Wednesday, November 16, 2011

Monsters



Yesterday we were streaming a tv show and a Lady Gaga advertisement came up. Now I don’t know much about Lady Gaga other than her meat dress, which was really gross and mortally offended all my veggie friends. I mean seriously—wearing meat? No wonder no one wanted to sit next to her. Anyway, this isn’t about her clothing. She had some kind of Tweet going about all her little monsters and she was Mama monster, etc. It was a Gaga celebration of life thing, but it got me thinking about monsters, especially since the show we were streaming was Grimm.

One of the things I like about Grimm is that the monsters are really monster-y. Monsters should be scary. That’s kind of the point. In Grimm, even the beautiful women who turn out to be monsters are hideous looking—the pretty blonde is an uber-creepy hexabeast. Have you ever noticed that many times gorgeous men/women become attractive monsters? A kind of that Disney Beauty and the Beast approach. The beast isn’t ugly; his only negative features are his animal ears (which are cute in a puppyish way) and long fingernails. His grotesquery is something that a good shave, mani/pedi, and, okay, a nose/snout plastic surgery session could cure.  

Maybe handsome/beautiful monsters are supposed to appeal to the rebel in us, who wants to fall in love with the bad boy/bad girl monster. (The bad boy never appealed to me, I’m too much of a realist—can you see a bad boy rocking a puking baby at 2am?) At any rate, the handsome bad boy could be a marketing thing, or maybe it’s a vanity thing and the actor/actress said, “I’m not going on stage looking like that.” In any case, I prefer my monsters scary. What about you?

7 comments:

  1. I like them scary in an understated way. Are you watching Once Upon a Time at all? I think Rumplestiltskin/Mr Gold is excellent at being scary without being over-the-top. He creeps you out without you ever fully knowing why - although he's more of a villain than a traditional monster. He acts pretty monstrously, though.

    But yeah, I'm not into stunningly gorgeous monsters. Was it the harpies or the furies who had beautiful faces but were hideous everywhere else? True monsters can't ever fully hide their monster-ness, in my opinion. There's always got to be something to give them away.

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  2. I remember seeing a making of "Monsters Inc." and how hard the animators worked to make their monsters lovable at first sight. Perhaps it's a question of audience? One of my favorite movies growing up was "The Dark Crystal," though. Part of the fascination was watching the bad guys steal the essence of the podlings. That was scary, I tell you what!

    I don't have a problem when pretty things turn out to be the most dangerous, but it is really satisfying to get a really creepy baddie. I'm a wuss, though. "Signs" is about as scary as I can go.

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  3. E. Louise,
    Yeah, Rumplestiltskin is good. (The evil queen doesn't work for me though. She just isn't scary. I don't buy that she killed her father.)

    Kelly,
    Absolutely, audience is a big factor. I'd never want little ones to see Grimm. (I loved Monsters, Inc. too.)

    I've never seen The Dark Crystal. I'll have to check it out on Netflix.

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  4. You make a good point. There is a proliferation of pretty monsters these days. I like the dichotomy of something beautiful being very monstrous or like "hidden" monstrosity, but these days monsters are usually just pretty to be pretty. :P

    I do like the scariness of the monsters on GRIMM. I also appreciated that the vampires on Buffy looked like monsters when they vamped out. But like Kelly said, I think audience and intent of the work also play into it.

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  5. I agree-monsters should be scary. Unless they're in Monsters Inc, in which case they're adorable, but I digress.
    ;)

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  6. I agree-monsters should be scary. Unless they're in Monsters Inc, in which case they're adorable, but I digress.
    ;)

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  7. Well, you know what Frodo says, "a servant of the enemy would seem fairer, and feel fouler." My experience with monsters is limited to my looking them in the eyes, right before I chop off their heads.

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