Monsters and Monstrosity in Media: Reflections on Vulnerability

As monstrous bodies on-screen signal a wide range of subversive destabilization of the notions of identity and community, this anthology asks what meanings monsters and monstrosity convey in relation to our recent circumstances shaped by neoliberalism and the pandemic that have led to the intensified tightening of border controls by nation-states, the intensive categorization of (un)identifiable bodies, and subsequent forms of isolations and detachments imposed by social distancing and the rapid transition of sociality from reality to virtual reality.
Presenting various thinkings along the lines of the body and its representations as cultural text, together with popular or recent media productions showing various bodies deemed to be monstrous as they either cross conventionally held borders or stay in liminal spaces such as between human-animal, human-machine, virtual bodies-corporeal flesh, living-death, and other permeable borders, this volume looks into the on-screen constructions of the monster and monstrosity not only as they represent notions of difference, perceived (non)belongings, and disruptions of traditional identity markers, but also as they either conceal various vulnerabilities or implicitly endorse violence towards the labeled Other.

List of Figures
Introduction
Anson Koch-Rein
University of North Carolina
Shane Carreon
University of the Philippines Cebu
Yeojin Kim
University at Buffalo/Singapore Institute of Management

Chapter 1 The Enemy as Monster, the Monster as Neighbor: Anticommunist Propaganda in South Korea and Kwŏn Chŏng-saeng’s Korean War Trilogy
Youn Soo Kim Goldstein
Weber State University

Chapter 2 Weaponizing Monstrosity: Starz’s Black Sails and the Power of Monstrous Narrative
Min-Chi Chen
Binghamton University, State University of New York

Chapter 3 The Move to Innocence: Reframing Monstrosity in Colin Trevorrow’s Jurassic World
Aarzoo Singh
University of Winnipeg
Angie Fazekas
University of Toronto

Chapter 4 Dark Zombiecologies: Trekking through the Transformative Zombie Forest
Joshua Nieubuurt
Old Dominion University

Chapter 5 Monstrous Gatekeepers – Eco-gothic Bodies in Video Games
Morgan Kate Pinder
Deakin University

Chapter 6 The Monstrous Gaze: Examining the Camera in Horror Film
Mychal Reiff-Shanks
Georgia State University

Chapter 7 “You Are Trespassing in My House”: Subverting the Gaze in Jennifer Kent’s Monster and The Babadook
Adam P. Wadenius
Cosumnes River College

Chapter 8 Ladies of the Night, What Pop Music They Make: The Monstrous Adolescent in Jennifer’s Body and Blue My Mind
Eleanor Gratz
University of North Carolina at Wilmington

Chapter 9 Watch Out Boys, She’ll Chew You Up: Feminine Monstrosity’s Linguistic Traps
Ryanne Probst
University of North Carolina at Wilmington

Chapter 10 Trans/futurities: Queering the Cyborg as a Strategy of Transgender Disidentification
Sheridyn Villarreal
Independent Scholar

Chapter 11 Boulet Brothers’ Drag Supermonster: Goth, Macabre, and Queer Excellence
Charlito O. Codizar
Sacred Heart School Ateneo de Cebu, Philippines

List of Contributors
Index

Yeojin Kim is a Professor of Instruction at the University at Buffalo/Singapore Institute of Management. She received her Ph.D. in the English Department at Binghamton University, State University of New York. She was a Korean Government Honor Fellowship student in 2016. Her primary research interests are cultural studies, transnational cinema studies, transmedia studies, and gender studies. She is a contributor to the book, 'Cinematic Women, From Objecthood to Heroism' (Vernon, 2020).

Shane Carreon is an Associate Professor in the College of Communication, Art, and Design at the University of the Philippines Cebu. He was a recipient of a Fulbright Fellowship and an Academy of American Poets Prize. His creative work practice and research interests include writing and literature, multimodal artistic expressions, gender studies, translation, visual culture, popular culture, and decoloniality.

Monstrosity, Monster, Bodies, Pandemic, Gender, Nation-States, heteronormativity, Hegemony, Othered, Alterity, Abnormativity