Ologies with Alie Ward - Teratology (MONSTERS) with W. Scott Poole

Episode Date: October 26, 2023

Frankenstein’s Monster! Hungry ghosts! Moaning bloodsuckers! Goat draining goblins. Babadooks. Gorilla-whales. Slasher films. Body horror… and what these folk stories, films, and fandoms have to do about our hopes and fears. Also yes, you can watch monster movies as a job. Just ask the wonderfully charming and deeply informed Dr. W. Scott Poole, College of Charleston professor and author of “Monsters in America,” who teaches multiple courses on history and monster lore. We also cover: monsters on various continents, monsters as queer icons, horror vs. monsters, secret messages in monster movies, the edits that your government may not have wanted you to see, what to do if you suspect you have one under the bed, Hollywood production secrets, special effects makeup, and — as always — why we’re so horny for ghouls.Buy W. Scott Poole’s new book: Dark Carnivals: Modern Horror and the Origins of American EmpireBrowse more horror and pop culture books by W. Scott Poole including: Wasteland: The Great War and the Origins of Modern Horror, Monsters in America, and In the Mountains of Madness: The Life and Extraordinary Afterlife of H.P. LovecraftDonations went to the International Rescue Committee and Pet HelpersMore episode sources and linksSmologies (short, classroom-safe) episodesOther episodes you may enjoy: SPOOKTOBER episodes, Thanatology (DEATH & DYING), Desairology (MORTUARY MAKE-UP), Taphology (GRAVESITES), Vampirology (VAMPIRES), Fanthropology (FANDOM), Victimology (CRIME VICTIMS), Forest Entomology (CREEPY CRAWLIES), Forensic Ecology (NATURE DETECTIVE), Oneirology (DREAMS), Fearology (FEAR)Sponsors of OlogiesTranscripts and bleeped episodesBecome a patron of Ologies for as little as a buck a monthOlogiesMerch.com has hats, shirts, stickers, totes!Follow @Ologies on Twitter and InstagramFollow @AlieWard on Twitter and InstagramEditing by Mercedes Maitland of Maitland Audio ProductionsTranscripts by Emily White of The WordaryWebsite by Kelly R. DwyerTheme song by Nick Thorburn

Oh, hey, it's your friend who gets terrified trying to drive in around about Aliborod and oh, we've got a good one. Oh boy, absolutely stellar instant classic here. So this guest is an author of many, many, many, many books and his writing is gorgeous. Even the titles are top shelf like Monsters in America are historical obsession with the hideous and the haunting and his latest book, Dark Carnivals, Modern Horror, and the Origins of American Empire. Just every sentence is beautifully descriptive

and heavy with vibes in his observations of human behavior. He has a deep reservoir of cultural knowledge. He's just, ah, he's the perfect guest. He got his PhD at the University of Mississippi, and he teaches courses such as monsters in America or Narratives of fear and violence in American history and Histories of death the Gothic and social revolution at Charleston College and my friend Max Oswald Hey Max put us in touch and I was I was so jittery. I was so worried

She's so cool that I would just blow the whole thing. And the first half of this episode is a lot of monster theory and sociological causes and effects of monsters. And then after the ad break, we get more into Patreon questions and more about specific monsters. And you can submit questions ahead of time if you want

via patreon.com slash allergies for as little as a dollar a month. And you can sport allergies, shirts, enhance, and totes via allergies and rich dot com. You can also support the show for zero dollars just by leaving us a review on. I read all of them such as this still wet one from M4 whose therapist recommended the show and who wrote I particularly gravitate toward allergies on darker days when I need a reminder that life is incredible and there's so much to appreciate. And I appreciate that M4 and everyone who left reviews and everyone who just spreads the word and tells your friends and your enemies about the show.

Okay, Territology. Who boy? Okay, this is a real word. It comes from the Greek for monster. And it is the study of monsters in folklore and fiction. It is also horrifyingly the term used to describe the study of physiological developmental quote abnormalities. But obviously, I prefer the term that is applied to the study of the myths of monsters and fantastical creatures, which again is another legit use in literature. Ter Territology. Scaring Moves in Monsters. The creatures are the what? The Spooktoborce the when. So let's get into it. Rise from your crypts. Turn your ears on for Frankenstein.

Frankenstein's monster. The bride of Frankenstein's monster. Zombies, Chippacupras, Bigfoot's, Werewolves, Babadook's, Folk Stories of Helful Ghosts. Monsters on various continents, horror versus monster movies, secret messages and scary movies, the directors' cuts that your government may not have wanted you to see, how monsters mirror our fears, what to do if you suspect you have one under the bed. Very tall ladies, sea snakes, Hollywood production secrets, special effects makeup, and more, with Professor, acclaimed author, horror fan, monster experts, and technologist, Dr. W. Scott Poole. [♪ Music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, I'm glad that he recommended me because I was very excited to be able to talk with you.

I enjoyed your work as well. Oh, oh my gosh. This kind of a cool thing for me to get to do. So I will try not to fanboy, but- No. When I got the email back that you're in, I was trying not to fan. I was really nervous. That's really funny.

Well, say now we don't have to be nervous. Now we're good friends. OK, we got our nerves out of the way. So on to less scary stuff, like body horror and monsters. So this is Scott Poul, he came. And Dr. Dr. Poole or Professor Poole, but I really love it when people call me Scott. So let's do that. All right. Sounds good, Dr. Poole.

Now, Professor, you teach courses on monsters. I do. I teach monster courses. I absolutely do. And you know, it's the most fun thing, sort of, I guess fun in italics, to say when people at parties find out that I'm a history professor, and they ask me what my topic is, and I respond. Not Civil War reconstruction or the American Revolution or Han China, but monsters. I do monsters and popular culture. So yeah, and they are history courses. What I kind of build my classes around is the idea

that part of why monsters are so important to us is that they are ways that we talk about all kinds of other stuff that's really important to us. Gender, politics, the way that we construct society, even economic inequality is an issue that comes up when you talk about monstrosity. And I think this is true with kind of the monstrous film tradition as well. Because monsters are quite literally out there, they're beyond the margins. It's just crazy stuff. For that reason, it's like this little space that we can talk about things that, you know, it's difficult to talk about when it's sort of done straight when we're not using these kinds of very very strong images.

Are monsters in one way metaphor? Are they portals into these discussions? They are definitely portals into the discussions. I think that they are definitely portals into the discussions, I think that they are something stronger than metaphors. And what I mean by that is this, when you use a metaphor, you always know you're using it. You know that you're not talking about a real thing. And one of the things that I emphasize to students in my classes when we talk about these kinds of things, is that for many people, not for me and not for many of them, but for many people, different kinds of monsters are very real. And the kinds of anxieties that these kinds of monsters express are certainly very real.

So for example, you can have a conversation with someone and you end up talking about vampires. And they say, well, of course I love vampires, but I don't believe in vampires. Then let's say the conversation turns to Bigfoot. Well, they're Bigfoot believers. If you don't believe in Bigfoot, you don't know what you're talking about, right? And this is true of so many of these things. One of the things I tell my students is that in the American context, because of the influence of religion, particularly Evangelical religion, the idea of Satan and demonic forces are, these

are probably the monsters that are most widely believed in in the American context. And yet, they also show up in our horror films. And going back in terms of historically, that's such a good point about religion and the stories that we have used to try to teach each other. How far back do monsters even go? And what's the difference between something that is posed as reality versus something that we know is story?

I think that they are in many respects, and I think there's evidence that they are older than homo sapiens, that sort of are prehistoric ancestors, a hundred thousand years ago, had a experience of the monstrous. The reason that I say that is that most scholars are pretty sure that the first experiences of religion were related to ceremonial burial. In fact, that may go back like 300,000 years. So, like leaving gifts for the dead. I got you something. And this likely held meaning in terms of grief, in terms of community solidarity. Politics probably entered into it, you know, who gets a proper ceremonial burial,

that kind of thing. For more on the subjects we linked in the show notes episodes on The Anatology about death and dying, deserology about mortuary makeup, taphology is about headstones and burial grounds and cemeteries, and of course, vampirology. But there's also these kind of ritual of terror that surrounded those prehistoric burials. The kind of the idea of like, well, what if they come back and what if they're mad

when they do? So there's a sense in which things like the leaving of gifts, the burial of people with gifts, there's these feelings of guilt and plocation and maybe even kind of a search for absolution from these creatures. And from our former kinfolk, like what will happen if they return?

And I don't think that there's a lot of light between those truly truly truly ancient ideas and the idea of the monster. What exactly is defined as a monster? What's a monster? What's a demon? What's a zombie? What's a in this? So, here's the thing about me that drives some of my other Monsterologists crazy. I don't define the monster. Now, let me back up. I was going to say, well, I guess this interview's over.

That was been great talking to you. Yeah. I was going to say, well, I guess this interview's over. That was been great talking to you. Yeah. So, yeah, don't come to me off yet. I'm pretty sure I got something here. Okay. So, hang in here with me. I think that the monster by its very nature is definition defying.

One of the things that when I first became interested, really, especially in kind of the academic study of monsters, like thinking about them as a scholarly topic, is just the fact that it's kind of this category that completely ignores categories. And so, for example, mentioned vampires. Okay, vampires, we count those as monsters. We also count Godzilla as a monster. We also throw serial killers in there in kind

of our spectrum of the monstrous. And so what do any of these different kinds of expressions of horror, chaos, what did they have really in common? And as I looked at it through time, and as I looked at it as a historian, like what's going on when people are afraid of these particular things. And so what I decided is that it's really sort of the context itself, the political, the historical, the cultural context that defines the monster. One example of this would be that in the 19th century, for about 60 years, Americans, most Americans, certainly middle-class Americans, were obsessed with the idea

of the sea serpent. And when I say they were obsessed, I mean, they loved reading accounts of sightings. There were lots and lots of Americans that were absolutely sure that they had seen one. There was an incident in the 1830s in Gloucester, Massachusetts, in which about 130 people claimed that a sea serpent showed up in Gloucester Harbor, and they all saw it. There was even sheet music that you could play on the piano at home, it is called the Sea Serpent Polka. It's a really... And now I can't play that for you, Ali.

If I could, I definitely would. That was a clip from the 1850s banger Sea Serpent Polka, which was composed by Eastern European born pianist, Maurice Strikosch, and covered by Jamie Winters, via SoundCloud, 170 years later. So according to the 1887 New York Times, obituary of Maurice Strikosch, he was a musical prodigy and began making

really good money performing concerts at the age of 11, but his parents disapproved. So he got at a Dutch, like later losers, he high-tailed it to Vienna at the age of 11, but his parents disapproved. So he got out of a dodge, like later losers, he high-tailed it to Vienna at the age of 12 with about reported by the New York Times two bucks in his pocket, which is like, how is this little man even gonna eat? Then I realized that that was reported in 1887.

So I looked it up and adjusted for inflation and that's like two grand in today's money. So this kid was loaded like a little tiny Justin Bieber who got emancipated and wrote a polka about a sea serpent. I was shocked to find that his obit and Wikipedia page both neglect to mention this composition. So maybe it was a blip in his otherwise very noteworthy life. But also, I mean, come on, name a better song about a C-Surpent. Name any song about a C-Surpent. Hopefully you know that where I'm going with this is, who's scared of C-Surpent today?

Nobody that I... Yeah. We're not watching films about them, we're not reading books about them, you know, etc., etc. But in the 19th century, the C-Surpent was... Yeah. etc. But in the 19th century, the sea serpent was, yeah, the sea serpent was there, vampire was there, zombie film was all those things. And when I really looked into it, one of the things that I discovered is that there's so much talk and so much interest in the possibility

of these kinds of creatures because it's at a time when the nature of scientific evidence. There's a lot of discussion of the nature of scientific evidence and what counts as scientific evidence. And the C-Surf got became kind of a perfect forum to discuss those kinds of things. It became a forum to discuss Darwinism. It became a forum for scientists themselves to talk about what it meant to do professional science, like the actual professionalization of the profession. So C. Serpentz don't have a lot to do with vampires, but they're both monsters. So I think it's in many respects the historical context that creates our monsters. And did they ever figure out what that sea serpent was? Was it like an orfish? Was it just one of those big wiggly ones?

So I'm pretty sure that they were saying of why. The orfish has been suggested as for the actually kind of hundreds of worldwide sea serpent sightings. And there was actually a New England whaling ship. I believe this was in the 1840s that they claimed that they had close to the Antarctic Circle. They had managed to get their hands on the corpse of a sea serpent. And they were going to bring it back to New York City.

And like runners had come like in advance, kind of say announcing that this was happening. So there were stories in the New York Times, and then they got back home and they were like, sorry, we've misplaced. What? How do you misplaced. What? We lost. How do you miss way to see, sir? We, we, we, well, you know, you just lose stuff, right? And so, and so, yeah, but I think that shows you like kind of the level of fascination that, you know, it's been lost

to us. It's also a little bit like in a class that I teach on the 20th century horror film, my students are like pretty insistent to me that 1931's James Whales Frankenstein is not scary at all. You know, Belugosi's Dracula is not scary at all. Films are much scarier now. And you know, they were really terrifying in the 1930s. And it's not that people in the 1930s were naive or that they were less smart than us or had less exposure to, I mean, these were people going through the Great Depression and about to face the

Second World War. So they're aware that the world's a challenging place. It's just that a part of it at least, part of it is that there were elements of the Frankenstein story that pushed certain kinds of buttons in the 1930s that it does not in quite the same way today. So I do think that monsters are very much born out of the historical context, out of the culture that creates them. What do you think that Frankenstein or Frankenstein's monster? I don't know if you have thoughts on what we should call him, but what buttons do you think he was pushing at that time?

Well, I tell you, as a horror film fan and a historian, one of kind of the most eye-opening moments that I really kind of ever had in doing this kind of work was watching a scene specifically in actually maybe my favorite classic horror film, The Bride of Frankenstein in 1935, just a wonderful classic horror film, The Bride of Frankenstein in 1935, just a wonderful fantasy horror film. There is in that film a moment in which the monster, very famously, there's always the villagers with the pitchforks and torches, and he's being chased.

Get him alive if you can, but get him! RUN! But search every ravine, every crevice, what the fiend must be found! RUN! And then he's actually tied up and raised up on this pole amid this really scary crowd that has gathered around him. And I realized, oh my God, this is the 1930s. This is the heart of the moment when African American men,

in particular, were being lynched across the country. This is a lynching. And then next step, there are people who watched this film in 1935 who had participated in a lynching or consider this, who had had a family member who had been murdered by a white mom. And for a while, I thought, well, you know, the old thing of like, well, you're reading too much into this. And then, as I was looking at reviews of the film, actually, when I was researching monsters in America and wanting to write about it and see what reviewers said at the time. No comment about this in American papers, but in the foreign press, specifically a review in a British paper.

I believe in fact it was the time, so many times. Noted that there was a scene in the film that will remind viewers of nothing so much as a Georgia lynching. Oh my God. For a very brief primer on this horrifying facet of America, you can visit the NAACP's article, History of lynchings in America, which recounts that a typical lynching involved a criminal accusation and arrest and the assembly of a mob followed by seizure, physical torment, and murder of the victim. Linchings were often public spectacles attended by the white community in celebration of white

supremacy. Photos of lynchings were often sold as souvenir postcards. And the atrocities were common, even in the early 20th century and the American South. And there was an anti-lynching bill posed to Congress in 1918, but it was defeated by a filibuster in the Senate. And lynchings finally started to decline toward the 1930s after the end of the ACP waged this campaign and persuaded Southern newspapers to publicly condemn lynchings, and then white businesses were boycotted in the South, which changed some diets. So in America, money talks the loudest. And so, you know, monsters can be great fun,

but part of the horror of the monster is that it can also become a way for us to experience the terror of the times in which we live in. I actually later learned that the director James Whale, who directed both Frankenstein and Bride of Frankenstein, that he had become close friends, interestingly enough, with Paul Robison, the musician, civil rights activist, very strong advocate on the American left in the 30s and 40s. He worked with him on the film Shobout a few years later.

He's very famous for the song Old Man River in that pretty lavish Hollywood production. But Paul Robeson, who was really a true radical and a very best sense on these issues, probably did influence James Well to think about that imagery. In part because that imagery is actually not in at least in the same way, and Mary Shelley's 1818 and 1831 Frankenstein. Have sociologists or historians looked into what the effect might have been on the

public either consciously or subconsciously of that imagery being a mirror to what was happening in society at the time. I have tried to find responses to it and not only actually in relation to those films or that particular issue, but really just sort of how people responded to sort of what we might call the politics of the horror film in earlier ages and even our own time. One thing I always like to tell people about this and that we always talk about in class

is that we should never assume this is true of anything. We should never assume that people are picking up what's been put down, right? Like there are certainly plenty of people I'm certain who manage to watch the Barbie film without learning very much about what wave feminism, right? I mean, they thought the color palette was bright and the songs were fine. And that was kind of it, you know, they missed it. So certainly like even things that are much more implicit,

it's really difficult to see where I think it becomes more interesting is as we get closer to our own time, the 1960s specifically, and horror films become much more explicitly political. George Romero employing an African-American male lead in night-a-living day at a protagonist, the hero, really, of the peace. All persons who die during this crisis, from whatever and they come back to life to seek human victims. Telling you they can't get in here. And so I think it becomes much more striking than often I found

in particularly in politically progressive horror in the 30s, 40s and 50s. There's almost this feeling of it being a kind of an in-jout for the people who get it, and then everybody else kind of does it. Going back to director James Whale, his Hollywood career started in 1930 with a film called Journey's End, and then he directed Frankenstein, Invisible Man, The Bride of Frankenstein, I looked him up and he was also weirdly gorgeous, like David Bowie in Seabia tones. Well, who was an out gay man in Hollywood in the 1930s, he also included a lot of in jokes for his own community that very much went over the head of everybody that

saw the film. Plenty of people who still see the film don't really see how it's kind of clearly queercoded in certain ways. One such way is the bride of Frankenstein's original plot point of Dr. Frankenstein bailing on his new wife, on his wedding night to harvest a human heart from his new bride, and then working alongside another male doctor

to create life. And the haze code was this thing. There were content guidelines for entertainment. And they were in place from the mid 30s to the late 60s. And they forbade anything that would compromise the sanctity of marriage. And this is nearly 100 years ago, but these discussions are still taking place,

especially regionally in the United States. I tend to have like a pretty sensitive ear and it's really subtle, but I notice that you might maybe be from the south. Yes. I know that you have a very subtle accent. Just kidding. It's very obvious, which is wonderful. Now, what's a little bit of your upbringing and your intersection with this? How long have you been a horror fan, too? Oh, like since I was six. Oh my god. No, I really have. So here's the thing. And, you know, gosh, we have to talk about like my accent and my image because here's the deal. So when I was old kid in late 1970s, on Saturday afternoon, my local rural South Carolina television station had an afternoon series, film series

that they called shock theater. Oh my God, okay. And shock theater was actually something that went back to the 1950s because what had happened is that Universal Studios as well as some other studios, but mainly Universal, had sold a lot of their old archival films, like the great Monster Mash films of the 1930s and 40s to local TV stations. And so, especially as late as the 70s know, it was just a really easy thing for a small station to throw together like a double feature of the 1931 Frankenstein and the 1941 Wolf. And so for years, all in Saturday after days, I just was absolutely glued to the set and saw everything from,

you know, just true incredible classic films like Bride of Frankenstein to just absolute garbage like the attack of the 50 foot woman, which I have to say is still a terribly guilty pleasure. Attack of the 50 foot woman, incredibly huge, with incredible desires for love and vengeance. The most grotesque monstrosity of all, a gorgeous and powerful woman breaks through the roof of a building. Did it have a glass ceiling perhaps? Terrifying.

And that was also the era. It wasn't really kind of the golden age for this, but magazines like famous monsters of film land were still around. And so when it was, you know, I could talk my mother into going and picking me up a comic book at the drug store, there was also like these wonderful monster magazines that had all these photographs of films I had not been able to see and stories about the actors and stories about the directors. And I just loved it.

And I actually think I loved it in part because I did live in a small, not very interesting, very conservative, and also very religious community. And so the kind of just like wide open, imaginative landscape that kind of stuff opened up and that otherwise kind of sort of dreary time and place was just really wonderful. How did your family feel about you a tiny taught being glued to horror films on Saturdays? Not good. It was a real problem, Ali. It was a real problem. And so there

were at least several times that Shock Theater was banned. Several different times going into my teenage years, the comics and the magazines were also banned. One of the most fun things about that side of it though is that in the 1980s, if you were a big horror film fan, by the 80s, it wasn't famous monsters. It was a magazine called Fengoria. I remember that. I remember that. And Fengoria is still with the chef Fengoria. They had these really, truly, honestly, like I completely understand why my parents were

so upset because the covers were just horrible. They were just bloody and they were like just faces melting and all this stuff. Of course, when my mom managed to find these, even though I did sequester them away and all that kind of stuff, she located them and they were banned from the house. Looking back, I totally get it. Like I actually do kind of understand that. But here's the thing. Fast forward to let's see about 2016. And Fengoria did a feature about my lovecraft book. And my mom was like with her little, little lady friends, she was like, oh my son, look at this, he's in this magazine.

Look, yeah, that's a sever cat on the cover, but it's my, yeah, it's my... I'm sure at the time though, she was like, why can't he just be in a playboy's? I can't, I find it. I know, yeah, I almost think, it's funny you say that, because I almost think they would have been a little bit more comfortable with that

because I was always, if you can't tell, like I already was kind of a weird kid, you know? And so, like I think that, well, at least it's like a normal just, you know, it's something we get what's going on there, but we don't know what all this is. Well, I'm sure in a parents worst fantasies is if you've got a, you know, a magazine with limbs and blood, you think like, okay, he's training to be a homicidal person. Right.

Some kind of professional killer is kind of his career goal. So I wonder how did you instead of being someone who put bodies and dumpsters, how did you become professor pool? Yeah, so there's a couple of things about that. One of the things that interests me, I think, from a scholarly perspective, as well as from a personal one, is how frequently people I know who love monsters like I do often like me turn out to be vegetarians turn out to be quite non-violent people both politically and also in their personal lives and although I do sort of try to stay away from doing sort of psychotherapy with monsters I don't think of them as

really kind of psychological phenomena primarily. But I do think it's true that having a space where the darkest parts of yourself, but also the darkest parts of your culture, you can talk about those things. And I mean with one's self, in one solitude as much as with other fans, that it does give you a different kind of perspective. Heds up, we have a two-part scholarly episode examining the sociology of fandom with legit phanthropologist, Meredith Levine, and yes, we'll link it for you in the show notes. You end up not, for example, glorifying violence in the way that films say a super hero film in which we witnessed the destruction of an entire city. But there's no blood somehow.

There's no bodies like the whole city's been flattened by a US-based superpower individual and somehow there's no casualties that we see. But there's that level of violence that seems to have kind of mainstream appeal, which interestingly has, I think, a connection to the way that we think about war in this country, the way that, you know, since the Persian Gulf War going back to the early 1990s, there's been this sense that, well, it's something that lights up on CNN. It's something that happens on the screen. It's like watching a video game. We don't actually see any of the bodies. We don't see any of the casualties. It's something very different than to watch a film

in which, well, there aren't mass casualties. There are maybe three or four characters that you've developed some kind of attachment to that suffer something really terrible. And so I think it gives you a different sensibility about violence, causes you to think about death as something that is not just simply nameless and faceless. You know, I've wondered before how there's an escalation

almost of specifics, visual specifics, when we might look at Bella Logosi's version of Vampire Not Scary, but then our horror films get more and more suspenseful and more specific, where we've then seen a wave of true crime being popular as like the next horror genre. You know, there's a really, really bright line for me between the horror film and true crime. I think they're doing very different things.

I think they're often appealing to very different audiences. I actually can't abide true crime. I don't watch true crime documentaries. And really the entire reason is that it is viewing the suffering of actual others as opposed to what is the imaginative experience of violence, grief, and human suffering. And so it's interesting. I mean, I am talking about how either my parents felt about the horror film or the churches

that they went to or the community that we lived in, there was always this discussion of becoming desensitized of violence. I sort of feel like I became the horror film and monsters in general kind of sensitized me and a lot of ways to violence and what it means. This is actually quite true crime and the popularity of it disturbs me is that actually quite true crime and the popularity of it disturbs me is that, well, I think that this is maybe what all of my elders were worried about when I was a kid. Like, this is the being disincentized, this is the suffering of others being turned into co-ing. I actually find that trend deeply troubling. And I think that it has a larger political meaning. I think that it's important that we ask questions like, why are we consuming and binging hours and hours and hours of true crime in a country that

imprisons a larger percentage of its population than any other country in the world? Is that essentially reinforcing some of our ideas about law and order, reinforcing some of our ideas about like dangerous others? Essentially giving us real monsters, embodying monsters very often in people who are marginalized already. So I do separate the love of an interest in monsters and horror film from True Crime and Jank, for sure. We did an episode called Victimology with Dr. Kelly Renison, who discusses this

and how victims of homicide in the US are overwhelmingly black men, but that's not reflected in most documentary crime and entertainment. And for more on victims' advocacy, you can see that episode linked in the show notes. But getting away from the actual suffering of real people and back to fiction. Where do you think the line is between monsters and horror? Because I think of monsters, and I think of them being intact. And then I think of horror and I think of blood.

And so where's the line? Well, first of all, you're absolutely awesome. OK. And there is, I think, a tie between what we think of as gore and horror that is very particular to really the last hundred years of global history. My sense of it is that what we think of as the horror film is actually born in the aftermath of the Great War of World War One. This is when you see the first usage of the term horror film, supernatural films that had come before that were of a different type, tended not to make use or make reference

to gore to the reanimated day-ed to the literal supernatural. And so I think that what we think of as horror is a very 20th 21st century experience. One of the things that happened with the World Wars and post-colonial conflicts that have followed is that essentially they're sort of the progress of combat medicine at the very same time that there's all these new terrible ways of killing and mutilating the human body. World War I is the early example of that. World War I, Cyanote lasted from 1914 to 1918, and it marked the real shift from wars fought on the backs of horses to the birth of the modern military industrial complex via innovations of weapons of mass destruction like the tank and chemical weapons, improved submarines and machine guns, and

the MK2 pineapple looking hand grenade. Weapons manufacturers are like, what a great war. But if you're like, what about that 2022 Taylor Swift bonus track on the album Midnight's called The Great War? Is this about military trenches? The lyrics go, your finger on my hairpin triggers, soldier down that icy road, looked up at me with honor and truth, broken and blue. So I called off the troops and then some stuff about love. And this song inspired by a world war, then inspired a course at the University of Ghent with Professor Ellie McClouseland, and it's titled, English Literature, Taylor's Version.

But yeah, the global rise of tearing up each other's bodies for money and land and resources and religions was the putrid shit that fertilized the growth of monster and horror genres, as we know them now. This continued all the way down to the present. So I think that like it's actually not an accident that in the United States, it's in post-Vietnam America, a country that had become used to seeing a country that had become used to seeing the reality of gore, the reality of the mutilated human body, that you have the explosion of interest in the slasher film, films dealing with war and horror. And in fact, there's a very direct connection there. One of the great, many would argue, the great makeup artist, sort of the star of Fengoria magazine was Tom Savini, who worked on films like George Romero's Dawn of the Dead, the first Friday the 13th film, a number of the classics of the Hora genre. He was a combat veteran of Vietnam.

Oh gosh. And has spoken about this, actually, he was very specifically a combat photographer. And one of the ways that he dealt with that experience is while it was happening, that experience is while it was happening, he essentially imagined it as special effects. He just sort of called it special effects in order to endure, you know, saying what was happening to his friends and to his comrades. And, you know, then in certain respects, this was therapeutic for him in later years.

But one of the real geniuses, you know, of Gore FX and the modern horror film, he brought that with him from Vietnam. I mean, that was quite literally sort of the war coming home. Oh, wow. I found a 1984 clip of Tom Sivini doing a show and tell of his Goulish effects

for one David Letterman. And I gotta say, Tom, Saunchers out with this jauntie Saturday night fever swagger. He's got tight jeans, a mustache. He's chewing gum, and just has this cool confidence of your older brother's friend, letting you check out his trans am.

This man could get it. Even Letterman was clearly enamored. Or what is it? Special makeup effects, it's called. I see. And what does that, Special makeup effects, it's called. I see. And what does that, when we go to a film, what of your work do we see?

Oh, well, anytime somebody's head is blown off or a kind of throat, a little creature runs around. That's me. Now, having a head blown off, it comes under makeup. Special makeup effect, sure. OK, well, let's take a look at some of this stuff. I wonder if that was just a way to deal, obviously, with the trauma, compartmentalize it.

I think so, and I think that, you know, it's mostly anecdotal evidence. I also just have a sense that that's why that generation also is particularly interested in these films. And the 70s and 80s are, you know, films today don't have the same amount of gore and blood and et cetera as you would find in the era of Texas chain saw massacre and the first Halloween and the Friday the 13th films and the nightmare on the straight films.

We've covered Frankenstein, the bride of Frankenstein, the son of Frankenstein, dawn of the dead zombies, 50-foot women, C. Serbans, Codzilla, Friday the 13th. So it's never been a better time to explore more of the ghouls. Halloween monster connection, October monsters. Why is this such a good month for them? Well, you know, it's interesting, I think, that the answer to that is that dating back to the earliest Christian celebrations of all Halas,

Eve of Halloween, the day before the Feast of All Saints, it is a visual day for the day at. It's always been a time for ghosts. It's always been a time for unquiet spirits. I mean, maybe going back to the third and fourth century of the Christian era. Now, it's interesting, though, because if, as some scholars do, you want to do a really strict kind of taxonomy of monsters. Like our monsters and ghosts really the same thing. I was wondering that and how do hungry ghosts in some Asian culture's factory? Right. Right. Well, and here's the thing. I think you could. If you wanted to, you know,

draw a strict line for whatever reason you were doing that between Unquiet spirits and monsters Maybe you could do that. Maybe you could say well Ghost is always forever and always We're talking about a human being once alive who isn't anymore who now can't find race And a monster is well, I guess if we were doing this for reals, we would just say, well, a monster is just anything else that's supernatural and scary. But I actually think that in the human experience and thinking about this in just kind of deep anthropological time, I do think that the ghost is in a lot of ways and the idea of the ghost is at the root of our idea of the monstrous.

One of the places you actually see this is in China where there are these traditions that go back at least to the Han Dynasty of the so-called hopping vampires, the Zhang Shi, the hopping vampire. And these vampires are your kin, your loved ones. Nice to see you again. How's the family? Who are going to return if they have been improperly buried, if you buried them in the wrong place, if their burial rights have been performed at the wrong time, there's a lot of ways to mess this up. In other words. And they're going to come back and they're going to be swollen with blood because they are blood drinkers. They're called hopping vampires because, well, they're actually the physically resurrected dead and,

you know, they have kind of a calcium deficiency. Like, their bones aren't what they're supposed to be. So they can't walk like they did. And they're going to come after you. They're thirsty, right? They are. And it does at a later moment, several centuries later, blend into the Buddhist tradition that then spreads into Korea and Japan of the idea of the hungry ghost. A reanimated loved one who for a a variety of different reasons, is still desiring something that they have lost in life. So hungry. So the question is, you know, are we talking about ghosts?

Are we talking about monsters? Seems like they're kind of acting the same. They're both creatures that represent a kind of a chaos, a kind of imbalance. Our own fear of death, our fear of having a bad death. I think that's one of the more interesting things about the monstrous is that we can say like, well, they embody death and they do, but none of us are able to escape that. I mean, we're all going to face death, but they tend to embody sort of the wrong death. Right. The worst case scenario, death.

The worst case scenario, death by violence, which is in some ways the very essence of what we think about when we think about the nature of evil, the use of violence to cut life short, to give someone or someone's a wrong death. So all of that to say, I'm not really too interested in the distinctions between ghosts and monsters, because I think they kind of root around in that same part of our subconscious and come from the same kind of needs that we have to think about our own finite and often chaotic experience. It's so interesting how the more we find out about life's mysteries, the more we can just

say, that's fine. Like C-servenc, that's fine. You know what I mean? Don't worry about it. Yeah, whatever. Yeah, that's fine. We're on to something else, some else is scarier. Can I ask you questions from listeners?

Yes, let's do that. Oh, they're so excited. And we're excited to make a donation in Dr. Pool, aka Professor Pool, aka Scott's name, and this week he chose the International Rescue Committee, or IRC, which was founded at the call of Albert Einstein in 1933, and is now at work in over 50 crisis-affected countries, helping to date nearly 33 million people, and they provide health care, learning resources for children, they empower communities, and they're always seeking

to address the inequity facing women and girls. So you can find out more at rescue.org and thanks to sponsors on the show for making that donation possible in Scottsdale. Okay, you can submit questions before the interviews by becoming a patron and patreon.com slash allergies for as little as a book a month. I may say your name on the show, possibly correctly.

Let's hear some of your questions. They were a scream. Connor, they then had a great question. Can you talk about humanoid monsters versus non-humanoid? Like, you know, humanoid like werewolves and zombies and mommies versus non-humanoid like dragons and the Kraken? And they said it seems like ancient societies tended to have more animalistic monsters. Well, modern societies have more humanoid monsters.

Is that true? Is there any psychology to explain that? I do think that for many ancient peoples, there was often the sense that a monster embodied chaotic elements of the natural world. We can see this, for example, with a pop culture monster that has an ancient past, a bazuzu from the ex exorcist. Oh! Well then let's introduce ourselves. I'm Damien Carras. And I'm that devil. Now kindly undo these straps. If you're the devil one, I'll make the straps disappear. That's much too vulgar display of power cares. Before Pazuzu made his big screen debut back in 1973, he was an ancient Sumerian kind of demon God.

Okay, so Pazuzu was considered a son of God and also the reigning monarch of the demons of the wind. So maybe he was also the king of arts, but in the exorcist, a priest finds an old statue of Pazuzu on an archaeological dig And it's like, cool. Hope this doesn't follow me and possess a girl in a night gown who stabs herself in the crash with a crucifix later on. How wrong he was. Pazuzu does not fuck around. And he was connected with sickness

and also with desert winds, which are both chaotic in their own way, but also were believed to bring sickness and to kind of bring us sort of impersonal death. So one argument has been that as the world, as you know, at post-scientific revolution 400 years ago, and then increasingly, as our experience becomes kind of Google-Maped and you know, there's sort of no hidden corners

out there anymore. We're turning more and more to more human-like creatures. But I also find evidence of people of the distant past using their monsters in very sophisticated and very interesting ways. Can I tell you about a monster? I really love? That's a good example. Okay. So in Tibetan Buddhism, there's this really scary guy, named Yamantaka. Okay.

And he's quite horrifying. According to some accounts, he has, I believe 34 different hands. Some accounts, he has, I believe, 34 different hands. Some they said he has 36. Each one, he's got this, this razor sharp dagger in them. He wears a necklace of human heads. And which is not what you want, right? No, what you want to say. No. Here's thing though. He is actually a teacher of Enlightenment. He is, Yamantaka is actually the avatar of a particular Bodhisattva, an Enlightened Being whose goal is to free human beings from the terror of death.

And so the daggers, in those many, many hands, however many he has, they are to cut through the ties to the ego that is keeping one from experiencing freedom and bound to the will of karma. The different heads actually represent different stages of one's life, in which you've been destructive or in Buddhist terms, you've been unskilledful when it comes to your own egocentric desires that have tied you to karma. And so he's absolutely terrifying, but even his sort of physical manifestation is meant to turn you to a more spiritual path. And you know, this is an idea that is many, many centuries old. So it is a little hard for me to get completely on board with the idea that, well, at one time monsters were just expressions of things we didn't get about,

you know, because thunderstorms scared us or whatever. And now it's serial killers. I think that ancient people, as people of every area have been able to think in complex ways about their monsters. That sounds like the scariest therapist ever, but effective.

They're like, I'm gonna help you get over your fear of death, but I am going to have a lot of hands with razors on that. Right. Well, and just to be clear, for all of your listeners, you know, if your therapist is wearing a necklace of human head, so I would call that a just a sea of red flags, you know. So I would move on. It's like, but they're covered in network.

Right. What am I going to do? Right. We had so many questions from so many listeners, I will list them in an aside about cryptids. Okay. So quick definition of cryptids are creatures that some cryptos whoologists swear really exist, such as the big Harry Bigfoot of North America,

the big Harry Yeti of the Himalayan Mountains, the winged hoved dragon-looking Jersey Devil, which nearby Philly residents could probably take it a fight, all will not spilling their beer, or the long-necked dinosaur-looking aquatic monster in Scotland's Loch Ness. I think my favorite might be something called the Mongolian death worm which is a two-foot-long poisonous alive sausage or this thing called the loveland frog of Ohio which was a four-foot tall humanoid frogman that scampered across roads and just scared the swamp water out of local residents until a cop shot it and it turned out to be an old escaped pet, a guana that had lost its tail and it deserved better, to be honest.

But other patrons who had cryptid questions included, Addy McBattie, Jessica Fowler, Lily McKenzie King, Ellie Schaefer, Slowfe, Sarah Meaden Connor, they then the Ren you know, Kayla Pilcher, Beth and Greer Carson, and Brittany Corrigan. What is a cryptid? What's the difference between a cryptid and a monster? Megan Wallsherard wants to know what is the best cryptid and why is it Mothman? For plenty of Mothman discussion, please see the creepy crawlies episode, aka Forest Entomology, with Dr. Kristen Wicker, linked in the

show notes, and we discuss his gleaming steel butt. But anyway, do you believe in cryptids? So where does a cryptid come into all this? Do I believe in cryptids? Well, I've never, so this is going to upset people probably. I don't believe in anything that is not falsifiable. Okay. It's sort of not incumbent on us on me In this case to you know believe in something that there's not evidence for you don't even have to say well Maybe there is because you know, of course, that's kind of a game. We could play about everything all day long

There's a jar of mayonnaise and my refrigerator that created the universe prove me wrong It Sent you you know How do you know that's not true? but I Love cryptids. I do love the Moth Man story. I love the Bigfoot story.

I love one of our local cryptids. There's actually going to be a Hulu special coming up about the lizard man of skate or swamp of South Carolina. See the 2023 release, the legend of lizard man, which has everything. Nightshoots, teenagers, in an old van, it's got claw marks, narrow escapes, and dubious reports of a green, wet like

seven-foot tall reptilian man with three fingers, red eyes, and snake-like scales. According to an official witness report taken in 1988, you can still get commemorative t-shirts. You can, and I might. I love them because to me, they are kind of just these expressions of kind of a hope for wonder in the world. And often it's very explicit, almost a kind of a religious impulse behind the desire for these things to be true. And I again think that

in going back to part of our earlier discussion in a world that does sort of feel like there's, you know, not the edges of the map anymore that says here be dragons, things like Bigfoot and the lizard man and the moth man can kind of fulfill that role. seldom have I seen these kinds of beliefs as opposed to other beliefs circulating out there. It calls very much harm. You know, it seems to be just kind of a weird hobby for a lot of people and, you know, God's know I'm into weird hobbies. So I think it's fine. I think it's great. Let me also add that I would absolutely love it if it turned out that there was, I say, a squat or whatever. Like, he could show up at my door, and I would be really excited about that.

But I just, so far, you know, we got nothing on that. For those who asked about Bigfoot looking at you, Sharon Refeld, Lindsay Mayer, Ed Metsovic, Col. Irwin, Ann Marie Everhart, and Lily, you can see the Forensic Ecology episode with Dr. T.R. Amor.

About her work in a Pacific Northwest Forest sequencing DNA of a species of hominid that did not sequence as homo sapiens, but something just from the genus homo. And she's known in her lab as a scientist who has found molecular, big-foot evidence. But she says it's most definitely just degraded human DNA, like an old trail-turd. But still, it's cool bragging rights. I guess if nothing else, it's a good way for people to get out, get in some... In the woods.

Yeah, get some low-impact cardio. You know? The polysphino. Yeah, get your stuff. Looking for. Yeah, I think that's the best, yeah, absolutely. They're gonna find that people who believe in Bigfoot are among the most cardiovascularly healthy people. I know. Yeah, I mean,'re going to find that people who believe in Bigfoot are among the most cardiovascularly

healthy people in America. I know. I mean, that's another thing. And, you know, there is that whole argument that like, hey, that's the practical effect of your beliefs that matter. So, yeah, go Bigfoot hunting. Yeah, sure. Yeah, do it.

A lot worse things people get up to. So, you know, go for it. It's very true. Which was my whole point in the witchology episode, but some of you took it too literally and you suck the fun out of it. Not that I'm disappointed or bitter, just disappointed and a little bitter, but let's change the subject to happier things, like a prehistoric reptile, the size of a 35-story building whose name means guerrilla whale, and is the reigning king of monsters who would not flinch.

It's pushing you like a rotting tomato. Becky the Seagress scientist wants to know thoughts about Godzilla. So Godzilla is one of my favorite monsters and part because Gajira, the original film that the Americanized version really sort of ripped off. Gajira is sort of one of the most political monster films of the 20th century. It came at a moment in Japan right after the Second World War when, of course, they're still dealing with the legacy of Hiroshima and Naksaki, the survivors of those events, or still, you know, very much a part of public life. And it's a film that's quite literally about a destructive horror that is raised by American atomic testing. Wow. And it's a very, very powerful. There's some imagery in the original Japanese film

that actually borrows very directly from some of the more famous photographs of Hiroshima. Just picture of Vista's of rubble, a panorama of unfathomable destruction, and the horrors of a giant city smashing monster get pulled into pretty sharp focus. And I talked about this a giant city smashing monster get pulled into pretty sharp focus.

And I talked about this a lot in monsters in America. It is interesting that a few years later, 1956, I believe, when a dubbed American version was released, much of that material was censored out references to the atomic bomb references to atomic testing. You know, an American was made the main character, even while much of the original footage was used. So it's a deeply, deeply political film in its origins.

Oh, I did not know that about Zilla. I had no idea. Yeah, right. And it's interesting what American films have done with Godzilla subsequently. The generally accepted as terrible 1990s Godzilla film did this really interesting thing where this is Roland Emmerich. Did this thing where it was nuclear testing that raised Godzilla, but it wasn't us. It was the French that raised Godzilla, but it wasn't us. It was the French.

Okay. Sure. As their fault. Yeah. Fucking French, man. Right. That's why we call them freedom for ice. That's right.

It's a Godzilla. Oh, we have so many good questions. I have a couple more from listeners. If that's okay. Yeah. I'm sorry. I'm going. Are you kidding? No, I love this. I'm like, Oh, we're good. Nicole S and many others, including Abby Lawson, who else asked about monsters and horniness? Christine Wentzol, Kendall M. Dylan Vitch are yearning to know. In Abby's words, what's a deal with monsters and horniness? Everyone is so horny for monsters. And let's be honest, I'm no exception. Abby said. They want to know, is there a psychological reason behind this? Monsters are really sexy. Your listeners are absolutely right about this. And this has been true of the horror film going back to the 1920s.

For anyone who thinks that it was either Bill Legosi's Dracula or Pattinson's Edward that made vampire sexy, they can go have a very weird experience watching the 1922 film, Noss Faratu. yet, swatching the 1922 film, Nas Faratu. Oh, Nas Faratu, of course, a lot of people know about him from Spongebob more than, uh, more than that, a Vimar era silent film. Just a side note, Scott mentioned this as though it were an understandable pop cultural fact, but I was like, excuse me, I need to know how No Sfaratu turned up in Spongebob Squarepants. So I found a 2022 article titled How No Satu Turned Up in SpongeBob Squarepants.

And it explained to me that Jay Lender, a SpongeBob writer and storyboard artist, would read horror film magazines in his youth, and a still image from the Nosferatu film just got burned in his brain, so he added it in there. And with 15 million SpongeBob viewers every week, at the time of Nosferatu's cameo, flicking some lights off and on. Nosferatu! It's possible that this pretty chance

and random reference to the vampire is what's kept it so popular among younger generations. And also, J. Lander knows that the ghoul's real name is Count Orlach, not Nosferatu, and he doesn't want to hear it from you, okay? And yes, we talk more about Nosferatu and Count Orlach in the two-part vampireology episode with Dr. Jeff Holder, who teaches courses on vampires because he is cool.

You know, Nosferatu looks like a rat. Nosferatu, he looks like an elderly rat. I think it's probably just right. Describe his face and has these talons, you know, and has this just absurdly like distended frame and arms that just look like they're 10 feet, you know, in length. And yet, Ellen, the female protagonist of Nosferatu,

has a very, very clear fixation on him. As he does her, and in fact, a fixation on him that exceeds her connection to her young husband, she is not interested at all in what he's up to, but she's all about us for Autic. Okay quick story. So recently Jarrett and our friend Jason were hanging on the couch watching this 1979 version of Nosferatu while my friend Catherine and I were doing a puzzle at the kitchen table. It was a wild Saturday night. But Katz back was turned, and for a moment she earnestly thought that they had switched to watching porn in our living room together while we did a puzzle 10 feet away. Monsters have been putting the bones in boning for Eons.

This turns up again and again, you know, I mean, where will films, the wonderful 1990s version of the film Candyman with the gorgeous Tony Todd playing the monster? But is this very very sexy monstrous figure and one suggestion that has been made and this is maybe getting a little too theoretical, but I do feel like you tell me after I say this, because I do feel like there's something too, yes. In the monster film, kind of the two out groups, the two marginal groups are the women who are the victims. Right.

And the monster that the male heroes are trying to kill. Yes. And so one theory, and it's not mine, and again, I'm not even sure it's true, but I like it. One idea is that there's just kind of this natural alliance between the woman and the monster, both of them are kind of like subject to, you know, kind of the patriarchal violence that's going on in the field. Again, don't know. I think it's a really, really interesting idea.

I think so too, yeah. Yeah, you throw in that too, Jennifer Kants, Babadook, where you have the queer coded monster. See a Tumblr post suggesting that the top-headed, hollow-eyed monster, silhouetted by his trench coat, was a metaphor for the outsider status experienced by so many LGBTQIA plus folks. And suddenly amid the sunny Pride Parade celebrations

or Babadooks merrily marching along, Director Jennifer Kent has said she thinks it's sweet and she's honored, which kind of is an understatement because being a queer icon, arguably more enviable than Oscar, but okay, Jennifer. Jal Sowis, as I mentioned, a phenomena with Frankenstein. And I think that's part of the attraction as well. I think it's also tied into just the very fact that there is an element of the human psyche

that kind of can't look away from what it's disgusted by. And so, yeah, there's a lot going on there for sure. Also given that the very word, Tertology has been used and is still used in some cases, rather horrifically to describe people with physiological abnormalities and films like Candy Man and its 2021 remake feature a villain with a sharp hook fashioned as a prosthetic. This next query submitted by Grace Robo Show,

Chinatasore, Fondo Dondo 35, and Catherine Bend touches on an upcoming episode we have on disability sociology. And a few people actually asked about that intersectionality between disability and illness and monsters and how that's another marginalized group that's been kind of monster-fied. And I wondered like Kia Keshimoto wants to know,

I'd love to hear a discussion of the intersection of monsters and disability. Do we find that that's changed over time at all? Well, in some ways, I think that it has, except, you know, going back to the 1920s, but then also really carrying forward into our monsters in the present, the idea of disfigurement as of any kind, as representative of the other. I think that that's still an unfortunate part of the horror tradition, I would say on the more positive side though, the fact that not unlike folklore actually, so I don't think that this is new and some attempt to be progressive or something, I think that the idea of the sympathetic monster has always been open to people, open for people who are looking for figures to identify with. We've talked a couple times about Fangoria magazine.

And actually a few months ago, there was this really wonderful article by a frequent writer for Fangoria who in dealing with cancer had found both solace and identification in David Cronenberg's body horror films as she began to experience her own body as alien to her. I think there's a lot in that that people can find solace in. If you're looking to watch more body horror films by David Kronenberg, please enjoy

hits such as shivers aka the parasite murders or they came from within which features the barfing of a bot fly larva looking parasite but there's also rabid featuring a woman who according to your friend Wikipedia develops an orifice under one of her armpits that hides a phallic, clitoral stinger she uses to feed on people's blood. But let's also not forget scanners, which originated the cinematic device of a human head exploding. Uh, Crenumberg also remade the fly, in which Jeff Goldblum's sexual magnetism is rather challenged by a tendency to vomit acid on people before eating them

So maybe just skip the popcorn. Let's venture outside to warmer climates at the behest of patrons Shailin Whippert Conor they them and Fonda Dondo 35 and a ton of other people in Fonda Dondo's words You have to ask about the Chupacabra. What up with that? Chupacabra. Is it just a coyote with mange? I mean, probably. Yeah, that's what I think. Yeah, I wish that I could say that no,

it's an ancient creature of Machika legend that my and Ruans have images of. But my sense of it in terms of what is described that people are seeing that it either looks like it it sounds like maybe it's a small dog with mange or I think you know maybe more likely coyotes yeah I do think in this gets into a whole other area but it is interesting that over the last 40 years or so there's been kind of this interest in what we might call border horror, all the way back in the 1980s, which became kind of the first decade of people losing their mind over

over immigration. There were urban legends that circulated about satanic circles that were operating just right over the border, that some bodies that had been found, the so-called Matamora slayings, that this was the work of a satanic cult, and to me, Chupacabra seems to kind of fit into some of that kind of monstrous language. I had not heard of the slayings in Matamora, Mexico, but they involved dozens of ritual homicides by a drug lord. And similarly, when livestock started dying in parts of Puerto Rico, communities suspected either blood draining by a cult, or possibly a large reptilian creature, hence the Chupa

Cabra, which means goat sucker. In northern parts in the United States, Chupa Copper sightings tend to be described as more dog-like, and experts agree they're just free-range canines with a little bit of skin disease. They're like, get off my back, I have a fucking rash, and yeah, I will eat your goats. And who could blame them? But moving along, a rather looping back to Frankenstein's, as we mentioned in the Vampirology episode. In 1816, there was this volcanic eruption and the resulting atmospheric effect led to a year without a summer.

So a bunch of hot, goth riders hold up in an Italian philla and among them were Mary Shelley and Lord Byron. And they were like, what if we have like a ghost story writing competition between us and Shabblam? Lord Byron makes a vampire tale, the changes pop culture, and Mary Shelley writes a book about a reanimated corpse. And I know we've touched on Frankenstein a bit, Susan C. Lester, and

for a rune stadler, need to know definitively. Frankenstein or Frankenstein's monster. What do you call it? or Frankenstein's monster, what do you call it? Well, here's the thing. No, so it's absolutely proper to say Frankenstein's monster. Okay. So I can definitively say that, however, however, I think that like it also has made this certain kind of sense that the monster and the creator have kind of shared their name. And this is actually referenced in some of the sequels to Frankenstein.

So many of your listeners probably haven't seen Son of Frankenstein and Son of Frankenstein, which I think is 1939. There's actually this whole discussion that kind of lays it out like, hey, you know, everybody says Frankenstein, but that's my dad's name. The monster was his monster. Dr. Frankenstein was my dad. Please call me MC Frankie Dink. I think that it's almost more interesting to me that the creator that unleashed something that couldn't be controlled and then the monster that were mostly sympathetic for we we use the same word and everybody knows what we mean. Do you think that has anything to do with dysfunctional parenting and a father putting too much pressure on a son to carry on a lineage? think in the original version of the novel, not the one that she released in 1831, when

she became a little older and a little more conservative. But in the original version of the novel, my sense is that it's God and human beings. Yeah, that Dr. Frankenstein is quite literally the creator that gives his creature, his creation, something the creation never really asked for. Right. And then kind of like said, well, you didn't turn out quite like I, quite like I wanted. So, you know, good luck. Go live in the woods.

So yeah, I think that James Swale and the films is aware of that because there's a lot of interesting religious and actually anti-religious imagery that I speaking of things that I don't think people picked up on at the time. See, for example, all the crosses in the cemetery, the Dr. Frankenstein's cocky attempt at creating life and resurrecting his monster who could be interpreted as kind of a blasphemous symbol of Jesus Christ. Also, the not-so-subtle appearance of Milton's epically long poem Paradise Lost, which some people consider kind of like fanfic

about Satan falling from the graces of God and launching his own hell, hotel of agony in the afterlife. Also, did you know that the actor who played Frankenstein so wonderfully in James Wales versions was actually born William Pratt, but he thought it sounded too boring. So he went by Boris Karloff, and he was broke until he landed that role in his mid-40s. And then became a famous Hollywood celeb. How about that? So sometimes the star power of a monster is just right under our noses.

But hey, what's under our beds? Patrons asked, such as Anatompson in a eastern Sophie Philpot, Francesca Huggins, eating dog care for a living, pickles, Jenna Breiner, and Abby. Here in Average Pie, Stephen Lee, Holly Cole, and Sarah Quark Henderson. A lot of people wanted to know, monsters under the bed. Have you ever had one under the bed? Why are they under the bed? And then Christine Gilarski, first inquest,

asked her, said, I can't believe I'm asking this. When I was in the fourth grade, I had an experience with a monster that I cannot convince my brain was not real. I remember so many vivid details. I'm almost 40 and I still believe this is real. I know it's weird. And a ton of people wanted to know,

below any shoes, wants to know, what is the best way to explain to my very curious and mature three year old that monsters are not real, but the monsters we have are stories. So are they under the bed? What happens if you think one's real and what do you tell your kids? So I saw monsters.

Oh, I was a little scared. Yeah, I used to say, again, I'm like consuming all those horror films from the 30s and 40s. And so I had these experiences where I thought I was seeing things. And sometimes it terrified me, most of the time it terrified me, occasionally kind of delighted me. Actually, one thing I would say to your listener, this is going to be really counterintuitive and maybe they could simply talk this up to that I'm not actually a parent. So, you know, maybe this is bad advice, but don't tell your kids that monsters aren't real yet.

The opinions expressed by theologist are those of theologist. Don't write me letters. They're probably going to have nightmares because my understanding is children do that. And, uh, guess what? They're also going to have nightmares when they're 50. Uh, like, you're not going to make that go away. Their bodies and brains, our bodies and brains are doing something that's important when that's happening. So I don't think that like as much as I myself am not a believer in the supernatural, you know, I don't think that we need to do

like the disenchantment of the universe for a three year old or whatever, like they're gonna figure out themselves that, you know, the really scary things are not under the bed and in the closet. So let them have, you know, the really scary things are not under the bed and in the closet. So let them have, you know, the scaryness and the wonder of the Adamine. But I mean, I'm just talking out of my head. I don't have kids. I'm not the one who has still with the screen.

You know, right? So I say they got to want to have that. I don't know kids either, but I have a dog that sometimes goes yes same. So I let her dream about whatever she wants. Well see and actually our dogs were not really clear if they're having a nightmare or if they're engaged in some kind of merry chase. Right. And honestly I think that might tell us something about dreaming in nightmares and those kinds of experiences in general for humans. I mean, I think we need to be able to have those kinds of things to make sense of the world. Clearly, we do not know how to parent.

Do not take our advice. But you know who might know how is authors of the 2020 study, Monsters at Bedtime, Managing Fear in Bedtime Picture Books for Children, which sites a 1996 study, saying that bedtime, managing fear in bedtime picture books for children, which sites a 1996 study saying that the monster always signifies something other than itself. While a 2014 study poses that monsters have a distinct function as psychological tools to help children cope with problems and anxieties. Okay, but what do you do about them?

It depends on how well the kiddo is. There was a 2009 study titled, Scaring the Monster Away. What children know about managing fears of real and imaginary creatures, and it found that younger kids, like under seven, don't do well with reality affirmation, saying there is no monster, but rather it helps to reframe things like, sure, maybe there is a monster drooling under your bed, but she's tired, just like you, and eats dust bunnies, not people. Older than around seven responds better to, nope, nope, monsters are not real. Unless they're heli monsters, which are cool lizards that will chomp your arms so hard,

you'll wish you were never bored. Alright, love you night night. Also, for more on dreaming and nightmares, see the onerology two-parter from January. And if you're still like, okay, but who decides monsters were under anyone's bed? The answer is your ancestors who use these folkloric kind of scare tactics

to get kids to bed at an earlier time. Although in Japan, where it's more common to sleep with a mat and a mattress on the floor, maybe you have to tell kids that the boogie man is chilling in the hamper. Being like, get some shudder, sweetie pitty, ooh, I smell like socks, which sounds honestly more friend than foe. Well, Margot Lewis, Diana, and Daniel Gil all wanted to know in Margot's words, are there monsters who are not scary at all and might even be cute? And another patron asked about Pokemon, Pocket Monsters.

So any lore on benevolent monsters? I have one that I really like. One example of this, it would be our friend with the human head necklace. Yeah. Right. So no, I don't know that we would necessarily call him cute, but he's definitely good. There is kind of the sweet monster called a leshy.

This is Siberian folklore. Their name means something like the tree people. And they're often portrayed as being kind of scary when he's not kind of real scary when you see them but also weirdly sweet. They actually like help shepherds and cowherds and they protect sheep from wolves and if you hear noises in the trees it's aesh-y that's weeping because one of their favorite trees was cut down. So that's kind of nice. Now, on the other hand, they are clove and hoofed

and covered in long-tangled black hair and occasionally still children. And also can turn you to stone if they get angry with you. So there is that, but their emotional intelligence also can turn you to stone if they get angry with you. So there is that, but their emotional intelligence seems to be really hot. This is what I'm saying.

I still don't want to match with them on Tinder though. Well, no, I mean, I don't know that that would work out. But oh, and here's the thing. I guess when you said Tinder, this way, we think of this. So like if you make the mad, I guess when you said Tinder, that's why we think of this. So like if you make the mad, if they don't turn you to someone, the other things they might do is they might tickle you till you die.

I'm not kidding. This is part of the lower, like coming back hundreds of years. And yeah, and I don't know, like, I don't think it's actually possible to like tickle someone today, yes. But like, that's what the last she do. I guess also, the last app a tree would be on his Tinder, probably.

Right, right. Something burning, that's not okay. That's such a good one. Last question, I always ask, guess is the hardest thing about your job and the easiest, but I'm going to take a pivot and ask, what monster just makes you give an exasperated side, just like not this one again, which one do you hate the most? I still can't take twilight So, okay, just real quick. So, a number of my students of this particular generation

are part of the Twilight fan community that has tried to kind of do reparative work on that and find something empowering in it. And so they have a few. I have kind of made it their task to, you know, educate me on this. And to particularly try to reclaim the films. But I'm just, you know, and I entertained it for a while. And I'm also glad that people have found things in it that are empowering. But I just really still think it's just reactionary

garbage. I just, everything from making the vampires toothless or at least fangless to, you know, using an actual first nation's mythological system and changing it around, you know, and turning them into werewolves. I mean, like to the point that tourists, you know, apparently want to talk to them about their werewolf mythology and that's just something, you just something that Meyer came up with. Obviously, the general portrayal of a very patriarchal romance and a very weird power dynamic with the whole, would we say May, December romance? Something more than that, right? Because he's like 200 and she's like 19 or whatever.

Well, and it's got kind of a pro-chastity message as well, right? It does. It does the very famous feminist essay on Twilight that referred to it as Chastity Porn. It actually first appeared in the mad stuff, the so-called purity movement among evangelicals, the true love whites, stuff. And it very definitely, I think, has a gendered politics. So, you know, more power to students of this generation that are finding queer coding and feminist messages,

but this is, I am one unconvinced, old lefty that still thinks it's just garbage. I can't do it. Well, maybe that makes it the scariest monster movie of all in different ways. It is a scary, and I have, you know, I read the books and I watched one of the films. I couldn't do, I couldn't get past. The films are better than the books. What about your favorite monster? There's

got to be one that if you were going to buy a monster t-shirt, this would be the one. If you have a Halloween costume, you'd have to decide on forever every year. This would be the one. Which one is it? I love, and I mean in a weird way, the bride of Frankenstein. Oh, that's great. The film, but also her. In fact, I'm wearing a bride of Frankenstein T-shirt. So, yeah. So that was an easy one. Yeah, I mean, again, playing off of some of the religious undertones of that story, she's sort of the eve that said

no to the plan for her. She doesn't want to be anybody's helpmate. She turns that down pretty strongly. And also just the impact that Elsel Anchester's portrayal of her had on kind of the iconography of Mont. I mean, just like Frankenstein, if I say bride of Frankenstein, you see that hair. You see that extraordinary kind of art deco design of her. And she's only in the film like five minutes, you know, at the end. I didn't realize that.

It's some of the best five minutes of film in the whole horror tradition. You know. Man. I hate me. I hate you. I hate you. Man. I hate you. I hate you.

I hate you. I hate you. I hate you. I hate you. I hate you. I hate you. I hate you. I hate you.

I hate you. I hate you. I hate you. I hate you. I hate you. I hate you. I hate Halloween. I have very curly, voluminous hair. You might say, I've got to send you a picture. Well, please do. I actually have a collection of friends that have done the bride of Frankenstein. And so I have quite a collection

because people have always gotten me like sort of bride of Frankenstein. I almost have too much at the time, really. But can you have too much of her? I don't think so. Apparently not. Yeah, no, she's extraordinary. And my friend, Katherine, taught me that if you have long enough hair, you can put a leader bottle on top of your head and then put a ponytail on top. How smart.

Yeah, so you're just kind of, you just nestle the bottle on a ponytail on the very top of your head and your halfway there. All you need is some baby powder or something. So Jack Pierce, who did the makeup for Elsel and Chester in 35, he actually used a part of a bird catch. Oh, I did. Yes, and I guess like with you, Ali, it was her hair.

That was Elsel and Chester's hair. That was her, actually, I always would have thought that was like an appliance. Yes, it is not any kind of appliance that is her hair just partially died. I think that it's actually, you can't tell this in the film, but it's actually died rad so that it would have some texture kind of on black and white film. And also so that sort of the white like kind of lightning streaks you know would kind of show off to advantage. They need to do some sort of comedy mashup like the bridesmaids of Frankenstein. That would be a great one.

This is spin-off. Right and like they're all angry at like how much they had to pay for their lab of garments. Exactly. Their burial shrouds were so expensive that they had to take out a student loan. Yeah. They're like, I'll never wear this shroud again. Right.

I'm dare she. Right. Oh my god, this has been such a joy. I cannot tell you. Well, for me too, Al. I really enjoyed it. Yeah. So ask smart people, spooky questions, and enjoy Dr. Scott Pools' latest book, Dark Carnival's

Modern Horror and the Origins of American Empire. He also authored Monsters in America, Wasteland, The Great War and the Origins of Modern Horror, and in the mountains of madness, the life and extraordinary after life of HP Lovecraft. All are linked in the show notes, so get them on your reading list. Again, gorgeous writing, so much knowledge. Thank you so much for being on Scott, and again, at donationwasmadetorescue.org, in his name, which is also linked in the show notes. Our web page for this episode, alleywear.com, slashology, slash,

territory is linked in the show notes. It has tons of links to clips and research as well, or at allergies on Twitter and Instagram. I'm at alleyword with one L on both erot Talbert Admin, Seaology's podcast Facebook group. Noelle Dillworth is our scheduling producer, Emily White, of the Wordery, makes our professional transcripts. Susan Hale is our managing director

and did a ton of producing on this as well. We also have small-achies episodes available for the kiddos in your life. There's shorter, clean, classroom safe versions of classic episodes. Thank you to Mercedes-Mateland of Maitland Audio and Secret Vegas Thomas and Jared Sleeper, of Binegem Media for working on those. Kelly Ardwyer makes our website and can make yours too. Thanks to the electrifyingly wonderful lead editor Mercedes-Mateland of mainland audio for the hard work in assembling and bringing this to life. Nick Thorburn of the band Islands made our theme music and if you stick around until

the end of the episode I tell you a secret. And this week it's that I've been drinking a lot of Chai tea. I've told you before, spicy chai, add a little cayenne, add a little black pepper in there. So good. Yesterday I was writing this episode and I microwaved the same cup of tea no fewer than six times. I just kept microwaving it, walking away for getting

and I just kept redoing it. Anyway, I'm about to hop on a flight back to California. I've been in Connecticut. I went to an Apple orchard, we carved pumpkins. I curled up by a fire. I've been having a real holiday, but now I'm back to LA where I think it's about 90 degrees. Okay, see you next week for our final spooktober.

Okay, bye bye. Hackadermy College, Amiology, CryptoZoology, Litology, Danosing Technology, Meteorology, No-Lectology, Nepology, Serialogy, Non-Selialogy. And technology, nevology, and seriology, and senology. And technology. And technology. And technology.

All children see monsters. No, I'm bees.