Why are monsters so fascinating?  Is it because they represent challenges—real and unknown—that we must face and overcome?  Are they a reflection of our bestial nature, our proclivity for sinfulness, even and especially towards the ones we love?

I think these reasons are accurate, but here’s the simplest explanation:  monsters are cool.  Every little kid who gets into monster movies doesn’t do so because the monster is a metaphor for grief, or nuclear war, or our darkest inclinations.  No, it’s because we want to see the monster—and see the good guys defeat it in some intriguing way.

Yes, we can appreciate monsters at a deeper, more sophisticated level as we grow older and experience “monsters” in our lives, but at the bottom of it all—after all of our high-browed interpretation of what are, essentially, B-movie fairy tales—we just love a cool, scary, weird monster.

Female readers may not understand this concept as intuitively as male readers, but anytime there is a big, scary beast in a video game, men’s first instinct is “how do I kill that thing?”  In games that permit early access to monsters way over the player character’s abilities, there is a thrill in surviving—often narrowly!—an encounter with a far stronger foe.  Even failing to defeat him is a lesson learned, and an opportunity for new growth.

I’ll never forget when my younger brother defeated an incredibly challenging enemy in the Nintendo classic Dragon Warrior.  He went into the encounter with a copper sword, one of the weakest swords in the game.  I still don’t know how he did it—he had wandered way off the intended path of his quest—but defeated this evil wizard-knight.  That was over thirty years ago, and I still remember it.

Yes, there are real monsters.  Yes, monsters in fiction are often symbolic of some deeper fear or anxiety.  But monsters—and defeating them—are also just really, really cool.

With that, here is 24 October 2024’s “TBT^16: Monsters“:

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It’s an election year here in the States, and the monsters on the Left seem to be more ravenous than usual.  I suspect they are uttering the death bellows before they are vanquished by the paladins of Trumpist Righteousness.

But I don’t want to be too cocky.  Besides, the best monsters are the ones we can enjoy while watching them lurk around on television—or the mysterious ones that may, but probably don’t, live way out in the woods somewhere, safely away from our predictable lives.

What if monsters are real?  What if Bigfoot (who doesn’t exactly seem monstrous, but that could just be good PR) is lurking around out there—and you stumbled upon him while camping?  Would it be an incredible adventure—or a nightmare?

Well, there are plenty of real monsters out there.  They aren’t cool and made from practical effects; they’re wicked people who are willing to do wicked things to unsuspecting people.

With that, here is “TBT^4: Monsters“:

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‘Tis the season for monsters and ghoulies!  Having just returned from the South Carolina Bigfoot Festival—and with the annual Spooktacular just two days away!—yours portly is in a monstrous mood.  Indeed, I wrote an entire album about them, which is available on streaming platforms for you cheapskates.

What is it that makes monsters so fascinating?  In old monster movies, the monster was always the last thing the audience saw, because saving the featured creature for last guaranteed you stay hooked (and because most of those old films had shoestring budgets and bad makeup/costumes/props, so they had one or two good shots with the monster before the whole contraption broke down).  Even now, when movies tell us everything that happens—even if we just saw it happen—we still want to see the monster—the more the better.

All I can figure is that we want to see how wild our own imaginations can be—and how well we can scare ourselves with monsters that are both alien and familiar.

With that, here is 27 October 2022’s “TBT^2: Monsters“:

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