The monster's body is a cultural body. What do you think Cohen means by this?
Jeyson
9/19/2014 12:46:49 am
I agree with Cohen about this statement. I believe that a monster's characteristics sometimes reflect the fear and the weakness of a culture. For example, maybe the vampire in the western culture is actually a representation of lust. Their lust for blood and hunger for more blood shows one of the sins in that period of time. Vampires from Dracula age to Edward Cullen all have the similar idea of lust in their own characteristics.
Nick
9/20/2014 11:37:23 pm
I agree with Jeyson's view. Ghosts, zombies, and vampires are the refection of people's fear and weakness. All those creatures have human behaviors but they also have some ability that we don't have or even want to have it.
Clifford
9/19/2014 01:14:21 am
I think Cohen means that monsters are actually made up of a culture's belief or traditions. For example, the belief that by burying a vampire or anything you think that is a vampire at a crossroad and chop off its head will prevent it from reviving. This is a belief of a weird culture, but because of this culture, the thought of vampire appeared. Monsters are started by the emotions of the people in an culture in response to a tradition that they don't get or something that they can explain, then the fear will because the monster's body.
Ken
9/20/2014 11:55:15 pm
I agree that monsters are made up of cultural beliefs and traditions, but I think monsters serves more as symbols. Monsters are representations of human beliefs,and they arise from our emotions.
Kim Steve
9/21/2014 12:58:26 am
Interesting insight! I did not see that traditions and culture could also create a monster. On the other hand, maybe traditions and some conventions could exist just in response to certain fears at the time.
Ariel
9/19/2014 09:01:23 pm
To me, this statement means how the monster is created upon people's attitude and behaviors. If they treat him nicely, maybe the creature will live like a normal human. However, because these people discriminate him, alienate him, bully him, treat and see him as a 'monster', this eventually lead the creature to the road of a brutal monster. In psychology, there is a theory stated that people will behave like how other people expect him to be like.
Nick
9/20/2014 11:34:19 pm
I agree with Ariel's statement that if humans treat monster nicely, that the creature will live like a normal person. Environment and society really build up a person's character. No one is born to be President Obama or Bin Laden. Choices and friends you make are the reason that makes you who you are.
Kim Steve
9/21/2014 12:52:07 am
I agree completely!
I think it is the people that creates the monster. We are the culprits of shaping the image of the monster.
Steve Kim
9/19/2014 09:01:42 pm
Fear and horror is created within us. It is how we perceive the presence of the monster, not what the monster actually is. In essence, Cohen’s first thesis reflects this notion since the monster (fear) is entirely shaped by the cultural and historical background of each readers.
Jeyson
9/20/2014 03:44:10 pm
I agree. Monsters are always inside our minds. Fear is the cause and the birth of monsters in this world. And this fear comes from the cultural and historical background of each of us.
YuJin Yang
9/19/2014 10:25:21 pm
I think Cohen is trying to say that monsters reflect cultural beliefs, desires, and fears. Therefore, in different cultures, different kinds of monsters exist. Almost every country has its own traditions of monsters. Thus, monsters have characteristics that people dislike and fear. For example, in many cultures, monsters are usually extremely powerful and they do what they think is right. This tells us that people desire to be powerful, but at the same time they fear having great power, which might bring chaos to their society.
Guillaume
9/20/2014 03:23:29 pm
I agree with you. Monsters are in a sense created by humans who fear different things. Their fears may vary across cultures and social norms, but many of those fears are shared across cultures, such as the fear of darkness and cold. This is probably the reason why people can find similarities between monster tales in different cultures.
Kim Steve
9/21/2014 01:02:53 am
Great response! While I was reading your comment, I thought Cohert's definition could work the other way around. Instead of thinking that culture and tradition made monsters, the presence of the monsters at the time may have shaped our culture and traditions!
Phillip Cho
9/20/2014 08:57:16 pm
I think that Cohen is saying, in addition to his comment about beheaded monsters, is that monsters do not really exist, and thus cannot think for themselves. The only thing monsters really are are the fears and the culture of the people that invented them. The actions of the monster are simply a manifestation of the fears of the creators' beliefs and culture.
Joshua
9/21/2014 10:03:26 pm
I agree with Philip. In my opinion Cohen is trying to state that monsters only represent the fears of a culture at a certain time, and not characters of their own.
Alex
9/21/2014 12:20:10 am
I agree with Cohen's definition of the term monster as an abstract concept that is established by people's fantasy and fear. Since different cultures fear different things, various monsters "exist" all over the world. For example, to ancient sailors, who spends most of their time on their ships, destruction of their ships would have been their greatest fear. This fear created tales of some enormous sea monsters like Kraken and Sea Serpent.
Kim Steve
9/21/2014 12:55:17 am
Fascinating example!
I did not manage to apply this definition to any particular example, but your example of Kraken and the Sea Serpent seems to be an epitome of Cohert's definition. Great insight!
Han Joo Kim
9/21/2014 01:10:53 am
In saying that the monsters' bodies are "cultural bodies," Cohen makes a point that monsters embody different aspects of the specific culture. For example, the fact that some cultures pierce corpses at forks so that they are "indecisive" when they wake up shows that this culture associates indecision as a bad trait; or vice versa, decisiveness as a valuable trait. In this way, monsters somehow belong to the culture, and represent the cultures themselves.
Also, Cohen, by mentioning that monsters are a cultural body, implies that they are not a physical body. Cohen is most likely implying that these monsters are abstract- like ideas.
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