Monsters and Monstrosity-Instructors explain the new ArtsOne cluster

As part of a new ArtsOne Cluster entitled Monsters and Monstrosity, Professors Andre Loiselle and Craig McFarlane are looking to explain the sociological and cultural significance of The Monster.

The cluster will examine how Monsters have been depicted through various mediums, and what we can learn about ourselves by studying these portrayals of Monstrosity.

McFarlane will be teaching The Sociology of the Weird and Apocalyptic, while Loiselle will be instructing Movie Monstrosity: A Creepy Fascination with the Abnormal.  Both Loiselle and McFarlane took the time to explain why studying the Monster can be a frightfully telling endeavor.

Craig McFarlane (Sociology): The Sociology of the Weird and Apocalyptic

Does your interest in fictional portrayals of monsters and mass devastation stem from your background as a Sociologist?

I’m somewhat of a pessimist by nature so I’m naturally drawn to portrayals-be they real or fictional-of mass destruction. I think a lot of people are drawn to this as well: who didn’t watch hours and hours of 9/11 footage or stare at their TV screens dumbfounded during the recent Japanese tsunami? There isn’t much of a tradition within sociology that takes an interest in mass destruction; there are some people who study war, some people who study genocide, and some people who study natural disasters. But sociologists who study fictional accounts of mass destruction, such as me, are certainly in the minority. With respect to monsters, sociologists have always been obsessed with abnormality and deviancy. “Deviance” is one of the most popular sociology courses in nearly every department and the founding text of sociological method, Emile Durkheim’s “Rules of the Sociological Method,” distinguishes between normal and pathological social processes.

Can you give an example of how these fictional events and characters are a reflection of a greater sociological trend?

Max Weber, one of the early and important sociologists, has a famous thesis that modernity is characterized by what he calls “the disenchantment of the world.” What he meant by this is that the world is increasingly organized on rational schemes; people orient themselves to the world in increasingly rational ways, and so on. What this also means is that supernatural explanations of the world decline more or less in proportion as rational explanations increase. Most important for human behaviour is that there is a general and increasing disbelief in magic and religion. This view is increasingly challenged by contemporary sociologists, anthropologists, and philosophers, among others, often taking the point of departure with Charles Taylor’s-a Canadian philosopher, incidentally, who teaches at McGill-recent book “A Secular Age.” A lot of this work has been done under the heading of “post-secular” and seeks to understand and explain why religious belief has persisted through modernity and, indeed, seems to be on the increase.

In many ways, horror and science fiction are working within this dynamic. With horror, albeit not with the “torture porn” genre, we see a fascination with magical, mysterious, and religious powers that escape our understanding; that still haunt the world; that still haunt us in the dark. On the one hand, we “know” that there are no ghosts or demons out there, but, on the other hand, despite this knowledge, we are still afraid of them. If we weren’t afraid, why would we bother to pay any attention to horror? Likewise, with much science fiction, we’ve seen an interesting transition: early science fiction was utopian and progressive looking at how technology would improve our lives and deliver us into a better world; much contemporary science fiction is the complete opposite-apocalyptic and presenting us with an existential threat. That technology-which we made, of course-can turn on us and have its own desires including, perhaps, the desire to eradicate us, was rather remote in 1984 when “The Terminator” was released. But now, in 2012, where cars will happily parallel park themselves for us because, apparently, we don’t have the basic capacity to park our own cars anymore-or we’re just really lazy-the idea that intelligent machines might not like us is certainly rather feasible.  And, I think that it is noteworthy that the two most recent installments of “The Terminator” franchise aren’t about preventing the end of the world but, rather, portray its actual ending and portray life some time after the ending of the world. We’ve resigned ourselves, at least insofar as much recent science fiction is concerned, to the fact that we, humans, aren’t the sovereigns of the planet anymore or, at best, for not much longer. Of course, we don’t just need to fear the potential rise of the machines: we also need to fear that our industrial production systems will poison our food supply (think of the various swine and avian flues) or destroy the entirety of the planet (at least by our standards of living).

To look at it a little differently, the entire zombie genre, especially the recent “The Walking Dead,” is asking basic, fundamental questions of sociology: how do people form communities? How do strangers relate to one another? Why do we co-operate? What is the role of force, violence and power in social systems? How do we manage threats and risks? Contrary to what many people believe, the zombie genre-even in its apocalyptic form-is not about zombies; it’s about how strangers relate to one another and, more importantly, it is about the ontological priority of the family to all other forms of human associations. It’s a fundamentally conservative genre. But then, most horror on TV and in the movies is also fundamentally conservative: think of the slasher movies of the seventies and eighties, which were largely about policing the sexuality of teenagers–you know who is going to die next; the people–especially the women–who just had sex.

What do you hope every student leaves your FYSM with?

Despite the actual content of the course-i.e., monsters, monstrosity, horror, and so on-the real goal of a First Year Seminar is to act as the university equivalent of high school “home room.” FYSM instructors are the primary point of contact our students have with the university. We are often put in the role of helping find the services they need and, to a large extent, helping them understand what university is all about. In my case, my goal when I teach FYSMs (I’ll also be teaching in the “Criminal Matters” cluster again next year) is to get students into the habit of (1) showing up to class, (2) doing the assigned reading, and (3) writing a lot. Thus, I’m not just interested in ensuring retention from first year to second year, but putting my students in a position where they will successfully graduate from their programs

In terms of the actual content of the course, I hope students come out of it with an appreciation of why popular culture is worthy of serious study. Our so-called “mindless entertainment” might be entertaining, but it certainly isn’t mindless!

Do you have a favourite Monster/Apocalyptic Genre or title? If so, why is it your favourite?

As my answers have likely suggested, I’m somewhat pessimistic. Not in the simple sense that I expect things to go bad, but that, overall, things can only go bad. This is tempered rather strongly with fatalism. For instance, as an intellectual exercise, I often wonder if human non-reproduction or even suicide is morally obligatory! A horror writer that adequately captures this sensibility–indeed, he even wrote a book of amateur philosophy on it called “The Conspiracy Against the Human Race“-is Thomas Ligotti. His most recent novel, “My Work Here Is Not Yet Done” is an especially good corrective to the sarcasm and irony of the workplace that you find in movies like “Office Space” or in TV shows like “The Office.” In terms of “weird fiction,” which wasn’t brought up in this interview, I quite like China Miéville’s work. I’m actually teaching his “The City & The City” in my “Power & Violence” FYSM in the “Criminal Matters” cluster. And, lastly, one of my favourite television shows–the “reimagined” “Battlestar Galactica.” “BSG” is the best show that has ever been made on war, terror, religion and politics, and whether or not humanity has any right to exist. It was, by far, the show that most ably captures the spirit of the Bush Era. Unfortunately for the story line, Obama won the Presidency partway through the final season of the series and the writers got caught up in the misleading ideology of hope. Perhaps if John McCain had won the Presidency, “Battlestar Galactica” would have had a far more impressive conclusion!

Andre Loiselle (Film Studies): Movie Monstrosity: A Creepy Fascination with the Abnormal

Why are films featuring Monsters important to study?  What can we learn from them?

Horror films, like other fictional forms that depict monsters, serve a complex and, one might argue, paradoxical function in society. From campfire ghost stories, late 18th/early 19th century gothic novels and Edgar Allan Poe’s tales of terrors to gory video games and contemporary zombie movies, monster narratives expose our demons so that we may confront them and come to terms with the disturbing thoughts, dreadful visions and paralyzing memories that haunt us. As such, they allow both individual anxieties and collective fears to be exorcized or at least temporarily contained. Not unlike the cathartic classical tragedies of ancient Greece (think of the monstrous Furies who relentlessly terrorize Orestes in Aeschylus’s The Eumenides [458BC]), terrifying movies and books provide an outlet through which we can purge our bloodcurdling torments.

But at the very same time – and this is the paradox – tales of terror also encourage the reader, spectator or gamer to indulge in a fascinatingly wicked spectacle of blood, gore, disgust and abjection. As civilized beings, we must always repress our basic animal instincts. We all have brutal, vengeful, perverse fantasies that we would never dare to act upon and that we barely ever talk about in mixed company. Horror fiction is one of the few cultural sites where we are permitted – however briefly – to wallow in those uncivilized urges. From this perspective, the monster is less the harmful threat that we are trying to contain, than the grotesque incarnation of the secret desires that we do have, but that we never express. Georges Bataille has argued that the Evil doer is attractive because s/he is “Sovereign”; s/he embodies freedom. The monster disregards our petty human rules and regulations, and does what it pleases – and we secretly envy this monstrous disregard for law and order. The guilty pleasure of horror is precisely that we identify, at least in part, with the evil freedom of the monster.

Horror fiction, and monster movies in particular, are worthy of scholarly attention for the very reason that they provide a heuristic tool through which we can explore, analyze and understand both our unsettling apprehensions and disturbing desires. In other words, tell me which monster movie you like and I will tell you who you are…

What is the goal of this FYSM?

The University is an environment in which students are encouraged to develop the critical distance necessary to consider analytically material that can be challenging and disquieting. This is how students learn to deal rationally with the exigencies of the increasingly complex and unpredictable world in which they live. I think that the small seminar setup of FYSM 1509 will offer the perfect space for students to start developing those critical skills. My hope is to create a safe and supportive environment in which students will feel comfortable and confident to examine material that is purposefully troubling.

Through a variety of exercises ranging from short movie reviews to more ambitious group projects, students will learn to write and speak lucidly and passionately about films that hopefully will both entertain and destabilize them.

But beyond movies, students will also be asked to consider the “real” monsters that roam the streets of our gothic city. One of the first projects the students will participate in is what I call – rather awkwardly – a “monstethnographic” research. In late October, they will be asked to observe the behavior of monsters in the streets of Ottawa! During the annual “zombie walk” or Halloween night, the students will survey and scrutinize the conduct of those who choose to be monsters for a day. They will report their findings to their peers in an attempt to understand the intentions and goals of this performance of monstrosity.

In contrast to this early – and admittedly frivolous – exploration of monstrosity as masquerade, a later exercise will require students to study those on which society imposes the label of monster. Beyond “reel” monsters, students will consider the question of who are the real monsters that haunt Canada in the early 21st century. I hope to give students great latitude in both the specific topics that they will study and the medium through which they will convey the results of their research. The First Year Seminar should provide a scholarly milieu conducive to such creative yet rigorous intellectual endeavors.

Do you have a favourite monster title? 

Hannibal Lector from Silence of the Lambs is a horrifying man. But he is also a fascinating and very attractive character. His intelligence, erudition and charisma mixed with his cold, calculating cruelty and abject cannibalism make him the perfect embodiment of Evil, as Bataille imagines it. Hannibal incarnates the sovereign monster who has the freedom to do what the rest of us, ordinary people, would never dare contemplate. As such, he is as hauntingly terrifying as he is mesmerizingly alluring.

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