Monsters and the Monster Makers Who Make Them

Copyright 2020 by Gary L. Pullman

Transformation is the changing of a person, place, or thing from one state into another. (In this post, we're limiting our consideration of transformation and its effects to concrete entities, although, of course, abstractions, such as ideas, moral principles, emotions, attitudes, values, and beliefs can and are often also transformed.) Such transformations, as might be expected, often, in turn, produce sometimes dramatic effects.

Some transformations, such as that of a caterpillar into a butterfly or a fetus into an infant) are natural. Others are induced. In times past, magic was the means by which transformations were evoked; today, science is likely to be the means of effecting such changes.

 For example, according to Ovid's account of the myth concerning Hermaphroditus, the god Hermes, in answer to the prayer of the nymph Salmacis, transformed the fifteen-year-old youth Hermaphroditus and his admirer, Salmacis herself, into a single person who possessed the adolescent's male sex and the nymph's female sex.

Today, such a “metamorphosis” would, of course, result from hormone therapy and surgery, and its cause wouldn't be a nymph's desire to be united forever with the object of her love (or passion), but gender dysphoria (at least as the cause of the condition is presently understood).

In some instances, sexual transformations are central to horror films. In such movies, a transvestite or a transgender person is frequently the villain, and he or she (usually she) is not typically portrayed with compassion or sensitivity. Psycho, Sleepaway Camp, and Insidious: Chapter 2 are some of the better-known horror movies that feature transvestite or transgender “monsters.”

But transformations need not be sexual. They can involve genetic mutation (a male scientist becomes a fly in The Fly), age and physical appearance (the succubus in The Shining changes from a beautiful young woman into an old crone), animality (men and women transform into werewolves in The Howling), insectoid (Debbie changes into a cockroach in A Nightmare on Elm Street 4), multiple personalities (Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde), and many other types of change.

Ovid himself suggests various types of transformations in his Metamorphoses. Such changes include changes of inanimate objects into human beings; men and women into divinities or other supernatural beings; a youth into a hermaphrodite; a woman into a man; men and women into animals, birds, stones, flowers, and a cloud; and a supernatural being into a plant.

 

Some of the metamorphoses of which Ovid writes were likely intended as rewards: Galatea's transformation from a statue into a woman; a fisherman's transformation into a sea god; Chiron's transformation into a celestial constellation. Other metamorphoses, however, were probably meant to be punishments of hubris or some other offense, as were those in which human beings were turned into stone. In some cases, as that of Syrinx, the metamorphosis was for protection. Regardless of the reason for such extreme changes, however, it seems such transformations would not be entirely devoid of horror.

In horror fiction, such changes are always extreme and, well, horrifying. They are horrifying for several reasons. They are

• beyond control, making those who are transformed helpless;
• usually for the worse—something more valuable—or, at least, more valued—is lost than that which is gained: humanity, youth and beauty, oneself;
• either irreversible or recurrent (that which is lost, in other words, is irretrievably lost or can be regained only for a time and is constantly under threat);
• sudden, often without warning, and do not, therefore, allow their victims time to reflect upon their fate or to “adjust” to a change that will have monumental and lasting effects on them throughout their lives as well as those who love—or even simply know—them;
• likely to alter the victim's self-image, self-confidence, and self-esteem;
• apt to endanger the victim, subjecting him or her to scorn, ostracism, incarceration, physical or sexual assault, or even murder.

Imagine that you are an adolescent boy who is suddenly neither a boy nor a girl and, paradoxically, both; that you are a beautiful young woman transformed into an old crone; that you are a man become a fly, a wolf, or a cockroach; or that you now have two personalities. Imagine that this astonishing change occurred instantly, only a moment ago, without warning or anticipation. You are yourself, but you are also, most assuredly, not yourself. You are a freak, a monster, who will be treated as such by others, feared and shunned, hunted and stalked.

That is the true nature of the monster who becomes monstrous through metamorphosis, whether the change is effected through magic or technology. A successful horror story that derives its horror from the existential transformation of a character succeeds when it shows that the true horror of this situation is not in the change itself but in the effects of the metamorphosis—and then portrays those effects so well that the audience or the reader, vicariously experiencing them, feels the “monster's” pain, suffers with the monster, and, in effect, becomes the monster, helpless, overwhelmed, the worse for wear, irretrievably altered, suffering losses of confidence and self-esteem; scorned, ostracized, incarcerated, physically or sexually assaulted, or even murdered.

The monster is redeemed, if redeemed at all, by the knowledge that those who make monsters are more monstrous than the monsters they make.

NOTE: The author does not mean to imply that transgender individuals are "monsters." He is alluding to Hermaphroditus, as this mythical figure's metamorphosis is described in Ovid's poem, and to the concepts of the ancients regarding conditions that are now explained and understood scientifically. Transgender individuals are certainly not monsters or in any sense monstrous.