Why I **HEART** monsters with ALL the HEARTS

[capri0mni]

I've always loved monsters, for nearly as long as I can remember.

Actually, I should qualify that: I'm not fond, at all, of the "Hollywood monsters," such as zombies, or "The Thing from the Black Lagoon" or "The Blob" -- which are, imnsho, blatant representations of abject fear-without-thought, and show up in stories to justify unjustifiable bigotry. But I've always loved the heraldic monsters:

Unicorns (Note Well: they are not just sparkly ponies with a horn. And they do not poop rainbows), Dragons, &hearts Gryphons &hearts, Greenmen, and of course, the monster of my Astrological Sun-sign: Sea-goats

For most of that time, I just thought they were nifty because they were -- "fancy" (?), and they represent the "magical impossible," and are manifestations of the imagination, and creativity... All good stuff. But I never gave them much more thought beyond: "Nifty, Neat-O! Keen!"

Then, a few years ago, for naarmamo, I was overcome with a desire to draw new monsters of my own invention, several days in a row... like some sort of biological urge, or something.

And the geeky part of my brain thought: "WTF is up?! What is a monster, anyway? What, after all, is the basic definition?" And that's when I found the etymology, of "monster" being a "creature, human or livestock, with birth defects, and seen as a bad omen, and sign that the gods were angry."

And from that point on, monsters became a political statement for me, representing Disability Pride, Culture, and History, and the fight against Ableism/Disablism -- on top of being a manifestation of creativity and imagination. ... And here, I could mount an argument that creativity and the use of the imagination is an essential part of Disability Culture, because when Society makes a concerted effort to deny you access (because it views you as a monster) you have to be creative, to make a way of living for yourself where none is given to you.

(but really, that's for another post).

Then, the other day, when I posted the newest image of my newest monster,* pebblerocker commented that she loved the "joins" -- where feather meets fur and fur meets scales. And there was the "ding-ding-ding!" of realization, and third leg in the three-legged stool of my monster-love popped into place.

Back in my first years of my college education, I took a literary survey course called "Comedy, Wit, and Humor" (it was awesome; it was once a week, three hours long, and we got to watch Richard Pryor videos and tell dirty jokes in class). And the one thing from that class which has stuck with me over the last 30 years is this:

The punchlines of jokes work because the human mind can only follow one line of logic at a time. The main "body" of the joke tells a story along a certain line of logic, and in standard narrative fashion, the emotional tension builds to a climax. Then, the "punch" line comes in, from a completely different logical direction and knocks that emotional tension "ass-over-teakettle," revealing all our fears and worries to be nonsensical. And in that release of tension, we laugh. (And that may be why so many people say a compatible sense of humor is the most important trait in life partners -- your sense of humor reveals how you are likely to respond to life's ambiguities. Personally, I will never trust anyone whose humor tends toward causing pain or belittling another's intelligence).

The joke that was given as a model of this formula:

Once, a bishop and a lay woman fell madly in love, and started to have an affair. One day, the two of them were having sex in the woman's bed when the husband came home early from work. The two of them were scrambling to get out of bed and dressed as the husband came up the stairs. But they were too slow.

The husband comes into the bedroom, looks over the scene, and, without a word, goes over to the window and starts making the sign of the cross over the neighborhood.

The bishop and the wife were utterly perplexed; the wife stops her excuse midstream and says: "Ahem -- Dear? What are you doing?"

To which the husband replies: "Well, if he's going to do my job, I figure I'd better do his."

--

And puns and conundrums do the same thing with single words and phrases -- highlighting conflicting meanings in homophones.

Anyway, pebblerocker's comment flicked on the light bulb that monsters do this, too. The point where the goat's front half grows from the fish's back half, or the Green Man's beard grows as foliage instead of hair, is like the punchline of a joke: the moment when the logic of the world-as-we-know-it gets turned on its head.

This can be the moment of terror (especially if you are the Archbishop of Seville, and all the comfort and power in your life is built on the world-as-we-know-it), but it can also be the moment of laughter (which Jim Henson, in his genius, understood instinctively, if not intellectually).

And that's why I Heart Monsters: In one package, they represent:

1) The sublime reaches of Human Creativity
2) Righteous Anger against human cruelty
3) The ultimate life-saving power of the Absurd

*
A ballpoint pen sketch of a monster with a vaguely (hairy) human torso, arms, and legs, a bird's head, and dragon's tail.

Comments

[capri0mni]

Reminds me of a song by Lee Hayes of the Weavers, in the latter years of his life:

"If I die before I wake
All my bones and sinew take
Put me on the compost pile
To decompose me for a while --

Sun, worms, water will have their way
Returning me to common clay.
When radishes and corn you munch,
You may be having me for lunch...

And then, excrete me with a grin --
Chortling: "There goes Lee -- Again!"

Meanwhile, "cat" has a certain poetic symmetry to it: Cat eats bird... starts turning into a bird. Bird eats fruit (with seed); Seed sprouts prematurely out the other end... creating an odd -- if cute -- if gross -- "Push-me-Pull-you" creature.

Lends a bit more credence to the notion that the monster's destructiveness is really "Deconstructiveness."

[spiralsheep]

I like the song, hee!

I also like your interpretation and will choose to think of that grotesque as a curlew-cat.

Lends a bit more credence to the notion that the monster's destructiveness is really "Deconstructiveness."

And that humorous "grotesques" were the only images/stories in churches that were open to individual interpretation by the viewer without supposedly imperilling their souls.

[capri0mni]

Isn't it wonderful, then, that the grotesques are all over the place, in the churches...

Do you know the answer to this question:

Were the humorous "Grotesques" designed by some master artist, in the design and building of the church? Or were they the impromptu inventions of individual artists/artisans who did the actual building (a bit like a doodled "Kilroy was here!" but in stone) stuck in an odd corner or two?

[spiralsheep]

I couldn't give you a definitive answer because like most history it'll vary from time to time and place to place so the answer would be either "Dunno" or "Both" depending on which more specific question was being asked. The manufacturers of particular pieces of ecclesiastical glass, even the earliest, are fairly well recorded (although individual designers aren't so well documented) but masonry tends to be either the stomemasons of/from X OR George Gilbert Scott. [/ecclesiastical architecture in-joke]. I'd guess the answer would also depend on the visual prominence of a grotesque in its original setting, which is not necessarily the context its seen in now.

Interestingly, the earliest creatures I recall seeing in ecclesiastical contexts in England (i.e. Anglo-Saxon rather than Roman) have ALL been realistic depictions of wolves OR dragons (i.e. the pre-Christian Ang-Sax animals associated with destructive forces). Also, the most human-visaged and terrifying angel I recall was Anglo-Saxon. It was a true (don't) Blink angel. ::shiver::

[capri0mni]

*nod*

I figured the answer was somewhere between "no way to know (without a time machine)" and "it depends." I was just wondering if the person long ago came up with the curlew-cat by a similar method of make-it-up as I do when I come up with something like my gryphon snail, or my Long Bird monster...

Also, the thought occurred to me this morning that cat-curlew's magical green "friend" is so verdant and jolly, that he's almost in the same category of "magical scat" goody-goody happiness as unicorns pooping rainbows...

Not to mention unicorn poop cookies (or biscuits, if you prefer) to feed your children.

Photographic evidence (and recipe) here: http://makingmemorieswithyourkids.blogspot.com/2012/03/unicorn-poop-cookies.html

So who are we to judge Medieval humor sensibilities (at least in art -- I reserve all right to get judgmental when it comes to kicking the resident dwarf for laughs)?

[spiralsheep]

Ooo... knowing how the designers of cheery grotesques arrived at their designs (not the scatological ones cos I think I can guess...) would be fascinating.

So who are we to judge Medieval humor sensibilities

Oh, scatology is still a staple of British humour (alas the dwarf-kicking &c is also still current although it's more often treated as a hate-crime these days).

[capri0mni]

Well, at least it is categorized as a hate-crime, these days, instead of, you know:

"Respectable party game, and what all the fashionable noble-folk are doing, to show off their good taste and excellent breeding."

I really do think civilization is heading in the right direction (even though our pace of travel would make a snail bang its head against a wall, in frustration).

[spiralsheep]

And in case you haven't found the slightly spurious "grotesque" = foliage connection yet:

The word grotesque comes from the same Latin root as "Grotto", meaning a small cave or hollow. The original meaning was restricted to an extravagant style of Ancient Roman decorative art rediscovered and then copied in Rome at the end of the 15th century. The "caves" were in fact rooms and corridors of the Domus Aurea, the unfinished palace complex started by Nero after the Great Fire of Rome in AD 64, which had become overgrown and buried, until they were broken into again, mostly from above. Spreading from Italian to the other European languages, the term was long used largely interchangeably with arabesque and moresque for types of decorative patterns using curving foliage elements.

Since at least the 18th century (in French and German as well as English) grotesque has come to be used as a general adjective for the strange, fantastic, ugly, incongruous, unpleasant, or disgusting, and thus is often used to describe weird shapes and distorted forms such as Halloween masks. In art, performance, and literature, grotesque, however, may also refer to something that simultaneously invokes in an audience a feeling of uncomfortable bizarreness as well as empathic pity. More specifically, the grotesque forms on Gothic buildings, when not used as drain-spouts, should not be called gargoyles, but rather referred to simply as grotesques, or chimeras.[citation needed]

Rémi Astruc has recently argued that although there is an immense variety of motifs and figures, the three main tropes of the grotesque are doubleness, hybridity and metamorphosis.[1] Beyond the current understanding of the grotesque as an aesthetic category, he demonstrated how the grotesque functions as a fundamental existential experience. Moreover, Astruc identifies the grotesque as a crucial, and potentially universal, anthropological device that the societies have used to conceptualize alterity and change.[not verified in body]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grotesque

http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=grotesque

And, while we're on the subject, this also springs to mind:

http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=antic&allowed_in_frame=0

[capri0mni]

Ooh, I knew "grotesque" <<-- "grotto," but I did not know that that link referred back to a specific instance of the "Green People" rightfully reclaiming the territory which had been stolen from them.

(as you can probably tell from that comment, I've always loved seeing, when riding in the car, old abandoned houses by the side of the road, with trees growing up through the chimney, and ivy curling out the window).