Brick Monster

A monster is a creature which produces fear or physical harm by its appearance or its actions. Derived from the Latin monstrum, the word usually connotes something wrong or evil; a monster is generally morally objectionable, physically or psychologically hideous, or a freak of nature. They are usually composites of different creatures, or hybrids of humans and animals, but the term can also be applied figuratively to describe someone with similar characteristics, such as a person who does cruel or horrific things.

Monsters pre-date written history, but do not emerge from a cultural void. Instead, they have their origins in a society's literary and cultural heritage, the academic study of which is known as monstrophy.

Monsters have appeared in literature and in feature-length films. Well-known monsters in fiction include Count Dracula, Frankenstein's monster, werewolves, mummies, and zombies.

Etymology

A polemical allegory presented as a five-headed monster, 1618

Monster is derived from the Latin monstrum, meaning "monster" or "portent, unnatural thing/event regarded as omen/sign/portent".[1] The academic study of the literary and cultural heritage of monsters is known as monstrophy.

Cultural heritage

In the words of Tina Marie Boyer, assistant professor of medieval German literature at Wake Forest University, "monsters do not emerge out of a cultural void; they have a literary and cultural heritage".

In the religious context of ancient Greeks and Romans, monsters were seen as signs of "divine displeasure", and it was thought that birth defects were especially ominous, being "an unnatural event" or "a malfunctioning of nature".

Monsters are not necessarily abominations however. The Roman historian Suetonius, for instance, describes a snake's absence of legs or a bird's ability to fly as monstrous, as both are "against nature". Nonetheless, the negative connotations of the word quickly established themselves, and by the playwright Seneca's time the word had extended into its philosophical meaning, "a visual and horrific revelation of the truth".

In spite of this, mythological monsters such as the Hydra and Medusa are not natural beings, but divine entities. This seems to be a holdover from Proto-Indo-European religion and other belief systems, in which the divisions between "spirit," "monster," and "god" were less evident.

In the post–World War II era, however, giant monsters returned to the screen with a vigor that has been causally linked to the development of nuclear weapons. One early example occurred in the American film The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms, which was about a dinosaur that attacked a lighthouse. Subsequently, there were Japanese film depictions, (Godzilla, Gamera), British depictions (Gorgo), and even Danish depictions (Reptilicus), of giant monsters attacking cities. A recent depiction of a giant monster is depicted in J. J. Abrams's Cloverfield, which was released in theaters January 18, 2008. The intriguing proximity of other planets brought the notion of extraterrestrial monsters to the big screen, some of which were huge in size (such as King Ghidorah and Gigan), while others were of a more human scale. During this period, the fish-man monster Gill-man was developed in the film series Creature from the Black Lagoon.

Card from the Japanese game obake karuta, c. early 19th century

Britain's Hammer Film Productions brought color to the monster movies in the late 1950s. Around this time, the earlier Universal films were usually shown on American television by independent stations (rather than network stations) by using announcers with strange personas, who gained legions of young fans. Although they have since changed considerably, movie monsters did not entirely disappear from the big screen as they did in the late 1940s.