Monsters on the mind

After Owen's blog post about werewolves a couple of weeks ago, I've found I've got monsters on the mind again too. Or maybe I always have monsters on the mind, and Owen just reminded me of it.

We live in scary times – and that's been true since the dawn of humanity, when scary times meant getting killed by a wild animal, kill or be killed. And today, what are we scared of? Not having enough money, family problems, school stress, work stress, recession, depression. So maybe we need our literary, cinematic monsters – vampires, werewolves and zombies – just to give us something fun to be scared by.

That's the argument in this story that I just heard the other day from National Public Radio in America. Our favourite monsters in books, TV shows and movies – in this case vampires – often reflect the things we're most scared of at a given time. Bram Stoker's Dracula, according to the story, embodied fears in Britain of globalization and disease.

The first couple of seasons of Buffy the Vampire Slayer reminded its adult fans how scary being a teenager really is. The really scary, evil monsters in that show didn't just want to hurt Buffy and the Scooby gang. They also made fun of their clothes and their friends. They weren't just evil – they were mean.

But as Owen reminded us, vampires aren't the only monsters we love. Vampires are complicated creatures. Werewolves are too, and they pull on the same heartstrings that our pet dogs do. If you're sick of complicated, ambiguous vampires, might I suggest zombies? They're pretty simple. They're also the comedic relief of the monster world (see Shaun of the Dead and Zombieland). Vampires are tortured, romantic souls. Zombies just want to eat your brains. 

(That's Jonathan Coulton, American geek rocker, with his zombie song "Re: Your Brains".)