Abstract
The monster is rarely visualized on contemporary stage and, when encountered, it usually comes as a verbal representation, a trope. On the other hand, the monster is highly visible on the screen, both in film and television. In addition to the monsters of yore, new ones engendered by modern technology have come into being and they too have animated the screen rather than the stage. The robot, born in 1921 into the theatre in Karel Capek’s R. U. R, was quickly adopted by the film industry where it has been a star ever since Metropolis (1926), a serious rival of King Kong’s offspring as well as of the more recent ETs. The last thirty years have seen the fantastic and with it the figure of the monster in various shapes invading and colonizing the screen. Mythological and folkloristic monsters, such as dragons, flying animals, supernatural humans or vampires, capture our attention along with such figures of awe as mutants, robots, or aliens. The film trilogy Star Wars, like Mars Attack! and Batman Returns, has been watched by millions in numerous countries, and so have television series such as Twilight Zone, Night Gallery, Outer Limits, The Invaders, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, The X-Files, or Star Trek, to name but a few. Literature has profited from the propagation of the fantastic on the screen and the works of Tolkien, Rowling, or Philip Pullman have been successfully translated and marketed to millions of readers all over the world.
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Notes
Along with the studies of Halberstam, Gilmore, Twitchell, Benshoff, and Chris Baldick on the monster, see also Joseph D. Andriano, Immortal Monster: The Mythological Evolution of the Fantastic Beast in Modern Fiction and Film (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1999);
Edward J. Ingebretsen, At Stake: Monsters and the Rhetoric of Fear in Public Culture (Chicago: University of Chicago, 2001); Monster Theory, ed. Jeffrey J. Cohen (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1996);
Daniel Cohen, Encyclopedia of Monsters (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1982); David Williams, Deformed Discourse;
David J. Skal, The Monster Show: A Cultural History of Horror (New York: Norton, 1993);
Elaine L. Graham, Representations of the Post/Human: Monsters, Aliens and Others in Popular Culture (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2002); and Monsters in the Italian Literary Imagination, ed. Keala Jewell (Wayne State University Press, 2001).
On the vampire, see Nina Auerbach’s and Paul Barber’s studies; David Glover, Vampires, Mummies and Liberals (Durham: Duke University Press, 1996);
Ken Gelder, Reading the Vampire (London: Routledge, 1994);
Roz Kaveney, ed., Reading the Vampire Slayer (London: Tauris, 2004).
On physical deformations, see Rachel Adams, Sideshow U.S.A.: Freaks and the American Cultural Imagination (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001).
On the monster in cinema, see Stuart Galbraith, Monsters are Attacking Tokyo: The Incredible World of Japanese Fantasy Films (Venice, CA; Feral House, 1998),
Katherine Fowkes, Giving up the Ghost: Spirits, Ghosts, and Angels in Mainstream Comedy Films (Wayne State University Press, 1998).
José B. Monleón, A Specter is Haunting Europe: A Sociohistorical Approach to the Fantastic (Princeton University Press, 1990), 139.
The black dog is also the attribute of Hecate, goddess of the moon and goddess of death. In the Middle Ages, it was believed that demons often take the form of black dogs. See Jean Campbell Cooper, An Illustrated Encyclopaedia of Traditional Symbols (London: Thames and Hudson, 1978), 52–53;
Hans Biedermann, Dictionary of Symbolism: Cultural Icons and the Meanings behind Them, trans. James Hulbert (New York: Meridian 1994), 98.
From the many handbooks that have compiled some of the “secrets of the trade,” Albert Hopkins’ encyclopedic guide from 1898 is still an invaluable source. See Albert A. Hopkins, Magic: Stage Illusions, Special Effects and Trick Photography (1898) (Rpt. New York: Dover, 1976).
For a definition of realism that is based on subjective perception, see Marshall Brown, “The Logic of Realism: A Hegelian Approach,” PMLA 26, no. 2 (March 1981): 224–241.
Jean Campbell Cooper, Symbolic and Mythological Animals (London: Aquarian Press, 1992), 78.
On the theatre of Tony Kushner, see James Fisher, The Theater of Tony Kushner: Living Past Hope (New York: Routledge, 2001); “ ‘Succumbing to Luxury’: History, Language, and Hope in Homebody/Kabul,” in Tony Kushner: New Essays on the Art and Politics of the Plays, ed. James Fisher (New York: McFarland & Co., 2006), 190–200; “Between Two Worlds: Ansky’s The Dybbuk and Kushner’s A Dybbuk,” Slavic and East European Performance 18, no.2 (Summer 1998): 20–32; “On the front Lines in a Skirmish in the Culture Wars: Angels in America Goes to College,” On-Stage Studies 21 (Fall 1998): 6–30; “ ‘The Angels of Fructification’: Tennessee Williams, Tony Kushner, and Images of Homosexuality on the American Stage,” Mississippi Quarterly 49, no. 1 (Winter 1995): 13–32.
Ruth Ronen, Possible Worlds in Literary Theory (Cambridge University Press, 1994), 50.
Antonin Artaud, The Theater and Its Double, trans. Mary Caroline Richards (New York: Grove Press, 1958), 25.
Freddie Rokem, Performing History: Theatrical Representations of the Past in Contemporary Theatre (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2000), 13.
See Ellen Schiff, From Stereotype to Metaphor: The Jewin Contemporary Drama (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1982).
See Moe Meyer, “Introduction: Reclaiming the Discourse on Camp,” in The Politics and Poetics of Camp, ed. Moe Meyer (London and New York: Routledge, 1994), 1–22.
Nicholas De Jongh, Politics, Prudery and Perversions: The Censoring of the English Stage 1901–1968 (London: Methuen, 2001), 83–94.
Clum, Acting Gay, 186 ; Still Acting Gay: Male Homosexuality in Modern Drama (New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 2000), xiii. See also Richard Dyer, The Culture of Queers (London: Routledge, 2002);
Alan Sinfield, Out on Stage: Lesbian and Gay Theater in the Twentieth Century (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999);
Carl Miller, Stages of Desire: Gay Theatre’s Hidden History (London: Casssell, 1996);
Ann Fleche, “When a Door is a Jar, or Out in the Theatre: Tennessee Williams and Queer Space,” Theatre Journal 47, no. 2 (May 1995): 253–267;
Edmund White, “The Burning Book: Genet and Cocteau,” Yale Review 81, no. 4 (October 1993): 24–44;
Jeffrey Meyers, Homosexuality and Literature 1890–1930 (London: University of London Athlone Press, 1977).
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© 2008 Irene Eynat-Confino
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Eynat-Confino, I. (2008). Ethics, Alterity, and Designed Emotion. In: On the Uses of the Fantastic in Modern Theatre. Palgrave Studies Theatre and Performance History. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230616967_9
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