DeMONstrations

For my first official essay, I wasn’t sure what to write about. Since Halloween was coming up, I thought it would be fun to write my essay on Monsters, especially because I’ve written on this topic before in my freshman year of college. Since I was writing this essay again, I could go much deeper than I did before. I read Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein for the Halloween spirit, and I couldn’t help but notice how similar it was to Elliot Rodger’s manifesto: My Twisted World. I knew this would be a fascinating topic to explore. I saw much of myself in Elliot Rodger, and since I was writing about monsters, I could talk about one of my favorite monsters: Godzilla. His story also provides an excellent addition to my analysis. This is what I’ve learned about monsters.

What Are Monsters?

Monster comes to the Latin word “monstrare” which means “to show” and “monere” which means “to warn.”^1,2,3 Given its similar etymology, “monster” also came from the word “demonstrate”.⁴ The word “demon” is found in the word “demonstrate” and “de” probably means falling away because it’s in front of words like “destroy,” “deform,” “devolve,” and “destruct.” They all have an essence of breaking down. Given these words and definitions, a monster is probably something that shows evil, or a warning that something horrible is going to happen.

Monsters, as warnings, can be divided into two groups. The first group contains real monsters, things that look physically deformed, or freaks of nature.⁵ The other group of monsters are imaginary. These monsters are deliberately created with a multitude of features, which are found in art and creative culture.⁶

Interestingly, these two groups were practically the same before the 1800s. An offspring was considered monstrous because it didn’t reflect the father, and instead, embodied the mother’s imagination.⁷ Aristotle said, “For he who does not resemble his parents, is already in a certain sense, a monstrosity; for in these cases Nature has in a way departed from the type.”⁸ “Monstrosity is a kind of defiance.”⁹ “For the monstrosity belongs to the class of things contrary to Nature, not any and every kind nature, but Nature in her usual operations.”¹⁰ Not only did was female imagination blamed for monstrosities, but the female figure itself was already seen as monstrosity. Aristotle, however, said it was natural deformation.¹¹ What really makes something monstrous is a sense of fakery or imperfect resemblance of the parents.¹² Of course, I don’t believe that women are monstrous in any way, but blaming the opposite sex does make sense. The female form is certainly not the same as the male form. It’s the first and closest deviation from what is seen as “normal.” When something doesn’t look the way it should look that’s when we question its purpose. Why is it different? What went wrong? Is there something that we should fear?

But we all know that looks can deceive. Just because something appears proper doesn’t mean it’s safe. And just because something is deformed doesn’t mean it’s dangerous. After the 1800s, when monsters could be divided into these two groups, that’s when monsters as physical deformities began to be questioned, especially through art. The female imagination was no longer seen as giving rise to physical monsters. Physical deformities were used by the imagination to create monsters. “If Art must imitate Nature, in cases of procreation, Nature imitates Art.”¹³

The monsters that were and are created by artistic imagination weren’t necessarily pieced together with random deformities. They’re usually exaggerated body parts pieced together to form a ferocious predator. “Regardless of their different sizes, features, and forms, monsters express – and ex-press – our dread of being torn apart, eviscerated, chewed, swallowed and then shit out.”¹⁴ The dragon, for example, is a hybrid of the three primary predators: leopard, python and eagle.¹⁵ With all three combined, it’s no wonder that the dragon is so popular in art and culture. Ultimately, the point of monsters is to put a face on something we should fear.¹⁶ When people don’t fully understand a danger, a monstrous face can be used to literally flesh out and evoke the proper fear required for the danger at hand. This goes back to the idea that monsters are a warning sign. They are there to demonstrate to us the evil that is around us. Monsters signal a dark force that must be dealt with immediately before it’s too late. 

Some common examples of monsters are the zombie, ghost, werewolf and vampire. They may seem like simple, scary faces, but it’s actually quite easy to attribute an underlying immorality or warning to them. For example, the werewolf could represent our fear of animal impulses, or the instinctual nature that subverts human reason. It’s interesting that a werewolf transforms during the full moon. As an astrologer, I know that the moon represents our instinctual natures and emotions. The Zombie could represent the fear of mass mobs people falling into decadence. It’s people who are materialists who only know consumption. Why do they like brains so much? Because they can’t think for themselves, and their only source of knowledge is the engulfment of free-thinking individuals. On the flip side, as opposed to the materialist, the ghost represents the idealist. Ghosts linger around in the material world with unfinished business. Their essence haunts the place because they never truly lived in the real world. All these monsters contrast with a moral human being. A human of virtue is not a mindless beast of the Earth, nor a floating, cold spirit of God. It’s the balanced integration of soul and body. But anyway, these are all too broad. What’s a specific monster acting out as a face of immoralities?

Godzilla

There are nearly an infinite amount of monsters in art and culture that demonstrate evil and immoralities. Godzilla is not only my favorite, and in my opinion one the coolest monsters ever, but with the recent Godzilla movies that came out, I think he’s a good example worthy of analysis, especially when putting a face on the evils and immoralities of humanity.

First, observe how similar Godzilla is to the dragon. He is a combination of predatory features: a reptilian, slithery body, the face and powerful muscles of a feline, hands that are like bird talons. Not to mention, he is utterly gigantic and breathes cosmic fire. He certainly sends a warning sign to everyone when he wrecks cities and defeats other monsters. He instills our primal fear of being eaten, which is why he is such an exciting monster.

What evil is Godzilla the face of? According to the director of the Godzilla movie released in 2014, Godzilla represents “…a force of nature, and if nature had a mascot, it would be Godzilla. So what do the other creatures represent? They represent man’s abuse of nature, and the idea that Godzilla is coming to restore balance to something mankind has disrupted.”¹⁷ In other words, Godzilla magnifies, dramatizes and demonstrates mankind’s failure to maintain its balance with nature. When Godzilla and the other monsters destroy cities, it sends us a warning signal that this is what the world will be like if we step out of balance with nature. 

In the second Godzilla film of 2019, Godzilla: King of Monsters, the monster discussion gets more interesting. In the beginning of the film, we discover that atomic bomb testing is the reason for the awakening of all monsters.¹⁸ The creation of these monsters allows us to project our own evil use of atomic bombs onto them. It gives us a face for global, all-powerful weapons. When we defeat these monsters, when they’re under control, it’s as if we’ve defeated our irresponsible use of atomic weapons. The face of the atomic bomb especially applies to Godzilla, not only because he breathes cosmic, blue fire, but a bomb is also what brought him back to life.¹⁹ This face, I think, is an attempt to objectively explain bombs. Godzilla isn’t necessarily a good or bad monster; he is a super power that should be respected, not abused. 

The other monsters represent similar powers to the atomic bomb. Emma Russel, who is a scientist and the main antagonist in the film, explains how the titans (monsters) have arisen because of humanity’s evils like overpopulation, pollution, and war. These titans are a natural defense of the planet, to restore balance.²⁰ The monsters can also represent natural disasters and climate change. One monster specifically, called Rodan, or the fire demon, arises from a volcano. Rodan is the monstrous face of a volcano.²¹

However, there is a distinction to be made between the monsters. Not all monsters are bad. If the monsters represent things like natural disasters, well they’re natural. Things that are natural aren’t really evil. Which kind of contradicts what Aristotle said. Good monsters would be like women to him. They’re natural; they’re just a slight deviation from the normal thing. So all the monsters are rather neutral merely representing major forces, but the truly evil monster is King Ghidorah. We can actually see he’s the most evil because he resembles the dragon: a supreme, predatory conglomeration of the feline, serpent, and eagle. King Ghidorah also has three heads, not just one.²² Which reminds me of Aristotle’s comment about monsters deviating from nature. In fact, King Ghidorah isn’t of the Earth; he is an alien from space.²³ Each head is like an individual snake, especially a king cobra because the tail of Ghidorah shakes like a rattle. Ghidorah can also fly like a bird with his gusty wings. King Ghidorah is a fierce, predatory monster that is actually powerful enough to face Godzilla. 

Now, the evil Ghidorah is a face of is tricky. For now, I’m going to wait to reveal the truth behind King Ghidorah, but I’ll say this much: while Godzilla is the neutral use of atomic bombs, King Ghidorah likely represents the after effects of these bombs. At one point in the film, Ghidorah was confused with a hurricane when people were looking at a map of the weather. Ghidorah breathes electricity, which is like the lightning strikes in the toxic clouds that develop. Take note of electricity, that will be important when we come back to him. 

The other thing is that Ghidorah didn’t wake up like the other monsters. He was deliberately woken up by humans, specifically Alan Jonah (a terrorist, which is someone who uses bombs irresponsibly), and Emma, who actually wanted to use the monster to, essentially, destroy humanity.²⁴ Destroying humanity is as evil as evil gets, so it’s fitting that these two would wake up King Ghidorah. 

Stay tuned, I will expand more on the Godzilla monsters later in the essay. What’s important here, is that monsters in artistic media can certainly be used to put a face on an evil.

Heads or Tails?

Unlike Godzilla, faces don’t have to be put on something so straight-forward as globalized, mass destruction. They can also be applied to humans where the evil is ambiguous or hidden. It’s common to hear one human accusing another of being a monster. Obviously, the accuser isn’t saying the accused is a deformed combination of predatory features; but the accused is so immoral in the accuser’s eyes, that a predatory monster may as well have acted in place for the accused. 

Some clear examples of this are the Nazies demonzing the Jews by depicting them with ugly faces and hooked noses. Or the Romans and Athenians of superior virtue looking down on the Barbarians by calling them “barbarians.” Or the European colonists being infatuated and surprised by their native monstrous relatives as Scott Poole explains in his detailed article called “Monsters of America.”²⁵

A more modern version of monster projection is the conflict between America and Al Qaeda. After the attack on September 11th, 2001, Americans demonized the Muslims, and the Muslims demonized Americans. There was an “us” and and “them” mentality that took over from a war on terror.²⁶

Ironically, the people that accuse others of being monstrous seem like the real monsters, if not more monstrous. On the other hand, in order to accuse someone of immorality, it would require having an ethical view. Having some kind of ethics, no matter how improper, is better than having no ethics at all. If someone can’t or is unwilling to distinguish good from evil, that in itself seems pretty monstrous.

So who is the real monster in these divisions? Or is everyone a monster? Or maybe some of us are less monstrous than others? Well, regardless of who is truly virtuous and what virtue even means, we can at least say that a monster poses an ethical question. When a monster arises, real or imaginary, someone’s virtue is being questioned.

The book The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde sheds some light on the monster duality. Dr. Jekyll in the story represents goodness, while Mr. Hyde represents the evil in himself that he doesn’t want to face. Instead of facing himself, he puts his evil face somewhere else like it’s not a part of him. We’re all human coins. When we sense evil or insecurity, objectively real or imaginatively insane, we project a monsterous face onto something, deliberately outside of us, and then destroy it. We create a scapegoat. It’s an escape from our demons. Hate the sin not the sinner. Purge yourself of your wickedness and you shall be light once again. When the darkness pervades every crevice, our natural response is to create a firm boundary, of good and bad, security and chaos, and to do whatever we can to destroy the chaos. 

Not only in the examples that I mentioned was there scapegoating, but even in small groups of people someone is always made to be the scapegoat martyr. There is always the black sheep of the family. And eerily, the outcasted person seems to take pleasure in it. Instead of trying to convince or integrate, they double-down on their evils, they act more chaotic and ridiculous. Why? because negative attention is still attention. Even though they are the devil, it still allows them to be seen. This dark half reaffirms the light half. In a twisted way, the light half feels good when they can project their evils on the dark half, and the dark half feels good because they are making the light half feel good. At least the dark half can still be a part of the group even if it’s a horrific sacrifice.

As a furry, I can understand this. I think many furries hide away from not only themselves, but especially other people. People care for women, blacks or gays, but a furry? No one ever seems to care about furries, yet people willingly choose to be a furry. They’re okay with social suicide. They dress in animal costumes. They’re mascots deprived of their human face, ex-communicated and ostracized from the proper social environment. It’s easy for a furry to be a face of evil because they’re already halfway there by pretending to be a mythical creature. As willing demonstrations, and neon fluffy faces of evil, furries are happy monsters. And I think it’s because there is a joy in being a degenerate. Not just as a furry, but being transgender or getting tattoos, or ultimately a rebel. If you’ve already been rejected, why even bother trying to fit in? Why not indulge the darker side of life? Why not fit in by not fitting in?

Perhaps this is why women are seen as the dark half, or the wrong half. When a woman gets too close to being a man, when a man feels intimidated by a woman for adopting masculine traits, a man’s automatic reaction is to demonize her. This reinstates an opposition and sense of identity. Contrary to what feminists may say, monstrous sexism might have a good purpose behind it. Or at least, when we’re able to see the opposite sex as different than us, to see their weaknesses, and their strengths not in alignment with ours, it creates a healthy opposition. If someone is the same as you, then there’s nothing left to learn or discover. But when someone is different from you, it creates the perfect environment for sexual attraction.

So far, we’ve established three things. 1) Monsters can represent faces for immoral actions. 2) These faces can be projections 3) A “monsterous” face is something we adopt to complete the other half. These faces are two sides of the same coin. And it really is a matter of which side the coin lands on to determine what is goodness and badness. 

Frankenstein and Elliot Rodger

At first glance, this might seem like an odd comparison, but these stories in combination, are excellent for delving deeper into the nature of monsters. The infamous and modern horror story of Elliot Rodger can expose the hidden insights of the classic Frankenstein novel by Mary Shelly. They are eerily similar, which makes for an exciting analysis. The parallels between these two stories are so close that it makes me wonder if Elliot Rodger modeled himself after the wretched creature of Frankenstein.

 After Elliot Rodger’s Day of Retribution, in which he was responsible for 20 casualties, he was immediately deemed as a misogynistic virgin monster. But was he always a monster? Is Elliot Rodger truly a face of evil? Or is his face a demonstration of something darker and sinister? We will answer these questions with the help of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.

The crux of Frankenstein is the idea that the creator, not the creature, is the real monster, no matter how evil his creation appears to be. When the ambitious Victor Frakenstein, a scientist who sought knowledge to increase his power and glory, gave life to the creature, instead of nurturing it, he abandoned it out of fear, terror, and horror, wishing he never created the creature at all.²⁷ When the creature was left to his own devices, he inevitably went on to commit horrible crimes. The creature, which could be argued as a monster, killed Frankenstein’s family members. First by killing young William when the monster couldn’t convince him of his goodness, and then Justine by making her look guilty of murdering Willam, Elizabeth, Victor’s soon to be wife, and even his friend Clerval.

Similarly, Elliot Rodger’s father, Peter Rodger, an ambitious Hollywood film producer, who co-directed the Hunger Games, also wasn’t a nurturing creator. First, Peter Roger wasn’t exactly present in Elliot Rodger’s life. He was constantly on business trips, to the point of missing one of Elliot’s birthdays.²⁸ Elliot Rodger’s parents were also divorced, which meant that Elliot Rodger could only spend time around him for half of the week.²⁹ Like Victor Frankenstein wishing he never created the creature, when Elliot Rodger’s father was asked in an interview if he wished his son was never born, he replied, “Part of me says yes. He did a lot of harm to people that didn’t deserve to die.”³⁰ I found his response to be rather cold and robotic, and missing the entire point. It’s about nurturing your son or creature to not be bad, not simply wishing it never existed. There were no tears or dramatic reactions. When comparing his reaction to another father, Richard Martinez, who merely lost his son to Elliot Rodger, not even his son being the shooter, it was quite different.³¹ This father was overwhelmed with emotion: anger, hate, sadness, and despair. Peter Rodger just looked stressed and very tired, the same way Frankenstein couldn’t sleep after he realized his creation was loose wreaking havoc on the world.³² Although, in Peter Rodger’s defense, this interview could’ve taken place months after the incident so he’s had time to process his emotion or he may just handle grief differently.

Also, in both of their defenses, Peter Rodger and Victor Frankenstein were responsible for a son and creature that wasn’t exactly easy to deal with. In that same interview, he said that Elliot Rodger received therapy ever since the age of nine.³³ If you had a kid that refused to socialize no matter how much therapy was given to him, what more could be done? For Frankenstein, what is someone supposed to do when a zombie-like creation is born? How could anyone not flee in fear and terror after something like that waking up? I’d probably do the same thing. These responsibilities are much more difficult than the average creator-createe relationship. Furthermore, there are plenty of people who have worse creators, born in worse circumstances, who don’t end up doing such horrible things. 

However, when looking from the perspective of the creature and Elliot Rodger, it seems as if the creators have completely deviated from their responsibility and so they are to blame. When the creature contemplated his life he said, “CURSED, CURSED, CURSED CREATOR! Why did I live? Why, in that instant, did I not extinguish the spark of existence which you had so wantonly bestowed?”³⁴ The monster couldn’t believe why he was created because it only seemed like he was created to suffer. How could anyone create a life-form to suffer? The monster suffered because he couldn’t find friends. He didn’t have anyone to nurture him to take on the world. He was left out in the cold literally and metaphorically.³⁵ When Elliot Rodger suffered in immense mental pain because he couldn’t get a girlfriend he said something strikingly similar, “My misery became harder and harder to bear, and none of my parents understood my plight. [My father] thought that all was well with me. How could he be so blind? He was so caught up in his failing work that he didn’t care about how my life was turning out. I cursed him for it. My father never made any effort to prepare me for facing such a cruel world.”³⁶ Both the creature and Elliot Rodger cursed their creators for being unable to nurture them properly, at least from their perspective. And because of that, they’ve never been able to connect to the outside world. They were left isolated and alone, in pain and suffering. 

I think it’s worth noting that both Elliot Rodger and the creature didn’t start out as born monsters. They started out as outsiders trying desperately to fit in. In chapters 12 and 13 of the novel, the creature spends all his time watching the DeLacy family, trying to understand how he could connect with human beings.³⁷ “The more I saw them,” he says, “the greater became my desire to claim their protection and kindness; my heart yearned to be known and loved by these amiable creatures; to see their sweet looks.” Elliot Rodger does the same thing. There are countless of times in his manifesto where he describes his longing for love, sex and pleasure with a girl. In one video he posted on YouTube, he’s sitting in his car with burning envy, recording a couple kissing, while talking about he’ll never be able to feel love.³⁸

When both of them are outsiders watching humanity from afar, it’s quite clear that they don’t want to destroy humanity. They want to connect with humanity. At the same time, they come off like monsters already. They seem predatory watching people intensely from a far distance. Recording a couple kissing while seething in his car? That’s creepy. A giant, hideous creature staring for months at a family? That’s creepy.

Thinking about predators, they tend to circle around their prey before they attack. They look from a distance and slowly get closer and closer before the final bite. When the creatures take this intense approach to love, I can’t help but feel how unnatural and alienating it must be. It’s like they were doomed before they even realized it. To place people on a pedestal under the gaze of predatory eyes is a recipe for rejection, not connection. 

In another strange parallel between the creature and Elliot Rodger, before they have completely given up on humanity, they both saved a person from drowning, but were also punished for it. In Rodger’s manifesto, he wrote how he saved his younger brother Jazz from drowning while attending a pool party. If it weren’t for him, Jazz would’ve drowned.³⁹ At this same pool party, Elliot Rodger explained how he was full of envy because a kid named Leo was there. Leo was younger than Elliot, yet had everything that Elliot wanted. Elliot Rodger perceived this as an injustice. For the creature in Frankenstein, he saved a young girl from drowning, but after he saved the girl, he was shot with a gun for appearing dangerous. He was shot even though he did something good.⁴⁰ Both the creature and Elliot Rodger were punished, despite doing something good for humanity.

Unfortunately, at every single turn, both the creature and Elliot Rodger were rejected. They never achieved the acceptance they so desired. Anytime they saw something beautiful or happy, they couldn’t feel happy about it themselves, they could only perceive it as pain. The creature says, “The labours I endured were no longer to be alleviated by the bright sun or gentle breezes of spring; all joy was but a mockery which insulted my desolate state and made me feel more painfully that I was not made for the enjoyment of pleasure.” ⁴¹ In a video, Elliot Rodger says that he can’t enjoy the beautiful scenery because of the cruelty of humanity and women.⁴²

At some point, when someone has been an outcast for such a long time, when all they experience is pain, they begin to question their very existence. As the creature says, “I was dependent on none and related to none! The path of my departure was free; and there was none to lament my annihilation. My purpose was hideous and my stature gigantic. What did this mean? Who was I? What was I?…These questions continually recurred but I was unable to solve them.” ⁴³  As I said previously, when someone is rejected, they become a scapegoat. They choose identity as the devil. When Elliot Rodger went to a party, and when no one said anything to him, the only way to get the attention of the people around them was by insulting them. When he didn’t get the responses he desired, he tried to push some girls off a balcony. This ended in a disaster with people calling him names, getting physically beaten up to the point of receiving a broken leg.⁴⁴ It’s moments like these when people shift from trying to connect with the group, and instead, become the opposition to the group. They find their identity by rebelling. 

When Elliot Rodger finally lost all hope he said this, “I am not part of the human race. Humanity has rejected me. The females of the human species never wanted to mate with me, so how could I possibly consider myself part of humanity. Humanity has never accepted me among them, and now I know why. I am more than human. I am superior to them all.” ⁴⁵ Elliot Rodger felt rejected, and because of that, he felt like he didn’t have a choice but to identify as an opposition to humanity. Interestingly, in his own mind, he didn’t assume a monstrous role, but a virtuous role. Instead of seeing women as human beings, he talked about them as objects by projecting a monstrous face onto them. He even went as far as saying that he was god among humanity. And with his day of Retribution, that was how he was execute it godliness, by purifying everyone who he deemed him as depraved.⁴⁶ Like Elliot Rodger, when the creature was denied a wife from Frankenstein, when he was denied love and acceptance, the creature declared war, not only on Frankenstein, but humanity as a whole. “Shall each man find a wife for his bosom and each beast have his mate, and I be alone. I had a feeling of affection, and they were requited by detestation and scorn. Man! You may hate, but beware! Your hours will pass in dread and misery, and soon the bolt will fall which must ravish from your happiness forever. Are you to be happy while I grovel in the intensity of my wretchedness?” ⁴⁷ And from then on, both of them carry out their evils, savoring whatever joy they could possibly get by destroying the lives of others. 

To them, they were overlooked heroes, but to the outside world, we only saw them as monsters.

Recap of Striking Similarities between Elliot Rodger and Frankenstein. 

1. Cold and unempathetic creators
2. Started out as “predatory” outsiders desperate to connect
3. Experienced constant pain from failing to connect
4. Feeling punished even after good deeds like saving someone from drowning
5. Declared a godly war on humanity out of envy

Despite how similar the monster and Elliot Rodger are, and how the story can be used to understand Elliot Rodger better, there are still some differences. One obvious difference is wealth and appearance. Unlike Elliot Rodger, the creature had absolutely no money, and was so ugly that everyone he came in contact with automatically shrieked and fled from him. Elliot, on the other hand, came from a privileged background, and was far from being ugly; he was handsome.

Interestingly, when both Elliot Rodger and the creature looked into their reflection, we can see the differences between them quite clearly. When the monster looked into a pool of water and saw his reflection, he was horrified at what he saw. He immediately understood why people ran away from him.⁴⁸ In a video that Elliot Rodger posted, when he looked into his reflection, all he said was, “Oh, check it out! There’s me!” in a narcissistic fashion.⁴⁹ The monster knew and saw why people automatically rejected him. Elliot, on the other hand, didn’t realize or couldn’t see his true personality. The main reason why people never seemed to care or connect with Elliot is because of his rather creepy and empty personality. Throughout his manifesto, all Elliot seemed to care about was sex with attractive women, and grandiose fantasies of money and power. He was utterly deprived of virtue. On the outside he may appear glamorous, but on the inside, the hideous appearance of Frankenstein’s monster may as well have been attributed to Elliot’s character.

Elliot is like a vampire. Vampires are the monstrous faces of narcissists. In modern culture they are usually depicted living in lavish mansions, they’re beautiful and well put together, but on the inside they’re empty. Even with all the powers and wealth, they’re predatory natures can only be satisfied by sucking the blood, by stealing the life from others. To me, that is what a narcissist is and exemplifies Elliot Rodger’s personality.  

It’s interesting because in popular culture, vampires can’t see their own reflections and I think it’s because there is no soul or virtue for them to see. The self, that the narcissistic personality assembles through duct tape and staples is so fake, that it cannot even be analyzed or reflected upon. There’s nothing there to see. When Elliot looked at his reflection, in a way, he really couldn’t see himself.  In another YouTube video he said, “I do everything I can to be attractive to you. I dress nice. I’m sophisticated. I’m magnificent. I have a nice car…and yet you girls never give me a chance.” ⁵⁰ He continues in yet another video, “I’ve been doing a lot of thinking of how sad and unfair my life has been all because girls aren’t attracted to me.” ⁵² Elliot, in his mind, has done everything to attract girls. In a sense, he has taken responsibility by being as presentable as possible. To him he looked fabulous; how could anyone disagree? Unfortunately, it wasn’t his appearance or wealth that was the problem, it was his inability to get out there and risk rejection. Elliot believed that just by showing up he should’ve been handed a life of happiness and success. When he saw people less attractive or younger than him getting girlfriends, not only was it infuriating to him, but deeply unfair. Ultimately, I think people ignored him because there truly was nothing there. How do you respond to something so deprived of a real self?

Everywhere Elliot went, he seemed to suck the life and energy away from everyone. In one interview, his neighbor talked about how he had to talk for long periods of time to get Elliot to say even one sentence. In another interview, a friend of Elliot said that he couldn’t spend time around him because he was too pessimistic and depressing. In his manifesto during one his family’s dinner party, he broke down saying he wanted to kill himself and cried after thinking he missed out on so much in life. It took his family three hours to cheer him up. He completely took over the entire night by making it all about himself. ⁵⁴

The monster’s complexion truly never did give him a chance to connect with people, and Elliot’s narcissism never gave him a chance to connect with people. Elliot blamed other people for not giving him a chance, but truthfully, I don’t think he gave himself a chance. Elliot was never willing to ever actually connect with people, to face his inner monster (whatever that may be), and instead projected his monstrosity onto women, and mankind as a whole. The main difference between Elliot and the creature was a reversal of misfortunates. In the same way that the father of the DeLacy family accepted the creature because he was blind to the outer covering, Elliot wasn’t accepted because of his ugly personality underneath.

The Shadow of the Light

“No Matter how hard you fight the darkness, every light casts a shadow, and the closer you get to the light, the darker that shadow becomes.” – Plato

In Jordan Peterson’s YouTube video The Flood and the Tower – and I highly recommend that you watch the video because it’s a great monster analysis on its own, but for the sake of my analysis, I will pick out a few key quotes – at nearly the beginning of the video, he gives an explanation that will provide the structural basis for this section, “Chaos is what causes your deterioration and death – and there’s lots of ways to conceptualize that. Fire-breathing, reptilian predator isn’t a bad place to start. And so the question is, ‘well what do you do in the face of that?’ And one answer is, ‘you build circumscribed enclosures.’ That’s order. And also you act as the builder of circumscribed enclosures, so that’s partly the hero…[but] the circumscribed enclosure isn’t impermeable; it can be invaded. It will inevitably be invaded, either from the outside, or from within.” ⁵³ He then goes on to say that chaos, or the monster, is a traumatic intrusion that undermines one’s entire belief system or sense of order. He uses the story of Adam and Eve as an example. “Adam and Eve are living in unconscious bliss, roughly speaking. Everything is fine; they’re living in their walled garden. They’re in a paradisal state. They’re not aware of their own vulnerability or nakedness, so they’re not suffering from negative emotion.” But this paradise state doesn’t last forever. He goes on to explain how human perceptions “have expanded to such a degree that we could no longer ignore what was irrelevant. We couldn’t do it because we discovered that we are surrounded by infinite threat. Always.” ⁵⁴

In both the novel of Frankenstein and Elliot Rodger’s manifesto we see criticism of knowledge, how knowledge has given rise to a horrible misery and pain, or ultimately that ignorance is bliss. At the beginning of the story, Frankenstein discusses his pure innocence as a child. “I was their plaything and their idol, and something better – their child, the innocent and helpless creature bestowed on them by heaven, whom to bring up to good, and whose future lot it was in their hands to direct happiness or misery according as they filled their duties toward me. With this deep consciousness of what they owed towards the being to which they had given life, added to the active spirit of tenderness that animated both, it may be imagined that while during every hour of my infant life I received a lesson of patience, of charity, and of self-control, I was so guided by a silken cord that all seemed but on train of enjoyment to me.” ⁵⁵ In Elliot Rodger’s manifesto, we don’t hear something nearly as poetic, but he asserted how happy and blissful he was. “My eight-year-old self had no inkling of the pain and misery girls would cause me once puberty would inevitably arrive and my sexual desires for girls would develop…boys would be embraced by girls, while I would be rejected. But at that moment, we were just innocent children growing up together…I was living ignorant, innocent bliss.” ⁵⁶ Similarly, when the monster discovered and read books from a bin that changed his entire view of the world, he says, “I cannot describe to you the agony that these reflections inflicted upon me; I tried to dispel them, but sorrow only increased with knowledge.” ⁵⁷

When the scientist Victor Frankenstein, with his ambitious pursuit for creating life actually took hold, that’s the point in which the creature woke up, and Frankenstein became mortified. There was no going back; the creature was alive. That was the point in which – the illuminating light, the discovery of chaotic knowledge – when the core essence of the ego discovered a threat. The line between light and dark suddenly became visible, and this kind of realization is frightful and painful. Similarly to Elliot Rodger, he noted the beginning of his pain and suffering after discovering sex and masturbation. “This was the start of hell for me. Going through puberty utterly doomed my existence. It condemned me to a life of suffering and unfulfilled desires.” ⁵⁸ The Frankenstein story could be an analogy for sex itself. I think we all remember our first orgasm. There’s this overwhelming sense of pleasure followed by an immediate sense of guilt and shame. In french, they say that the orgasm is a mini-death, and it’s no wonder. A small piece of your soul dies, especially during sex, which is an act of creation. Many of us run away from it or hide, or act like it doesn’t exist. We’re afraid to talk about it because of how awkward it may be. Sexual maturity is when we lose our innocence. 

 As Victor Frankenstein also says, “Learn from me, if not by my precepts, at least by my example, how dangerous is the acquirement of knowledge and how much happier that man is who believes his native town to be the world, than he who aspires to become greater than his nature will allow.” ⁵⁹ This suggests the evil of being a creator, the ambitious pursuit of knowledge, and the evil of playing god. When one assumes that they know everything, when they discover knowledge, they lose their innocence and ultimately their bliss. It is at this moment that a monster arises.

Of course, no one has learned their lesson. Everyone wanted to go back to blissful innocence instead of facing the truth that they have discovered. “[W]ith the enlightenment attempt to banish monsters to the unconscious, to make them completely invisible, it is arguable that the experience of terror took on more prolific proportions. Monsters did not go away. They merely changed their habitation and their name and returned with a vengeance. This shadow struck back.” ⁶⁰ Victor Frankenstein’s creature was the ignored shadow that wreaked havoc on his family. Elliot Rodger’s Day of Retribution was the shadow of vengeance. A light always illuminates a monstrous shadow.

Going back to Godzilla – and notice how the word “god” is in Godzilla – the evil monster, King Ghidorah, and I don’t know if this is a coincidence, but King Ghidorah is a perfect face for someone trying to play God. Remember earlier when I said to take note of lightning? What does lightning represent? It’s the paramount discovery of scientific knowledge. Lightning represents that killing of innocence. It’s shocking and chaotic, with a visual striking contrast of light and dark. It wasn’t directly said in the novel, but there were hints that Frankenstein’s monster was birthed from lightning.

King Ghidorah is the scientific god, which is represented by his golden, electric complexion. The distinction between light and dark is seen clearly when his reflective scales contrast with the looming dark storm behind. King Ghidorah shows you what happens when a scientist, in the pursuit of egotistical knowledge, goes too far. In the third Godzilla movie, containing King Kong and Mecha Godzilla, we see a continuation of this. Mecha Godzilla was created, again, by a scientist who wanted power. Of course, one of the skulls of King Ghidorah was used to power Mecha Godzilla, a machine. A machine that emulates the real Godzilla, which again, goes back to the idea of it being a fake. Mecha Godzilla is not the real god. As Aristotle said, a monster is something that pretends or fakes the original.  

King Ghidorah was also found frozen in a block of ice in the south pole. ⁶¹ This is significant because in the poles the sun is either always in the sky, or never there at all depending on the season. There’s all light or all dark, and no inbetween. At the very beginning of the Frankenstein novel, Robert Walton is seen sailing in the arctic, who is the same in the ambitious pursuit of knowledge like the younger Frankenstein. Robert Walton is used as a contrast to the young Frankenstein and the old Frankenstein. Robert Walton couldn’t understand why Frankenstein, who seemed so wise and educated, could be so unfortunate.⁶² The young Fraknenstein has an incredibly deep desire for knowledge even at the expense of his family members, worthy of sacrifice. We hear the same thing from Robert Walton, “I would sacrifice my fortune, my existence, my every hope, to the furtherance of my enterprise. One man’s life or death were but a small price to pay for the acquirement of knowledge which I sought, for the dominion I should acquire and transmit over the elemental foes of our race.” ⁶³ Since the sun never sets or rises in the poles, this metaphorical light can be seen can be used to show how knowledge is mostly light or dark. When Frankenstein studied science at university he said, “It seemed to me as if nothing would or could ever be known. All that had so long engaged my attention suddenly grew despicable. By one of those caprices of the mind…I at once gave up my former occupations, set down natural history and all its progeny as a deformed and abortive creation, and entertained the greatest disdain for a would-be science, which could never even step within the threshold of real knowledge.” ⁶⁴ I think this scene shows Frankenstein being stuck in eternal light. As Jordan Peterson said, this is order. All there is, is order. It’s boring and comfortable like the normal science that Frankenstein despised. It wasn’t real knowledge because it’s at the heart of structure and order. There is no line where the light meets darkness, which means one’s desire to be god cannot happen because you are already within the light of god. In order to be god, one has to create their own light, revealing a division between light and dark. 

Shifting back to Godzilla, this might be a bit of a stretch, but the three different heads of Ghidorah are like the different Freudian egos within someone. The right head is the aggressive id, the left head is the superego, and the middle head is the ego itself trying to reconcile between the two. King Ghidorah represents ego. These different heads show us the different parts of ourselves, and probably things that we do that we can’t explain. It could also represent the tough decisions we have to make as creators, the idea that we’re not really sure what we’re doing. The pursuit of knowledge forever confuses us and it’s difficult to go about it.

As the fake king, Ghidorah demonstrates the human ego when it has convinced itself that it can play god. Science, and more fundamentally reason, is a powerful tool for understanding and transforming reality. When one has command over nature it can easily instill overconfidence into the ego, which only creates more destruction and chaos. This is why King Ghidorah controls all the monsters to destroy everything all at once before Emma even had a chance to wake them up. It’s that point where reason has gone too far; it has illuminated too much of the darkness, which is what makes it so shocking and surprising, like reaching a sexual climax, like suddenly seeing darkness in the everlasting light in the poles.

Emma, who released King Ghidorah, was a scientist herself like Frankenstein. She was able to develop the frequency device to control the monsters by waking them up, which are the faces of natural destruction. She was trying to play god by controlling nature. As usual, it’s not the creatures or the monstrous faces that are to blame, it’s the creators. Madison, the daughter, calls her mother a “monster” not King Ghidorah, which is kind of ironic.⁶⁵ Emma is a monster for assuming way too much responsibility over the Earth and humanity. 

Godzilla however, is the real god. He’s nature himself. Nature is elusive, and no matter how much someone claims to know about reality, no matter how close someone is to god, they cannot be god himself. That is why Godzilla and King Ghidorah inevitably fight. These two monstrous faces in combat represent the battle within ourselves when we create something new. Are we going to accept that we have gone too far in our pursuit of knowledge and try to fix it? Or, are we going to run away from it like Victor Frankenstein?

Integrating the Shadow

Of course, it’s not only Victor Frankenstein or Peter Rodger that should take responsibility, the creature and Elliot Rodger need to as well. Jordan Peterson explains what happens when someone doesn’t integrate their monstrous shadow as they slowly are swallowed by the darkness they’re unwilling to face, “Your suffering makes you bitter, your bitterness makes you resentful, your resentfulness makes you vengeful, and once you’re on that road…well you end up fantasizing in your basement about shooting up your local highschool and then killing yourself…Cuz’ that’s sort of the ultimate end of that line of pathological reasoning.” ⁶⁶

In Godzilla, humans run away from their creations. In a futile attempt, they try to kill both monsters with an oxygen destroyer, which is represented by the desire to retreat back into the world of innocence. Retreating back into innocence though is impossible. It’s too late; the knowledge has been discovered. Frankenstein has given birth to the monster. King Ghidorah has been unleashed.

This is why Godzilla dies, and King Ghidorah lives. It’s not until they realize that Godzilla is about owning our creative mistakes. Godzilla represents the proper responsibility we take when we discover shocking knowledge. We face the monster head on, and this is demonstrated by fighting King Ghidorah. As said in the movie, only Godzilla could defeat King Ghidorah.⁶⁷ Godzilla may represent goodness, but he is still a monster himself because he is scary. Responsibility is scary. It’s much easier to try and kill both monsters instead of owning the Godzilla monster within us. 

Also, the only reason the two monsters were able to fight for a second time was Mark Russel and Emma Russel were able to face their monsters. Mark was able to face Godzilla,  the monster of nature, and once he faced it Godzilla was able to be brought back to life with humanity’s use of nuclear weapons. Emma uses her knowledge of science, which was originally used to wake up Ghidorah, to control Ghidorah. Instead of using knowledge to act as god, it was using knowledge while keeping the ego in check, which metaphorically relates to King Ghidorah facing Godzilla. She had to literally face King Ghidorah, her own evil monster in order to allow the true king, Godzilla, to destroy it. The only person in the entire film who seemed to do the right thing was the child, Madison. She didn’t exactly choose her mother or father’s side. She remained in the middle only focusing on doing what’s right. She took responsibility when necessary, but didn’t assume too much responsibility. That’s why she has a natural affinity for Godzilla.

Although Emma Russel and Alan Jonah joined forces at the beginning, this part of the movie shows the real difference between them. Instead of becoming another Frankenstein by letting the discovery, or pursuit of knowledge wreak havoc on the world, she chose to set things right. Jonah, on the other hand, didn’t care to do anything because as he said, “I’ve seen human nature firsthand, and I’m here to tell you that it doesn’t get any better. It just gets worse. So I’m sorry that [Ghidorah] isn’t exactly what we were expecting. But we opened Pandora’s Box, and there’s no closing it now.” To him, the pursuit of technology will destroy us no matter what we do. This is the nature of reality. Johan very much reminds of H.P. Lovecraft and his monstrous stories. In the very beginning of the story “Call of Cthulu,” there’s a powerful and beautiful passage that encompasses his philosophy quite well. “The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open us such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age.” ⁶⁸ It’s interesting because it seems as though Jonah, and more importantly, Lovecraft, believe that the knowledge we have now isn’t even something to be afraid of. Really, you think this is a big deal? You think King Ghidorah is a problem? Give me a break. The problems that Elliot Rodger and the creature are facing are simply child’s play. Whatever they’ve discovered is nothing compared to reality at large. Hence, unlike the Godzilla movies, Lovecraft’s monster stories have no happy endings. Humanity is impotent no matter what, so who cares what shadows may or may not arise.

On some level, I agree with this idea. Humanity is too small and insignificant to know the true evils and essence of reality. But I disagree because meaning is relative. Why does the rest of the universe matter if our science isn’t even close to touching it? Sure, we may be ignorant at large, but on a small level, the knowledge we have accumulated matters. It has a huge impact on us. It certainly did for the creature and Elliot Rodger. The line of light and dark, no matter how small, has significance, especially to a small species. We shouldn’t worry about the bigger shadows beyond us. We should focus on the shadows that are in the here and now with the little illumination we have.

I think Jordan Peterson provides a better approach to the monstrous creation idea, “If you look at something monstrous you have a tendency to turn into a monster and people are often very afraid of looking at monstrous things exactly for that reason. And then the question is: should you turn into a monster? And the answer to that is yes, you should. But you should do it voluntarily and not accidentally. And you should do it with the good in mind rather than falling prey to it by possession.” ⁶⁹ In other words, when the inevitable knowledge comes to us that flips our entire worldview, or when we’re faced with an evil we don’t understand, or we simply reach a stage in which we have impact on our surroundings, we should not only own our mistakes, but expect to make mistakes. We should be like Godzilla.

So when we’re looking at the stories of Frankenstein and Elliot Rodger, it shows us a difficult battle of integrating the shadow. I think many people miss the point of these horror stories because they don’t see the shadow as something to be integrated. After Elliot Rodger’s attack, so many different people used it to serve their own ideological agenda. People who didn’t like guns used it to ban guns. Feminists used it to attack misogynistic culture and video games. But that misses the entire point.

The deeper meaning behind the Frankenstein and Elliot Rodger is that they are falling prey to the monster by possession; they are falling into shadow without realizing it. It’s not something that happens overnight; it’s a process that develops slowly over time. Again, that is why it’s so shocking when a monster arises because we never expect to pass that threshold. “[M]onsters defy borders [because] they are liminal creatures who can go where we can’t go. They can travel diplomatic immunity to those undiscovered countries from who borne no human travellers – only monsters – return.” ⁷⁰ In a sense, as Jordan Peterson says, one has to become a monster themselves to see other monsters, to face other evils. When Justine is trialed for a murder that she didn’t commit, but because the evidence was stacked against her, Elizabeth said that she couldn’t believe a human being could be capable of such crimes.⁷¹ Furthermore she said, “When falsehood can look so like the truth, who can assume themselves of happiness?” ⁷² This feeling can be fully articulated by saying that “transgressing the conventional frontiers separating good from evil, human from inhuman, natural from cultural, monsters scare the hell out of us and remind us that we don’t know who we are. They bring us to no man’s land and fill us with fear and trembling. In that sense we may say that monsters are our Others par excellence. Without them we know not who we are. With them we are not what we know.⁷³ Monsters test our divisions and structures. They are the unknown place meeting with the known places.⁷⁴ In order to know the unknown we have to become a part of the unknown, we have to embrace it.

For both the creature and Elliot Rodger, they desperately tried to remain in blissful ignorance as creatures, and once they realized that their happiness couldn’t be met from their environmental externalities, they swung immediately into the opposite direction of becoming god. They assumed a responsibility much larger than themselves. They elevated themselves from wretched victims to powerful gods of humanity. There was never this middle ground of being both a creator and creature. They never accepted their inner Godzilla. They never owned their shadow.

Before Ellliot Rodger became overly obsessed with women, he was obsessed with World of Warcraft. From his manifesto, it seemed like he built his entire life around the game. When he played it, he was happy. When he wasn’t playing it, he was miserable. There was nothing else he seemed to care about. His biggest issue was having no diversity of happiness because it always predicated on an outside externality, and it was always one. If it wasn’t girls, it was World of Warcraft, and if not that, it was something as vague and shallow as wanting to be rich. 

The lowest of this mentality was his obsession with winning the lottery.⁷⁵ Being rich, to him, was the only way to get a girlfriend. He spent thousands of dollars on lottery tickets, each time desperately hoping to win and being utterly crushed when he lost. He literally left his life to chance; a powerball was to determine his fate. It’s no wonder he was so miserable or why he did what he did. It’s impossible to be happy this way, and more importantly, it’s a complete suspension of responsibility.

Despite how pathetic and irresponsible Frankenstein and Peter Rodger may have been as fathers – and I’m not even sure they can be blamed at all because the nature of creativity is to make mistakes  – as creators they had a wisdom that the creature and Elliot Rodger didn’t have. I don’t think Frankenstein was wrong in not making the creature a wife. Like Elliot Rodger placing his hope and happiness in women and the lottery, I thought it was crazy when the creature put his happiness in getting Frankenstein to create him a wife. “Everywhere I see bliss, from which I alone am irrevocably excluded. I was benevolent and good; misery made me a friend. Make me happy, and I shall again be virtuous.” ⁷⁶ If the monster doesn’t get his wife, then he’ll seek revenge on humanity.⁷⁷ Frankenstein destroyed the creature’s soon to be wife because of all the possible scenarios of it going wrong.⁷⁸ He realized that if the first creature didn’t turn out right, why on Earth would the second one turn out right? What would happen if the 2nd creature didn’t want to be a wife? What if they sought destruction on humanity together? Similarly, Elliot Rodger’s father in the interview said that even if Elliot Rodger got a girlfriend, he would still be unhappy. It wouldn’t have mattered if the creature or Elliot Rodger got their demands met. Both of their happiness was tied completely to the external world. If their happiness wasn’t denied this time, it would be denied eventually. So to me, it is ridiculous that the monster was leaving his virtue and happiness up to chance. Just as it was ridiculous for Elliot Rodger to leave his virtue and happiness in the lottery. Both were completely relying on fate, the luck of the draw. In a sense, yes, Frankenstein and Peter Rodger were entirely responsible for the monster and son respectively, but that’s only because the monster and son decided to take zero responsibility.

The Sublime

One feeling that perfectly encapsulates the merging of light and dark is the sublime. Whether it’s integrating the shadow, perceiving a limited state, being in a state of limbo, feeling an orgasm, experiencing the joy of finishing a creative artwork, finding delicate balance between order and chaos, facing a monster calmly, these are all sublime states. It’s about values. It’s about the creative destruction of values, the neverending push and pull of life and death. This is what gives life meaning. This is what makes life worth living. 

In the dictionary, the sublime is described as, something of such excellence, grandeur, or beauty as to inspire great admiration or awe. ‘Awe’ is an important word here. This is the difference between something being “awesome” or “awful,” the difference between something between terrible and terrific. Interestingly, horrible and horrific are both negative. 

To go even deeper I’d like to refer to Richard Kearney, who is continental philosopher at Boston college, and has noted the importance of monsters and the sublime in his article on terror. In an effort to acquire a deeper understanding, he refers to Immanuel Kant’s analysis of the sublime. Kearney summarizes Kant’s complicated analysis as, “an aesthetic distance (as in fictional or theatrical accounts of terror); or from a certain negation – ‘resistance’ – in the very midst of terror…[it is] courageous calm in the midst of horror.⁷⁹ Even that explanation is complex, Kearney restates that when “our mind discovers unaspected depths within itself in the face of some immeasurable menace outside of us we feel sublime…this discovery that we have a certain security [from] the threat itself.” ⁸⁰ For example, in a very literal way, it’s like standing on the edge of a cliff and looking out into the grandness of nature. When I went on a hike to Timpanogos Cave, I experienced the sublime many times. First, as I hiked higher and higher on the mountain, I realized how small and insignificant I was, and how dangerous it felt to walk on a cliffside knowing that rocks could tumble down at any moment. When I stood on a cliff, I felt sublime because on the one hand I felt fear from the extraordinary height, but a sense of pleasure or calmness because I was safe in the extraordinary beauty around me.  

When the park ranger turned off the lights inside the cave, I never knew true darkness. The idea of being in the pocket of a mountain, not being exposed to any light, but at the same time feeling safe and secure with the people around, to me, was another sublime moment. To witness the crystallized rockcicles that have known nothing but darkness for thousands of years, but to suddenly experience the illuminating sight of a human being, is again, so utterly sublime. Hiking to and being inside Timpanogos Cave was awesome.

In the novel of Frankenstein, there is a scene depicting the sublime. In chapter nine, Frankenstein experienced sublime feelings when he travelled into the mountains, visualizing lightning, and crystal waters. In Chapter ten, Frankenstein actually makes contact with the monster for the first time ever, but not to be attacked, but to have a discussion. To look into the face of a monster, and to not be immediately killed by it, but to listen to it, shows how sublime monsters can be. The scenery was there to instill sublime feelings and emotions that we actually feel when handling a monster calmly. 

Of course, the Godzilla movies are constantly filled with sublime moments due to the nature of the monsters. They are enormous and dangerous, yet beautiful and majestic, destructive and horrible, but powerful and protective. These contrary combinations found in these monsters is what makes them so utterly sublime. There are some key moments in the movie that really demonstrate sublime feelings. For example, when Madison touches Mothra, when Mark stares at Godzilla’s intimidation display, when Dr. Serizawa touches one single scale on Godzilla while looking deep into the eyes of the beast, and finally when Madison is inside the stadium and King Ghidorah looks at her before blowing lightning.⁸¹

However, with all these examples, the sublime seems to be an incredibly rare occurrence. I think it can only occur when there’s a possibility of death. And how often are people in deadly situations? The only other sublime moment that I can think of for me was my car crash experience. My car flipped and slid on the asphalt for five seconds, stopping in the middle of the road upside down while the music was still playing, but I wasn’t shaken because I wasn’t hurt in any way. That is a sublime experience. I wasn’t crying, or in pain, or happy and delighted…I just couldn’t believe what happened. I simply looked at my totaled car, trying to figure how I even survived that crash, let alone pain-free…I was in a state of awe and wonder. It was sublime.

The sublime is like brushing shoulders with death. It was like having a conversation with him. Rarely do we ever get to see death for who he really is. Death is mysterious and elusive, and in these sublime moments, it’s as if he decided to sit down with us at a table, order a drink, and talk about his experience as if it were a job. But this almost never happens. Again, he eludes us. We never think about him because we don’t want to think about him. Who wants to imagine their own death? Who wants to think about how they’ll never be? Our lives are spent constantly being distracted and deviated from our inevitable death. When death finally comes, he does so suddenly without a word or warning. He doesn’t tell when he’ll strike because there is no expiration date.

That is why we are so attracted to car accidents. Or gory horror movies containing blood and guts, and severed body parts. Or serial killers like Ted Bundy or school shooters like Elliot Rodger. Movies like Godzilla depict our secret desire for destruction of humanity and cities. The Green-eyed monster is the face of envy, a face that Elliot Rodger and the creature in Frankenstein knew all too well. Envy is the pleasure and enjoyment of death and destruction. We’re so desperate to get a taste of death, while at the same time wanting nothing to do with it. It’s so much easier to look at death from a distance instead of looking at him face to face. It’s easier to become death himself, to give death to others, instead of being on the receiving end of death.

Kearney pointed out in his article on terror how horror movies containing monsters made a huge increase after the attacks of 9/11. He pointed out how sublime it was for the media to broadcast the collapse of the twin towers. It’s also sublime when the media captures and broadcasts news on school shooters like Elliot Rodger. Since monsters blur the boundaries, the sublime is the same. There’s a combination of horror and pleasure. There’s a sense of shame when indulging in death from a distance – similar to being a peeping tom, watching porn on the internet, or even masturbating – you’re looking at death from afar, you’re cheating. Not only are you not running away from it like you should be, but you feel a deep sense of pleasure; you’re shamelessly indulging your curiosity. It’s only when we get done with our curious consumption do we experience guilt.

This reminds me of Louis C.K. joking about how you could tell how bad a person was by looking at the time distance between 9/11 and their next masturbation session. For him, it was between the two buildings going down. As funny and horrible as it is, to see such conflicting ideas united, I kind of don’t blame him. Given how sex and masturbation really is a monsterous act, because there’s a built of pleasure followed by guilt and shame, and since sex involves a creator making a creature… Sexual pleasure and death often go hand and hand whether we know it or not.

Anyway, sublime media desensitizes us to actual danger. ⁸² And even though we don’t want to admit it, it’s pleasurable to watch horrible things on TV. It’s the contemplation of death, it’s the quenching of that insatiable curiosity. The combination of pleasure and pain, horror and beauty. Jonas Cieka has an interesting Halloween essay video where he explores a concept similar to the sublime. He analyzes to to the ideas of the philosopher called Baudrillard in combination with the horror movie Hellraiser . Most people, like myself, can’t really fathom or stomach this movie because it really is so horrible, but some people find pleasure in pain. I think this explains why there’s a lot of kinks and weird things that people do sexually. There’s something exciting about blurring the boundaries. It’s the point where things just don’t make sense anymore. It is beyond our sense of reason and order. The more intense the contrast between life and death, dark and light, the more awesome it is. 

Final Thoughts

Were Elliot Rodger’s father and Victor Frankenstein evil creators/parents? Is creativity bad? Is the pursuit of knowledge bad? With the Frankenstein novel, and with the demonstration of King Ghidorah in the Godzilla movie, it would be yes; knowledge is evil when one creates, but refuses to take responsibility for it. Mary Shelly would probably take it a step further, especially when Victor Frankenstein himself said that the pursuit of knowledge is responsible for the European conquerors because of the loss of interest in simpler pleasures like family life.⁸³ Shelley would say that the Native Americans were never monstrous at all, it was the European conquerors who labeled them as monsters. 

Contrary to the monstrous creator idea, I think the creator/creature dichotomy is a false dichotomy, and anyone who projects their monsters is monstrous; it’s not just one side that is monstrous for projecting. In a cynical way that agrees with the ideas above, I think to be a creator, to be a parent, or be god, is to be automatically evil. Every parent is evil because it’s impossible to raise a child properly. Someone has to be grandiose and narcissistic to actually believe that they can do a great job as a parent. And anyone who doesn’t have a child who says that they’ll be the best parent ever is delusional. However, making mistakes is a necessary part of life. I’m not excusing Elliot Rodger’s father or Victor Frankenstein. Could they have done better? Could they have prevented these horrors? Yes. But on the other hand, the creature and Elliot Rodger weren’t exactly easy creatures to deal with, especially when they suspended all their responsibility. Creators are creatures, too. They can’t be responsible for everything. But also, creatures are creators. There is a responsibility that a creature has to take on, especially when they lose their child-like innocence. 

Otherwise, to reject the idea that we’re all creators and creatures, what’s to stop evil from happening? How will evil be stopped unless someone, somewhere decides to face the monster instead of running away from it? One of the reasons why I became so obsessed with Elliot Rodger’s story was because I see so much of myself in him. I wasn’t as privileged, but I did come from a privileged background. I was spoiled with many material things kids never get from their parents. My father wasn’t the best father. He was an alcoholic who spent all of his time trying to not live in the real world. When he wasn’t deluded, he was bitter, angry, and incredibly critical of me. And to this day, I still like there’s a void in my sense of self. I feel unlovable, angry and difficult to trust people. I’m still pretty narcissistic, like Elliot Rodger, and I alienate myself by putting myself down or putting people on a pedestal. Instead of seeing myself as a normal human, I either sacrifice myself to the people around me because I perceive them as gods, or I become a god myself and demonze the people around me. But it is what it is. My father’s father was a much worse creator, so how can I really blame my own father for being an alcoholic? Life is hard for everyone, and unfortunately, you have to be the one to right the wrongs and eradicate the evils.. I think that’s why I love Godzilla so much. He is so cool and in complete alignment with nature. He represents someone who has integrated his monster, or achieved the ideal masculinity. They may be vicious or predatory, but they’re aware of it, and they only unsheathe their claws or expose their teeth to other monsters. Monsters who don’t know they’re monsters. 

That is the proper essence of a human being. They are not an arrogant creator trying to control everything, nor are they a predetermined creature responsible for nothing. They are not in order stuck in protected, innocent light, nor are they in chaos consumed in all-pervasive darkness. They are a person continually producing their inner light, no matter how small or insignificant to the surrounding darkness, with their full conscious awareness of both life and death. Not divided. Not divine.

Footnotes

1. Trout, Paul A. “Why We Invented Monsters.” Salon. Salon.com, December 3, 2011. 

https://www.salon.com/2011/12/03/the_evolution_of_monsters/.

2. Gelder, Ken. The Horror Reader. 2000.
3. Kearney, Richard. Strangers, Gods, and Monsters: Interpreting Otherness. 2003, 117.
4. Gelder, The Horror Reader, 87.
5. Kearney, Strangers, Gods, and Monsters, 115.
6. Kearney, Strangers, Gods, and Monsters, 116.
7. Gelder, The Horror Reader, 84.
8. Aristotle, Platt, Arthur. On the Generation of Animals. (Alex Catalogue, Net Library, 2000), 76.
9. Aristotle, Generation of Animals. 79.
10. Aristotle, Generation of Animals. 80.
11. Aristotle, Generation of Animals. 76.
12. Gelder, The Horror Reader, 86.
13. Gelder, The Horror Reader, 88.
14. Trout, Why We Invented Monsters.
15. Trout, Why We Invented Monsters.
16. Trout, Why We Invented Monsters
17. Stern, Marlow. “Godzilla: Director Gareth Edwards Says Godzilla Is a ‘God’ Protecting Mankind Against Climate Change.” The Daily Beast, The Daily Beast Company, 14 May 2014, https://www.thedailybeast.com/godzilla-director-gareth-edwards-says-godzilla-is-a-god- protecting-mankind-against-climate-change.
18. Godzilla: King of Monsters, directed by Michael Dougherty (Legendary Pictures, 2019), 11:00. https://www.amazon.com/Godzilla-King-Monsters-Kyle-Chandler/dp/B07VKQNJNW/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2RJC3936TKAK6&dchild=1&keywords=godzilla+2&qid=1635632629&qsid=146-2386254-6977949&s=instant-video&sprefix=godzilla+2%2Cinstant-video%2C150&sr=1-1&sres=B07VKQNJNW%2CB00KG2SXII%2CB07TLM3QWG%2CB0013WEJLU%2CB07L98GMXJ%2CB000I9U75G%2CB09CLSSMW7%2CB07VLNBZJ3%2CB094BYCKWD%2CB08V8B8TQT%2CB008Y7D8AK%2CB07K2Q3S6G%2CB00ADHREE0%2CB07TKZQFJC%2CB00N1QFRV2%2CB0095D42WK&srpt=DOWNLOADABLE_MOVIE
19. Godzilla King, 1:18:00 to 1:19:00
20. Godzilla King, 47:30 to 48:30
21. Godzilla King, 55:00:00 to 56:00:00
22. Godzilla King, 39:55 to 42:00
23. Godzilla King, 1:11:20 to 1:12:20
24. Godzilla King, 47:30 to 48:30
25. Poole, W. Scott. Monsters in America: Out Historical Obsession with the Hideous and the Haunting. Second ed. 2018.
26. Kearney, Strangers, Gods, and Monsters, 111-113.
27. Shelly, Mary. Frankenstein. (New York: Open Road Integrated Media, Inc., 2006), Chapter 5
28. Rodger, Elliot. My Twisted World. s3.documentcloud.org/documents/1173808/edlliot-rodger-manifesto.pdf, 44. 
29. Rodger, Twisted World, 10.
30. Barbara Walters, “The Secret Life of Elliot Rodger,” YouTube, July 1, 2014, Interview, 38:40 to end, https://youtu.be/pnT0CMwBrWs.
31. CNN, “Why wasn’t something don…,” YouTube, May 26, 2014, Interview, 2:59, https://youtu.be/0KyZyB5VjhE
32. Shelley, Frankenstein, Chapter 5.
33. Walters, Secret Life, 40:47.
34. Shelley, Frankenstein, 242.
35. Shelley, Frankenstein, 214.
36. Rodger, Twisted World, 59.
37. Shelley, Frankenstein, Chapters 12 & 13.
38. Roder, Elliot, “My reaction to seeing a young couple at the beach, Envy,” May 23, 2014, Internet Archive Videos, 3:17, https://archive.org/details/elliotrodgermanifestomytwistedworld/Elliot+Rodger/Season+1/S1E20+My+reaction+to+seeing+a+young+couple+at+the+beach%2C+Envy.mp4
39. Rodger, Twisted World, 50
40. Shelley, Frankenstein, 251.
41. Shelley, Frankenstein, 252.
42. Rodger, Elliot, “Lonely Vlog, My Life is so unfair,” May 23, 2014, Internet Archive Videos, 1:00 to 2:00, https://archive.org/details/elliotrodgermanifestomytwistedworld/Elliot+Rodger/Season+1/S1E21+Elliot+Rodger%2C+Lonely+Vlog%2C+Life+is+so+unfair.mp4
43. Shelley, Frankenstein, 228.
44. Rodger, Twisted World, 122.
45. Rodger, Twisted World, 135.
46. Rodger, Twisted World, 135.
47. Shelley, Frankenstein, 303.
48. Shelley, Frankenstein, 180.
49. Rodger, Lonely Vlog, 3:20 to 3:35
50. Rodger, Elliot, “Why do girls hate me so much,” May 23, 2014, Internet Archive Videos, 6:21, https://archive.org/details/elliotrodgermanifestomytwistedworld/Elliot+Rodger/Season+1/S1E17+Why+do+girls+hate+me+so+much.mp4
51. Rodger, Elliot, “Life is so unfair because girl dont want me,” May 23, 2014, Internet Archive Videos, 5:48, https://archive.org/details/elliotrodgermanifestomytwistedworld/Elliot+Rodger/Season+1/S1E18+Life+is+so+unfair+because+girls+dont+want+me.mp4
52. Rodger, Twisted World, 135.
53. Peterson, Jordan B., “2017 Maps of Meaning 11: The Flood and the Tower,” YouTube, May 18, 2017, Lecture, 7:20 to 14:00.
54.  Peterson, Flood and Tower, 14:00 to 19:00
55. Shelley, Frankenstein, 46.
56. Rodger, Twisted World, 13.
57. Shelley, Frankenstein, 212.
58. Rodger, Twisted World, 47.
59. Shelley, Frankenstein, 83.
60. Kearney, Strangers, Gods, and Monsters, 117.
61. Godzilla King, 22:30 to 23:30
62. Shelley, Frankenstein, 34.
63. Shelley, Frankenstein, 54.
64. Shelley, Frankenstein, 64.
65. Godzilla King, 1:07:20 to 1:07:30
66.  Peterson, Flood and Tower, 19:00 to 20:00
67. Godzilla King, 1:13:20 to 1:14:30
68. Lovecraft, H.P., Call of Cthulu. (Weird Tales, 1928), 1.
69. Peterson, Flood and Tower, 19:00 to 20:00
70. Kearney, Strangers, Gods, and Monsters, 117.
71. Shelley, Frankenstein, 131.
72. Shelley, Frankenstein, 159.
73. Kearney, Strangers, Gods, and Monsters, 117.
74. Kearney, Strangers, Gods, and Monsters, 121.
75. Rodger, Twisted World, 104-115.
76. Shelley, Frankenstein, 53.
77. Shelley, Frankenstein, 54.
78. Shelley, Frankenstein, 303.
79. Kearney, Strangers, Gods, and Monsters, 130.
80. Kearney, Strangers, Gods, and Monsters, 130.
81. Godzilla King, 9:50, 28:09, 1:33:45, 1:36:30, 1:41:20
82. Kearney, Strangers, Gods, and Monsters, 133.
83. Shelley, Frankenstein, 88.