THE MONSTROSITY OF STRANGENESS. “MONSTER” AS A POLITICAL METAPHOR IN SCIENCE FICTION MOVIES

Abstract

The concept of the alien or monster is inextricably linked to the concept of the border. In order to recognize something as “yours”, “your own”, “known”, you have to come into contact with something different, which means you have to cross certain boundaries that are culturally sanctioned. It's not just about territorial boundaries, although they largely contribute to the greatest shocks and changes within culture. A boundary is often defined as the line where the periodic form ends. It is defined using opposite concepts, such as: “our” vs. “their” space, “theirs” vs. “foreign”, “safe” vs. “dangerous”, “harmoniously organized” vs. “chaotic”. Every culture begins by dividing the world into internal space (“our”) and external space (“their”). It is a binary breakdown and the interpretation depends on the typology of the culture. It is the border that allows us to understand what belongs to one world and what belongs to the other. Thanks to this, we can define what is familiar and safe and confront it with what is strange and fills us with fear. As Waldenfels notes in his book A Topography of the Other, “you cannot have your own without the other” (Waldenfels, 2002, p. 70). The stranger is our mirror on which we can define or even get to know and name our own subjectivity. The process of self-knowledge cannot take place without prior contact with others. Historical events have imposed certain patterns on us that we must struggle with in creating our reality. It is therefore not surprising that film representations of aliens and monsters are becoming more and more diversified and no longer refer only to human characters. Nevertheless, most of them are still based on history and refer positively or negatively to racist ideology (one can cite one of the first such films, namely The Birth of a Nation by David Wark Griffith from 1915). All these ideas are based on one of the fundamental primary features, which is fear. It is no different in the science fiction movie Monsters (2010) analyzed in the article, dir. Gareth Edwards.