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Why are we attracted to monsters?
No, I’m not talking about our love life. Ah, maybe I am. But that’s another post entirely.
We are drawn to monsters in our entertainment. Hannibal Lector. Dexter. Edward of TWILIGHT infamy, sparkles and all.
It is the allure of the forbidden. Hence the cover of the first TWILIGHT : outstretched hands holding a bright red apple. The eternal battle : “What I knew was right” vs. “What I wanted.”
We search for the humanity in the attractive monster : yes, he does terrible things, but never to me.
Samuel McCord chides the ghoul, Alice Wentworth, that Victor is basically a Walking Happy Meal to her. Bella is the same thing to Edward.
Should she have chosen Jacob, she would have had to walk on eggshells never to make him angry to escape the scars another mortal woman received who had the misfortune to love a werewolf.
Sure, vampires are sexy. And what a compliment that a sexy man wants your company when he could just as easily have you for dinner.
Our attraction to sexy vampires can be understood.
A vampire Megan Fox would be hard to refuse a nibble on the neck, if sips were all she planned to take. But the ghoul, Megan Fox, is hardly sexy when she develops an appetite for bad, and ultimately, good boys in JENNIFER’S BODY.
Vampires are the ultimate Bad Boy in many urban fantasies today.
Many women want to believe that the right woman could tame even a blood-thirsty monster … at least enough to be the ultimate protector, provider, and lover.
As a former counselor, I cannot stress enough how unrealistic and dangerous that is.
But it sells books.
It just isn’t true to the male nature. But it is a wish that is understandable since most of those novels are written by women –
Who have to guess at the nature of males as men have to with the nature of females.
But then there is our puzzling fascination with zombies.
Zombies embody an “all consuming evil” (pun intended.) A malevolent evil with no mercy, regard, or compassion … only hunger.
Worse.
If you are only infected instead of ingested, you become one of the hungry dead yourself! No sense of family, friend, or even of yourself.
And you develop terrible table manners!
Zombies are not unlike a force of Nature … and Nature has become unsettlingly dangerous these past months as we remember Japan, New Zealand, and Katrina.
So perhaps we are drawn to the zombie movie because the zombie reflects the all-too-real terrors in our newspaper headlines. Just as you cannot reason with a zombie, threaten its family or its further living … the same can be said of a terrorist.
Terrorists keep on coming until you kill them. The same can be said for the deranged killer who stalks into a schoolroom and begins to open fire with automatic weapons.
Zombies provide similar evils … but non-threatening since they could never exist. We can work out our fears of terrorists, muggers, and insane gunmen in the dark of the movie theater.
We can ask ourselves what would we do in a Zombie Apocalypse, who would we take with us, what we would take, and where would we go. In the unspoken thoughts of our minds, we translate that into a Nuclear War/Natural Disaster Apocalypse.
We identify with the survivors in the zombie movies. We want to believe that we would survive in such a crucible. And deep down that supports our fearful hope that we would survive should Nature, Nuclear War, or terrorism reign over our landscape.
Who would have thought it?
Zombies as therapy!
No, I’m not talking about our love life. Ah, maybe I am. But that’s another post entirely.
We are drawn to monsters in our entertainment. Hannibal Lector. Dexter. Edward of TWILIGHT infamy, sparkles and all.
It is the allure of the forbidden. Hence the cover of the first TWILIGHT : outstretched hands holding a bright red apple. The eternal battle : “What I knew was right” vs. “What I wanted.”
We search for the humanity in the attractive monster : yes, he does terrible things, but never to me.
Samuel McCord chides the ghoul, Alice Wentworth, that Victor is basically a Walking Happy Meal to her. Bella is the same thing to Edward.
Should she have chosen Jacob, she would have had to walk on eggshells never to make him angry to escape the scars another mortal woman received who had the misfortune to love a werewolf.
Sure, vampires are sexy. And what a compliment that a sexy man wants your company when he could just as easily have you for dinner.
Our attraction to sexy vampires can be understood.
A vampire Megan Fox would be hard to refuse a nibble on the neck, if sips were all she planned to take. But the ghoul, Megan Fox, is hardly sexy when she develops an appetite for bad, and ultimately, good boys in JENNIFER’S BODY.
Vampires are the ultimate Bad Boy in many urban fantasies today.
Many women want to believe that the right woman could tame even a blood-thirsty monster … at least enough to be the ultimate protector, provider, and lover.
As a former counselor, I cannot stress enough how unrealistic and dangerous that is.
But it sells books.
It just isn’t true to the male nature. But it is a wish that is understandable since most of those novels are written by women –
Who have to guess at the nature of males as men have to with the nature of females.
But then there is our puzzling fascination with zombies.
Zombies embody an “all consuming evil” (pun intended.) A malevolent evil with no mercy, regard, or compassion … only hunger.
Worse.
If you are only infected instead of ingested, you become one of the hungry dead yourself! No sense of family, friend, or even of yourself.
And you develop terrible table manners!
Zombies are not unlike a force of Nature … and Nature has become unsettlingly dangerous these past months as we remember Japan, New Zealand, and Katrina.
So perhaps we are drawn to the zombie movie because the zombie reflects the all-too-real terrors in our newspaper headlines. Just as you cannot reason with a zombie, threaten its family or its further living … the same can be said of a terrorist.
Terrorists keep on coming until you kill them. The same can be said for the deranged killer who stalks into a schoolroom and begins to open fire with automatic weapons.
Zombies provide similar evils … but non-threatening since they could never exist. We can work out our fears of terrorists, muggers, and insane gunmen in the dark of the movie theater.
We can ask ourselves what would we do in a Zombie Apocalypse, who would we take with us, what we would take, and where would we go. In the unspoken thoughts of our minds, we translate that into a Nuclear War/Natural Disaster Apocalypse.
We identify with the survivors in the zombie movies. We want to believe that we would survive in such a crucible. And deep down that supports our fearful hope that we would survive should Nature, Nuclear War, or terrorism reign over our landscape.
Who would have thought it?
Zombies as therapy!
***
Never thought of the similarities between zombies and terrorists until now.
ReplyDeleteAnd never understood why girls were attracted to bad boys. Never made sense to me.
A thoughtful analysis, Roland. Zombies probably mirror our sense of self in today's culture with so many poor souls stuck in mindless office jobs.
ReplyDeleteAlex:
ReplyDeleteInstinctual attraction I believe. The allure of the forbidden. It got Eve into all that trouble, too! LOL.
Milo:
I think you are right. To survive in grim situations, many people turn off their higher brain functions to retain some semblance of sanity.