Sites of Monstrosity in Film: Genres of Horror and their Respective Villains: Hunter Luber, Spanish 058

Sites of Outward Monstrosity

Monstrosity takes many varied forms. It is difficult to set hard guidelines for individual sites of monstrosity. That is to say, monsters do not fit easily into single categories. The lines between different sites and genres of monstrosity are blurred and grey. Many monstrous characters fall into multiple different categories at the same time. However, it is impossible to move forward without creating some set of guidelines by which to consider monstrosity in film.

We shall begin with the first and most obvious form of monstrosity evident in horror films: outward monstrosity. By this, we mean monstrosity that is self-evident in the appearance of a character, creature, or "monster". Generally speaking, outward monstrosity manifests itself in the form of creatures that are large, potentially dangerous, and malformed. However, this is not necessarily a universal rule.Physical deformity or differentiation from the norm here is a must. If a creature looked perfectly normal in the human sense, it would not be outwardly monstrous (unless perhaps we wish to consider humanity inherently monstrous in and of itself, but we will consider that later). 

If we begin with the definition that, "A monster is a living being of negative value" (Canguilhem, 28). We can consider this negativity in a few ways. Physical negativity in appearance would qualify as physical deviation from the norm -- that which either challenges general conceptions of beauty or conceptions of what is physically possible. Within the horror genre, outward monstrosity tends to take two forms. On the one hand, we have physical deformity. On the other, legendary or mythical creatures which have become a veritable pop-culture phenomenon in recent decades. Both of these categories challenge our conception of physical norms for human appearance. The ways in which this takes place will be explained in the following pages. 

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