“In infinite variety, living things appear, and change, and reach the land, leaving a record of their coming, of their struggle to survive, and of their eventual end.” – opening narration, ‘The Creature From The Black Lagoon’
First of all1, I hope you’ve been enjoying Behind With Knife! Chapters 1-3 should be up as you’re reading this. You’ve met Mara, you’ve met Tommy. More tomorrow! More Friday!
Thanks for reading! Brendan and I hope it’s a fun thing to add to your October, which, hey! Starts today.
On to SUB-GENRE SLAM! This week, we’re doing monsters/creature features. That’s a broad category with a lot of angles, so I am going to look specifically at two different types. Since monster/creature feature is my favorite of horror’s sub-genres, I need something to limit myself. So I’m gonna make like the The Shape Of Water fish man and get vulnerable. There are two major pulls I feel toward the monstrous, two things that attract me. How I feel about these things has changed over the years. Let’s explore.
SUPERPOWERS, BUT SAD ABOUT IT: VAMPIRES
No, vampires don’t really count as creatures, but they are definitely monsters. Yes, I talked about vampires in the monsters that act like slashers column, but this is a different type of vampire story. I’m talking sad-sack vampires. Or power-mad vampires. Im talking monstrous meditations on immortality. I’m talking about Anne Rice’s vampires, or Karen Russell’s vampire in the lemon grove. Maybe Twilight vampires fall into this category, but I’m not interested in vampires who are at eternal war or whatever. No Underworld, no—with great reluctance—no Blade.
Anne Rice’s vampires are either very sad about the fact that they will live forever and watch everyone they’ve ever known or loved die, and the fact that they are unavoidably agents of death themselves, or they’re super fuckin stoked about it. Those two sentiments (sad/stoked) are easy characterizations of Louis (the former, Brad Pitt/Jacob Anderson) and Lestat (the latter, Tom Cruise/Sam Reid), but every vampire in the series goes back and forth on how they feel about immortality. The overwhelming takeaway from Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles—at least the seven that I read 20 years ago—is that while immortality might mean you can do some cool things, it’s super not worth it, dude.
Yes, Lestat has some stocks grow for like a century and wakes up rich one day. Yes, Marius has been around and seen everything since the Roman Empire. Yes, Armand gets to run an arts collective in Paris for a while. Yes, they all have superhuman strength and speed and can murder pedophiles or whatever and are mostly cool with pansexual open relationships.2 I’m not too proud to admit that all of this sounded appealing to me, once upon a time. I’m less and less interested in actually having superpowers or doing vampire vigilantism these days, but you can imagine how these things are appealing to an insecure 17-year-old. Immortality is a disaster, though. Death is not just a natural part of life, it is a good and necessary part of life. Especially if, by living, you require the blood of other living beings to go on existing? No one’s happy with a multi-century life.
Someone tell the billionaires.
MONSTER/CREATURE AS OUTSIDER WHO DOESN’T FIT: WEREWOLVES, AND KINDA EVERYONE ELSE, TOO
It’s no secret how much I love werewolves, so let’s get it out of the way: Stephen Graham Jones’ working class nomads in Mongrels are most of what I’m thinking here. Characters who are monstrous because they do not fit within the acceptable personality types allowed by the empire—that, or a genetic ability to transform into giant wolves at will. Hey, was Grendel actually a monster, or just an outsider? Was Grendel’s mom actually a monster, or just a grieving mother? Then there are the creatures that are, despite a few violent incidents, mostly just weirdo guys—the gil-man from Creature From The Black Lagoon, his cousin from The Shape Of Water, all the hybrids in The Daughter of Doctor Moreau.
Long ago, I would’ve pointed to shame and self-hatred as my biggest reasons for being attracted to the monstrous in fiction. Some combination of aging, therapy, quitting drinking, or the mellowing effects of marijuana have given me a more positive outlook these days. No negative self-talk in Casa de Corlew. Yes, Brendan and I talk about how much we love the suffering arc of The Wolfman‘s Larry Talbot, a man who inherited things he didn’t ask for and never wanted. Maybe this is the socialism talking, but what horrifies me more now is not that one individual might be predestined for evil, but that the systems that create monsters are irresistible. What if monsters only exist because society demands an enemy? Surely not all societies demand an enemy, right?
What would have to happen for you to be kicked to the margins of society? The United States has a short slippery slope built in: if you can’t pay rent, you’re out on the streets. If you’re out on the streets, your very existence is criminalized. Most people pay rent by having a job, and it’s increasingly easy to lose your job simply because the C suite might see the stock price go up another nickel. It’s so easy to lose a job, and it’s so hard to find a new. It’s so easy to become unhoused. So many people’s response to seeing an unhoused person is to view them as monstrous. The United States loves to blame poor people instead of rich people whenever there’s a problem, don’t we?
Anyway, I like werewolves and swamp creatures. Big fan of how they usually live in very connected small communities and take care of each other.
I could go longer on creature features, but really? Chapter 3 of Behind With Knife is up.
Sorry you got an email,
Chris
- well, got a runner-up epigraph, too: “The way you walked was thorny though no fault of your own, but as the rain enters the soil, the river enters the sea, so tears run to a predestined end. Now you will have peace for eternity.” – ‘The Wolf Man’ ↩︎
- not my personal bag, but the books kinda make it seem like this is a survival mechanism for immortals ↩︎