Monsters and the Moral Imagination - The Chronicle Review - The Chronicle of Higher Education 6/5/11 10:27 PM

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October 25, 2009

Monsters and the Moral Imagination
By Stephen T. Asma
Monsters are on the rise. People can't seem to get enough of
vampires lately, and zombies have a new lease on life. This year
and next we have the release of the usual horror films like Saw VI
and Halloween II; the campy mayhem of Zombieland; more-
pensive forays like 9 (produced by Tim Burton and Timur
Bekmambetov), The Wolfman, and The Twilight Saga: New
Moon; and, more playfully, Where the Wild Things Are (a Dave
Eggers rewrite of the Maurice Sendak classic).

The reasons for this increased monster culture are hard to pin
down. Maybe it's social anxiety in the post-9/11 decade, or the
conflict in Iraq—some think there's an uptick in such fare during
wartime. Perhaps it's the economic downturn. The monster
proliferation can be explained, in part, by exploring the meaning of
monsters. Popular culture is re-enchanted with meaningful
monsters, and even the eggheads are stroking their chins—last
month saw the seventh global conference on Monsters and the
Monstrous at the University of Oxford.

The uses of monsters vary widely. In our liberal culture, we

dramatize the rage of the monstrous creature—and Frankenstein's
is a good example—then scold ourselves and our "intolerant
society" for alienating the outcast in the first place. The liberal
lesson of monsters is one of tolerance: We must overcome our
innate scapegoating, our xenophobic tendencies. Of course, this is
by no means the only interpretation of monster stories. The
medieval mind saw giants and mythical creatures as God's
punishments for the sin of pride. For the Greeks and Romans,
monsters were prodigies—warnings of impending calamity.

After Freud, monster stories were considered cathartic journeys

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into our unconscious—everybody contains a Mr. Hyde, and these

stories give us a chance to "walk on the wild side." But in the
denouement of most stories, the monster is killed and the psyche
restored to civilized order. We can have our fun with the "torture
porn" of Leatherface and Freddy Krueger or the erotic vampires,
but this "vacation" to where the wild things are ultimately helps us
return to our lives of quiet repression.

Any careful reading of Bram Stoker's Dracula, for example, will

reveal not only a highly sexualized description of blood drinking,
but an erotic characterization of the count himself. Even John
Polidori's original 1819 vampire tale The Vampyre describes the
monster as a sexually attractive force. According to the critic
Christopher Craft, Gothic monster tales—Frankenstein, The
Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Dracula, Anne Rice's
Vampire Chronicles—rehearse a similar story structure. "Each of
these texts first invites or admits a monster, then entertains and is
entertained by monstrosity for some extended duration, until in its
closing pages it expels or repudiates the monster and all the
disruption that he/she/it brings," he writes.

A crucial but often-ignored aspect of monsterology is the role those

beasties play in our moral imaginations. Recent experimental
moral psychology has given us useful tools for looking at the way
people actually do their moral thinking. Brain imaging, together
with hypothetical ethical dilemmas about runaway trolley cars, can
teach us a lot about our real value systems and actions. But another
way to get at this subterranean territory is by looking at our
imaginative lives.

Monsters can stand as symbols of human vulnerability and crisis,

and as such they play imaginative foils for thinking about our own
responses to menace. Part of our fascination with serial-killer
monsters is that we (and our loved ones) are potentially vulnerable
to sadistic violence—never mind that statistical probability renders
such an attack almost laughable. Irrational fears are decidedly
unfunny. We are vulnerable to both the inner and the outer forces.
Monster stories and films only draw us in when we identify with
the persons who are being chased, and we tacitly ask ourselves:
Would I board up the windows to keep the zombies out or seek the
open water? Would I go down to the basement after I hear the

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thump, and if so, would I bring the butcher knife or the fireplace
poker? What will I do when I am vulnerable?

The comedy writer Max Brooks understands that dimension of

monster stories very well. In books like The Zombie Survival Guide
and World War Z, Brooks gives us painstaking, haunting, and
hilarious advice about how best to meet our undead foes. For its
April Fools' edition, the otherwise serious journal Archaeology
interviewed Brooks, asking him (tongue firmly in cheek): "Does the
archaeological record hold any zombie-related lessons for us today?
What can our ancestors teach us about meeting and, ultimately,
defeating the undead menace?" Brooks replied: "The greatest
lesson our ancestors have to teach us is to remain both vigilant and
unafraid. We must endeavor to emulate the ancient Romans; calm,
efficient, treating zombies as just one more item on a rather
mundane checklist. Panic is the undead's greatest ally, doing far
more damage, in some cases, than the creatures themselves. The
goal is to be prepared, not scared, to use our heads, and cut off
theirs."

Brooks is unparalleled in parodying a well-worn monster tradition,

but he wouldn't be so funny if we weren't already using monster
stories to imagine strategies for facing enemies. The monster is a
virtual sparring partner for our imagination. How will I avoid,
assuage, or defeat my enemy? Will I have grace under pressure?
Will I help others who are injured? Or will I be that guy who
selfishly goes it alone and usually meets an especially painful
demise?

In a significant sense, monsters are a part of our attempt to

envision the good life or at least the secure life. Our ethical
convictions do not spring fully grown from our heads but must be
developed in the context of real and imagined challenges. In order
to discover our values, we have to face trials and tribulation, and
monsters help us imaginatively rehearse. Imagining how we will
face an unstoppable, powerful, and inhuman threat is an
illuminating exercise in hypothetical reasoning and hypothetical
feeling.

You can't know for sure how you will face a headless zombie, an
alien face-hugger, an approaching sea monster, or a chainsaw-
wielding psycho. Fortunately, you're unlikely to be put to the test.

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But you might face similarly terrifying trials. You might be

assaulted, be put on the front lines of some war, or be robbed,
raped, or otherwise harassed and assailed. We may be lucky
enough to have had no real acquaintance with such horrors, but we
have all nonetheless played them out in our mind's eye. And though
we can't know for sure how we'll face an enemy soldier or a rapist,
it doesn't stop us from imaginatively formulating responses. We
use the imagination in order to establish our own agency in chaotic
and uncontrollable situations.

People frequently underestimate the role of art and imagery in

their own moral convictions. Through art (e.g., Shelley's
Frankenstein, Hitchcock's Psycho, King's and Kubrick's The
Shining), artists convey moral visions. Audiences can reflect on
them, reject or embrace them, take inspiration from them, and
otherwise be enriched beyond the entertainment aspect. Good
monster stories can transmit moral truths to us by showing us
examples of dignity and depravity without preaching or
proselytizing.

But imagining monsters is not just the stuff of fiction. Picture

yourself in the following scenario. On the evening of August 7,
1994, Bruce Shapiro entered a coffee bar in New Haven, Conn.
Shapiro and his friends had entered the cafe and were relaxing at a
table near the front door. Approximately 15 other people were
scattered around the bar, enjoying the evening. One of Shapiro's
friends went up to the bar to get drinks. "Suddenly there was
chaos," Shapiro explained in The Nation the next year, "as if a
mortar shell had landed." He looked up to see a flash of metal and
people leaping away from a thin, bearded man with a ponytail.
Chairs and tables were knocked over, and Shapiro protected one of
his friends by pulling her to the ground.

In a matter of minutes, the thin man, Daniel Silva, had managed to

stab and seriously injure seven people in the coffee shop. Using a
six-inch hunting knife, Silva jumped around the room and attacked
with lightning speed. Two of Shapiro's friends were stabbed. After
helping some others, Shapiro finally escaped the cafe. "I had gone
no more than a few steps," he recalled, "when I felt a hard punch in
my back followed instantly by the unforgettable sensation of skin
and muscle tissue parting. Silva had stabbed me about six inches

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above my waist, just beneath my rib cage."

Shapiro fell to the pavement and cried out, "Why are you doing
this?" Standing over him, Silva plunged the knife into Shapiro's
chest, beneath his left shoulder. "You killed my mother" was the
incoherent response that Silva offered his victim. Silva then pulled
the knife out of Shapiro and rode off on a bicycle. He was soon
apprehended and jailed.

Was Silva a monster? Not exactly. He was a mentally ill man who
snapped and seemed to think that his mother had been wronged
and felt some obscure need to avenge her. (She was, in fact, in a
nearby hospital at the time, being treated for diabetes.) But from
the perspective of raw experience, this horrifying event shares
many qualities with the imagined monster attack. Shapiro and his
unfortunate company were suddenly presented with a deadly,
irrational, powerful force that sent them reeling for mere survival.
And yet the victims demonstrated an impressive ability to reach out
and help each other. While the victims were leaping away from
Silva's angry knife blade, I suspect that he was for them, practically
speaking, a true monster. I would never presume to correct them
on that account. In such circumstances, many of us are sympathetic
to the use of the monster epithet.

One of the fascinating aspects of Shapiro's experience is how

people responded to his story after the fact. I have been suggesting
that monster stories are encapsulations of the human feeling of
vulnerability—the monster stories offer us the "disease" of
vulnerability and its possible "cures" (in the form of heroes and
coping strategies). Few monster stories remain indefinitely in the
"threat phase." When fear is at a fever pitch, they always move on
to the hero phase. Hercules slays the Hydra, George slays the
dragon, medicine slays the alien virus, the stake and crucifix slay
the vampire. Life and art mutually seek to conquer vulnerability.
"Being a victim is a hard idea to accept," Shapiro explained, "even
while lying in a hospital bed with tubes in veins, chest, penis, and
abdomen. The spirit rebels against the idea of oneself as
fundamentally powerless."

This natural rebellion may have prompted the most repeated

question facing Shapiro when he got out of the hospital. When
people learned of Daniel Silva's attack on seven victims, they asked,

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"Why didn't anyone try to stop him?" Shapiro always tried to

explain how fast and confusing the attack was, but people failed to
accept this. Shapiro, who was offended by the question, says, "The
question carries not empathy but an implicit burden of blame; it
really asks 'Why didn't you stop him?' It is asked because no one
likes to imagine oneself a victim." We like to see ourselves as
victors against every threat, but of course that's not reality.

Believers in human progress, from the Enlightenment to the

present, think that monsters are disappearing. Rationality will pour
its light into the dark corners and reveal the monsters to be merely
chimeric. A familiar upshot of the liberal interpretation of monsters
is to suggest that when we properly embrace difference, the
monsters will vanish. According to this view, the monster concept
is no longer useful in the modern world. If it hangs on, it does so
like an appendix—useful once but hazardous now.

I disagree. The monster concept is still extremely useful, and it's a

permanent player in the moral imagination because human
vulnerability is permanent. The monster is a beneficial foe, helping
us to virtually represent the obstacles that real life will surely send
our way. As long as there are real enemies in the world, there will
be useful dramatic versions of them in our heads.

In 2006, four armed men in Kandahar, Afghanistan, broke into the

home of an Afghan headmaster and teacher named Malim Abdul
Habib. The four men held Habib as they gathered his wife and
children together, forcing them to watch as they stabbed Habib
eight times and then decapitated him. Habib was the headmaster at
Shaikh Mathi Baba high school, where he educated girls along with
boys. The Taliban militants of the region, who are suspected in the
beheading, see the education of girls as a violation of Islam (a view
that is obviously not shared by the vast majority of Muslims). My
point is simply this: If you can gather a man's family together at
gunpoint and force them to watch as you cut off his head, then you
are a monster. You don't just seem like one; you are one.

A relativist might counter by pointing out that American soldiers at

Abu Ghraib tortured some innocent people, too. That, I agree, is
true and astoundingly shameful, but it doesn't prove there are no
real monsters. It only widens the category and recognizes monsters
on both sides of an issue. Two sides calling each other monsters

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doesn't prove that monsters don't exist. In the case of the American
torturer at Abu Ghraib and the Taliban beheader in Afghanistan,
both epithets sound entirely accurate.

My own view is that the concept of monster cannot be erased from

our language and thinking. It cannot be replaced by other more
polite terms and concepts, because it still refers to something that
has no satisfactory semantic substitute or refinement. The term's
imprecision, within parameters, is part of its usefulness. Terms like
"monster" and "evil" have a lot of metaphysical residue on them,
left over from the Western traditions. But even if we neuter the
term from obscure theological questions about Cain, or
metaphysical questions about demons, the language still
successfully expresses a radical frustration over the inhumanity of
some enemy. The meaning of "monster" is found in its context, in
its use.

So this Halloween season, let us, by all means, enjoy our fright fest,
but let's not forget to take monsters seriously, too. I'll be checking
under my bed, as usual. But remember, things don't strike fear in
our hearts unless our hearts are already seriously committed to
something (e.g., life, limb, children, ideologies, whatever).
Ironically then, inhuman threats are great reminders of our own
humanity. And for that we can all thank our zombies.

Stephen T. Asma is a professor of philosophy at Columbia College

Chicago. Oxford University Press is publishing his most recent
book, On Monsters: An Unnatural History of Our Worst Fears,
this month.
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