantine church, with the shafts of
the steam engines acting as church galleries - the pulpit being supplied by
the cylinder.25 Press accounts of the Abbey Mills engine-house lacked such
direct religious associations, but some of the articles did refer to the
tremendous engines,26 the wonderful machinery,27 and a sense of deep
wonder and admiration at the sight of the lavish decorative ironwork.28 The
sense in which, according to the Daily Telegraph, the factory becomes
poetical and the furnace, fairy-like strongly relates to the perceived
reconciliation of the artistic and the useful in these spaces; put another way,
the imbuing of the purely functional with symbolism normally reserved for
religious buildings made the prosaic seem magical.
Religious associations were also made during the visit to Crossness
vast underground sewage reservoir, where one of its four compartments had
been kept free of sewage for the visitors. Compared to the gigantic crypt of a
gothic cathedral,29 it was lit especially for the occasion with, according to the
Daily Telegraph, 100,000 coloured lamps, which produced a fairy-like
appearance.30 Some compared the effect to that experienced at night in
Londons pleasure gardens at Cremorne and Vauxhall;31 all were astonished
and pleased by its striking appearance - the Daily Telegraph stating that it
was bewildering in its beauty and comparing the effect, oddly enough, to
that experienced in the piazza of St Marks by night.32 This was truly a
subterranean wonder and was the object of greatest interest to the visitors.
Press accounts of the ceremony at Abbey Mills, three years later, lacked such
dramatic associations, perhaps because there was no comparable
subterranean wonder; the tone of most of the articles was prosaic and
explanatory, like Bazalgettes account that formed their source.
When the ILN published its second account of Crossness on 15 April
1865, it included a further five large-scale wood engravings depicting the
ceremony in the engine-house (fig. 5), the interior ironwork, Bazalgettes
lecture, the banquet in one of the workshops, and the subterranean sewage
reservoir (fig. 6).33 The text of the article on page 342 is largely borrowed
Paul Dobraszczyk 15
___________________________________________________
from the earlier account in the Morning Post and its tone is both celebratory
and prosaic. However, the engravings, especially when compared to those
published a week earlier by the ILN (figures 1-3), highlight, in visual terms,
the magical quality perceived in some of the press accounts already
discussed. Compared with the technical plan published on 8 April (fig. 1), the
engraving showing the ceremony in the engine-house (fig. 5) pictures both
architectural detail and a theatrical event acted out within its spaces: that is,
the Prince of Wales - shown in the centre-right of the image and surrounded
by a crowd of cheering figures - pulling a lever to start the engines. The
cylinder of one of the engines, seen in the centre of the engraving with three
figures standing on top of it, does indeed resemble a church pulpit, as the
Daily News had remarked on 5 April, with the church galleries behind - in
reality the supporting floors of the steam engines - also crowded with
onlookers. Shown in the extreme right of the engraving is part of the
beautiful octagon, described by the Daily News, with its foliated cast-iron
capitals and entablatures, while on the left, in the arch above the window, is
revealed some of the handsome brickwork praised in many of the press
accounts. The engraving gives a visual form to what the non-illustrated press
accounts had stressed: the synthesis of architecture and engineering (or the
artistic and the useful) in the engine-house and its religious or magical
associations. Furthermore, as a front-page image, this engraving functions as
a dramatic visual introduction to this particular issue of the ILN. As such, it
reflects not only the striking language of the non-illustrated accounts but also
the versatility of wood engraving as a medium, a point consistently stressed
by the editors of the ILN: on the one hand, wood engraving could represent
the sewer system as a technical achievement with engravings copied directly
from Bazalgettes engineering drawings (fig. 1); on the other, it could picture
the magical quality of the spaces inside the engine-house (fig. 5).
In its 15 April issue, the ILN also included a full-page stand-alone
engraving showing the interior of the sewage reservoir on the day of the
ceremony, lit up by the 100,000 coloured lamps described by the Daily
Telegraph (fig. 6). Compared with the engraving a week earlier that depicted
a similar view (fig. 3), this image, like that on the front page (fig. 5), also
gives a striking visual form to the transformed perception of these spaces,
described in the non-illustrated press accounts. This engraving is also much
larger than its counterpart, filling an entire page and separated from the
article that describes it by six pages, further accentuating its dramatic impact
as a stand-alone image. Furthermore, the viewpoint, positioned in the very
centre of the reservoir, stresses the dramatic recess - seemingly infinite - of
the arches lit up by the myriad lamps, while the prominent figures in the
foreground further accentuate the vast scale of the enclosed space. Unlike fig.
3, which concentrates on the technical aspects of the reservoir, such as the
penstocks separating the compartments, this engraving stresses the dramatic
16 Monster Sewers: Experiencing Londons Main Drainage System
______________________________________________________________
qualities of the space itself. In short, it gives a visual form to the sense of
magical sublimity perceived by the press in the accounts discussed
previously.
5. Monstrous Spaces
Alongside the perceived magical quality of the underground
reservoir at Crossness was a more disturbing sense of the monstrous. The
writer for the City Press, describing the descent from the warm daylight
into strange dimly defined vistas, confessed to a curious nervous shock
(not disagreeable).34 The appearance of the reservoir - brilliantly lit and
empty of sewage - led the Morning Star to state that this was not what you
would naturally expect in such a place - that is, the foul, filthy and
abominably nasty.35 However, it was the writer for the Daily Telegraph, of
the most poetic turn of mind, who played most strongly on this
disassociation of imagination and reality. If the reservoir was so clean you
could have eaten your dinner off it it concealed, in the parts already filled
with sewage, a repulsive flood. If there was no foul festona or feculent
moisture in this part of the reservoir, then light would soon give way to
darkness, dirt [and] rats when the visitors left and the reservoir was filled
with sewage and shut away from the public gaze forever.36 Indeed, this
writer revelled in such a unique conjunction of the clean and the dirty:
standing in the empty part of the reservoir, with its fairy lights and crypt-like
space, the close proximity of the sewage in other unseen parts of the reservoir
prompted the writer to feel in the very jaws of peril, in the gorge of the
valley of the shadow of death, separated only by bolted iron gates from the
the filthiest mess in Europe, pent up and bridled in, panting and ready to
leap out like a black panther at the turning of a wheel, at the loosening of a
trap, at the drawing of a bolt.37 Why was this writer, in particular, so
affected by the space in the reservoir? Certainly, in general, the language of
the Daily Telegraph tended to be more vigorous than its main
conservative rivals, the Times and the Standard. Nevertheless, compared to
other articles in the Daily Telegraph describing similar events, such as the
opening of the Metropolitan Underground Railway in January 1863, this
account of the Crossness reservoir is singularly extravagant in its poetic
excesses.38 There seems to have be a unique quality of this space that
stimulated an imaginative response on the part of the press, given strongest
expression by this writer.
The sense of the monstrous in the reservoir, for this writer, plays off
both a reality (the proximity of sewage) and also something imagined (the
imminent fate of this magical space - to be forever severed from the world
above in a sea of sewage). It is this dialectic of the visible/invisible and
real/imaginary that generates a stream of monstrous oppositions to the
magical. It is a dialectic that is also confined to the verbal accounts. When the
Paul Dobraszczyk 17
___________________________________________________
ILN depicted the reservoir in visual form (fig. 6), any sense of the
imaginative impact of the spaces not seen disappears: here, the visual can
only represent what is seen - that is, the lamps and the arches - and not the
invisible sea of sewage that generates monstrous counter associations in the
language of the article in the Daily Telegraph. It is precisely the lack of
visibility in this space that produced a monstrous counterpart to the magical.
Notes
1
John Hollingshead, 1861, 390.
2
Stephen Halliday, 1999, 91-99 and Owen, 1982, 58 and 60.
3
The two other main drainage pumping stations were constructed at Deptford
(1859-1862) and Pimlico (1870-1874). Both were situated in built-up areas of
London, were architecturally more restrained than Crossness and Abbey
Mills, and neither were used for public ceremonies.
4
.Richard Trench & Ellis Hillman, 1984, 111.
5
.ILN, 20 December 1851, pp. 725-726, Opening of the Croydon water
works.
6
ILN, 17 January 1863, pp. 73-74, Opening of the Metropolitan Railway.
7
Richard D. Altick, 1998, 348-355.
8
Altick, 1998, 19.
9
Altick, 1998, 34.
10
H.R.F. Bourne, 1998, 243, 261-262 and 270-271.
11
Bourne, 1998, 243.
12
Joseph William Bazalgette, 1865, 280-314.
13
Times, 4 April 1865, p. 14, The main drainage of the metropolis;
Standard, 4 April 1865, p. 6, The southern outfall; and Morning Post, 5
April 1865, p. 5, The main drainage system.
14
ILN, 8 April 1865, p. 335, The metropolitan main drainage southern
outfall at Crossness.
15
London Metropolitan Archives, MBW/2511: Southern outfall works,
buildings, 1862, contract drawing no. 1, general llan.
16
Bazalgette, 1868.
17
Times, 31 July 1868, p. 12, The Thames Embankment.
18
ILN, 15 August 1868, p. 162, The metropolitan main drainage.
19
Daily Telegraph, 5 April 1865, p. 2, Opening of the main drainage by the
Prince of Wales.
Paul Dobraszczyk 23
___________________________________________________
20
Morning Post, 5 April 1865, p. 5; Daily Telegraph, 5 April 1865, p. 2;
Standard, 4 April 1865, p. 5; and City Press, 8 April 1865, p. 9 Completion
and opening of the main drainage works at Crossness.
21
Daily Telegraph, 5 April 1865, p. 2.
22
Marylebone Mercury, 8 August 1868, p. 2, The Abbey Mills pumping
station.
23
Times, 4 April 1865, p. 14 and 31 July 1868, p. 12; Observer, 9 April 1865,
p. 5, Opening of the southern outfall of the main drainage works; Standard,
31 July 1868, p. 3, Opening of the Thames Embankment footway; and City
Press, 8 August 1868, p. 3, The Abbey Mills pumping station of the main
drainage works: visit of the Corporation.
24
Times, 5 April 1865, p. 5, Opening of the main drainage.
25
Daily News, 5 April 1865, p. 5, Opening of the metropolitan main drainage
works by the Prince of Wales.
26
Times, 31 July 1868, 12.
27
Observer, 2 August 1868, p. 3, Thames Embankment and Abbey Mills
pumping station.
28
Standard, 31 July 1868, p. 3.
29
Daily Telegraph, 5 April 1865, 2; Daily News, 5 April 1865, 5; and Times,
5 April 1865, 5.
30
Daily Telegraph, 5 April 1865, 2.
31
Standard, 5 April 1865, 3; and Daily Telegraph, 5 April 1865, 2.
32
Daily Telegraph, 5 April 1865, 2.
33
ILN, 15 April 1865, pp. 341-348, The Prince of Wales at the metropolitan
drainage works.
34
City Press, 8 April 1865, 9.
35
Morning Star, 5 April 1865, p. 5, Opening of the main drainage works by
the Prince of Wales.
36
Daily Telegraph, 5 April 1865, 2.
37
Daily Telegraph, 5 April 1865, 2.
38
On the opening of the Metropolitan Underground Railway see Daily
Telegraph, 10 January 1863, p. 3, Opening of the Metropolitan Railway.
39
Michelle Allen, 2002, 383-402.
40
Matthew Gandy, 1998, 34-35.
41
David Pike, 1999, 102-138 and 2005, 51-77.
42
Times, 4 April 1865, 14.
43
Morning Post, 5 April 1865, p. 5.
44
Times, 4 April 1865, 14.
45
G.R. Booth , c.1853, 17-18; J. Wiggins, 1858, 11; and George Rochfort
Clarke, 1860, 24-26.
46
George Rochfort Clarke, 1860, 18.
24 Monster Sewers: Experiencing Londons Main Drainage System
______________________________________________________________
47
Clarke, 1860, 22-24.
48
Clarke, 1860, 27.
49
Clarke, 1860, 28.
50
Clarke, 1860, 32.
51
Booth, c.1853, 6.
52
Wiggins, 1858, 23-24.
53
Booth, c.1853, 7-8.
54
Booth, c.1853, 20.
55
Henry Mayhew, 1862, 388-425.
56
Mayhew, 1862, 415.
57
Mayhew, 1862, 424.
58
Allen, 2002, 387. For the account of the nightmen see Mayhew, 1862, 451-
452.
59
Pike, 2005, 57-58. For Mayhews descriptions of the sewer hunters and
mud-larks see Mayhew, 1862, 150-158.
60
Mayhew, 1862, 411-414, Of the new plan of sewerage. Mayhew
describes what would eventually become Bazalgettes scheme, but states that
it is not known whether the plan will be put into action (414).
61
Mayhew, 1862, plate between pp. 334-335, London nightmen; plate
between pp. 370-371, The rat-catchers of the sewers; and plate between pp.
388-389, The sewer-hunter. All the plates are supposedly based on
daguerreotypes.
62
Hollingsheads series of essays appeared in All the Year Round as follows:
26 January 1861, no. 92, pp. 453-456, Underground London. Chapter III;
20 July 1861, no. 117, pp. 390-394, Underground London. Chapter I; 27
July 1861, no. 118, pp. 413-417, Underground London. Chapter II; 10
August 1861, no. 120, pp. 470-473, Underground London. Chapter IV; and
17 August 1861, no. 121, pp. 486-489, Underground London. Chapter the
Last.
63
Hollingshead, 1862, 2.
64.
Hollingshead, 1862, 43-56, Chapter IV. Old Channels.
65
Hollingshead, 1862, 57-72, Chapter V. A Day Below and 73-83,
Chapter VI. A Bunch of Legends.
66
Hollingshead, 1862, 84-99, Chapter VII. New Channels.
67
Lynda Nead, 2000, 24-26.
68
Hollingshead, 1862, 1 and 4.
69
Hollingshead, 1862, 50-56.
70
Hollingshead, 1862, 57-72 and 73-83.
71
Hollingshead, 1862, 88.
72
Hollingshead, 1862, 98.
73
Hollingshead, 1862, 87.
Paul Dobraszczyk 25
___________________________________________________
74
Hollingshead, 1862, 99.
75
Nead, 2000, 6-8.
76
Nead, 2000, 6.
77
Nead, 2000, 7 and 8.
78
East London Observer, 8 August 1868, p. 5, Visitation of Abbey Mills
pumping station.
79
Daily Telegraph, 31 July 1868, p. 2, Opening of the Thames
Embankment footway.
References
Allen, Michelle (2002). From cesspool to sewer: sanitary reform and the
rhetoric of resistance, 1848-1880, Victorian Literature and Culture 30: 383-
402.
Gandy, Matthew. (1998). The Paris sewers and the rationalization of urban
space. [article on line] (London: Department of Geography, 1998, accessed
15 March 2004); available from
http://www.strath.ac.uk/Departments/Geography/pdf/Gandy.pdf.
26 Monster Sewers: Experiencing Londons Main Drainage System
______________________________________________________________
Halliday, Stephen. (1999). The Great Stink of London: Sir Joseph Bazalgette
and the cleansing of the Victorian metropolis. Stroud: Sutton.
Mayhew, Henry (1862). London labour and the London poor (vol. II).
London: Griffin Bohn.
Wiggins, J. (1858). The Polluted Thames: the most speedy, effectual, and
economical mode of cleansing its waters, and getting rid of the sewage of
London. London: J. Newman.
Paul Dobraszczyk 27
___________________________________________________
Fig. 1: Page layout, ILN, 8 April 1865, p. 335, The metropolitan main
drainage southern outfall at Crossness and Metropolitan main drainage:
plan of the southern outfall works at Crossness, wood-engraved print.
28 Monster Sewers: Experiencing Londons Main Drainage System
______________________________________________________________
Fig. 2: Page layout, ILN, 8 April 1865, p. 325, The metropolitan main
drainage: general view of the southern outfall works at Crossness, wood-
engraved print
.
Paul Dobraszczyk 29
___________________________________________________
Abstract
The etymological roots of the monstrous imply a boundary space between
human and non-human (originally, human and animal)the imaginary space
that lies between being and non-being, presence and absence. The zombie
transgresses this boundary, giving corporeal shape to all that is not spiritthe
remains of our humanity after the loss of any unique soul. Thus the zombie is
the antithesis of our human identity (therefore, monstrous). This paper seeks
to formulate the characteristics of the zombie myth as it is found in literature,
film and culture, tracing its collision with the ghoul (originating in literature
with H.P. Lovecraft and in film with George Romero), and examine the role
identity plays in shaping the reception of the zombie in popular culture.
Keywords:
Zombie, anxiety, film, George Romero, culture, folklore
Lovecrafts zombie ghoul appears forty-six years before Night of the Living
Dead. But this early fusion of flesh-eating with the zombie is less global that
the type we find in Romeros films. Romeros tales imply a danger to
civilization. His protagonists struggle against zombie infestation in what has
come to be known as survival horror.
Emerging out of the zombie ghoul stories written since 1985 is a
new type of zombiethe zombie channel. The zombie channel is a result
of the need to breathe new life into what fast became mere rehash of Romero.
Writers, who were unable to leave the survival horror genre without
alienating zombie literatures primary fan base, began to explore the point of
view of the zombie. One of the best of these stories is The Other Side of
Theory by Daniel Ksenych , in which zombies eat the flesh of others in
order to download12 wisdom, to help them metamorphose into enlightened
beings. In Brian Keenes The Rising, the flesh-eating zombies are infested
with a foreign consciousness to replace the self that has been lost to death.
The dead are possessed by entities that have been waiting eons13 (30) for
the opportunity to live through the dead flesh of others. Keenes zombies are
intelligent, coordinated, and purpose driven, but they are not zombie ghosts,
as the entity that infests the dead bodies is not the self original inhabiting
those bodies. A foreign consciousness channels through the corpse. Thus,
Keenes zombies represent the same loss of self as a zombie ghoul. Lucius
Shepards 1984 work Green Eyes is particularly unique in that the spirits
occupying the reanimated dead are other identities shaped by Jungian
archetypes.
40 Ontological Anxiety Made Flesh
______________________________________________________________
The sixth type of zombie is the tech zombie, a zombie under the
control of others, like the zombie drone, only controlled by means of some
technological device or advancement. This category includes the wives in Ira
Levins 1972 Stepford Wives, the Martian army in Kurt Vonneguts Sirens of
Titan. Vonnegut describes the process:
Notes
1
The term originates around 1,000 C.E. (Oxford English Dictionary, s.v.
werewolf.)
2
Paul De Man, Time and History in Wordsworth, Diacritics (Winter
1987): 16.
3
Paul De Man, 16.
4
Where it was the name of a spirit, a high God.
5
Peter Dendle, The Zombie in Haitian and Southern U.S. Folklore.
(unpublished manuscript)
6
William Beckford, The History of the Caliph Vathek, Project Gutenberg e-
book, transcribed by David Price from Cassell & Companys 1887 edition,
n.p.
7
R.P. Van Wing, tudes ba-kongo (1921), trans and edited by Edwin W.
Smith in Smith, African Ideas of God: A Symposium (1950), p. 159.
8
William Seabrook. (1985), Dead men working in the cane fields, in: P.
Haining (ed.) Zombie.(Great Britain: Target., 1985) 22
9
I intentionally exclude Henrik Galeen and Paul Wegeners earlier Der
Golem (1915), because the golem, unlike the zombie, is not formerly human.
10
And often in need of a good copy-editor.
11
Howard Philips Lovecraft, Herbert West reanimator, in: Stephen. Jones
(ed.) The mammoth book of zombies. (New York: Barroll and Graf 1993).
231
12
Daniel Ksenych, The other side of theory, in: J. Lowder (ed.) The book
of all flesh. (Los Angeles: Eden Studios, 2001), 171.
13
Brian Keene, (2004), The rising. New York: Leisure. 30
14
Kurt Vonnegut, (1967), Sirens of Titan. London: Coronet 53
References
Beckford, William. The history of the caliph Vathek. London: Cassell and
Company, 1887.
Jones, Stephen. ed., The mammoth book of zombies. New York: Barroll and
Graf, 1993.
Ksenych, Daniel. The other side of theory, in: J. Lowder (ed.) The book of
all flesh. Los Angeles: Eden Studios, 2001
Lger, J.N. Son histoire et ses dtracteurs. New York: Neale Publishing Co.,
1907.
Lovecraft, Howard Philips, Herbert West reanimator, in: S. Jones (ed.)
The mammoth book of zombies. 207-234. New York: Barroll and Graf, 1993..
Seabrook, William. Dead men working in the cane fields, in: P. Haining
(ed.) Zombie. Great Britain: Target, 1985.
St. John, Sir Spencer. Hayti or the black republic, London, 1889.
Kevin Alexander Boon 43
______________________________________________________________
Van Wing, R.P., tudes ba-Kongo, 1921, in: E.W. Smith (trans and ed.)
Smith, African ideas of God: A symposium, 1950.
Peter Dendle
Abstract
Although it has usually enjoyed cult rather than mainstream attention, the
zombie has nonetheless proven a resilient staple of the twentieth-century
American pantheon of cinematic monsters. Through almost seventy-five
years of evolution on the big screen, the zombie can be read as tracking a
wide range of cultural, political, and economic anxieties of American society.
Born of Haitian folklore and linked from its earliest periods to oppression,
the zombie began as a parable of the exploited worker in modern industrial
economies and of the exploited native in colonial nations. Through decades
marked by concerns over environmental deterioration, political conflict, the
growth of consumer-capitalism, and the commoditization of the body implicit
in contemporary biomedical science, the creature has served to articulate
these and other anxieties in ways that are sometimes light-hearted and witty,
sometimes dark and cynical.
Keywords:
Zombie, folklore, anxiety, America, movies
Notes
1
William Seabrook; for folklore see Parsons.
2
As Maximilien Laroche writes, The figure of the zombi represents the
African view of death as it was transformed within the Haitian context. He is
the symbol of the slave, the alienated man robbed of his will, reduced to
slavery, forced to work for a master. This explains his double economic and
religious significance (55).
3
. For West Africa and Haiti, see Hans-W. Ackermann and Jeanine Gauthier.
4.
Mimi Sheller meditates on the evolving exploitation of the zombie image
from folklore to film and back again: from a dread memory of slavery into a
new idiom of forced labour, and then from a ghoulish monster in Hollywood
movies they slip back into Haitian understandings of the US occupation
(146). For American imperialism and White Zombie see also Williams.
5
Edward Lowry and Richard deCordova observe, The zombie film enacts
quite literally what in other films is represented only by implication: the link
between character alliances and property relations (351).
6
Jane Caputi, Films of the Nuclear Age. Journal of Popular Film and
Television 16 (1988): 100-107.
103.
7
See Ellen Draper. Zombie Women when the Gaze is Male. Wide Angle 10
(1988): 52-62.
8
Maya Deren, Divine Horsemen: Voodoo Gods of Haiti (1953). (New York:
Chelsea House, 1970), 42. Wade Davis states the point more bluntly: the
fear in Haiti is not of zombies, but rather of becoming a zombie (9, and cf.
191).
9
For zombie movies and late-60s social tensions such as race and war
protest, see Hoberman and Rosenbaum, ch. 5; for race in particular see
Lightning; for Vietnam, see Higashi; and for nuclear anxiety see Caputi.
10
For a sustained reading of Night as well as Dawn, see Gregory Waller.
11
Badley, 75.
12
For a more detailed overview of the cinematic zombies evolution in
appearance and behaviour, see the Introduction to Peter Dendles chapter in
this volume.
References
Ackermann, Hans-W. and Jeanine Gauthier. The Ways and Nature of the
Zombi. Journal of American Folklore 104, 1991.
56 The Zombie As a Barometer of Cultural Anxiety
______________________________________________________________
Badley, Linda. Film, Horror, and the Body Fantastic. Westport, CT:
Greenwood Press, 1995.
Caputi, Jane. Films of the Nuclear Age. Journal of Popular Film and
Television 16, 1988.
Dendle, Peter. The Zombie Movie Encyclopedia. Jefferson, NC: McFarland &
Co., 2001.
Deren, Maya. Divine Horsemen: Voodoo Gods of Haiti (1953). New York:
Chelsea House, 1970.
Draper, Ellen. Zombie Women when the Gaze is Male. Wide Angle 10
(1988): 52-62.
Higashi, Sumiko. Night of the Living Dead: A Horror Film about the
Horrors of the Vietnam Era. In From Hanoi to Hollywood: The Vietnam
War in American Film, ed. Linda Dittmar and Gene Michaud, 175-188.
Rutgers University Press, 1990.
Parsons, Elsie. Folk-Lore of the Antilles, French and English, 3 vols. New
York: G.E. Stechert & Co., 1933-43.
Seabrook, William. The Magic Island. New York: Harcourt, Brace, and Co.,
1929.
Peter Dendle 57
______________________________________________________________
Sheller, Mimi. Consuming the Caribbean: From Arawaks to Zombies.
London and New York: Routledge, 2003.
Waller, Gregory. The Living and the Undead: From Bram Stokers
Dracula to Romeros Dawn of the Dead. Urbana: University of Illinois
Press, 1986.
Williams, Tony. White Zombie: Haitian Horror. Jump Cut 28 (1983): 18-
20.
Section Two
Neda Atanasoski
Abstract
This article considers the U.S.-led NATO bombing of Serbia and Kosovo in
1999 and suggests that the gothic novel provides the narrative within which
the U.S. role in Eastern European affairs is represented. U.S. political and
media discourses surrounding NATOs Operation Allied Force recast the
Dracula narrative to locate the threat to Western military and media
technologies in the primordial ethnic conflicts of the Balkans, while
inscribing the U.S. as a space of human rights. Highlighting political and
media representations of ethnic conflict in the Balkans, the article connects
the U.S. self-understanding of having overcome its past of racial inequality
and of being a democracy rooted in diversity to its foreign policy that
establishes its right to intervene in regions troubled by ethnic intolerance
thereby displacing domestic racial anxieties through its humanitarian
projects around the globe.
Keywords:
War and the Monstrous, Technologies of the Monstrous, Media and
Monstrosity, Dracula, Imperialism, Balkanism, Humanitarianism, Ethnic
conflict, Ethnic cleansing, Multiculturalism
We are pledged to set the world free. Our toil must be in silence, and our
efforts all in secret; for in this enlightened age, when men believe not even
what they see, the doubting of wise men would be his greatest strength. It
would be at once his sheath and his armour, and his weapons to destroy us,
his enemies, who are willing to peril even our own souls for the safety of the
one we love - for the good of mankind, and for the honour and glory of God.
- Van Helsing in Bram Stokers Dracula, 279
Notes
1
In 1999, the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia consisted of Serbia and its two
provinces, Vojvodina and Kosovo, and the republic of Montenegro.
2
Hit Smarter, Not Harder?, CNN.com, 18 February 2001, (30 June 2005),
<http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2001/gulf.war/legacy/airstrikes/>.
3
Michael Mandel, in Yugoslavia Unraveled: Sovereignty, Self-
Determination, Intervention, ed. Raju G.C. Thomas (Lanham: Lexington
Books, 2003), 287-316, 293.
4
Joseph J. Eash III Harnessing Technology for Coalition Warfare in the
NATO Review (Web Edition) 48.2 (2004): 32-3, (25 October 2005),
<http://www.nato.int/docu/review/2000/0002-11.htm>.
5
I wish to be more than clear that I am not proposing to exonerate Milosevic
as a chief player in the destruction of Yugoslavia; nor am I suggesting that
the world should have passively observed the conflict in the region escalate.
Instead, I am attempting to assess the media and military technologies and
the political and legal narratives through which the U.S.-led West of the post-
Cold War order has been able to establish its often violent imperial interests
as universal, benevolent and humanitarian.
6
Tomislav Longinovic Vampires Like Us: Gothic Imaginary and the
serbs, in Balkan as Metaphor: Between Globalization and Fragmentation,
eds. Duan Bjeli and Obrad Savi (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2002), 45.
7
Ibid., 51.
8
Ibid., 55.
9
Maria Todorova Imagining the Balkans (New York: Oxford University
Press, 1997), 18.
10
I cite the term blood and belonging from the title of Michael Ignatieffs
book on the new nationalisms of the 1990s, which exemplifies the
essentializing logic in dominant explanations of ethnicity and conflict. Blood
and Belonging: Journeys into the New Nationalism (New York: Farrar,
Straus and Giroux, 1993).
11
Tim Allen Perceiving Contemporary Wars, in The Media of Conflict:
War Reporting and Representations of Racial Violence, ed. Tim Allen and
Jean Seaton (New York: Zed Books, 1999), 11-42.
12
John Bowen The Myth of Global Ethnic Conflict in Journal of
Democracy 7.4 (1996): 3-14, 3.
13
Michael Ignatieff Empire Lite: Nation Building in Bosnia, Kosovo and
Afghanistan (London: Vintage 2003), 24.
14
Ibid., 24.
15
Ibid., 59.
76 Dracula as Ethnic Conflict
___________________________________________________
16
Avery F. Gordon Ghostly Matters: Haunting and the Sociological
Imagination (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997), 12.
17
Bram Stoker Dracula, The Norton Critical Edition, eds. Nina Auerbach
and David J. Skal (New York: Norton, 1997), 41.
18
Auerbach and Skal, xii.
19
Stephen Arata The Occidental Tourist: Dracula and the Anxiety of
Reverse Colonization in Auerbach and Skal, 463.
20
Ibid., 465.
21
Ibid., 463.
22
Thomas Richards The Imperial Archive: Knowledge and the Fantasy of
Empire (New York: Verso, 1993).
23
Ibid., 4-5.
24
Speech: Ill Leave the Presidency More Idealistic in the New York
Times (Late Edition, East Coast) 19 January 2001, A.24.
25
Stoker, 10.
26
In the Presidents Words: We Act to Prevent a Wider War, in the New
York Times (Late Edition) 25 March 1999, A.15.
27
Samuel P. Huntington The Clash of Civilizations?, in The Globalization
Reader, eds. Frank J. Lechner and John Boli (Malden: Blackwell Publishing,
2000), 27-33.
28
Stoker, 278.
29
William Jefferson Clinton A Just and Necessary War in the New York
Times (Late Edition, East Coast) 23 My 1999, 4.17.
30
Vesna Goldsworthy Invention and In(ter)vention: The Rhetoric of
Balkanization, in Bjelic and Savic, 25-38, 29.
31
Ethan Bronner Historians Note Flaws in Presidents Speech in the New
York Times (Late Edition, East Coast) 26 March 1999 A.12.
32
Stoker, 210.
33
Ibid., 210.
34
Belgrade Targets Find Unity From Heaven, in The New York Times
(Late Edition, East Coast) 30 March 1999 A.1.
35
NATO Press Conference, 25 March 1999, (25 October 2005),
<http://www.nato.int/kosovo/press/p990325a.htm>.
36
See Stuart Allen and Barbie Zelizers Rules of Engagement: Journalism
and War in Reporting War: Journalism in War Time, eds. Allen and Zelizer
(New York: Routledge, 2004), 3-21. Allen and Zelizers introductory
remarks demonstrate that while recent reporting of the U.S. war in Iraq, in
which the practice of embedding journalists with combat troops provided
an explicit and visual instance of the necessary cooperation between national
medias and the military to raise public support for the war, media images
Neda Atanasoski 77
___________________________________________________
have always been crucial for raising public support for military actions and
intervention.
37
Society of Professional Journalists Reference Guide to the Geneva
Conventions, (25 October 2005), <http://www.genevaconventions.org/>.
38
Piers Robinson The CNN Effect: The Myth of News, Foreign Policy, and
Intervention (New York: Routledge, 2002), 1.
39
Marjana Skoco and William Woodger The Military and the Media in
Degraded Capability: The Media and the Kosovo Crisis, ed. Philip
Hammond and Edward S. Herman (Sterling: Pluto Press, 2000), 79-87.
40
Ibid., 81.
41
NATO Press Conference with Jamie Shea on 23 April 1999 (25 October
2005), <http://www.nato.int/kosovo/press/p9904231.htm>.
42
Amnesty International Collateral Damage or Unlawful Killings?:
Violations of the Laws of War by NATO during Operation Allied Force
(New York: Amnesty International USA, June 2000), 41.
43
Cited in Amnesty International, 42.
44
CBS Evening News 21 April 1999.
45
Tony Weymouth The Media: Information and Deformation in The
Kosovo Crisis: The Last American War in Europe, ed. Tony Wymouth and
Stanley Henig (London: Pearson Education, 2001) 143-162, 153.
46
Wendy Kozol Domesticating NATOs War in Kosovo/a: (In)Visible
Bodies and the Dilemma of Photojournalism, Meridians 4(2) 2004: 1-38,
14.
47
Lisa Parks Satellite Views of Srebrenica: Tele-visuality and the Politics of
Witnessing, Social Identities 7.4 (2001): 585-611, 589.
48
Ibid., 589.
49
ABC Nightly News, 10 April 1999.
50
Blaine Harden What It Would Take to Cleanse Serbia in the New York
Times (Late Edition, East Coast) 9 May 1999, 4.1.
51
Roger Cohen From Bosnia to Berlin to the Hague, On a Road Toward a
Continents Future in the New York Times (Late Edition, East Coast) 15 July
2001, 4.7.
52
Ibid.
78 Dracula as Ethnic Conflict
___________________________________________________
References
Auerbach, Nina and David J. Skal, editors. The Norton Critical Edition of
Dracula. New York: Norton, 1997.
Robinson, Piers. The CNN Effect: The Myth of News, Foreign Policy, and
Intervention. New York: Routledge, 2002.
Skoco, Marjana and William Woodger. The Military and the Media. In
Degraded Capability: The Media and the Kosovo Crisis, edited by Philip
Hammond and Edward S. Herman, 79-87. Sterling: Pluto Press, 2000.
Keywords:
Germany, Nazi, Bolshevik, communism, African American, poster,
propaganda, stereotype
The U.S.A. would rescue Europes culture from doom with a Kultur-
Terror, a beast both absurd and terrific, a gigantic monster who brings the
American way of life to the European continent and leaves only destruction
in his path. This is the message of a 1944 poster by Leest Storm, designed for
audiences in the Nazi-occupied Netherlands.1 In the image, the great creature
82 Kultur-Terror
______________________________________________________________
is composed of wildly incongruous body parts, each of which represents
some facet of American culture that was anathema to the ideals of National
Socialism. From the waving Old Glory, to the Indian chief headdress, to the
figure of the Statue of Liberty in the background and the textual label in the
foreground, the monster is unmistakeably a visual amalgamation of all things
American. Ostensibly, the poster warns viewers against the dangers of
listening to Allied radio broadcasts. The small foreground figure with
exaggerated ears was a frequent component of posters in that particular
propaganda campaign, and in this case he suggests that the American
salvation of those in occupied territory might be more akin to cultural
infection.2
The artist could easily have described the virulent danger of
American culture with a far less complex image; instead he chose to picture
Americanness as a composite terror, a monster made up of spare parts in
Frankensteinesque fashion. While analysis of each of the constituent parts
reveals that the monster was intended to connote both general notions of the
ills of American culture and point to specific persons, events, or ideas,
examination of the context (both historically and within the totality of Nazi
visual propaganda) of the poster points to a long and deeply-rooted tradition
of monster imagery.
Previously, the monster had been reserved for depictions of
communism in National Socialist propaganda. Bolshevism was seen as
posing a significant threat to ideologies worldwide, and as such it was often
given the most vilifying of treatments in visual propaganda. In posters and
other ephemera, the Bolshevik monster, snarling and lumbering, armed with
weapons both crude and modern, left only misery in his wake. He was both a
simian giant, devastating cities with a single footfall or swing of his hammer,
and a skulking, skeletal fiend guilty of more personal, insidious crimes, but in
each case he was identifiable as the communist menace by his red cloak or
shaggy red pelt, or, in some cases, by hands, arms, and torso bathed in blood.
In a 1956 interview, infamous F.B.I. Director J. Edgar Hoover called
communism a many-faced monster, endeavouring to gain the allegiance of
[American] citizens.3 Indeed, the figuring of Communism and the
communist world as a hideous, venomous creature, capable of injecting
poison into the bloodstream of nations on both sides of the Atlantic was
commonplace in both the textual and visual rhetoric of the first half of the
twentieth century.4 Nowhere is the image of the Bolshevik monster more
fully exploited than in German propaganda of World War I, the Interwar
Period, and the Second World War. Visual media that promoted National
Socialism throughout occupied Europe portrayed Bolshevism as a frightening
beast that threatened not only the ideals and livelihood, but also the very life
of the viewer.
Kristen Williams Backer 83
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The origins of the monstrous form can be traced to multiple sources.
Socialism had been depicted in European caricature as a skeleton since the
nineteenth century, and the Orthodox Church used a furry red (and
comparatively rather benevolent-looking) beast to represent the destruction of
religious tradition by the revolutionary forces in Russia.5 Even today, the
Internet is rife with the work of conspiracy theorists, armchair eschatologists,
and hate group mouthpieces who trace the roots of both the Global Zionist
Conspiracy and the Bolshevik movement to the Biblical Esau, who was
characterized by his ruddy, hairy body and lack of refinement.6
Perhaps the most directly influential antecedents to the Bolshevik
monster were derogatory personifications of Germany created by Allied
propagandists in World War I. Following the German invasion of Belgium,
whose neutrality, previously guaranteed in the Treaty of London of 1831 and
1839, was dismissed as a Scrap of Paper, Germany was increasingly
portrayed as the Hun.7 Public opinion snowballed from outrage among
intellectuals over a broken treaty, to the notion that Belgium was a virgin
territory symbolically raped by Germany, to the belief that German soldiers
were the perpetrators of atrocities and that no civilian was safe.8 Writers like
William Le Queux, who compared the German army to one vast gang of
Jack-the-Rippers, published sensationalized tales of German troops
ravaging both the landscape and the women and children of Belgium.9 As
these accounts of horrific acts of unchecked violence and sexual depravity
were circulated among the British and American public, anti-German visual
propaganda increasingly centred on the barbarism of the Hun. In iconic
images such as Ellsworth Youngs 1918 Remember Belgium, and to a greater
degree, H.R. Hopps' Destroy This Mad Brute, also of 1918, the only codified
markers of German-ness are the helmet and moustache.10 The cudgel-
wielding gorilla, whose stooped posture is echoed even in the most human
portrayals of the Hun, threatens to bludgeon America with Kultur as he
carries an innocent (yet titillatingly bare-breasted) victim off to her
unspeakable fate. While such images encouraged enlistment among young
men who saw military service as a means of defending American
womanhood, a contemporary poster by Norman Lindsay reminded
Australians that the Huns bloody stronghold of Western Europe could easily
spread to their insular nation.11 In Lindsays poster, the iconography was
further reduced, leaving only the helmet to distinguish the beast as German.
The looming threat of his dripping claws, however, would have left little
confusion as to who was the enemy.
In almost no time, German propaganda artists appropriated the
figure of the beast for their own means. Perhaps the most iconic of all images
depicting the Bolshevik monster is Julius Ussy Engelhards 1918 drooling,
fanged primate accompanied by the text, Bolshevism brings war,
unemployment, and famine.12 The posters subject matter is clearly
84 Kultur-Terror
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modelled on the earlier images by Hopps and Lindsey, given the generally
ape-like figure with slumped shoulders, a full pelt, and elongated arms and
fingers. Its style, however, represents a distinct departure from that of the
previous two images. Unlike the painterly style of Hopps and Lindsey, so
rooted in illustration tradition, Engelhard effectively utilizes the flat planes of
colour, negative space, and bold text of graphic design. For Germany, a
country whose official self-identity rested squarely on nostalgia and tradition,
use of a technique so tied to commercialism and modernism may have been
an additional critique of the future-driven ideology of communism. That the
monster carries not only a knife, but also a smoking bomb, reinforces the
critique of modernization, especially when contrasted with the message
conveyed by the rude club in Hopps work. Though Engelhards poster is
unmistakably related to (and possibly even a direct reaction to) the atrocities
propaganda that depicted Germany as a terrifying beast, it is important to
note that German propaganda artists did not simply turn the characterization
onto their own enemies. The monster embodied the potentially destructive
powers of Bolshevism; it was not a hideous visual form representing actual
monstrous acts committed by soldiers.
The rise of communism across Eastern and Central Europe
following the war added a new dimension to the visual language of the
Bolshevik monster. Not simply a fiendish skeleton or a subhuman ape,
particularly in Hungarian propaganda surrounding the establishment of Bel
Kuns Soviet Republic, posters increasingly depicted the Bolshevik as a
giant. Possibly taking its initial cue from favourable Soviet propaganda that
depicted the noble worker as superhuman, the red giant motif was used by
all sides. In works commissioned by the Social Democrats, for whom a
coalition with the far left was a government power play, he was the
sympathetic, even heroized giant, triumphing as he painted the parliament
red. For counter-revolutionary forces, he was the oversized red oaf, unaware
of his own strength until he had crushed the nation.13 Perhaps the most
damning characterization of the red giant in Hungary appeared in a 1919
poster, along with the message, They Wash Themselves.14 In the
background, blood streams from the windows of the Parliament building and
gushes into the Danube below. In the foreground, the giant bends over to
bathe himself in the sticky pool, and as he turns his head to gaze at something
beyond the picture plane, the audience is given a glimpse of the still-wet
knife clenched in his teeth and understands that the bloody river is of his own
making. If the vision of the giant revelling in his own destructive powers was
not sufficiently horrifying to viewers, then perhaps his sheer size was.
Significant scale discrepancy between huge aggressors and their tiny victims
became a hallmark of Bolshevik monster iconography.
By far, the most impressive quality of Leest Storms compositional
scheme in Kultur-Terror is this same manipulation of scale. The giant
Kristen Williams Backer 85
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monster, both tall and wide (owing to his multiple, spread arms and
wingspan), occupies nearly nine-tenths of the picture plane. Diminutive
buildings crumble underneath his feet, and antlike humans flee the scene in
the lower right hand corner of the poster. The size of the Statue of Liberty
and skyscraper dotted cityscape in the lower left hand corner and the body of
water directly beneath them suggest distance; perhaps the figure has just
emerged from the Atlantic Ocean and stepped onto land to begin his carnage
and destruction. Kultur-Terror could even have borrowed this symbolic
narrative from H.R. Hopps work.15 In Destroy this Mad Brute, the apelike
Hun stands on a slab of ground labelled America, having left ripples in the
reflective water behind him. Across the pond lies the burned out carcass of
the European landscape.
A giant monster devastating a tiny civilization was also the central
theme of Bolschewismus ohne Maske, (Bolshevism Unmasked) a 1937
poster by Herbert Agricola advertising a didactic exhibit of the same name.16
Like the earlier Eternal Jew and subsequent Degenerate Art exhibitions,
Bolshevism Unmasked was meant to provide Germans with the visual and
ideological tools to recognize the monster from the east.17 The monster
depicted in Bolschewismus ohne Maske is so large that he dominates the
composition, and a small skeleton of a city burns behind him, the flames
creating an eerie, lurid glow that dramatizes the images oppressive palette.
At his feet, his victims lie in a grotesque heap. The leftmost figure, the grey
pallor of whose skin suggests he may already be dead, is the very
embodiment of abjection. He lies with his face turned upward to reveal a
gaping mouth and empty, bloody eye sockets. The other prone figure cowers
and tries vainly to shield his head from the next blow, which, given the
perpetrators dynamic pose and bloodied whip, will no doubt be fierce. This
is atrocities propaganda at its most horrific, and it has been reserved for this
later incarnation of the Bolshevik monster. Compared to earlier images, for
example Engelhards bomb-toting ape, the communist identification is more
clear-cut than ever. Instead of relying solely on text or colour iconography,
Agricola has clothed the monster in a long dark coat and belt reminiscent of
Soviet military garb, and to remove all doubt has given him a red hat with an
easily visible star.
Given that Storms Kultur-Terror makes no reference, either explicit
or veiled, to communism as a facet of the marauding American beast,
comparison to the corpus of Bolshevik monster images may at first glance
seem inappropriate; however, in both its total conception, the composite
monster that links seemingly unrelated elements into a unified whole, and in
the use of specific visual tropes to describe the enemy and Other, Kultur-
Terror draws heavily on the tradition of the Bolshevik monster. Indeed, it is a
direct offspring of the Bolshevik monster, a form that conflated Nazi fears of
the Red Menace, the global Jewish conspiracy, and various Slavic
86 Kultur-Terror
______________________________________________________________
Untermenschen into the single form of Bolschewismus, sometimes
seemingly indiscriminately (a trend that paralleled other forms of Nazi
propaganda).
The conflated beast that brings cultural terror to Europe warns
viewers to be wary of an ungainly culture characterized by paradox and
hypocrisy. The monsters head is that of a hooded Klansman. The Ku Klux
Klan was established in 1865 as a social club for southern men
disenfranchised after the American Civil War, but it soon became more
known for its penchant for vigilante justice.18 The group all but disbanded
less than a decade later, but it regained strength in the early twentieth
century, and by the 1920s was more than two million strong.19 This new
incarnation of the Klan was primarily focused on keeping African Americans
out of the positions of power in the government and workforce to which they
were beginning to gain access following the First World War. Its tactics
included mob violence and lynching, a fact alluded to by the presence of the
noose looped around and hanging from one of the monsters arms. Storms
inclusion of the pointed hood was a visual element designed to frighten; it
suggested to the viewer that the intrusion of Americanism into European
culture was akin to the approach of an angry, out of control lynch mob.
The hood, whether worn by American Klansmen or by the monster
in Kultur-Terror, is a device primarily intended to instil fear in those who
encounter it. Because the hood, effectively a mask, hides the face and identity
of the perpetrator, the victim is left to wonder about and fear the unknown
enemy. This tactic appears in Agricolas Bolschewismus ohne Maske as well.
Instead of choosing a face from among those already codified in the visual
record (a skull, a red man, a stereotyped Jew or Slav, or a fanged ape, among
others), he chose a face that was utterly non-specific. If the terrifying figure
represents Bolshevism unmasked, then beneath its mask, Bolshevism is
something unnameable and inhuman. With its sunken eyes and snarling
mouth, the monsters face unquestionably intends to inspire only negative
identification, but since it fails to allude specifically to any one person or
group, it can effectively encompass any or all persons or ideas execrated by
the Nazis. The Klan hood allows the same blanket identification with
American culture.
Leest Storm might also have intended the hooded head to stand in
stark contrast with the monsters body. Though the creature is led by what
might be considered the face of American racism, its torso, its very heart, is a
cage that contains two grossly stereotyped African American figures. Their
enclosure is labelled Jitterbug - Triumph of Civilization, but the figures
movements barely resemble the popular partner dance. Instead they are
exaggerated steps that combine with the figures elongated arms and partially
nude bodies to approximate the racist caricatures that had been appearing
since the early nineteenth century and were rampant in Jim Crow America.
Kristen Williams Backer 87
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By juxtaposing signifiers of both African American culture and the Ku Klux
Klan, the poster creates a paradox. The United States is a country defined
both by its intolerance for minorities and by its co-opting and celebration of
minority culture. This paradox, in the context of a persuasive image, speaks
of just one facet of the cultural hypocrisy that purports to deliver Europe
while clearly annihilating it.
The centrality of the jitterbugging figures, as well as their position
in the monsters body (inside the ribcage, serving as the heart), arguably
suggests that African American culture is foremost among the monstrous
aspects of Americanism.20 Additionally, though the creature is almost wholly
characterized by slapdash, comical asymmetry, some of its parts are paired.
Significantly, there are two muscular black arms and two bomber wings.
These limbs spring from the monsters trunk in the most anatomically correct
places; they can be read as the truest parts of its body and thus the most
pregnant carriers of symbolic meaning. The black arms are clearly the most
menacingly positioned of all the limbs, and when combined with the cage
torso, they assert that African American culture is the most fearsome
characteristic of American civilization.
Individuals of African heritage living in Germany and in occupied
Europe were subject to many of the same systematic eradication policies
perpetrated by the Nazis against other minorities, and blackness was an
integrated part of the visual scheme of that which was denied, despised,
feared, or targeted in National Socialist propaganda.21 Visitors to the 1937
Degenerate Art Exhibition were urged to judge for themselves the
depravity of Modernism in a show that jumbled primarily Expressionist and
cubist art with seemingly innocuous art chosen because its artists were
Jewish or Eastern European, and art by so-called primitives and the clinically
insane. Pieces were grouped so as to obliterate their original contexts and for
maximum ideologically instructive effect, including wall texts that either
used Nazi rhetoric to critique the art or that mocked the manifestoes and
statements of the artists themselves.22 An exhibit of Emil Noldes work,
which was heavily influenced by arts of Africa and the South Pacific, as well
as by his desire to paint Old Testament scenes with authentically Jewish
models, was accompanied by wall text that decried the Verniggerung or
niggerization of music, theatre, and the visual arts. The paintings were
arranged with no heed to chronology but rather traced a supposed evolution
from whiteness to blackness in Noldes expressionist paintings. 23
The next year, Hans Ziegler, master architect of the Degenerate Art
show, also staged an exhibition of Degenerate Music and designed the
guides cover. Though pieces by composers like Mendelssohn, Mahler, and
Schoenberg were among those condemned, visually, Degenerate Music is
reduced to a single iconic figure, a caricatured man who, though clearly
wearing a Star of David on his lapel, is unmistakably black. And although the
88 Kultur-Terror
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white hoop ring in his ear might be meant to allude to an iconography of
tribal Africa, his dapper suit and top hat make clear that he is the African
American performer: the blackface Minstrel showman, or, more likely, a jazz
musician.24
Both American and German racist propaganda and caricature had
used similar features and iconography to derogate those of African descent
for decades prior to World War II. While the jitterbugging figures in Kultur-
Terror conform to this established tradition of visual slur, the powerful black
arms connote a more specific recent history. With its right hand, the monster
waves a record album over its head; the arm seems poised to hurl the record
like a discus into the small city. The musical allusion serves as both a visual
parallel to the caged dancing figures, unifying the composition, and to
connote the presence of African Americans in the music industry. Degenerate
jazz culture is but one of the weapons with which the U.S. batters Europe.
The monsters left hand is sheathed in a boxing glove and grasps a bulging
moneybag.
In the United States, boxing had begun as an underground sport, but
by the Jazz Age it had not only achieved mainstream recognition, but had
become extremely popular. It was glamorous and exciting, and spectators
from the full spectrum of race and class in America enjoyed the sport. In the
mid-1930s, boxing became a forum for political bouts as well. In 1936,
German boxer Max Schmeling had beaten the seemingly unstoppable
Brown Bomber, African American Joe Louis, in New York to gain the title
of world heavyweight champion. He was given a heros welcome; he
returned to Germany on the Hindenburg and a film of the fight, pointedly
titled Max Schmelings Sieg- Ein Deutscher Sieg (Max Schmelings Victory- a
German Victory) was shown throughout Germany and seen by more than
three million fans in the first four weeks after release alone.25
Two years later, on June 22, 1938, the two met again to settle the
score, as both held the world heavyweight champion title on opposite sides of
the Atlantic, but had not faced off due to increasingly hostile political
relations between the U.S. and Germany. The fight was hyped in the press as
a bout not only between the two nations, but between black and white, and
more specifically between the Nazis and all the minorities they sought to
eradicate. In contrast to the first fight, wherein Schmeling had studiously and
carefully knocked Louis out in the twelfth round, in the politically charged
rematch, Louis practically pulverized Schmeling with an unrelenting
onslaught and after only two minutes and four seconds, the match was
called.26 Louiss furore in the ring was characterized in the press as so
terrifyingly violent that it was half human, half animal, and even
Schmeling himself contested Louiss blows to his kidney as illegal.27
The 1938 Louis-Schmeling fight served as fodder for visual
representations of America like Kultur-Terror in two distinct ways. Firstly,
Kristen Williams Backer 89
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the fight itself was a national embarrassment. Unquestionably, German
politicians, boxing fans, and sporting insiders all expected Schmeling, whose
physique fit perfectly with a Germanic body aesthetic of the ideal and whose
career (marked by several dramatic comebacks) had come to embody the
Nazi vision of a renascent Reich, to win.28 The ferocity with which Louis
had pummelled Schmeling allowed a convenient excuse for the loss, and it
added fuel to inflammatory Nazi rhetoric that associated blackness with
brutality and inhumanity. The American composite monster that incorporates
black boxers arms would, like Joe Louis, show absolutely no mercy.29
Secondly, the moneybag that the monster holds like a bomb, ready
to drop, relates to Germanys sour grapes attitude toward American boxing.30
While the prominence and easy identification of the dollar sign surely points
to a critique of American capitalism, a system equally as reprehensible as
Bolshevism to National Socialism, it is in the combination of the boxing
glove, the moneybag, and the small figure that clings to and peeks around the
bag that the full message is expressed. The clinging figure has an oversized
and exaggerated down-turned nose, perhaps the most recognizable marker of
Jewishness in the visual vocabulary of anti-Semitic propaganda, and his large
glasses and striped pants suggest that he is a businessman.31 Nazi propaganda
played on fears of Jewish financial success with sociology; posters in
Vichy France announced that 98 percent of American bankers were Jewish
and that 97 percent of the U.S. press was owned by Jews.32 While such
numbers were no doubt inflated for sensational effect, boxing was an industry
that was, in New York at least, dominated by Jews. Managers and promoters,
trainers and doctors, and a large part of the constituency of boxing fans were
Jewish. Schmeling, himself, even employed a Jewish trainer when fighting
outside Germany. When Schmelings Nazi association became undeniable in
the public eye, Jews in New York decided to boycott his fights.33 Boxing
provided Nazi propagandists with a convenient means of logically tying
multiple enemies into a single homogenous form; warnings against African
Americans, Jews, capitalism, and American violence are all encoded into the
monsters single muscular appendage.
The Kultur-Terror monsters second set of arms, just beneath the
main, muscular arms, does not match. On his left, an arm inside a dark suit
and white cuff holds a mallet and strikes the drum that forms the creatures
abdomen and hips. On his right, the arm, clothed in chain gang stripes and
with a manacle dangling from its wrist, aims a Thompson submachine gun
(the Tommy Gun) at the city below. This iconography links deadly
violence and criminality, and it ascribes a criminal character to the United
States. The Tommy gun had a reputation as a favourite weapon among those
involved in organized crime (a reputation gained primarily through films),
and anti-American propaganda in the Second World War frequently
connected American soldiers with gangster culture. Both German and Italian
90 Kultur-Terror
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propaganda characterized American pilots as gangster pilots who
indiscriminately bombed civilians. In a poster from Italy, a sneering, cigar
smoking thug, dressed not in military fatigues but in the double-breasted suit
and derby hat of a mafia hoodlum, points a Tommy gun at a dead child while
an American bomber flies overhead.34 This gangster pilot identification
may even be the motivating impetus behind the inclusion of the airplane
wings and blood-spattered bomb leg on the Kultur-Terror monster.
Race and gangsterism intersected in the Nazi medias coverage of
riots that broke out in Detroit, Michigan in June 1943. Racial tensions had
boiled over in cities across the U.S. in the preceding months, but the
breakdown of law and order in Detroit was particularly severe. After several
days of mob violence, 34 people were dead and costs of property damage
totalled over two million dollars. German-controlled radio broadcasts in
Vichy France reported that the riot revealed the internal disorganization of
a country torn by social injustice, race hatreds, regional disputes, the violence
of an irritated proletariat, and the gangsterism of a capitalistic police.35 The
monster in Leest Storms poster seems to embody this characterization of
America.
The Kultur-Terror creatures left leg, with its enormous bomb that
dwarfs the city over which it hangs, supports the images critique of
gangster pilots; indeed it hovers just above a city square, not a military
installation. The right leg conveys an entirely different message. It is the
Worlds Most Beautiful Leg, complete with measuring tape to prove that it
conforms to the perfect feminine proportions. The leg, along with the two
flag-waving and trumpet blasting figures that ride on the monsters shoulders
connote All-American womanhood. The woman riding on the beasts right
shoulder wears the headdress of a Plains Indian and the one on its left, the tall
hat and boots of a marching band drum major. Both costumes are distinctly
American and yet distinctly non-specific (the Plains headdress, for example,
is notoriously misused in images of Native Americans). The women
themselves have the curvy physiques and scant attire of pinup girls. The two
women and the perfect leg imply that the feminine side of the Cultural
Terror, the face of American womanhood that takes part in the cultural
redemption of Europe, is American femininity as filtered through American
G.I.s. The monster brings not only the American way of life, with violence,
militarism, and business, but also its own brand of genuinely American sex.
The monster in Storms poster is marked by the absurd
combinations of its ludicrous anatomy. Despite the beasts utter incongruity,
the poster is formally unified by visual and connoted rhythm. Repeated
elements (stripes, bars, feathers, etc.) give the image a cadence, a visual
rhythm that, since it recurs throughout the monsters body, links unrelated
elements into a whole. The regularity of repeated elements might also remind
viewers of the unrelenting rhythm of approaching ground troops. While the
Kristen Williams Backer 91
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visible rhythm created by the repetition of formal elements may have been
designed to scare the viewer (probably on a subconscious level), the
monsters unseen rhythm is more frightening, more dangerous to National
Socialist ideology. The sound connoted by the beaten drum, the jitterbugging
African Americans, and the trumpet and record is the primitive beat of
American popular music.
Jazz, noted for its flexibility and openness to improvisation, was
foremost among musical styles designated by the Nazis as degenerate. Its
African and African American roots no doubt made jazz an easy Nazi target,
but the very structure (or seeming lack thereof) of the music was a cultural
threat. Jazz is an expressionist art form; it lends itself to outpouring of
emotion and is not governed by the rational mind. This quality, perhaps the
most defining and most celebrated characteristic of the medium, was
abhorrent to the cold intellect championed by Nazism.36 In Kultur-Terror,
jazz can be thought of as a metaphor for the United States itself. Just as jazz
borrowed from multiple sources to create a hybrid musical form and allows
for multiplicity of styles and injection of musicians own idiosyncrasies, the
American official ideology is one of inclusion, of melting pots and salad
bowls, and of personal freedoms outside the bounds of government control.
The Kultur-Terror monster furthers this metaphor. Like America, a
powerful whole made up of multiple different states, ethnicities, and
(ostensibly) points of view, the monster comprises unrelated parts to create a
terrifying complete anatomy. This inclusiveness stands in opposition to the
exclusivity of Nazi ideology. Whereas Nazis rejected otherness with a
paranoiac vehemence, the United States claims an origin that celebrated
otherness and equality.
The opposition of exclusive and inclusive, of singularity and
multiplicity, is arguably at the root of all Nazi monster propaganda. Because
National Socialism excluded so many, indeed defining itself through
exclusion and homogeneity, its best visual definition of otherness was
inclusion and heterogeneity. Thus, groups as different as Jews and
Bolsheviks became indistinguishable from one another, Americas diversity
became an unwieldy conflation, and all were lumped together into the feared
Other. The monster was the perfect form for this composite Other, as
teratogeny essentially opposes eugenics; the making of monsters exploits
difference, whereas the Nazi-championed quest for a master race depends on
eliminating it. As the frequent monster combination of Bolshevik and Jew
makes clear, the composite terror was a fundamental strategy of defining
otherness in Nazi propaganda; however, Kultur-Terror reveals its
Frankenstein quality like never before. As the inclusiveness of American
culture was perfectly anathema to the eugenic ideal of National Socialism, so
the composite freakery of Kultur-Terror was perhaps the Nazis perfect
Other.
92 Kultur-Terror
______________________________________________________________
Notes
1
Figure 1.
2
Peter Paret, et al., Persuasive Images: Posters of War and Revolution from
the Hoover Institution Archives (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University
Press, 1992), 173.
3
J. Edgar Hoover, J. Edgar Hoover on Communism (New York: Random
House, 1969), 64.
4
Ibid, 153 and Cyndy Hendershot, Anti-Communism and Popular Culture in
Mid-Century America (Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 2003), 1.
5
Paret et al., 122 and Vladimir Neviarovich, Revolutions and Diabolism,
PRAVOSLAVIA.RU, 9 February 2004, (4 April 2005).
<http://www.pravoslavie.ru/enarticles/ 040209190208>.
6
See, for example, Esau / Edom in Russia, The End Times, 27 January
2002, (19 April 2005). <http://www.meguiar.addr.com/Russian_Edomites
.htm>; this is but one of many websites dedicated to the subject. An
abundance of websites, even some with scholarly writing, can be easily found
using any search engine.
7
In an August 4, 1914 interview with British ambassador to Germany Sir
Edward Goschen, Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg said, We
are at war todayjust for a word neutrality a word which in war-time
has so often been disregarded just for a scrap of paper. A. Pearce Higgins,
The Law of Nations and the War (London and New York: Oxford University
Press, 1914), 13, quoted in Nicoletta F. Gullace, Sexual Violence and
Family Honour: British Propaganda and International Law during the First
World War, The American Historical Review, Vol. 102, No. 3 (1997): 720.
8
Gullace, 714-747 traces this progression of public opinion in detail.
9
William Le Queux, German Atrocities: A Record of Shameless Deeds
(London: G. Newnes, 1915), 45-121, quoted in Gullace, 714.
10
Figure 2. For a reproduction of Youngs poster, see Paret et al., 21.
11
For a reproduction of Lindsays poster, see Peter Stanley, What did You do
in the War Daddy? A Visual History of Propaganda Posters (Melbourne:
Oxford University Press, 1983), 37.
12
Figure 3.
13
Paret et al., 110.
14
Figure 4.
15
Figure 2.
16
Figure 5.
17
Paret et al., 131.
Kristen Williams Backer 93
______________________________________________________________
18
The Indiana Historical Research Foundation, A Brief History of the
Original Ku Klux Klan: 1865-1869, An Educational, Historical Study of the
Ku Klux Klan, 30 August 2005, (24 October 2005).
<http://www.kkklan.com/briefhist.htm>.
19
A Brief History of the Ku Klux Klan, The Journal of Blacks in Higher
Education 14 (1996): 32. The Indiana Historical Research Foundation
website (op. cit.) puts the membership number at over eight million.
20
A parallel can be found in an Italian poster series from circa 1941-45. The
American soldier is figured as a looter who would rob Europe of its
centuries-old treasures; in one example, he fills his lap with riches while
guarding a stockpile of religious art and liturgical instruments, and in
another, he drunkenly gropes the Venus de Milo, who has been sarcastically
marked with a price tag of only two dollars. Significantly, in each of the
posters that portray Americans as thieves, the soldier depicted is a
stereotyped African American. For reproductions see Zbynek Zeman, Selling
the War: Art and Propaganda in World War II (London: Orbis Publishing,
1978), 115, and Toby Clark, Art and Propaganda in the Twentieth Century
(New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1997), 113.
21
Particularly brutally targeted were the so-called Rhineland Bastards
(Rheinlanbastarde), biracial children of relationships between white German
women and French colonial troops that occupied the Rhineland after the First
World War. For more on the situation of the African diaspora during the Nazi
era, see Robert W. Kestling, Blacks Under the Swastika: A Research Note,
The Journal of Negro History Vol. 83, no. 1 (1998): 84-99.
22
Neil Levi, Judge for Yourselves!- The Degenerate Art Exhibition as
Political Spectacle, October 85 (1998): 41.
23
This wall text is clearly legible in photographs of Reich officials visiting
the exhibition following its 1937 opening in Munich.
24
See Hans Severus Ziegler, Entartete Musik: Eine Abrechnung (Dsseldorf:
Vlkischer Verlag, 1937) for reproduction.
25
David Margolick, War of the Worlds, Vanity Fair 541, September 2005,
375.
26
Ibid, 378.
27
Peter Wilson, British boxing commentator, quoted in ibid, 377.
28
Ibid, 374.
29
Schmelings manager, Max Machon tried repeatedly to end the one-sided
match by symbolically throwing in the towel, but this gesture of surrender
was not observed in New York, so Louis continued to batter Schmeling even
though his side was attempting to concede the fight. Ibid, 378.
30
Compare to Figure 3.
94 Kultur-Terror
______________________________________________________________
31
Nazi visual propaganda obsessively repeated the oversized, misshapen
nose as a feature of the Jewish, Bolshevik, or Slavic face; such examples are
too numerous to mention. It even appears on images that make no other
reference to Jewishness, for example Figure 4, wherein the red giants face
has been turned to the side to provide an unobstructed view of the
stereotyped nose, and his neck and shoulder have been awkwardly
manipulated to accommodate the turned head.
32
Zeman,102-103. The monster in Kultur-Terror wears a banner decorated
with the Star of David as a loincloth; this might be a similar suggestion of the
pervasiveness of Jewish power in America.
33
Margolick, 374.
34
See Zeman, 114.
35
People and Events: Detroit Race Riots 1943, The American Experience,
Eleanor Roosevelt, 1999 (2 May 2005).
<http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/eleanor/filmmore/index.html>.
36
For more on the situation of jazz under the Third Reich, see Michael H.
Kater, Different Drummers: Jazz in the Culture of Nazi Germany (Oxford
and New York: Oxford University Press, 2003).
References
A Brief History of the Ku Klux Klan. The Journal of Blacks in Higher
Education 14 (1996): 32.
Clark, Toby. Art and Propaganda in the Twentieth Century. New York:
Harry N. Abrams, 1997.
Higgins, A. Pearce. The Law of Nations and the War. Oxford and New York:
Oxford University Press, 1914.
Margolick, David. War of the Worlds. Vanity Fair 541, September 2005,
366-378.
Paret, Peter, Beth Irwin Lewis and Paul Paret. Persuasive Images: Posters of
War and Revolution from the Hoover Institution Archives. Princeton, New
Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1992.
People and Events: Detroit Race Riots 1943. The American Experience,
Eleanor Roosevelt. 1999. <http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/eleanor/
filmmore/index.html> (2 May 2005).
Stanley, Peter. What did You do in the War Daddy? A Visual History of
Propaganda Posters. Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1983.
96 Kultur-Terror
______________________________________________________________
Zeman, Zbynek. Selling the War: Art and Propaganda in World War II.
London: Orbis Publishing, 1978.
Elun Gabriel
Abstract
In an 1894 pamphlet titled Anarchism and Its Cure, the pseudonymous author
Emanuel described rabid beasts and poisonous reptiles in the shapes of men,
who call themselves anarchists, seeking by means of violence to bend the
world to their personal desires. Five years later, a professor of criminal law
in Bonn described anarchists as rapacious beasts in the shape of men. The
figure of the monstrous anarchist, common at the end of the nineteenth
century, distilled Europeans fears of political radicalism, biological
degeneration, and common criminality. In this paper, I will describe the
production of this image in the popular imaginationthrough newspapers,
popular fiction, and expert accountsand examine the social and political
work that it performed in explaining political radicalism for late-nineteenth-
century audiences. Two interconnected narratives about the anarchist
monsters origins articulated Europeans fears about the dangers menacing
their society. One perspective presented the anarchist as biologically
defective. In the words of Cesare Lombroso, the pioneer of criminal
anthropology, "the most active advocates of this anarchist idea are. . . for the
most part either criminals or insane, or sometimes both together." By reading
the physiognomies of famous anarchists, Lombroso descried an unusually
high rate of men he classified as born criminals. The other interpretive
framework linked anarchist monstrousness to a specifically Russian form of
degeneration. In this telling, anarchism, a philosophical doctrine invented by
French and German thinkers, had been infected by an Eastern thirst for
blood: the Russian anarchist Mikhail Bakunin, wrote one author, pressed the
dagger and the dynamite bomb into the hand of anarchism, inspiring it with
the sinister fanatical lust for destruction and murder which continues to burn
today and which has made anarchism into a nightmare abhorred by the entire
world. Like the fictional monster Dracula, the anarchist embodied fears that
an eastern European corruption had come to haunt the West.
The construction of the anarchist as monster obliterated the option of
understanding anarchist acts as rational or political, substituting dread of the
alien and unknown for an analysis of the social context that gave rise to
anarchism.
Keywords:
Anarchism, Germany, Conservatism, Liberalism, Dracula, degeneration,
Hydra
104 The Anarchist as Monster in Fin-de-Sicle Europe
______________________________________________________________
In an 1894 pamphlet titled Anarchism and Its Cure, the pseudonymous
German author Emanuel described rabid beasts and poisonous reptiles in the
shapes of men, who call themselves anarchists, seeking by means of
violence to bend the world to their personal desires.1 Five years later, a
professor of criminal law in Bonn referred to anarchists as rapacious beasts
in the shape of men.2 After the stabbing death of Austrian empress Elisabeth
II in September 1898, a German newspaper inveighed, The anarchists . . . do
not deserve to be dealt with as human beings [Menschen], they may in no
way lay claim to the name of human [Mensch].3 By using metaphors of
monstrousness, anarchisms opponents obscured the movements political
claims, instead placing anarchists beyond the pale of the human community
as manifestations of ominous evil. Though denying anarchisms political
character, these authors offered distinctly political answers to the question of
the monsters origins and the means to its elimination.
The immediate context of this anti-anarchist narrative outpouring was
the rise of anarchist terrorism known as propaganda of the deed in the two
decades before the turn of the century. Anarchist assassins claimed the lives
of the president of France in 1894, the prime minister of Spain in 1897, the
empress of Austria in 1898, the king of Italy in 1900, and the president of the
United States in 1901. The terrorism of Russian populists (commonly
referred to as nihilists), who felled Tsar Alexander II in 1881, was also
popularly associated with anarchism. In addition to the spectacular killings of
crowned heads and political leaders, the era saw dozens of failed attentats
(political assassination attempts), as well as frequent bombings in cafs, train
stations, and other public venues. Though anarchist terrorism took few lives,
its ubiquity and unpredictability provoked public alarm and demanded
interpretation. Politicians, journalists, social scientists, and novelists all
sought to explain anarchism in such a way as to make its threat coherent to
the public.
This essay will contextualize the image of the anarchist as monster
within late nineteenth-century European fears of degeneration, and then focus
on the particular ways this discourse was mobilized for political purposes in
the German Empire. While Europeans shared a generalized fear of the
anarchist menace, its manifestations entered the political sphere in distinct
ways within each national context. The German case offers simply one
illustration of how metaphors of monstrousness were put to political use in
this era.
The popular discourse of the anarchist as monster was rooted in the late
nineteenth-century idea of degeneration, the belief that humans were prone to
the atavistic resurgence of savage or animalistic qualities, as well as to
biological decline through moral corruption and the over breeding of unfit
human specimens.4 For instance, the field of criminal anthropology,
pioneered by the Italian Cesare Lombroso, set out to develop a scientific
Elun Gabriel 105
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understanding of criminalitys biological roots, in hopes of being able to
discover the degenerate born criminals among the populace and so
eliminate them. Lombrosos magnum opus, L'Uomo delinquente, originally
published in 1878 but revised multiple times, laid out the theory that crime
was caused by biological deficiencies of a hereditary nature that could be
detected through close observation. In the skulls and brains of criminals, but
also in other parts of the skeleton, in the muscles, and in the viscera,
Lombrosos German follower Hans Kurella explained, we find anatomical
peculiarities, which in some cases resemble the characters of the few
authentic remnants of the earliest prehistoric beings.5 For Lombroso, the
task of unmasking the criminal types that walked among the populace
depended heavily on reading their physiognomy, as well as discovering other
tell-tale biological signs of degeneracy. The enormous jaws, frontal sinuses
and zygomata, thin upper lip, huge incisors, [and] unusually large head of
one criminal suspect led Lombroso to characterize him as in fact the most
perfect type of the born criminal.6 The physical markers of degeneracy he
saw in his subject painted a portrait of the monstrous.
Lombroso believed that most anarchists could be clearly categorized as
degenerates of this type. In his 1894 study devoted entirely to anarchists, he
asserted that the most active advocates of this anarchist idea are . . . for the
most part either criminals or insane, or sometimes both together.7 The
anarchists Ravachol and Pini, he wrote, present the most complete type of
born criminal, and not only in their faces, but in their attitudes toward crime,
in their delight in evil, in the complete lack of an ethical sense, in the hatred
which they show for family, in their indifference toward human life.8 The
degenerates physical grotesquery, which the trained observer could easily
descry, was matched by a moral wickedness. What made the anarchist truly
monstrous was a total rejection of the institutions and values of human
society, a repudiation of the essential qualities of humanity.
The depiction of the anarchist found in Lombroso was also evident in a
variety of other texts from the period. A London Times correspondents 1894
description of Ravachol as a brute, resembling a hyaena rather than a man,9
suggests the physiognomic interest in the anarchist as degenerate. In his two-
volume study of anarchism from 1894, Italian police inspector Ettore
Sernicoli described political criminals as what modern science calls
disharmonious, or degenerate.10 As such, anarchism is not, Sernicoli
posited, anything other than a very new manifestation of a pathological state
as old as the world.11 The idea of the anarchists implacable hostility to
humanity was captured by a character in E. Douglas Fawcetts 1893 novel,
Hartmann the Anarchist, who refers to anarchists as the Frankensteins
monsters of civilization which are born to hate their father.12 In these
sources, the anarchist appears as both physical degenerate and embodiment
of a cosmic destructive fury. Both physical degeneracy and the renunciation
106 The Anarchist as Monster in Fin-de-Sicle Europe
______________________________________________________________
of social institutions and values set anarchists apart from the human
community.
This view of the anarchist as monster found expression in two of the
most well-known novelistic depictions of anarchists from the era. mile
Zolas 1886 novel about a miners strike, Germinal, offers a portrait of the
Russian anarchist Souvarine as feminized and wild, possessing both a
magnetic seductive power and a capacity for savage violence. Though
lacking obvious physical signs of deformity, Zolas anarchist thirsts for
violence and shuns human sympathy. This depiction of the anarchist fit
within Lombrosos taxonomy as well, as the criminal by passion, whose
criminality stemmed from hypersensitivity and lack of self-control, suggested
in Zolas first lengthy description of Souvarine. In addition to his slim,
blond build and delicate features, the anarchists white, pointed teeth, his
small mouth and thin nose, and his rosy complexion all gave him the
appearance of a determinedly sweet girl, while the steely glint in his eye gave
periodic glimpses of a more savage side.13 The novels protagonist tienne
finds himself unnerved by his fair complexion and those dreamy eyes that
would occasionally turn red and assume a look of wild savagery. In some
curious way they seemed to sap his will . . . . tienne felt as though he were
gradually being absorbed by him.14 tiennes curiosity to know more about
the cult of destruction that Souvarine only rarely and darkly referred to,
leads him to ask the anarchist about his political goal. To destroy
everything, responds Souvarine. By fire, sword and poison . . . . What we
need is a whole succession of horrific attacks that will terrify those in power
and rouse the people from their slumber. Zolas description of the
enraptured Souvarine emphasizes his inhuman, supernatural aspect: While
he spoke, Souvarine presented an awesome sight. As though in the grip of an
ecstatic vision, he almost levitated from his chair; a mystic flame shone from
his pale eyes, and his delicate hands clenched the edge of the table as though
they would crush it. tienne watched him, afraid. Though the anarchists
hypnotic power nearly seduces tienne, the hero ultimately rejects
Souvarines project of total destruction as monstrous and unjust,15 and
instead adopts social democracy.
At the end of the novel, when the miners strike has failed, Souvarine
finally turns his monstrous pronunciations into acts. To punish the miners
capitulation, Souvarine sets in motion the mines destruction by weakening
the supports that hold back an underground river. Working inside the
bottomless chasm of blackness of the mine, he was seized with fury. He
was exhilarated to feel the breath of the invisible on his skin, and the black
horror of this rain swept abyss drove him to a frenzy of destruction. He
attacked the tubbing at random . . . . with the ferocity of a man plunging a
knife into the living flesh of a person he loathed.16 Having ensured that the
mine will collapse on the miners who have chosen to return to work,
Elun Gabriel 107
______________________________________________________________
Souvarine coolly watches them pass by, counting them as a butcher might
count his animals as they enter the abattoir.17 After waiting to make sure the
flooding has begun, Souvarine disappears into the night:
Image 1. English Right of Asylum. From Kladderadatsch 47, no. 34, 2nd
supplement (26 August 1894). This illustration shows England as a hen (with
the face of liberal prime minister William Gladstone) whose nest shelters the
anarchist crocodiles.
In Britains warm nest, where they can multiply and eventually return to
terrorize the continent.
Even moderate conservatives unwilling to support an all-out war on
socialism saw anti-socialist measures as having a useful moderating effect by
driving the lurking anarchists from the socialist party. In 1898 the National
Elun Gabriel 113
______________________________________________________________
Liberal leader Ludwig Bamberger argued that governments anti-socialist
measures had had an ameliorative effect on Social Democrats, as evidenced
by the current genial behaviour of their parliamentary representatives. He
compared this era favourably with the Reichstag two decades earlier (before
the laws) when such beasts as [socialists turned anarchists] Hasselmann,
Most and their consorts were raging in its chambers.36 Conservative
politicians, academics, and newspaper editors insisted that the Kaiser and his
ministers had the right and the duty to use the full force of the governments
institutions to stop an insidious menace that threatened civilization itself.
Only by slaying the anarchist beasts could the social order be protected.
German liberals saw the situation rather differently, drawing on a
different trope of the monstrous to explain anarchisms origins and the
appropriate remedy for it. During the height of anarchist terrorism in the
1890s, a spate of scholarly works appeared in Germany, purporting to offer
expert knowledge of the phenomenon. Many of these works included
prefaces recounting how the author was inspired to write his book after
delivering a public lecture to a packed audience of ignorant citizens eager for
someone to make sense of the anarchist threat.37 Leaving aside the function
of establishing the authors authority and the works interest for readers,
these prefaces suggest the real level of citizens desire for an explanation of
anarchist terrorisms meaning. The interpretive framework offered by these
liberal academics (mostly professors of law and jurisprudence) linked
anarchist monstrousness to the fin-de-sicle anxiety about the dangers of
Eastern degeneration invading Western Europe discussed earlier. In this
liberal telling, anarchism, a philosophical doctrine invented by French and
German thinkers, had been infected by an Eastern thirst for blood. Instead of
British liberalism nourishing the monster of anarchism, the blame lay with
Eastern savagery.
Ernst Viktor Zenker, a German expert who wrote a tome on anarchism
in 1895, began his history of anarchism with the philosophical writings of the
Frenchman Pierre-Joseph Proudhon and the German Max Stirner in the mid-
nineteenth century. According to Zenker, it was the Russian Mikhail Bakunin
(and his discipline Sergei Nechaev, author of a well-known call to violence,
the Revolutionary Catechism) who perverted this benign philosophy of
individual freedom into a creed of murder. By the 1860s, times and men had
changed, he commented. The philosophic period was passed, Stirner was
dead, and Proudhon near his end; Russian godfathers stood round the cradle
of modern Anarchism. The men who gave anarchism the sanction of the
dagger, the revolver, petroleum, and dynamite . . . were neither Frenchmen
nor Germans, but the half-civilised barbarians of the East. Modern
anarchism, thus branded by the semi-civilized culture of Russia, had
adopted the tactic of terrorisman idea, he insisted, that does not spring
from the logical development of Proudhons and Stirners ideas.38 In this
114 The Anarchist as Monster in Fin-de-Sicle Europe
______________________________________________________________
way, Zenker explained anarchist violence in Western Europe as the product
of a Slavic contagion.
Others conformed to the same pattern, arguing that Russian savagery
alone accounted for the anarchist turn to violence. Writing in the popular
German family magazine Die Gartenlaube (The Arbour), C. Falkenhorst
claimed that Proudhons contemporaries had considered him merely a
philosopher, a brooder, and a thinker, whose clever points only the educated
could understand. No one took him seriously, and after his death, his ideas
appeared to fade away. But today the world thinks differently about the
consequences of Proudhons ideas, Falkenhorst continued, for the news of
criminal attentats pours in from all sidesattentats that scoff at all humanity
and must no longer be interpreted as signs of a political struggle, but as the
excrescences of a dark destroying fury. Falkenhorst cited Sergei Nechaevs
alleged declaration, Our work is terrible, total, unrelenting destruction, as
evidence of the murderous attitude Russians had introduced into anarchism.
Like Zenker, he attributed the tactic of assassination entirely to this Russian
influence: Not until the Frenchmans cleverness was mated with the
Russians brutal violence was the world surprised with the monstrous
creation of todays anarchism.39 Another scholar of anarchism, Hermann
Tobias, observed that Proudhon and Stirner never gave the slightest thought
to pursuing agitation for their ideas with the violent criminal means which
todays terrorists use. Despite all obstacles, they had faith in the victorious
conquering power of the idea.40 In contrast, their degenerate Russian
descendants, Bakunin and Nechaev pressed the dagger and the dynamite
bomb into the hand of anarchism, inspiring it with the sinister fanatical lust
for destruction and murder which continues to burn today and which has
made anarchism into a nightmare abhorred by the entire world.41
This concern with anarchist terrorisms Eastern origins reveals an
anxiety about the Wests inability to keep itself free of dangers from the
periphery in a world ever more interconnected. Just as Bram Stokers Dracula
takes advantage of the bustling shipping trade to penetrate the heart of British
civilization, so Russian anarchists such as Mikhail Bakunin easily made their
way West, where they could spread their infection to the weak-minded and
ravage the innocent. For these Germans, there was also a particular concern
with drawing the line between East and West to their east. It is not
insignificant that these authors placed France and Germany together in
representing Western civilization. Though Germans traditionally saw
themselves as Western, in opposition to the inferior Slavs of the East, the
French and British did not always see them the same way. By stressing
anarchisms Russianness, they defended their own status as fully civilized.
German liberals attempts to understand the significance of the anarchist
scourge did not stop with their expressions of fear about the spread of Eastern
degeneration. As in the case of conservatives, the question of what exactly
Elun Gabriel 115
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brought the monstrous anarchist into European society was inevitably
political. Liberals attributed the spread of the anarchist nightmare to the
brutality of repressive governments in the West, which had in a sense invited
the anarchists in. For instance, Emanuel, whose description of anarchists as
rabid beasts and poisonous reptiles in the shapes of men I cited at the
opening of this essay, went on to rail against ignorance clothed in the robes
of state authority wielding force [Gewalt] instead of knowledge in an attempt
to cure murder through murder.42 Zenker likewise complained that
Germanys harsh anti-socialist laws passed in 1878 had ensured the spread of
anarchism, which suddenly raised its Gorgon head aloft in places where it
had never previously existed.43 Like the Gorgon Medusa, something once
beautiful had become a terror, in this case transformed by the German
governments brutality. Liberals not infrequently complained that the
presence of anarchism in Germany resulted from the Kaisers government
fostering a political atmosphere of Eastern barbarism. Ultimately, all of these
scholars, along with liberal politicians and publicists, urged that social order
could be secured only on a foundation of legal equality and political
democracy.
Myriad cultural and political perspectives on the anarchist danger flowed
from the starting point of depicting anarchists as monsters, and therefore
enemies of civilization and humanity. The examples outlined here suggest
some of the ways in which the idea of the monster could take on a profound
political meaning. The construction of the anarchist as monster in fin-de-
sicle writings resisted the possibility of understanding anarchist acts as
rational and political, substituting dread of the alien and unknown for an
analysis of the social context that gave rise to anarchism. Attributing
monstrous qualities to the perpetrators of political violence helped to explain,
and therefore manage, the threat they posed. Yet addressing the menace of
anarchist violence in this way also allowed, and even necessitated, the kind of
further interpretive acts that both German conservatives and liberals
undertook to pinpoint the origins of the anarchist danger, and to suggest
remedies to it.
Notes
1
Emanuel, Anarchismus und seine Heilung (Leipzig: Verlag von Wilhelm
Friedrich, 1894), 7-8.
2
Hermann Seuffert, Anarchismus und Strafrecht (Berlin: Verlag von Otto
Liebmann, 1899), 2.
116 The Anarchist as Monster in Fin-de-Sicle Europe
______________________________________________________________
3
Cited in Die Ermordung der Kaiserin von Oesterreich, Frankfurter
Zeitung, 13 September 1898, 2.
4
Two of the most important scholarly works on the idea of degeneration are
Robert A. Nye, Crime, Madness and Politics in Modern France: The Medical
Concept of National Decline (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984)
and Daniel Pick, Faces of Degeneration: A European Disorder, c.1848-
c.1918 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989). On the use of
Lombroso by German criminologists, see Richard F. Wetzell, Inventing the
Criminal: A History of German Criminology, 1880-1945 (Chapel Hill:
University of North Carolina Press, 2000).
5
Cited in Randy Martin, Robert J. Mutchnick, and W. Timothy Austin,
Crimonological Thought: Pioneers Past and Present (New York: Macmillan,
1990), 29.
6
Cited in Pick, 145.
7
Cesare Lombroso, Gli Anarchici (1894; reprint, Millwood: Kraus Reprint,
1983), 21.
8
Lombroso, 25.
9
Cited in Auberon Herbert, The Ethics of Dynamite, Contemporary
Review (May 1894), reprinted in The Right and Wrong of Compulsion by the
State, and other Essays, ed. Eric Mack (Indianapolis, Indiana: Liberty Fund,
1978).
10
Ettore Sernicoli, LAnarchia e gli Anarchici: Studio Storico e Politico, vol.
2: Fisiologia degli Anarchici (Milan: Fratelli Treves, 1894), 28.
11
Sernicoli, vol. 2, 199-200.
12
E. Douglas Fawcett, Hartmann the Anarchist: or, The Doom of The Great
City (1893; reprint, New York: Arno Press, 1975), 82, cited in Noel Patrick
Peacock, Constructions of Anarchism in British Fiction, 1885-1914 (Ph.D.
diss., University of Western Ontario, 1994), 43.
13
mile Zola, Germinal, trans. Roger Pearson (1886; reprint, London:
Penguin Books, 2004), 141-142.
14
Zola, 244.
15
Zola, 245.
16
Zola, 462-463.
17
Zola, 466.
18
Zola, 483.
19
Joseph Conrad, The Secret Agent: A Simple Tale (1907; reprint, New York:
Signet Classic, 1983), 237.
20
Murat Halstead, The Illustrious Life of William McKinley, Our Martyred
President (N.p, 1901), 25, 67, 68.
21
Halstead, 26, 27. For more on Halsteads depiction of anarchists, see
Peacock, 42.
Elun Gabriel 117
______________________________________________________________
22
Gustavo Tosti, Anarchistic Crimes, Political Science Quarterly 14, no. 3
(September 1899), 416.
23
Stephen Arata, The Occidental Tourist: Dracula and the Anxiety of
Reverse Colonization, Victorian Studies 33, no. 4 (Summer 1990). Arata,
623, notes that in this fear Dracula resembles the innumerable invasion
scare and dynamite novels of the 1880s and 90s, many of the latter
featuring anarchists.
24
Arata, 626-627.
25
Halstead, 70, 26.
26
The Southern Question was the occasion of considerable anxiety and
political tension in newly-unified Italy. Northerners regarded the South as a
primitive, savage land some were unsure could ever be made truly Italian.
27
Pick, 126.
28
Petersburgtija Wiedomojti, 11 September 1898, cited in Dieter Johannes,
Manahmen gegen die Anarchisten im Deutschen Kaiserreich (1871-1918),
Materialsammlung 2 (Frankfurt: Archiv fr libertre-historische
Hermeneutik, 1999), 8.
29
Cited in Vernon L. Lidtke, The Outlawed Party: Social Democracy in
Germany, 1878-1890 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1966), 274.
30
W. Krieter, Die geheime Organisation der sozialdemokratischen Partei, 3rd
ed. (Magdeburg: Verlag von Albert Rathke, 1887), 3.
31
Heinrich von Treitschke, Der Socialismus und der Meuchelmord (Berlin:
Druck und Verlag von G. Reimer, 1878), 6.
32
Cited in Die Ermordung der Kaiserin von Oesterreich, 2.
33
Cited in Frankfurt, 20. September, in Franfurter Zeitung, 20 September
1898, Abendblatt, 1.
34
Berliner Politische Nachrichten, 12 September 1898; 13 September 1898.
35
National-Zeitung, 11 August 1900, Morgen-Ausgabe, 1.
36
Ludwig Bamberger, Wandlungen und Wanderungen in der Sozialpolitik
(Berlin: Rosenbaum & Hart, 1898), cited in Guenther Roth, The Social
Democrats in Imperial Germany: A Study in Working-Class Isolation and
National Integration (Totowa, N.J.: The Bedminster Press, 1963), 93-94.
37
Rudolf Stammler, Die Theorie des Anarchismus (Berlin: Verlag von O.
Hring, 1894), Foreword; Naum Reichesberg, Sozialismus und
Anarchismus (Leipzig: Verlag von August Siebert, 1895), Foreword; E. V.
Zenker, Der Anarchismus: Kritik und Geschichte der anarchistischen
Theorie (Jena: Verlag von Gustav Fischer, 1895), v.
38
E. V. Zenker, Anarchism: A Criticism and History of the Anarchist Theory
(London: G. P. Putnams Sons, 1897), 144, 145.
39
C. Falkenhorst, Die Anarchisten, Die Gartenlaube, 1892, no. 10, 311,
309-310.
118 The Anarchist as Monster in Fin-de-Sicle Europe
______________________________________________________________
40
Hermann Tobias, Der Anarchismus und die anarchistische Bewegung,
Volkswirtschaftliche Zeitfragen: Vortrge und Abhandlungen herausgegeben
von der Volkswirtschaftlichen Gesellschaft in Berlin, vol. 163 (Berlin:
Verlag von Leonhard Simion, 1899), 36.
41
Tobias, 12.
42
Emanuel, 7-8.
43
Zenker, 279-280.
References
Arata, Stephen. The Occidental Tourist: Dracula and the Anxiety of
Reverse Colonization. Victorian Studies 33, no. 4 (Summer 1990): 621-645.
Conrad, Joseph. The Secret Agent: A Simple Tale. 1907; reprint, New York:
Signet Classic, 1983.
Fawcett, E. Douglas. Hartmann the Anarchist: or, The Doom of The Great
City. 1893; reprint, New York: Arno Press, 1975.
Nye, Robert A. Crime, Madness and Politics in Modern France: The Medical
Concept of National Decline. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984.
Familial Monsters
(Maybe some of them are regular folk like you & me)
Family, Race and Citizenship in Disneys Lilo and Stitch
Emily Cheng
Abstract
My paper addresses the themes of family, adoption (of the alien monster),
and multiculturalism in Disneys 2002 animated film, Lilo and Stitch. I argue
that the film portrays the setting of Hawaii as a multicultural paradise
through both the visual representation and the narrative of domesticating the
monstrous alien, Stitch, by assimilation into a native Hawaiian family and
the cultural pluralism of the nation. While the alien monster poses a threat to
the American family and civilization, in his incorporation into the family, and
allegorically, into the U.S. nation, he goes through a process of becoming a
model citizen and a proper subject of the law. I connect this narrative of
inclusion into the liberal contract to the films embeddedness in the neo-
liberal tourism industry that produces Hawaii as an exotic other available for
mainland consumption.
Keywords:
Monsters in Animation, Family and Monsters, Alien Monsters, Disney,
Tourism, Hawaii
This paper looks at Disneys 2002 film, Lilo and Stitch as a site of
visual culture that engages with narratives of the family and adoption (of the
alien) in relation to the U.S. nation. One starting point of this discussion is to
situate it in the context of the recent history of Disney films, such as Mulan
(1998), Aladdin (1992), and Pocahontas (1995) that have been criticized for
their participation in imperialist narratives, and racism and sexism.
According to Eleanor Byrne and Martin McQuillan, the release of The Little
Mermaid in 1989 was a turning point for Disney films, both stylistically and
thematically. They posit a relationship between Disneys productions and
their left critics in which the text offers an overt reading that the audience
can easily identify and make an obvious critique that allows Disney to then
defend and construct its conservative ideological messages, for these
denunciations of Disney are precisely what keeps Disney going.1 Along
these lines, in Lilo and Stitch, Disney has stylistically responded to recent
critiques of the anglicized features of the women of colour of by returning to
their earlier styles, for instance, flattening the noses of the indigenous
characters while increasing the womens physical brawn.
While discussions of Disney have often focused on the relationship
between the corporation and the critic, in this paper my method is to address
the multiple and often contradictory meanings produced by the film by
124 Family, Race and Citizenship in Disneys Lilo and Stitch
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considering its reception found in print and online reviews, production, and
the text itself. My reading of the film is situated in these material contexts of
production and reception, particularly through a consideration of its form as
animation and its marketing as family entertainment. I focus particularly on
how in both its production and filmic narrative the film upholds U.S. claims
to being a multicultural nation that are projected onto Hawaii as an imagined
racial paradise, a process which is embedded in the neo-liberalist tourist
economy. More specifically, this idealization of the nation takes place
through a double narrative of domesticating the alien in both the family and
the nation that also raises and resolves the contradictions of Asian
immigration and fears of the Asiatic alien threat to the nation, particularly
represented as a threat to the Pacific Coasts of the geographic U.S.
This is a movie about aliens, but also one in which the alien can be
assimilated, through its inclusion into a family (composed of himself and two
orphaned native Hawaiian sisters). The movie opens on the alien planet of
Turo, governed by the futuristic society of the Galactic Federation, where an
evil genius scientist, Jumba Jookiba, has secretly created Experiment 626,
a monstrosity that is programmed to destroy, in particular to seek out cities
to attack. When his existence is revealed, the Galactic Federation orders
Experiment 626 to be destroyed and his creator to be imprisoned for life.
However, 626 escapes and flees to Earth, where he lands in Hawaii, and his
creator is sent to retrieve him. This representation of Stitch as a monstrous
alien whose only purpose in life is to wreak havoc is figured as an alien threat
to the U.S. nation-state staged in the Pacific and as a threat to civilization
itself.
Along with this narrative of the alien threat to the planet and nation
is the story of the family that is formed when 626 is mistakenly adopted as a
dog by two indigenous orphaned sisters. Having escaped imprisonment on
Turo, 626 is taken in by an animal shelter, as a stray dog, in Hawaii. Now
named Stitch, the alien is adopted by Lilo, and her older sister, Nani, who
have been recently orphaned by the death of their parents in an accident.
While Nani originally gets Stitch for Lilo to have a companion, he turns out
to be a threat to the family as his destructive ways keep her from getting a
job, and he destroys the house itself. Before they get Stitch, the social worker
known as Mr. Bubbles, whom they call when things go wrong, already has
threatened to remove Lilo and put her under state care, and Stitch exacerbates
the situation.2 The figure of Mr. Bubbles who represents the state not only as
a social worker, but also as a former CIA agent specializing in alien
encounters, ties family to the state explicitly. Indeed, his command that the
two conditions for Nani and Lilo to stay together as a family are that Nani get
a job and that Stitch become a model citizen links the proper form of
family to citizenship and participation in the nation.
Emily Cheng 125
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Reviews of the film help to illuminate the dominant understanding
of this film and help to situate the film in popular culture and dominant
ideologies. One common way of evaluating the film in reviews was in terms
of its suitability for both parents and children, in that it teaches important
lessons about family and love, while also being witty and sophisticated
enough for adults. This double billing seems to delineate two overt levels on
which the meaning of the text may be read. On the one hand, what makes the
film suitable for children is its overriding theme of ohana, or family, which
as Calvin Trager notes, this trope is too expository to be missed.3 On the
other hand, it is the multiple ways in which the film references other popular
culture sites that appears to be an important component of what makes the
film interesting for adults.
Many of these reviews also provide a way to understand the film as
a popular cultural text that is a corollary to the national project of building a
multicultural citizenry. As several reviewers have pointed out, the film
references many popular culture sites, for instance, Steven Spielbergs E.T.
and Elviss music as well as the Kings legacy of impersonations, however,
the list of references extends much further, to include The Ugly Duckling,
Frankenstein, Godzilla, Men In Black, Star Wars, and Gremlins. These
references and the thematic content of the film also draw on other dominant
narratives of the nation, especially regarding the figure of the Asian other and
the Asia-Pacific as frontier. Specifically, the setting, content, and production
of the film serve to reaffirm Hawaii as a part of the U.S. as a multicultural
nation. I read the setting of the film in the liminal U.S. space of Hawaii as
pointing to the contested boundaries of the nation in the Pacific as well as
referencing lost-standing fears of the alien other of the Asia Pacific that is
resolved through a national projection of multiracial paradise. While Stitch is
mandated to become a model citizen, in a way, the movie also portrays
Hawaii as a model national space.
This construction of Hawaii as a racial paradise relies specifically
on its form that allows for the animation of the physical space. Interviews
with co-writers and co-directors Chris Sanders and Dean DeBlois on the
DVD bonus material explicitly state their desire to properly portray the native
Hawaiian culture, in order to show their respect as well as accurately
represent it in cartoon form. This insistence on the realism of the animated
form is interesting in its masking of the films alliance with dominant cultural
values and narratives; while animation might have the potential to
defamiliarize such narratives by disrupting the reality effect of the film, the
intent at least of this film is to use animation to produce a hyper-real Hawaii.
While of course the intention of the filmmakers is not prescriptive of
the films meaning, this goal of realism was taken up and circulated in
discourses about the film in the context of tourism. A link found on the
website of the Hawaii Visitors and Convention Bureau (HVCB) to a review
126 Family, Race and Citizenship in Disneys Lilo and Stitch
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found in about.coms Hawaii/South Pacific for Visitors travel section
suggests the films relationship to the tourism industry. While in some overt
ways the films content, production, and reception may seem to serve as
media for a transnational tourist industry, it also sets up a discussion of the
entwinement of the tourism industry with representations of exoticized
culture as well as universal family values. The rhetoric of a real Hawaii in
the review posits the work of the film as a text complicit in tourism that is
directed at and constructs a mainland audience. The review suggests that the
animation form and attention to the films production are two important
locations to consider in this function: it will come as a shock to many that
the film that best captures the true spirit of Hawaii and the meaning of
'ohana is an animated motion picture, thus linking the desire to know
Hawaiian culture as multicultural difference to both the theme of family and
the animation form. Indeed, the review cites Disneys return to the 1940s
watercolour, which hadnt been used since Bambi in 1942, as the best way
to re-create the island visually.2
Going further, the review explicitly connects watching the film and
physical travel in its discussion of the production of the film in establishing
the producers dedication to properly portraying Hawaii for the audience, so
that the film performs a tourist experience of exploration and getting to know
the native. To establish the great lengths to which the film goes in
representing Hawaii for the tourist, the review points out the directors
research efforts in discovering Hawaii:
This empirical research thus seems to ensure that the team has done the work
of exploring for the viewer and packaging the real Hawaii for
consumption. I suggest that this kind of verisimilitude signals a kind of
epistemological conquest of the other in the Pacific.
In his book Reimagining the American Pacific, Rob Wilson
discusses the processes of producing an image of Hawaii as an authentic and
indigenous Pacific space in the transnational tourist economy. As he notes,
the Hawaii Visitors Bureau is the organization that was responsible for
packaging aloha spirit as a multicultural self-image of Hawaii designed to
ensure an authentic Pacific experience for the tourist. While he situates
Hawaii within a transnational tourist apparatus within the Pacific Rim, I am
particularly interested in Hawaii in relation to a larger U.S. imaginary. What
Emily Cheng 127
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I find especially interesting for my paper is his articulation of Hawaiis
appeal as not only indigenous, but as gendered: he identifies the renewed
focus on the island lifestyle and the push globally to market Hawaiis
special appeal as a beautiful, multiculturally appealing, and world-class
Pacific woman (italics in original) are copresent.5 At the same time as
Hawaii is gendered, it is the idea of native spaces that are protected from, or
at least resistant to, capitalism that is packaged for appeal to the tourist. In
this film this gendered construction morphs into an infantilization of Hawaii
and a narrative of woman-centred family formation.
Perhaps we can understand the function of this film in relation to
tourism as both what Joseph Roach calls vicarious tourism as well as an
enticement for real travel following a viewing of the film that rests on the
exoticization but also the containment of difference as well as historical
memory.6 Significantly, the article notes that not only did the HVCB sign a
$1.7 million deal with Disney to promote Hawaii in conjunction with the
movie, but notes the importance of this deal to attract children (and their
parents) in the wake of the losses in tourism dollars after September 11.
Here, the films management of memory and history in the service of
neoliberalist business practices is made clear in its management of national
mourning for profit. Further, if we take the figure of the dog, and U.S. pet
culture in general, as a sign of an emergent neoliberal structure of feeling, in
which the ownership of a dog performs a normalizing function across
difference, then Stitchs adoption by the sisters as a dog significantly locates
the films narrative and its construction of a national multicultural citizenry.
Within the narrative of the film, visual images serve an instructional
function that models the modes of viewing the film discussed above. Indeed,
Stitchs education about national belonging takes place through his
comprehension of visual culture. For instance, Lilo instructs Stitch about
being a model citizen through the example of Elvis. Holding up a photograph
of Elvis, Lilo tells Stitch: Elvis Presley was a model citizen. Ive compiled a
list of his traits for you to practice. Number one is dancing.7 Here,
citizenship is performed through culture, such that national belonging seems
to be defined primarily through culture as well. She sequentially holds up
pictures of Elvis when enumerating each point about Elvis. Certainly, Elvis is
an apt figure for a consideration of model citizenship and historical
memory and popular cultural representations of Hawaii, given his
affiliations with Hawaii through tourism, mass media, and entertainment. A
frequent visitor to the islands between the 1950s and 70s, Elvis made three
movies there, Blue Hawaii, Girls Girls Girls, and Paradise, Hawaiian
Style, in addition to performing several times, including the first live concert
televised world-wide, Elvis, Aloha from Hawaii. Elvis famously served in
the U.S. Army from 1958 to 1960 as a regularly drafted solider and was
heralded by the media and public for his patriotism in serving like other men
128 Family, Race and Citizenship in Disneys Lilo and Stitch
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and refusing to allow his celebrity to garner him special treatment. Elviss
love of a state whose iconography in the popular imagination relies heavily
upon exotic images of a tropical paradise and upon the military (signified in
Pearl Harbour) is suggestive of the implications of Lilos idealization of Elvis
as a model citizen in his dual relationship of experiencing and producing
Hawaii for popular consumption and his performance of a masculinized,
military patriotism. In 1961 these two aspects came together when Elvis held
a fundraising concert for the U.S.S. Arizona Memorial at Pearl Harbour that
was crucial to enabling the construction of the memorial. Though the Navy
had been attempting to raise funds for 20 years, they had only reached half of
their goal of $500,000, and the proceeds of the concert allowed them to
actually surpass their goal.8 Through this appropriation of the figure of Elvis,
the film suggests the relationships between official state historical memory,
citizenship, and the cultural production of Hawaii as a consumable product.
How does the film make use of visual images to portray its message
about travel, family, and memory? Stitchs understanding of family and
national belonging based on his education through visual images parallels the
promotional articles suggestion that watching the movie can encourage
families to actually travel to Hawaii. Further, throughout the film, Lilo takes
pictures of tourists (whose overly tropical dress, clueless expressions, and
white bodies comically code them as mainland tourists) and puts them on her
bedroom wall. While these pictures, which often catch the tourists in typical
poses - on the beach, eating ice cream, etc. - appear to be overtly humorous,
they also serve to make a relationship of tourism and fascination with other
cultures visible, for while tourists go to Hawaii to experience aloha spirit,
the locals find the white mainlanders equally exotic. In positing this
relationship of equal exchange, the film seems to elide the unequal political
and economic power, and histories of settler colonialism and violence that
mark Hawaii as a U.S. state.
However, by the end of the movie, Lilos wall collection of
photographs of tourists give way to pictures of her family, now made up of
Nani, Stitch, and herself, along with the other characters in the film. So, if the
double domestic narratives of family and nation are intertwined, this
replacement can be read to indicate that both the larger mediation of Hawaii
as a U.S. multicultural space and the family are about ways of managing
personal and collective memories. As the family mantra of ohana suggests,
family is defined through memory: ohana means family, and family means
no one gets left behind or forgotten.9 The series of photographs at the end
of the film seem to document the future of the family, by providing new
memories in a photo album. The content of these photos is also significant,
showing the family celebrating U.S. national holidays such as Thanksgiving
and travelling to Graceland, former home of the model citizen himself. That
they have become tourists to the mainland seems to suggest that flows
Emily Cheng 129
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between Hawaii and the U.S. mainland are commensurate. The final image
suggests that a new history of family is being made, in that Lilos picture of
her biological family at which she has stared nostalgically throughout the
film has been reconstituted so that a picture of Stitch is attached to the
corner. Stitch, who previously has no memories, according to Jookiba and
therefore was all alone, now has family as demonstrated through the
documents of their memories.
Further, the final sequence in which the aliens have captured Stitch
makes most explicit the entanglement of law, family, and nation. When Stitch
interrupts the Grand Councilwomans speech to ask if he is allowed to say
goodbye, he identifies himself as Stitch, signalling his transformation from
being the generic experiment 626 to having a name, as part of a family, in
contrast to the opening scene in the planet Turo when he is given a chance to
speak on his behalf before being sentenced to prison and instead verbally
insults his audience. It is the subjectivity expressed in this act that shows the
alien leader that Stitch can no longer be destroyed as a prisoner who
transgresses his rights, for he is not longer a monstrous other to the citizen
subject.
Stitchs identification as a member of a family represents his
newfound affective bonds that not only redeem him and render him suitable
for life on earth, in Hawaii, but this formation of the family is also what
transforms the two sisters into a viable family under the law. The non-nuclear
family here then suggests the films message of validating other family forms
through the figure of the alien, though what exceeds the directors appeal to
family is also the appeal the unity of the homogeneous nation through the
narrative of domesticity. The legality of the family is again tied to a national
narrative that categorizes normative subjects under the law, specifically
through the competing legality of the alien Galactic Federation and the U.S.
state that frames the alien law as overly rigid, and human (U.S.) law as
morally right. Mr. Bubbles points out this inflexibility when he says that
aliens are all about the law, and Grand Councilwoman laments that their
laws are absolute and do not allow deviation even when the will of the law
would allow for change.
In the end it is the Euro-American rule of law grounded in the
market that takes primacy. Mr. Bubbles, again representing the state, instructs
Lilo to show her title to Stitch she received when she adopted him at the
shelter. Her adoption and her claims to him are framed, then, in terms of
property rights, such that taking him away is an act of theft. The rules of the
market sanctioned by the U.S. state become a justification for the Galactic
Federation to submit to the sovereignty of the U.S. so that the liberal contract
accords with what is morally right, which in this context is leaving the family
intact. Stitchs earlier transgression of the alien rules by escaping
confinement then can be figured as an act of freedom from authoritarian law,
130 Family, Race and Citizenship in Disneys Lilo and Stitch
______________________________________________________________
as a flight from government grounded not in the liberalism and universal
humanism, but in rigid non-human rules. Supporting a teleological narrative
of the assimilation of the alien then, the film upholds the U.S. as a space of
freedom, in which the alien can go from destroying civilization to become
civilized as a member of a family and of the nation.
What I have suggested in my reading of the film is that it seems to
be embedded in a neo-liberal structure of feeling in representing Hawaiis
relationship to the larger U.S. nation in terms of tourism and a celebration of
indigenous culture, as well as through calling attention to the liberal market
as upholding the family and nation, in a sense. However, as in the film as a
whole, this ending scene also carries an ambiguity that re-articulates the kind
of earlier histories that I argue that the film mediates through its attention to
personal and collective memory. So, for instance, when Mr. Bubbles and the
Grand Councilwoman recognize each other from the 1973 Roswell event,
which Bubbles had investigated for the CIA, they note the ongoing
relationship of alien threats to the globe that the U.S. must hide, and manage;
the Grand Councilwoman warns, well be checking in now and then, to
which Bubbles responds, I was afraid of that.10 The continued presence of
the alien articulated here can be connected to the alien threat performed by
Stitch in his earlier destruction of the model of San Francisco.
By portraying Hawaii as a site of cultural difference, which is
equally as available to the mainland, as vice versa, the film further locates
Hawaii within a national discourse of difference under multiculturalism. At
the same time however, the setting of the islands, which almost become a
character as the reviews imply, also invite consideration of the kinds of
narratives and memories that the film asks us to forget, for instance, the alien
threat figured historically in the Asiatic threat to the American Pacific and the
U.S. nations need to constantly re-inscribe the Pacific as a U.S. site. This
forgetting is ambivalent, however, as we can see in the instability of the
closure of the domestic narrative of family formation that is so intertwined
with the narrative of the nation in the film. Though in the end Stitch does
learn to dance the hula, the primary sign of the indigenous in the film, and
would thus appear to have achieved model citizenship, the superficiality of
this definition of inclusion into the nation looms in the background as Stitch
remains alien to the family. His transition in the context of family from
object/dog to productive family member (the images during the credits show
Stitch doing the familys household chores, such as cooking and laundry)
signifies the trace of the other in both family and nation, as his role now
resonates with histories of labouring alien bodies central to Hawaiis
development as a state.
Emily Cheng 131
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Notes
1
Eleanor Byrne and Martin McQuillan. Deconstructing Disney (London:
Pluto Press, 1999), 3.
2
Chris Sanders and Dean DeBlois, Lilo & Stitch (Burbank, Calif.: Buena
Vista Home Entertainment, 2002), videorecording.
3
Calvin Trager, Lilo and Stitch review, Box Office Prophets, 24 June 2002,
(10 July 2005). <http://www.boxofficeprophets.com>.
4
John Fischer, Lilo and Stitch and the Spirit of Hawaii,
Hawaii/SouthPacific for Visitors, 25 May 2003, (May 25, 2003).
<http://gohawaii.about.com/library/weekly/aa062502a.htm>.
5
Rob Wilson. Reimagining the American Pacific (Durham, North Carolina:
Duke University Press, 2000), xvi.
6
Joseph Roach. The Enchanted Island: Vicarious Tourism in Restoration
Adaptations of The Tempest, in The Tempest and Its Travels, ed. Peter
Hulme and William Sherman (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania
Press, 2000), 62.
7
Sanders and DeBlois, 2002.
8
Burl Burllingame. Elvis Shook It Up 40 Years Ago for the Arizona
Memorial, Honolulu Star-Bulletin Online, 23 March 2001, (1 October
2005). <http://starbulletin.com/2001/03/23/features/story4.html>.
9
Sanders and DeBlois, 2002.
10
Ibid.
References
Burl Burllingame. Elvis Shook It Up 40 Years Ago for the Arizona
Memorial. Honolulu Star-Bulletin Online. 23 March 2001.
<http://starbulletin.com/2001/03/23/features/story4.html> (1 October 2005).
Fischer, John. Lilo and Stitch and the Spirit of Hawaii. Hawaii/ South
Pacific for Visitors. 25 May 2003.
<http://gohawaii.about.com/library/weekly/aa062502a.htm> (25 May 2003).
Sanders, Chris and Dean DeBlois. Lilo & Stitch. Burbank, Calif.: Buena
Vista Home Entertainment, 2002. Videorecording.
Trager, Calvin. Lilo and Stitch Review. Box Office Prophets. 24 June 2002.
<http://www.boxofficeprophets.com> (10 July 2005).
Colette Balmain
Abstract
In this chapter, I consider the re-emergence of the monstrous-child sub-genre,
in the contemporary American horror film and its relationship to the
traumatic events of 9/11. In particular, I focus on the manner in which the
representation of the monstrous child can be understood as a metaphorical
terrorist in that it, threatens the bourgeois, patriarchal familythe family as
symbolic of the nation as a wholefrom within. I suggest that child as
monster can be interpreted as signalling fears around the loss of boundaries-
political, economic and cultural-as inscribed within the demonic figure of the
child (the other/not-America/outside), which turns against the parent (the
self/America/Inside). The child is not only abject - signalling in Freudian
terms the return of the repressed - but is a place of becoming, in Deleuze and
Guattaris terms, which places the hegemonic ideology of patriarchal
capitalism under threat: articulated through the threat to the bourgeois family
as the embodiment of its values. In these terms, the child as metaphorical
terrorist highlights the fragility of the symbolic order in the face of the threat
of the other: a fragility, which was only too obvious in the light of the
horrific events of 9/11.
Keywords:
Terrorist; Deleuze; Guattari; Horror Film; National cinema; 9/11; 7/7; The
Ring Two; The Amityville Horror; monstrous-child; urbaniod horror film;
cloning; reproductive technologies.
1. Introduction
Drawing on Stephen Heaths argument that, nationhood is not a given, it is
always something to be gained,1 in his article, The Concept of National
Cinema, Andrew Higson contends that national cinema functions as one
form of internal cultural colonialism, which works to:
As the horror in the horror film comes about through the breaching of
boundaries, it is pertinent to consider how the American horror film, as
ideological apparatus of the state, has reconfigured itself in the light of the
shocking events of 9/11 in which the colonial invader became the invaded, as
the impenetrable boundaries of America as nation-state were breached by the
Other. In his new preface to his 1978 seminal text, Orientalism, Edward
Said talks about the proliferation of media texts on the war against terror:
In the aftermath of 9/11, and subsequently in the weeks after 7/7, this was
expressed in terms of them and us: the Us [the Other/The East/The racially
inscribed Object] as a potential threat to the Western democratic way of
life [the Self; The West; The White subject]. In the UK, as in the US, this
was simplified into political and media hysteria around the evil ideology of
Colette Balmain 135
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the Other. Binary distinctions were solidified and re-established between
the Good West and the Evil East, and the threat within was expressed
utilising the language of apocalypsism.
In The Idea of Apocalypse in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre,
Christopher Sharrat argues that the development of apocalypticism in horror
is distinct to the tradition of catastrophe and utopia in science fiction.6 He
cites Tobe Hoopers The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (Tobe Hooper, US:
1974), made at a time of crisis in American politics-the Watergate era and the
Vietnam war-as one of the forerunners of the apocalyptic tradition in the
horror film: a tradition which as Robin Wood points out in An Introduction
to The American Horror Film, suggests that annihilation is inevitable,
humanity is now completely powerless, there is nothing anyone can to do to
arrest the process.7 Wood contends that the negation of the apocalyptic
horror filmthe idea of the end of the world can be seen in positive rather
than negative terms: the end of the world as the end of patriarchal capitalism
within the recognition of the very instability of dominant ideology. However
more recently, but before the events of 9/11, in his preface to Freuds Worst
Nightmares8, Robin Wood mourns the loss of the progressive features of the
1970 horror film, asking whether there are any horror films which could be
championed as making some sort of radical statement about contemporary
life, in the manner in which he saw The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Dawn
of the Dead (George Romero, US/Italy: 1978) as doing9.
In light of the events of 9/11, it is no surprise that the apocalyptic
horror film has emerged as the dominant trend in American horror cinema
within two distinct strands: the post-modern urbanoid horror film10: Dead
End (Jean-Baptiste Andrea and Fabrice Canepa, France/USA: 2003), Cabin
Fever (Eli Roth, USA: 2002), Wrong Turn (Robert Schmidt, USA/Germany:
2003) and the remake of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre (Marcus Nispel,
USA: 2004) and or the monstrous-child horror film: such as Godsend (Nick
Hamm, US: 2004) Blessed (Simon Fellows, Romania/UK: 2004) Hide and
Seek (John Polson, US: 2005), Exorcist: The Beginning (Renny Harlin, USA,
2004)11, The Amityville Horror (Andrew Douglas, US: 2004) and The Ring
Two (Hideo Nakata, Japan/USA: 2004). Whilst both types of familial horror
originally emerge within what Robin Wood contends is the progressive
trends the 1970s, their reconfiguration and reinterpretation in the light of the
events of 9/11 seems to offer a more reactionary interpretation of the family:
one that needs to be understood as articulating cultural anxieties and fears
over the Enemy Within: the repositioning of the Other as inherently
threatening to the American way of life and its sense of a divinely-ordained
mission.
In this chapter, I concentrate on the second of these familial horror
genres, the monstrous-child film, focussing in particular on the positioning of
the child as metaphorical terrorist-as a direct response to the traumatic events
136 The Enemy Within
______________________________________________________________
of 9/11-and examine the mechanisms through which it allows the restoration
of national and political boundaries in face of the threat from the Other.
[T]he father is dead, its my fault, who killed him? its your
fault, its the Jews, the Arabs, the Chinese, all the sources
of racism and segregation12
Tony Williams contends the more repressive the society, the more monstrous
the repressed.35 In the light of this, the monstrous-children of The Ring Two
and Hide and Seek can be seen as the monstrous progeny of The return to
family values as articulated by Bush which repeats that of the earlier
Reagan-Bush era of American politics in the aftermath of 9/11. On one
hand, the figure of the child as terrorist within the family can be seen as
progressive as it functions in its apocalyptical capacity as signifier of the
demise of a repressive, patriarchal capitalism in Woods terms. Or in Deleuze
and Guattaris terms articulates a notion of becoming which undermines
fixed categories and boundaries, constituting what Conley sees in
142 The Enemy Within
______________________________________________________________
Becoming-Woman Now, the possibility of transition towards a non-
phallocentric and non-capitalist space outside of a deadly and reappropriating
dialectic.36
However, the allusion in The Ring Two to letting the dead in and
the need to send them back functions as a barely veiled metaphor for the
reassertion of boundaries against incoming immigrants. This gives credence
to the monstrous-child as a reactionary figure. The reassertion of the
patriarchal family unit at the end of The Ring Two and The Amityville Horror
can be read as an attempt to reconcile Americas internal fantasy with her
outward projection of reality. The fact that sequels for both The Ring Two
and The Amityville Horror are in production suggests that the monstrous-
child sub-genre will be around for some time.
Notes
1
Stephen Heath cited in Andrew Higson, The Concept of National Cinema,
in The European Cinema Reader, ed. Catherine Fowler (London and New
York, Routledge: 2002), 139
2
Andrew Higson, The Concept of National Cinema, in The European
Cinema Reader, ed. Catherine Fowler (London and New York, Routledge:
2002), 139
3
Jill Forbes and Sarah Street, eds, European Cinema: An Introduction,
(London: Palgrave, 2000), 17
4
James Donald, How English Is It? Popular Literature and National
Culture, New Formations 6 (1988), 32
5
Edward Said, Orientalism, Western Conceptions of the Orient, (London:
Penguin Modern Classics: 2004), xv
6
Christopher Sharrat, The Idea of Apocalypse in The Texas Chainsaw
Massacre, in. Planks of Reason. Essays on the horror film, ed Barry Keith
Grant (London: Scarecrow Press, 1996), 255
7
Robin Wood, An Introduction to the American Horror Film, in Planks of
Reason. Essays on the horror film, ed. Barry Keith Grant (London:
Scarecrow Press, 1996), 187
8
Steven Jay Schneider, ed., Freuds Worst Nightmare (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2003)
9
Robin Wood, What Lies Beneath, Senses of Cinema, 2001:
<http://www.sensesofcinema.com/contents/01/15/horror_beneath.html> (17th
September 2005)
Colette Balmain 143
______________________________________________________________
10
Carol Clover, Men, Woman and Chainsaws: Gender in the Contemporary
Horror Film (London and New York: Routledge, 1992
11
Since writing this paper, another version of this prequel to The Exorcist has
been made released (2005) on DVD and Video. Renamed Dominion:
Prequel to the Exorcist, this is the original version as directed by Paul
Schrader, which the studios deemed as unmarketable and brought Renny
Harlin in to shoot an alternative version, which was released cinematically in
2004. Originally Schraders version was to have been part of the DVD
features on the release of Exorcist The Beginning, however the box-office
failure of Harlins film has meant that Dominion: Prequel to the Exorcist did
receive a limited theatrical release as well as being released on a separate
DVD to Exorcist The Beginning. However for the purposes of this paper, I
am discussing Exorcist: The Beginning
12
Carl Clover, Men, Woman and Chainsaws, 269
13
Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and
Scziophrenia, tr. Robert Hurley, Mark Seem and Helen R. Lane, (London:
Athlone, 1984), 264
14
Robin Wood, An Introduction the American Horror Film, 185
15
Vivian Sobchack, Bringing It All Back Home: Family Economy and
Generic Exchange in The Dread of Difference: Gender and the Modern
Horror Film, ed. Barry Keith Grant (Austin: University of Texas Press,
1996), 150
16
Robin Wood, An Introduction to the American Horror Film,181
17
This is one of the four possible endings to Hide and Seek, including one in
which Emily is locked up in a mental institution. Audience reactions to
previews of the film, led to this ending being substituted for the less overtly
horrific drawing scene. However, all four endings make it clear that
Emilys status as monstrous-child.
18
Audiences were first introduced to the monstrous figure of Freddy Kruger,
as primal father, in Wes Cravens Nightmare on Elm Street (US: 1984) which
so far has run to 6 sequels, ending with Cravens return to the franchise, and
postmodern parody, with New Nightmare in 1994. It may be of some
significance, that Robert Englund has returned to the role of Freddy Kruger,
even if it is only as presenter, for the television series A Nightmare on Elm
Street: Real Nightmares. Directed by Rick Ringbakk, the series is presently
in postproduction.
19
The series began in 1985 with Joseph Rubens seminal critique of the
American dream, The Stepfather, with Terry OQuinn as Jerry Blake, the
eponymous and psychotic stepfather of the title. Two sequels followed
quickly. Stepfather 2 (directed by Jeff Burr), in 1987, in which Terry
OQuinn once again reprised the role of the murderous stepfather, still
144 The Enemy Within
______________________________________________________________
searching fruitlessly for the perfect family, with the made for video
Stepfather 111 (Stepfather 3: Fathers Day, Guy Magar) followed in 1992:
this time with Robert Wightman instead of Terry ONeill in the lead role.
20
One of the few monstrous-mother as psychotic killer films is Mothers
Boys, directed by Yves Simoneau in 1994, with Jamie Lee Curtis playing
against type as the murderous Judith Madigan. The archaic mother may be
alluded in iconography and mise-en-scene, as in the Alien series of films, but
she is rarely the visible psychotic killer. The failure of Casey Becker to
correctly identify the mother rather than the son as the identity of the killer in
the original Friday 13th at the beginning of Scream (Wes Craven, 1996)
functions merely to stress that the murderous mother as killer is the exception
that proves the rule. This of course is not the case in many European horror
films, for example, in the giallo of Dario Argento, woman are almost always
the killer. For a discussion of problematic status of woman-as-killer in
European Horror, see Donato Totaros article The Final Girl: A Few
Thoughts on Feminism and Horror, Offscreen (January 31, 2002),
<http://www.horschamp.qc.ca/new_offscreen/final_girl.html> (17th
September 2005)
21
Vivian Sobhack, Bringing it all back Home: Family Economy and
Generic Exchange, 149
22
ibid,.150
23
ibid, 151
24
ibid, 151
25
see Robin Woods discussion of Michael Myers in Halloween in An
Introduction to the American Horror Film
26
Blood from Satan injected during the fertilization process.
27
See Mette Bryld, Cyborg Babies and Cybergods: The Baby Markers New
Origin Stories (2000) < http://www.women.it/cyberarchive/files/bryld.html>
(17th September 2005)
28
As I have argued elsewhere, the Japanese characters than can be seen on
the margins of Samaras birth certificate imply that she comes from the
Orient. See Colette Balmain, Lost in Translation: Otherness and
Orientalism in The Ring. Diagesis: The Journal of the Association for
Research into Popular Fictions, Special Horror Edition, 7 (Summer 2004):
69-77
29
This is true of both the sequels. Rasen (The Spiral, Jji Iida, Japan: 1998),
which opened as part of a double bill with Ringu on its premiere in Japan,
and Nakatas own sequel Ringu 2 in 1999. Although closer to Japanese writer
Kji Suzukis second book in the trilogy (Ringu, Rasen, Loop), also named
Rasen, the film Rasen was not successful at the box-office. The prequel to
Ringu, Ringu 0: Bsudei (Ring 0: Birthday, Norio Tsuruta, Japan: 2000)
Colette Balmain 145
______________________________________________________________
References
Balmain, Colette. Lost in Translation: Otherness and Orientalism in The
Ring. Diagesis: The Journal of the Association for Research into Popular
Fictions, Special Horror Edition, 7 (Summer 2004): 69-77
Bryld, Mette. Cyborg Babies and Cybergods: The Baby Markers New
Origin Stories (2000) < http://www.women.it/cyberarchive/files/bryld.html>
(17th September 2005)
Forbes, Jill and Street, Sarah Street, eds. European Cinema: An Introduction.
London: Palgrave, 2000.
Totaro, Donato. The Final Girl: A Few Thoughts on Feminism and Horror,
Offscreen (January 31, 2002),
<http://www.horschamp.qc.ca/new_offscreen/final_girl.html> (17th
September 2005)
Filmography
The Amityville Horror, directed by Andrew Douglas, US: 2004
Dawn of the Dead, directed by George Romero, US/Italy: 1978
Dead End, directed by Jean-Baptiste Andrea and Fabrice Canepa,
France/USA: 2003
Cabin Fever, directed by Eli Roth, USA, 2002
Wrong Turn, directed by Robert Schmidt, USA/Germany, 2003
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, directed by Marcus Nispel, USA, 2004
Godsend, directed by Nick Hamm, US: 2004
Blessed, directed by Simon Fellows, Romania/UK, 2004
Hide and Seek, directed by John Polson, US: 2005
Exorcist: The Beginning, directed by Renny Harlin, USA, 2004
Dominion: Prequel to the Exorcist, directed by Paul Schrader, USA: 2005
The Amityville Horror, directed by Andrew Douglas, US: 2004.
Ringu, directed by Hideo Nakata, Japan: 1998
The Ring Two, directed by Hideo Nakata, US/Japan: 2005
Psycho, directed by Alfred Hitchock, US: 1960
Rosemarys Baby, directed by Roman Polanski, USA: 1968
Night of the Living Dead, directed by George A Romero, USA, 1968
The Exorcist, directed by William Friedkin, USA,1973
Its Alive, directed by Larry Cohen, USA, 1974
Carrie, directed by Brian de Palma, USA, 1976
The Fury, directed by Brian de Palma, USA, 1978
Halloween, directed by John Carpenter, USA, 1978
Friday the 13th, directed by Sean Cunningham, USA, 1980
The Omen, directed by Richard Donner, UK, 1976
Nightmare on Elm Street, directed by Wes Craven, USA: 1984
New Nightmare, directed by Wes Craven, USA, 1994
The Stepfather, directed by Joseph Ruben, USA: 1985
Stepfather 2, directed by Jeff Burr, USA: 1987
Stepfather 111 (Stepfather 3: Fathers Day), directed by Guy Magar (tv)
(USA: 1992)
Mothers Boys, directed by Yves Simoneau, USA:1994
The Ring, directed by Gore Verbinski, USA/Japan, 2002
Rasen (The Spiral), directed by Jji Iida, Japan: 1998
Monstrous Mothers and the Media
Nicola Goc
Abstract
Both the idealising and the demonising of mothers has reached an apex in
media discourses of recent years positioning mothers as either Madonnas or
Medeas. Contemporary media discourse places the ideal mother within
celebrity news construct where she regains her svelte figure within weeks and
seamlessly returns to her career; at the other end of the spectrum the deviant
mother is portrayed within news texts as wicked and cruel, the antithesis of
motherhood. Mothers have been receiving bad press since that mythological
monstrous mother Medea, killed her children. The Cruel Mother motif has
been a recurrent representation in plays, ballads, poems and novels for
centuries and continues to survive in the monstrous mother motif of
contemporary media infanticide and child abuse discourses. Through the
individualising of deviance within the monstrous mother paradigm the
media audience, and society, is absolved of responsibility through the actions
of the individual. Using contemporary media texts I will examine the role the
media plays in creating the social space in which motherhood continues to be
constrained within a patriarchal ideology where women as mothers continue
to be categorised, idealised and demonised, and where deviant mothers are
understood as monstrous.
Keywords:
Infanticide, celebrity culture, motherhood, media discourses, master
narrative, public opinion, dominant ideology, representation.
1. Celebrity Mothers
In the 21st century, newspaper column space is increasingly being
devoted to manufactured celebrity news, displacing political and social news.
As Julieanne Schultz says, celebrity news is no longer the obsession of trashy
magazines and tabloids; all print media has been sucked into the celebrity
vortex and its profitable promise.1 James Autry has observed in America
what he calls celebrity journalism increasing in all forms of media,
including news. 2
Hand in glove with this celebrity news focus is what Anne Summers
calls the breeding creed, a powerful new ideology that defines women
first and foremost as mothers.3 Celebrity mothers are news, and as Summers
notes, womens magazines are doing their bit to promote motherhood. But
what is the message?
150 Monstrous Mothers and the Media
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In a world of mediated voyeurism, text has now been displaced by the
image and the celebrity object is there to be seen and recognised, its value
lying in our need for something to look at, admire, envy, and talk about.
Photographic images as negotiated interpretations of reality, grounded in
particular social and cultural contexts, are increasingly influential in creating
public opinion in a world which is experiencing the collapse of conversation
and the rise of the image.4
Photographs of pregnant celebrities feed our quest for voyeuristic
pleasure; the image is the essence of visual entertainment that requires no
reciprocal communication or feedback to the person observed. The celebrity
news image, usually capturing intimate moments, reduces issues, such as
motherhood in the 21st century, to the personal, individual level, displacing
social and political issues with our voyeuristic interest in the personal lives of
those inhabiting the world of celebrity. Calvert argues that one of the social
forces fuelling voyeurism is that we are an increasingly hedonistic, self-
absorbed society in which we get our pleasure from watching others lives.5
In a world of mediated voyeurism, discourse has been reduced to the public
gaze, displacing public discourse on such issues as childbirth, child care,
parental leave, post partum depression, levels of community support, abortion
and infanticide. Political and social discourse has become the shadow of
celebrity news. In terms of female newsworthiness, the pregnant celebrity or
royal now sits at the top of the hard news agenda. Maternity is not only the
new fashion accessory for the female celebrity, but it also defines
womanhood and the maternal in news culture.
In any given week tabloid stories on celebrity mothers abound.
Maternity is the new must have; must do, for the female celebrity in
contemporary parlance motherhood is wicked. In the week of April 25
Womans Day and Who magazines both ran front-page features on Britney
Spears pregnancy. Who displaying a bikini-clad Spears with the heading
Im pregnant! followed by a four-page spread of scantily-clad Spears
relaxing on a Florida beach with friends under the oversized heading: Shes
having a baby!6
According to the tabloid Spears has been transformed from mean and
lean to soft and sensual. Turn to the next double-page spread and you
have the baby clues: The hair, the clothes, the, um, expanding body of
evidence and the cravings - chilli con carne, baked potatoes and burgers.
And then of course the obligatory drama - celebrities cant have
straightforward pregnancies or births. Womans Day, under Pregnant
Britneys hospital dash told its readers:
The star spent two nights fearing for the life of her
unborn baby in a leading Florida clinic after experiencing
stomach cramps and severe bleeding.
Nicola Goc 151
______________________________________________________________
She was in a terrible amount of distress and her husband
was at her side, an insider said. Kevin, 26, and a group
of bodyguards were later seen pacing outside the medical
facility fearing the worst. But on Sunday the young singer
was given the all clear and Kevin took her home.7
Thirty years have passed since Helen Reddy empowered women with
her song I am Woman I am invincible; now we have Britneys celebrity
motherhood status appropriating the public news agenda as she sings:
My loneliness is killing me
I must confess I still believe
When Im not with you I lose my mind
Give me a sign
Hit me baby one more time.
Womans Day continues with the celebrity motherhood trope with a front-
page photograph of Nicole Kidman wearing a high-waisted Givenchy dress
that sparks pregnancy speculation that:
152 Monstrous Mothers and the Media
______________________________________________________________
she may already be pregnant with the baby she so
desperately wants. While the star continues to deny she is
expecting she has gained some new curves, and even
admitted to wearing maternity clothes. And, like a little girl
struggling to keep a big secret, shes been blurting out
increasingly personal details about her longing to have a
baby and her past struggle with miscarriage.9
Keep turning the pages and you come to a full-page advertisement for
face cream depicting a pretty young model smiling at the camera as she
pushes a pillow underneath her blouse, and the tag: Now you dont have to
be expecting to have that radiant glow everyday.11
If pregnancy is the new beauty product, then why not pregnancy as the
ultimate TV reality game show? According to Endemol, the makers of Big
Brother, the next reality TV programme will be Make Me A Mum. In July
2004 the producers launched the concept of a new show that would see 1,000
men vie for the chance to father a child. Make Me A Mum will whittle down
Nicola Goc 153
______________________________________________________________
the candidates until two hopefuls are selected to compete against each other,
press reports said:
According to CBC Arts local critics accused the Dutch Big Brother producers
of exploiting the birth to boost ratings.16
And if pregnancy is the new reality TV game show and the new
beauty product, then childbirth is the new art form. A recent global news
story Performance The Art of Birth told of Berlin artist Winfried Witt
inviting 30 people to witness the birth of his child in the DNA-Galerie. Witt
claimed Its a gift to humanity, a once a lifetime thing.17 He and fellow
artist and partner Ramune Gele wanted to challenge artistic norms, gallery
owner Joann Novak told Germanys Bild newspaper. The gallery, known for
its installations and video art, would be closed during the birth. Invited guests
would be summonsed as soon as Geles contractions became regular. The
private aspect will be maintained, Noval said. Reuters reported another
gallery owner in the street as saying I find it mad. An AFP story quoted the
154 Monstrous Mothers and the Media
______________________________________________________________
artist as saying the spectators, who registered for the exhibition via the
Internet, would participate in an exceptional experience. According to the
artist, Man, because he is unique, is an existential object of art. Witt
wanted to show living people, perceived at the same time as object and
subject through a kind of magnifying glass and to expose man in the
situations of his personal life.18
While man, because he is unique may be an existential object of
art, pregnant woman, in the form of Ramune Gele, remains mute. As the
existential object of this living art she does not need a persona beyond that
of a pregnant human. Gele is in fact the perfect parturient woman, silent and
submissive, captured for the voyeurs gaze in the throes of childbirth as an
artistic fetish. Through the female form Witt projects himself as the winner of
the ultimate sperm race. The birth was due to take place in May 2005, though
nothing further was publicised about the proposed artistic performance.
Motherhood as living art and prime-time TV may be the extreme, but
the idealisation of motherhood through the representation of celebrity
mothers in tabloid news and magazines is now accepted unquestioningly as
the crucial ingredients of a daily media diet.
2. Breast Nazis
Post delivery, a glamorous, fur-draped, scarlet-lipped and sultry Jerry
Hall was featured on the front page of Vanity Fair in 1999 offering her infant
son a full, pendulous breast. This provocative image caused a divisive debate
about mothers breastfeeding in the public, a debate which still holds news
currency today. In August 2004 Washington Post columnist, Roxanne
Roberts, wrote a column Do Me a Favor, Keep a Lid on Your Double Latte
in which she claimed her right to a peaceful cup of coffee was being
undermined by women breastfeeding in Starbucks.19 Her attack was on one
particular mother, Lorig Charkoudian, a Silver Spring woman
4. Monstrous Mothers
In their bid to entertain and increase profits for shareholders, the
media idealise motherhood in the form of celebrity mothers, but also seek out
the equally newsworthy and highly saleable darker side of motherhood in the
representation of the monstrous mother.
While Medea news stories entertain their audience, they also inform
on many levels, and significantly impact on the ways in which society views
motherhood. GQ magazine in 2002 managed to package sex and infanticide
into a highly disturbing media discourse. Illustrated with a full-page colour
photograph of a beautiful topless model with her back to the camera, Robert
Drapers article A Prayer for Tina Marie begins: Gentleman, here is your
child, 22, with a soft round face you could hold in one hand and chew like a
peach muffin She will have sex with you on the first night. The subject
of the article was a young Texan woman, Tina Marie Cornelius, who is
Nicola Goc 157
______________________________________________________________
serving a life sentence for murdering her two young children. According to
Draper, Cornelius turned to prostitution and drugs after unwanted attentions
from her former stepfather.24
Kathleen Folbigg in Australia, like Andrea Yates in America, became
the media icon of monstrous motherhood when in 2003 she was convicted of
the murder of her four infant children. The Daily Telegraph published a
running banner: Monstress: the diary of a child murderer as they
catalogued Folbiggs record of infanticide through the publication of her
incriminating diaries. 25 One chilling entry:
January 16 1998
The gym was pivotal (sic) part of me, and now because I
cant go without taking Laura its (sic) put a damper (sic) on
everything. Ive had my one and only escape taken away
from me.
5. Crack Mothers
In the mid to late 1980s a moral panic emerged in the US from Ronald
Reagans war on drugs which saw crack-addicted mothers demonised. In
1985 Susan Spencer reporting for CBS News used as her source a New
England Journal of Medicine study claiming that cocaine had just as
devastating an effect on pregnancy as heroin, that it caused spontaneous
abortions, and that babies born to mothers who used coke went through
withdrawal.26 Amidst the media hype that followed Spencers story, one of
the authors admitted the research was a limited but important study
designed to raise questions and concerns about using cocaine while
pregnant.27 Spencers story focused on the health warnings for all pregnant
women, but the media campaign picked up on the compelling narrative of
drug-addicted mothers, quantified by the statistic reported by CBS that 15%
158 Monstrous Mothers and the Media
______________________________________________________________
of all babies born had mothers who abused drugs.28 This focus quickly saw
the media direct the spotlight to black or Latino women.
According to Douglas and Michaels in their recent publication, The
Mommy Myth: The idealization of Motherhood and How it had Undermined
Women, the news networks documented the epidemic by showing the
requisite premmie in a neonatal ICU, then routinely showed dozens of
bassinettes lined up side by side in maternity wards, all of which allegedly
contained crack babies.
The crack babies moral panic may have dissipated, but drug-using
mothers are still headline copy. In a recent case of neglect in Australia a 19-
year-old drug-injecting mother whose third baby was born by emergency
caesarean five weeks premature due to her drug use was found guilty of
neglect when it was revealed that the 10 month-old infant weighed just 6.82
kilograms. The court heard how the mother was spread thin and was under
the pressure of poverty and lack of support in parenting her three children.
Nowhere in the press discourse is there a mention of the responsibilities of
the father. John Hartley argues that:
What Dalrymple got wrong was the calculation that Meadow would be
villain for a week, that his newsworthiness would be transitory. Meadows
expert medical evidence in hundreds of criminal and family court cases over
the past decade is now under scrutiny. News audiences have a new monster
narrative and are now lapping up the demon doctor narrative with the
voracious appetite of a gallows pack. The martyred mothers narrative, I
suspect, with its symbiotic relationship to the demon doctor, will be
consumed within this new master narrative, allowing the deviant mother
narrative to survive in its many manifestations.
7. Conclusion
The media has clearly identified motherhoods news values as coming
from the two extremes: from the idealised to the demonised: from the sex
goddess whose perfect body has been transformed by the seductive fecundity
of maternity, to the monstrous mother who murders her own babies. In
terms of media attention, outside these disparate constructs, regular mothers
can only register on the news values radar when they are perceived as super
mothers with ten kids under eight, give birth to quintuplets, or deliver on the
right calendar event - Christmas Day, New Years Day or Mothers Day.
Anything in between these extremes holds little or no news value. While
regular sleep-deprived mothers, struggling to nurture their babies amidst
household debt, social isolation, ill-health, stretch marks and flabby
Nicola Goc 161
______________________________________________________________
stomachs, continue to be absent from the media motherhood discourse,
societys expectations of mothers and motherhood will remain trapped into a
damaging circularity, shutting out important social discourse on issues such
as poverty, social isolation and child-care which impact directly on womens
mothering experiences.
Jennie Lusk recommended in her 2001 study of Mexican neonaticide
that consideration be made to the societal implications of our impulse to
shun neonatidical mother.35 Motherhood discourse itself has been reduced to
simplistic news narratives that seeks to entertain with stories about celebrity
Madonnas or monstrous Medeas. In an increasingly Huxleyan world where,
according to Neil Postman, culture is becoming a burlesque and the
population is distracted by trivia:
Notes
1
Schultz, Julieanne, Stars, lies and propaganda, Griffith Review 5 (2004):
9.
2
Anna Gough-Yates, Understanding Womens Magazines, Publishing,
Markets and Readerships. (London: Routledge, 2003), 136.
3
Anne Summers, The End of Equality, Work, Babies and Womens Choices
in 21st Century Australia (Milsons Point, NSW: Random House, 2003 ), 7.
4
Clay Calvert, Voyeur Nation Media, Privacy, and Peering in Modern
Culture (Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 2004), 73.
5
Ibid, 74.
6
Anonymous, Shes Having a baby! Who Weekly, 25 April 2005, 34-35.
7
Anonymous, Pregnant Britneys Hospital Dash, Womans Day, 25 April
2005, 10.
8
Lana Berkowitz, Britney prepares for motherhood and we cant take our
eyes off her, Houston Chronicle, 15 April 2005, sec. HLF.
<http://www.Houston Chronicle.com> (24 April 2005).
9
Anonymous, Nicole Reveals Im in baby mode,
Womans Day, 5 April 2005, 14-15.
10
Anonymous, Demi pregnant and smoking? Womans Day, 25 April
2005, 8-9.
11
Anonymous, Now you dont have to be expecting to have that radiant
glow everyday, Womans Day, 25 April 2005, 27.
12
Anonymous, Sperm Race, Metro, 23 July 23 2004, sec C, p. 3.
13
Toby Sterling, Pregnant woman is reality for the Dutch Big Brother
Associated Press, 30 August 2005, (31 August 2005).
<http://www.detnews.com/2005/screens/0508/30/E05-296664.htm>.
14
Anonymous, Birth first for Dutch Big Brother, BBC News UK Edition,
19 October 2005, (26 October 2005).
<http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/4355434.stm>.
15
Anonymous, Contestant gives birth on Dutch Big Brother, Irish
Examiner, 18 October 2005, (24 October 2005).
<http://www.examiner.ie/breaking/story.asp?j>.
16
Anonymous, Realitys new milestone: TV contestant gives birth, CBC
Arts, 19 October 2005 (24 October 2005).
<http://www.cbc.ca/story/arts/national/2005/10/19/Arts/bigbrother_birth_051
019.html>.
17
Anonymous, Performance the Art of Birth, The Weekend
Australian, 23-24 April 2005, sec. C, p. 25.
Nicola Goc 163
______________________________________________________________
18
Anonymous, Artist Invites Public to Birth of His Child, AFP, 25
April 2005.
19
Roxanne Roberts, Do Me a Favor, Keep a Lid on Your Double Latte,
Washington Post, 11 August 2004, sec. CO1.
20
Dominique Jackson, Accessory after the act, The Weekend Australian
Magazine, 29-30 March 2003, 33-37.
21
Ibid.
22
Rebecca Williams, Newberry keen to make new golden splash, The
Hobart Mercury, 27 Jan 2005, sec C. p. 40.
23
Dee OConnell. What happened Next? Observer, 30 March 2003 (24
April 24 2005). <http;//observer.guardian.co.uk/,3858,4646541-
110648,00.html>.
24
Jane Hall, How the Media Cover Women, Fox News Watch 8 November
2002 (29 April 2005). <http://www.tompaine.com/feature.cfm/ID/4385>.
25
Anonymous, Monstress: the diary of a child murderer, Daily Telegraph,
22 May 2003, sec B. p.31.
26
Susan Douglas and Meredith Michaels, The Mommy Myth - The
Idealization of Motherhood and How it has Undermined Women (New York:
Free Press, 2004), 154-5.
27
Ibid.
28
CBS News, January 9, 1989; cited in Douglas et al., 155.
29
NBC News, Oct. 29, 1988; cited in Douglas et al., 156.
30
Douglas et al., 160.
31
John Hartley, JUVENATION News, Girls and Power in News, Gender
and Power, ed. Cynthia Carter, Gill Branston and Stuart Allen, (London:
Routledge, 1998), 47-70.
32
Bob Woffinden, Against the Odds, Daily Telegraph, 11 May 2001, sec.
2177.
33
Ken Norman, Donna Anthony, 18 November, 1998, (24 April 2005).
<www.portia.org/chapter04/anthony.html>.
34
Dr Theodore Dalrymple, Roy Meadow Profile, Daily Telegraph, 14
December, 2003, sec. Op Ed.
35
Jennie Lusk, Modern New Mexican neonaticide: Tranquilizing with this
jewel/ the torments of confusion, Texas Journal of Women and the Law
11(2001):1. 93-130.
36
Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death, (New York: Penguin Books,
1985), 155-156.
37
Julie Brienza, When the bough breaks: Can justice be served in
neonaticide cases? Trial 33 (1997): 13-17.
164 Monstrous Mothers and the Media
______________________________________________________________
References
Batt, John, Stolen Innocence - The Story of Sally Clark. London: Ebury Press,
2004.
Brienza, Julie. When the bough breaks: Can Justice be served in neonaticide
cases? Trial. 33 (1997): 13-17.
Summers, Anne, The End of Equality, Work, Babies and Womens Choices in
21st Century Australia. Milsons Point, NSW: Random House, 2003.
Nicola Goc 165
______________________________________________________________
Surette, Ray, Media, Crime, and Criminal Justice - Images and Realities.
California: Wadsworth Publishing Company, 1998.
Wykes, Maggie, News, Crime and Culture. London: Pluto Press, 2001.
Of Monsters, Masturbators and Markets: Autoerotic Desire,
Sexual Exchange and the Cinematic Serial Killer
Greg Tuck
Abstract
Of all the sexual behaviours to gain cinematic visibility since the
liberalisations of the 1960s, masturbation seems to have taken the longest to
establish itself. However, rather than this increased visibility reflecting either
a simple relaxation of attitudes, or a postmodern, ironic attitude to sexuality,
many if not most direct representations continue to promote a negative view
of masturbation. This paper argues that this attitude is informed as much by
the anti-masturbation hysteria of the eighteenth and nineteenth century as by
contemporary attitudes to the practice. In particular, it will discuss why
representations of masturbation are employed to demonstrate the perverse
sexuality of the serial killer, a lone individual caught in a spiral of ever
increasing insanity, alienation, sadism and masturbation. What seems
particularly monstrous about their masturbation is the total consumption and
objectification of the victim by the serial killer is merely an activity that
facilitates a consumption of the self. A reading of the behaviour of Carl
Stargher (Vincent DNofrio) the serial killer of The Cell (Tarsem Singh,
USA, 2000) will be presented, which maps the alienated and monstrous
autoeroticism of the serial killer. It will suggest that rather than exceptional
these masturbating serial killers are merely an extreme reflection and
metaphor of a more general anxiety regarding the autonomy of the self-
pleasuring lone individual of both modernity and the market economy.
Likewise, rather than suggesting an emergent postmodern attitude to sexual
autonomy, this anxiety is as old as the free market itself.
Key Words:
Masturbation, Autoeroticism, Serial-Killers, Insanity, Alienation,
Consumption, Individual, Market Economy, Postmodernism
Concurrent with both the age of reason and rise of market relations
an anti-masturbation hysteria began that ragged across both Europe and
America for over two hundred years. Whilst history rarely offers us clear
dates for such shifts, with the anonymous publication in 1715 of a pamphlet
entitled Onania, or The Heinous Sin of pollution and All its Frightful
Consequences, in Both Sexes considered, with physical and spiritual advice
to those who have already injured themselves by this abominable practice, 11
the idea that masturbation was not only sinful but that it caused physical and
mental disease was establish. Onania combined the absolutist morality of the
bible, particularly the condemnation of Onans spilt seed (Genesis 38 4-10),
with the quasi-empirical Ancient Greek model of the bodily humours
developed between 500BCE to around 200 AD, to imply that the loss of vital
fluids, in both male and female masturbation, was both bad and dangerous.
Unlike the emphasis on balance inherent to the humoral model as it had
previously been understood, any loss was now considered dangerous.
Accumulation of fluids, not their balanced expenditure was the key to a
healthy life and the body was more and more viewed as an ideal rather than
material system, something that was owned rather than lived, lost rather than
experienced.
By 1750 the support offered to these ideas by the eminent Swiss
physician, Tissot had established the dangerous effects of masturbation as a
medical fact. Even that arch rationalist Immanuel Kant defined Onanism as
an abuse of the sexual faculty [by which] a man sets aside his person and
degrades himself below the level of animals [] and no longer deserves to
be a person. 12 By Victorian times this hysteria had reached epidemic
proportions. Now the cures on offer were no longer limited to potions and
pamphlets but included forms of bondage clothing, toothed anti erection
rings, genital cages and even barbaric surgical intervention such as suturing
closed the foreskin, cauterisation of sensitive tissue, and even castration and
clitoridectomy. There were obviously a number of factors involved in this
phenomenon. The rise in literacy and the growing popularity of sexually
explicit literature, the development of singular rather than collective
bedrooms, the fear of sexually transmitted diseases, all undoubtedly
contributed to the ideological notion that masturbation was on the increase.
However, as with Jamesons insistence on the mutually determining role of
economic, social and sexual logic, of particular note was the rise of the
market economy, which developed and promoted a notion of the free
individual that was difficult to confine to the economic sphere. As the
historian Thomas Laqueur has suggested,
176 Of Monsters, Masturbators and Markets
______________________________________________________________
the debate over masturbation that raged from the
eighteenth century onwards might best be understood as
part of the more general debate about the unleashing of
desire upon which a commercial economy depended and
about the possibilities of human community under these
circumstances - a sexual version of the classic Adam
Smith problem.13
Notes
1
Timothy Taylor, The Prehistory of Sex, (New York: Bantam Books, 1996),
p.182.
2
Anthony Giddens, The Transformation of Intimacy: Sexuality, Love and
Eroticism in Modern Societies. (Cambridge: Polity Press. 1992), p.16.
3
Shere Hite, Women as Revolutionary Agents of Change: The Hite Reports,
1972-1993. (London: Bloomsbury, 1993), p.54.
4
Frederic Jameson, Postmodernism: or, The Cultural Logic of Late
Capitalism. (London: Verso, 1991)
5
Engels, cited in Jameson, Fredric, The Ideologies of Theory: Essays 1971-
1986 Volume 2, Syntax of History (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota
Press 1988).
1988, p.211.
6
Louis Althusser, For Marx. (London: New Left Books, 1977), p.113.
7
Fredric Jameson Postmodernism: or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism.
(London: Verso, 1991) p.47
8
Ibid., p. ix.
9
Ibid., p.ix.
10
Peter Lewis Allen The Wages of Sin: Sex and Disease, Past and
Present.(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000) p. 80.
11
Anonymous, Onania, or the Heinous Sin of Self-Pollution, and all its
Frightful Consequences, in Both Sexes, Considered. 8th Edition. (London:
Thomas Crouch Booksellers,1723) 1.
12
Immanuel Kant cited in: Sobel, Alan. Philosophies of Masturbation, <-
http:// www.uno.edu/~asoble/pages/masturb.htm> (29 November 2000).
13
Thomas Lacquer, The Social Evil, the Solitary Vice and Pouring Tea, in:
P. Bennett and V. A. Rosario, (eds) Solitary Pleasures: The Historical,
Literary and Artistic Discourses of Autoeroticism. (London: Routledge,
1995) p.157
14
Karl Marx, Capital, Volume One. (Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing
House, 1961)pp.71-84.
15
Ibid.,69-83.
16
Ibid., 422-423.
184 Of Monsters, Masturbators and Markets
______________________________________________________________
References
Allen, Peter Lewis, The Wages of Sin: Sex and Disease, Past and Present.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000
Althusser, Louis, For Marx. London: New Left Books, 1977
Laqueur, Thomas, The Social Evil, the Solitary Vice and Pouring Tea, in:
P. Bennett and V. A. Rosario, (eds) Solitary Pleasures: The Historical,
Literary and Artistic Discourses of Autoeroticism. London: Routledge, 1995
Miscellaneous Monsters
(They can be evil, male, female, but most importantly
beware, they can be cute)
Nobodys Meat: Freedom through Monstrosity in
Contemporary British Fiction
Ben Barootes
Abstract
A free woman in an unfree society will be a monster. Thus spake Angela
Carter. On the surface, this statement seems to suggest that a free woman is
demonized by her unliberated society. A different reading, however, reveals a
deeper truth: in order that a woman may be free within an unfree society, she
must first be monstrous. It is her monstrosity that which separates and
distances her from society that enables the woman to escape her social
shackles. As Fay Weldons The Life and Loves of a She Devil demonstrates,
an ugly woman is not bound to a society that values beauty and the
helplessness of women. Carters fiction, specifically the short stories
contained in The Bloody Chamber, addresses how monstrous women
vampires, tigresses, and werewolves are freed from such bonds as time and
sexual characterization. Carter further explores this concept in her novel
Nights at the Circus wherein she examines how even the seemingly
monstrous female can find not only liberation but also power and control.
Jeannette Wintersons Sexing the Cherry warns of those who go too far: a
monstrous woman whose expressions of her free will amount to death and
destruction. Freedom through monstrosity is not limited to women alone
other marginalized groups and individuals can also achieve sovereignty by
embracing their (often imposed) monstrous nature. This is the case for both
Saladin Chamcha and the non-Anglo-Saxon youth of London in Salman
Rushdies The Satanic Verses. Whether the monster is a woman or an
immigrant, natural or constructed, these texts all argue that freedom is gained
through the acceptance and celebration of ones own monstrosity.
Keywords:
Woman, womanhood, freedom, literature, she-devil, vampire, autonomy
She realizes that she is no mere morsel; she is more than breasts and rump.
Having accepted her monstrous assertive role, she takes to her hysteric helm.
She becomes one of the women who grab their sexuality and fight back;
her sexuality becomes active (rather than passive or suppressed
altogether).31 Dead, passive, inert meat is transformed into living, lively
flesh. The passive voice gives way to the active: rather than being forced, she
chooses to spend her nights between the paws of the tender wolf.32
In the Company of Wolves symbolizes the suppression of
sexuality by the clothing worn by each. It is the veil society places over the
characters (both female and male) sexual (animal, monstrous) natures.
Carters Red Riding Hood first tears off her own clothes, throwing them into
Ben Barootes 193
______________________________________________________________
the fire to be followed by the wolfs wear. She thus liberates her sensuality,
her sexuality, her desire. Shirking passivity, she becomes - if not aggressive -
assertive. She confronts the devouring sensuality (both the interior and
exterior wolves) and laughs at it full in the face.33 Rendering the threat null,
she embraces it and gains power, strength and a new awareness of both self
and other.34 After gaining sexual autonomy, the heroine, as an active
subject, can help the wolf to lose the false skin that covers his (true) self. Her
newly gained freedom is passed on to her (former) assailant - he too is
released from the bonds of phallocentric hegemony. She transforms the initial
(traditional) sexual relationship - male aggressor and passive female - into
one of mutual desire. By levelling the sexual hierarchy, the heroine slays the
carnivore incarnate. She rids the situation of carne - transform[s] meat
into flesh35 - and, removing the socially fabricated role of the male,
renders tender the wolf, makes him her companion rather than her attacker.
Throughout these tales, we are reminded that the road to
emancipation can be littered with the corpses of the oppressors, paved with
the cobble-bones of the unfree. The Marquis de Sade (who found freedom in
his own monstrous way) wrote that the only way to gain complete freedom is
through the utter domination and obliteration of the other.36 This is reflected
in the sexual practices of these women - one of the primary means whereby
these devilish dames actualize their freedom. To engage in an act of sex with
these women leads to the end of ones own self: as Carter puts it they only
[know] one kind of consummation.37 Ruths romp with Carver, the half-wit
groundskeeper, causes the senior citizen to have a fit and she leaves him lay
in a pool of his own excrement.38 The man is entirely debased by Ruths
process of release.
Wintersons Dog-Woman follows suit; she devours the two men
with whom she has sexual contact. At one point, an intrepid lover attempts to
mate with the mongrel matron. Her vastness proves an impediment. In an
effort to improve the situation, she flexes her sexual muscles; as a result the
man is sucked entirely within her, balls and everything.39 Consummation
indeed. When a Puritan hails the Dog-Woman and requests that she perform
oral sex upon him, she obliges him as best she can. However, her physical
characteristics - her mountainous body, her flat nose, heavy eyebrows, her
scarce and broken teeth, all surrounded by a deeply scarred face - have led
her to an existence outside the realm of human sexuality (repressed or
otherwise).40 Understandably, she does not comprehend the practices and
motions of a sexual relationship: she believes the phallus becomes detached
during copulation and produces the new life in the womans body.41 She thus
assumes that the male member, once having been chomped and detached,
will simply - though slowly - grow anew.42 The Dog-Woman terminates any
future fuckery for her fellated fellow.
194 Nobodys Meat
______________________________________________________________
Echoing the Marquis, Carter stresses the necessary subjugation of
the other so that a woman may achieve and further her own liberation:
Notes
1
Angela Carter, The Sadeian Woman and the Ideology of Pornography (New
York: Pantheon, 1978), 27.
2
Angela Carter, In the Company of Wolves, The Bloody Chamber
(London: Penguin Books, 1979), 111. According to Hlne Cixous,
patriarchal Western society encourages woman to avoid putting oneself in
such a position: Above all, dont go into the forest (Cixous, Sorties, 68).
3
Fay Weldon, The Life and Loves of a She Devil (Chatham, Kent: Sceptre,
1983), 144.
4
Ibid., 8.
5
Ibid., 11.
6
Ibid., 24.
7
Ibid., 47.
8
Ibid., 131-3
9
Ibid., 130.
10
Angela Carter, The Lady of the House of Love, The Bloody Chamber
(London: Penguin, 1979), 94.
11
Ibid., 95.
12
Ibid., 97.
13
Ibid., 95.
14
Ibid., 97.
15
Ibid., 97.
16
Ibid., 106.
17
Ibid., 93.
18
Ibid.
19
Weldon, 88, 93, 121, 130,178, 198, and 213.
Ben Barootes 197
______________________________________________________________
20
Ibid., 131-2.
21
Carter, The Bloody Chamber, 103.
22
Hlne Cixous, Sorties: Out and Out: Attacks/Ways Out/Forays, The
Newly Born Woman, trans. Betsy Wing (Minneapolis: University of
Minnesota Press, 1986), 71.
23
Ibid.
24
Carter, The Bloody Chamber, 115.
25
Elizabeth Vandiver, Female Monsters and Monstrous Females, Classical
Mythology (Chantilly, VA: The Teaching Company, 2000).
26
Jeanette Winterson, Sexing the Cherry (Toronto: Vintage, 1989), 19.
27
Angela Carter, The Tigers Bride, The Bloody Chamber (London:
Penguin, 1979), 64.
28
Ibid., 67.
29
Angela Carter, In the Company of Wolves, The Bloody Chamber
(London: Penguin, 1979), 110.
30
Ibid., 118.
31
Merja Makinen, Angela Carters The Bloody Chamber and the
Decolonization of Feminine Sexuality, Feminist Review 42 (Autumn 1992):
3 and 4.
32
Carter, The Bloody Chamber, 118.
33
Carter, The Bloody Chamber, 118.
34
Makinen, 10. Cf. Cixous argument that the other is necessarily connected
to, associated and interacts with the self (Cixous, Sorties, 71).
35
Ibid., 11.
36
Carter, The Sadeian Woman, 117.
37
Carter, The Bloody Chamber, 103.
38
Weldon, 60.
39
Winterson, 109.
40
Ibid., 29 and 17.
41
Ibid., 38.
42
Ibid., 37.
43
Carter, The Sadeian Woman, 27. Hearkening back to Classical foundations:
the Greek historian Herodotus refers to the Amazons as androktones -
killers of men - from the Scythian oiropata (Histories, 4.110.1).
44
Winterson, 133.
45
Ibid., 62-3.
46
Ibid., 88.
47
Hlne Cixous, The Laugh of the Medusa, trans. Keith Cohen and Paula
Cohen, New French Feminisms, ed. Elaine Marks and Isabelle de Courtivron
(New York: Schocken Books, 1981), 249.
48
Carter, The Sadeian Woman, 90.
198 Nobodys Meat
______________________________________________________________
49
Winterson, 37.
50
Carter, The Sadeian Woman, 138.
51
Salman Rushdie, The Satanic Verses (Toronto: Vintage, 1988), 283-5.
52
Ibid., 298.
53
Ibid., 304.
54
Weldon, 49.
55
Rushdie, 95.
56
Ibid.
57
Ibid., 295.
58
Ibid., 95.
59
Hlne Cixous, The Laugh of the Medusa, 253.
References
Weldon, Fay. The Life and Loves of a She Devil. Chatham, Kent:
Sceptre, 1983.
Niall Scott
Abstract
The recent release of Metallicas documentary Some Kind of Monster and
the proclamation of the bands identity as This Monster Lives provides an
explicit statement of a familiar theme of monstrosity in the culture
surrounding Heavy Metal. This notion of monstrosity is linked to conceptions
and images of human evil evident in lyrics and art work amongst other Metal
themes. In this paper I will explore Kants conception of radical evil and the
evil in human nature in relation to discourses of evil and human nature in
Heavy Metal culture. One of Kants discussions on evil In Religions within
the boundaries of pure Reason alone sees it in terms of a vice in the
predisposition to humanity. He describes this as the human inclination to
create a worth for oneself in the opinion of others occasioned by the attempts
of others to gain a hated superiority of over us. Releases by bands such as
Slayer (God hates us All), Deicide, Metallica , Hatebreed and Marilyn
Manson to name but a few, provide opportunities for an exegesis of Kants
conception of the evil in human nature as well as a critique of it. I argue that
the commitment to the celebration of the monstrous in Heavy Metal lyrics is
ambiguous. It can be read as a positive pursuit of human identity, or is
dependent on human identity in the religious history of (satanic) evil. The
possibility of a genuine commitment to the diabolical is examined in the light
of Kants theory of evil.
Keywords:
Kant, evil, Heavy Metal, Metallica, Slayer, diabolical, Satan satanic.
Notes
1
Kerry King, Slayer, Disciple God Hates Us All American Records, (2001)
2
James Hetfield, Metallica, Frantic, St Anger, Creeping Death Music &
EMI Blackwood music (2003)
3
Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky, Metallica, Some Kind of Monster (Los
Angeles California: Paramount Home Video, 2005) DVD recording
4
Joe Berlinger and Greg Milner, Metallica, This Monster Lives, (London,
England: Robson Books, 2004)
5
Marilyn Manson The Golden Age of Grotesque (Nothin/interscope Records
2003)
6
Carl A. Raschke, Painted Black: From Drug Killings to Heavy Metal- The
Alarming True story of How Satanism Is Terrorisuing Our Communitites.
(New York: Harper and Row,1990) 175, quoted in Robert Walser, Running
with the Devil Power Gender, and Madness in Heavy Metal Music (Wesleyan
University press: Middletown, Connetticut 1993) p.142
7
I am full aware that there is limited space here so I will not be dealing in
detail with the vast subculture that exists in Scandinavian Black Metal which
some may think deserves more attention. For those readers wanting to
investigate this further, I recommend the text Lords of Chaos, The Bloody
Rise of the Satanic Metal Underground Michael Moynihan and Didrik
Soderlind, (USA Feral House, 2003)
8
Immanuel Kant, Groundwork to the Metaphysics of Morals, 4:421, Ed. by
Laura Denis, Ontario, Canada: Broadview editions 2005)
9
There is much more to this issue, but here I just want to introduce the
Categorical imperative in order to demonstrate its relationship to radical evil.
For a detailed discussion and critique on Kants universal law, I recommend
Allan Woods Kants Ethical Thought (Cambridge University Press:
Cambridge 1999),
10
Immanuel Kant, Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason,
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1998) 6:29, footnote. (henceforth
cited as Rel.)
11
Seiriol Morgan The Missing Formal Proof of the Universal Human
Propensity to Evil in Kants Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason
Philosophical Review, 114, 1, (2005) forthcoming. I strongly recommend
this article to any reader interested in looking deeper into the contradictions
Niall Scott 211
______________________________________________________________
and deep problems in Kants argument on radical evil. I do not dare delve too
far into this territory here, as it takes this piece beyond my original aims.
12
Ibid.
13
James Hetfield, Lars Ulrich, Cliff Burton and Kirk Hammett, Master of
Puppets, Master of Puppets (Polygram Records 1988)
14
Rel 6:29-30
15
Rel 6:26
16
Rel 6:29
17
The Struggle Within, Metallica (The Black Album)
18
Bill White, Metallica Doc Strips Down Monsters of Rock to Egomaniacal
Pussycats, Seattle Post Special to the Post-Intelligencer, July 30, 2004.
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/movies/184138_metallica30q.html
19
Immanuel Kant Rel.6:33
20
Jeff Hanneman and Kerry King South of Heaven South of Heaven
Slayer:Def Jam Records (1988)
21
Henry Allison, Idealism and Freedom, (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1996 ) 175
22
King Diamond, Mercyful Fate, Evil Melissa, Roadrunner records (1983)
23
Kerry King, New Faith, God Hates Us All, Slayer: American Recordings,
(2001)
24
Rel 6:35
25
Morgan The Missing Formal Proof of the Universal Human Propensity to
Evil in Kants Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason
Philosophical Review, 114, 1, (2005) forthcoming
26
http://home3.inet.tele.dk/borgholt/articles/theyre_only_horrorstories.htm
Author and date unknown (14 January 2005)
27
Chris Campion In the face of Death The Observer, Feb 20, 2005
28
Keith Kahn-Harris Black Metal Philosophy Terrorizer magazine, 128,
February 2005.
29
Robert Walser, Running with the Devil Power Gender, and Madness in
Heavy Metal Music (Wesleyan University press: Middletown, Connetticut
1993), 161
30
Walser, 163
31
Deena Weinstein, Heavy Metal The Music and Its Culture (DA Capo Press
2000)
For further Discussion on the discourse of heavy metal see the article:
Adorno and Metal by Thomas C. Gannon at:
http://www.usd.edu/~tgannon/hm.html (06/08/03)
32
Kahn-Harris,
33
Bill White, Metallica doc strips down monsters of rock to egomaniacal
pussycats Seattle post special to the post intelligencer, Friday, July 30, 2004
212 God Hates Us All
______________________________________________________________
References
Allison, Henry. Idealism and Freedom, Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1996
Berlinger, Joe and Milner, Greg. Metallica, This Monster Lives, London,
England: Robson Books, 2004
Berlinger, Joe and Sinofsky, Bruce. Metallica, Some Kind of Monster Los
Angeles California: Paramount Home Video, 2005, DVD recording
Campion, Chris. In the Face of Death The Observer, Sunday Feb 20, 2005
Raschke, Carl A. Painted Black: From Drug Killings to Heavy Metal- The
Alarming True story of How Satanism Is Terrorisuing Our Communitites.
New York: Harper and Row, 1990, quoted in Robert Walser, Running with
the Devil Power Gender, and Madness in Heavy Metal Music, Wesleyan
University press: Middletown, Connetticut 1993.
Walser, Robert. Running with the Devil Power Gender, and Madness in
Heavy Metal Music, Wesleyan University Press: Middletown, Connetticut,
1993.
Weinstein, Deena. Heavy Metal The Music and Its Culture, U.S.A.: DA Capo
Press, 2000.
Maja Brzozowska-Brywczyska
Abstract
The paper focuses on the ambivalent power of cuteness and offers a
preliminarily sketched map indicating some of the possible intersections of
cuteness and monstrosity. The main idea is that these two - seemingly distant
and contradicted - realms can be read/understood one through the other. The
basis for such an assumption is to be found both in cuteness ambivalent
aesthetics and multidimensional ethics. With respect to aesthetics, cuteness
can be found both in the anatomy of a child and a freak (cuteness involves a
certain malformation and exaggeration of infantile aesthetic diagram). As for
ethics, cuteness can be thought of as a sweet coating that makes it easier to
swallow bitter pill; it is in other words able to change meanings of
ambivalent and simply negative issues, like violence or sexuality. Question
that arises in the light of the above-mentioned inconsistencies of cuteness is:
Can we define the nature of cuteness as transformative - shifting the
monstrosity not even to the realm of beauty (for a cruel beauty is something
within the spectrum of monstrous emanations), but to the very space that is
thought of as absolutely pure and sweet?
Keywords:
Cuteness, monstrosity, otherness, popular culture
Such text has two main features - it is excessive and obvious, and
the seemingly paradoxical mixture - of overflowing semiosis and refuse of
in-depth analysis - makes popular culture text practically bottomless well of
meanings (within the limits set by intentio operis). My general assumption is
that both the cute and the monstrous can be read as such popular texts.
Different and unexpected usages of these two concepts add to their
definitions, challenging the cleanness of the boundary raised between the
cute and the monstrous. How much cute can the monster bear to maintain his
monstrosity and escape from blurring into virtual nonexistence? How
monstrous should the cutie become to turn amusement into terror and cross
the boundary of monsters realm? Are the possible meaning transitions some
signum temporis revealing the very ambiguities of our culture? These are
only some of possible questions that the suggestion of certain cute-monstrous
reciprocity evokes. And it may be so that the specifics behind the popular
culture can shed some light on the curious nature of cuteness/monstrosity.
Common definitions of cutie and monster (as extracted from the
most recognizable icons of both these species - say Hello Kitty and Cthulhu)
reveal the human tendency to assume aesthetic/ethic coherence and disclose
the innate inclination to structure the world arranging the elements of it in
sets of binary oppositions. Pure-type monster, though horrifying and
abominable, though occupying the other side of the norm, the grotesque,
impenetrable and dangerous through the looking-glass world, still has got
more in common with the order than with the chaos. By taking place (being
placed?) on the edge, on the boundary, the monster protects us from crossing
it by the simple fact of showing (Latin monstrare) where it lies. Due to the
assumed coherence between monstrous looks and behaviour, monster as such
is predictable, mainly because of his being a portent of danger. The same,
216 Monstrous/Cute. Notes on the Ambivalent Nature of Cuteness
______________________________________________________________
though aiming at opposite direction, applies to cute. Cute is (or maybe should
be?) predictable because its safe aesthetics connotes harmless ethics.
The openness of cute concept enables us to read its aesthetics, its
surface without linking it to prescribed cute ethics. It can be otherwise.
Monstrosity of cuteness may be concluded either on the basis of its
appearance or its behaviour leading - moreover - to disturbing as well as
ironic conclusions (monstrous cutie can be thought of either as a threat or a
trifle). In order to welcome the cute as a multivocal discourse we need a set
of its readings where the sacred harmony between looks and behaviour is
hardly ever sustained.
Cute is first and foremost a circular concept. Frances Richards, in
her Fifteen theses on the Cute3, noted that as a means of softening,
neutralizing the sharp, threatening concepts it works inevitably as a sort of
pendulum swinging to and fro, and thus being able to play its role only up to
a certain point, where the sweetness becomes a mock and a pitiful or ironic
alter-ego of itself. Cute can therefore serve as multipurpose
descriptive/interpretative tool endowing its objects either with more positive
or ambivalent connotations. To make cute a multifaceted concept we need the
following instruction:
4. Scheming Cute
The main source of cute transformative potential seems to lie - as
suggested above - in its aesthetic features, so the main strategies of
evoking/revealing the monstrosity in cuteness will also base on its
appearance. The assumption of the ethic/aesthetic coherence allows here to
create not always cute scenarios telling stories not only about the monstrosity
of cute but also of its creator.
In his Biological homage to MM, Stephen Jay Gould18 sketched the
transformation of MM stating that: as Mickeys personality softened, his
appearance changed. The change at work is progressive juvenalization.
Gould draws on the concept of Kindchenschema proposed by a
German ethologist, Konrad Lorenz. According to this idea, features of
juvenility serve as a trigger releasing the mechanisms for affection and
nutrition in adult humans.19 Among the Kindchenschema releasers are:
5. Framed Cute
The domain, where most of the definitional play and counter-play
take part is popular culture, or - more correctly - various cultures of popular
culture seen as a heterogenic whole, an open text, a pleasure machine. Much
has been said about popular culture, but what I would like to stress as a
possible trait in grasping the paradox of cute/monstrous division, is that its
nature is that of parasite in an endless search for a new feeder. It sounds like
a clich that postmodern culture is all about transgression and ambivalence,
but these two come not only as a threat. The elements of social life exorcised
so frantically beyond the boundaries of shared - comprehensible -
community, are now welcomed back. The uncanny, the unthinkable, the
other, the paradoxical seem to construct a strange whole becoming a method
of copying with the reality (quite similar in nature).
The most natural environment of monstrous readings of cute seems
to be a culture of alien-nation.27 It emerges as a result of fascination with
strangeness, freakiness, otherness and ambivalence. It is a site of combining
224 Monstrous/Cute. Notes on the Ambivalent Nature of Cuteness
______________________________________________________________
together this, what seems to be mutually exclusive, of familiarizing this,
what cannot be neither understood nor accepted within the existing socio-
cultural frames. Still, it would be a mistake to equal these techniques of
embracing otherness with a birth of new global morality. The reading of
alien-nation culture as a cultural crusade against intolerance and xenophobia
is only one of the possibilities and not necessarily the most correct one,
because
Notes
1
Readerly text is - in brief essentially passive, receptive, and demands
acceptance of the meanings provided, although is quite undemanding of its
reader, while the writerly text challenges its reader to make sense out of it on
his own, to try to decipher it, to take part in the meaning construction. John
Fiske refers to popular culture texts as producerly texts; John Fiske,
Understanding Popular Culture (London & New York: Routledge, 1995)
2
Ibid, 104
3
Frances Richards, Fifteen theses on the Cute, [article on line] Cabinet
Magazine 4 (2001), accessed 14 February 2005; available from:
http://www.cabinetmagazine.org/issues/4/cute.php
4
Ibid
5
Sharon Kinsella,Cuties in Japan, [chapter on line] in Women, Media, and
Consumption in Japan, eds. Lise Skov and Brian Moeran (Richmond, Surrey:
Curzon Press, 1995), accessed 14 February 2005, available from:
http://www.kinsellaresearch.com/Cuties.html
6
Ibid
7
Daniel Harris, Cute, Quaint, Hungry and Romantic: The Aesthetics of
Consumerism, Cambridge: Da Capo Press, 2001 p. 4
8
Kurt Brereton,The Pathetic Manifesto, 2000, (15 April 2005).
<http://www.kurtbrereton.com/pdf/patheticmanifesto.pdf>
226 Monstrous/Cute. Notes on the Ambivalent Nature of Cuteness
______________________________________________________________
9
Harvey Roy Greenberg,Heimlich Maneuvers: On A Certain Tendency of
Horror and Speculative Cinema, PSYART: A Hyperlink Journal for the
Psychological Study of the Arts, 1 October 2001 (31 December 2001).
<http://www.clas.ufl.edu/ipsa/journal/2001_greenberg04.shtml>
10
www.patriciapiccinini.net
11
Linda Michael, We are family
12
More examples of anti-cute: Jamie Raap, Cute: a container insensitive to
content and context, 2004 (14 February 2005).
<http://www.zeitguised.com/wear/work/cute/cute.html>
13
See: Marek Krajewski, Kultury kultury popularnej (Pozna: Wydawnictwo
Naukowe UAM, 2003)
14
Raap
15
Though two of them are thieves, one plays a playboy, other is psychopath,
yet another suffers from terrible dandruff; one happens to be completely
nutty and has a glass eye, other has serious dental problem, and yet another
seemingly mechanic lacks hands, although is equipped with most necessary
tools. Cruelty? Camp? Funny? Freaky?
16
People watching HTF are often aware of the ambiguity of this cartoon
gore/splutter, but equally often express the following opinions: it is so unreal
and the cartoons dont die for real, so why worry; its funny seeing
maltreated Cuddles, no one will cry for him after all, its just a parody of
nice, neat Disney fables. People watching HTF supposedly arent a group
sadists or psychopaths. It is (again supposedly) the ironic gaze, knowing the
games name and distanced attitude towards reality that makes it possible to
laugh at eyeballs dangling from the sockets, scorched fur and twisted limbs.
Or isnt it?
17
Harris, 5
18
In: Stephen Jay Gould, Niewczesny pogrzeb Darwina. Wybr esejw
(Warszawa: Prszyski I S-ka, 1999)
19
I (following Goulds argument) leave aside this presentation the issue of
whether or not this affectionate response to babyish features is truly innate or
learnt through the process of socialization. It is suffice to say that the so
called cute response applies to most of us.
20
Ibid, 261
21
Unfortunately the issue of selling cute is to complex and dense to be
sensibly encompassed within this short sketch, but it is worth stressing that a
whole fancy goods industry exploits the emotional response the cute things
achieve from their viewers and owners - for it has the potential to change an
act of buying into an act of adopting the cute product. And this shift has
important consequences. See e.g. Jamie Rapp, Sharon Kinsella and Daniel
Harris (references)
Maja Brzozowska-Brywczyska 227
______________________________________________________________
22
Harris, 6
23
Raap
24
Ibid
25
Which, when confronted with the title: myths and metaphors of enduring
evil makes a very promising metaphor indeed and a very dangerous
transformation of monster and its definition.
26
Richards
27
Krajewski, 105
28
Krajewski, 105-106
29
Michel Foucault, Filozofia, historia, polityka. Wybr pism (Warszawa-
Wrocaw: PWN 2000), 78
30
Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, Monster culture (Seven Theses) in Monster
Theory: Reading Culture ed. Jeffrey J. Cohen (Minneapolis & London:
University of Minnesota Press, 1996) 6
31
Michel Foucault, Of other spaces , Diacritics, 31 (1986): 27
References
Brereton, Kurt Pathetic Manifesto 2000.
<http://www.kurtbrereton.com/pdf/patheticmanifesto.pdf> (15 April 2005)