IMPORTANT

A request: please have your email close by this upcoming weekend, as I will be grading your final essays and must submit final grades on Monday. Because the turn over is so quick, I need you to respond quickly if I email you in the case that there is a problem with your essay.

Also, please make sure to submit in doc, docx, or pdf format.

Citing Monster Theory

For your final essay, please make sure to properly cite Monster Theory, by Jeffrey Jerome Cohen.

Here is the information:

In the parenthetical citation, simply use his last name (Cohen). You do not need to include the page numbers, since you don't have those.

For the Works Cited page, here is the info to plug in:

Cohen, Jeffrey Jerome. Monster Theory. Minneapolis, Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press, 1996. Print.

Lastly, please note that the works cited page citation above is not formatted with the proper indentation (I can't do that in blogger), so make sure you indent the second line.

Wikepedia

Hi everyone,

Just a reminder that while you may use Wikepedia to do some brainstorming, you may not use it for your research for this (or any other) essay. Wikepedia is updated by regular people, and often contains errors. It's not created by academic scholars.

If you have any questions about the legitimacy of a scholarly source, let me know.

Prof D

Final Essay Working Thesis Requirement

In addition to meeting with your peer mentors to go over your final essay rough draft, you will also upload the following to Moodle by midnight on Saturday the 3rd.

The Moodle assignment will be titled: Final Essay Working Thesis

I will give you feedback on your working thesis so make sure to check Moodle for this!

The Final Essay Working Thesis should include the following:

Your monster or vampire's full name

Example: Dracula

Your monster or vampires's culture: time and place

Example: Victorian England (1800s)

Cultural fears and desires the monster embodies in the form of a thesis statement:

Example: Dracula embodies the Victorian's cultural fear of women's sexual expression. He also represents the culture's desire for that very same female sexual expression, as well as the desire to break out of restrictive gender roles. 

(Notice how the fears and desires all relate to each other. Yours should too!)

Lastly, please include at least two library sources you plan to use in your paper along with three to ten sentences per source explaining how they relate to your topic.

Example: Gerber Davis' essay in "Skin Shows" discusses how Dracula acts as both permission giver for the expression of the Victorian female's sexuality and as a figure of prohibition for that very same expression. In this sense he operates as a kind of doppleganger of the men in the novel (and ultimately the culture at large), by encouraging and participating in the women's sexual emancipation and also acting as figures of repression and punishment. The essay also discusses some of the gender norms for women and men at the time, which I plan to use as historical background in my essay. 

If you would like to include more, such as the beginning few paragraphs of your essay, you may. This is not required, however.

Any questions? Email me.

Little Red Dress by Addie Crane

Little Red Dress

            Once upon a time there was a girl named Scarlett. She was called that because of her beautiful red hair. Her parents did their best to prepare her for the real world. They taught her many lessons about being wary of strangers, watching her drink, never walking home alone after dark, and the like. She grew to be a brilliant, strong, and independent young woman and was accepted at the University of California Irvine. She found school difficult, but was good at balancing course work, friends, and her job at a local bakery.

            After one particularly stressful week, Scarlett decided to go clubbing with her friends in Los Angeles. She put on her favorite little red dress and made sure to put pepper spray into her bag. She talked to her friends the entire uber ride, happy that the school week was over and excited to dance at the club. They danced to all their favorite songs and made sure to watch their drinks. After an hour, one of Scarlett's friends, who had drank more than usual that night, was barely able to stand. Everyone decided they should get her home. Scarlett wasn’t done partying and wanted to help her friend, but wanted to stay at the club. Her friends tried to convince her to come back with them to the dorms, but she was stubborn and insisted she would be okay. Reluctantly they let her stay and she went back to dancing. Scarlett continued to drink and dance all night. At around 2am she decided to call an uber.

Since it was 2am on a sunday morning and a lot of drunk people were trying to get home rates were heavily inflated and it would have cost her $300 to get back to her college. She could not afford the cost, but it was late and knew she had to get home safe. She knew her grandmother lived in Santa Monica, but did not know how far the apartment was from the club. Scarlett looked up the directions on her phone and found out it would be a 20 minute walk. Walking alone at this time was far from ideal, but she felt she had no other choice. It was going to be hard, because she was drunkenly stumbling around in five inch heels. At least, her grandmother had given her a key to the apartment and said she was welcome to stay over any time. Scarlett knew how much her grandmother loved the cookies at the bakery she worked at in Irvine and wished she had known ahead of time to bring some with her. She messaged the group chat of her friends and told them she was going to stay at her grandmother's house close by. She set her phone to share her location with them, so they would know where she was at all times in case something happened. Scarlett started walking with her pepper spray in one hand and her phone guiding her in the other. The streets that always seemed so pleasant during the day seemed sinister. Every noise and every shadow made her tighten her grip on her pepper spray. After a couple minutes of walking a black mustang pulled up and the driver rolled down his window. She knew to keep walking and didn’t even glance at the car.

He called out to her, “Excuse me, miss it’s really not safe for you to be walking by yourself at this time”. She stopped for a second remembering all the warnings her parents had given her, but figured she could pepper spray him if he tried anything. She walked up to his window. She noticed he was wearing a nice suit with a thick wool coat and that his eyes were different colors.

“I don’t want to seem creepy. You’re just a beautiful girl,” he smiled showing his big almost blindingly white LA smile, “I would hate for something bad to happen to you”.

“I should be fine thank you” Scarlett replied starting to walk away.

“Get in. I can give you a ride wherever you need to go”

“Seriously, I’ll be fine I’m just going to my grandmother's apartment at the corner of Wilshire and South Barrington”

“I won’t force you. Stay safe” he said and then sped away.

Feeling a little bit more trusting of strangers Scarlett continued her walk. She was relieved when she reached the apartment complex and put her pepper spray back in her purse. She unlocked the door as quietly as possible hoping to not wake her grandmother. She noticed the lights were on and found that strange because her grandmother went to bed early.

“Grandmother? It’s me Scarlett. I didn’t have money to go home so I figured I would stay here. Are you okay?” She called out.

“Oh Scarlett! I’m glad you’re safe and you chose to come here. Come say goodnight to me” Scarlett's Grandmother replied from the bedroom. Scarlett put her bag down in the living room and walked into the bedroom only to find the man that offered her a ride home holding a knife to her grandmother's throat.

“What are you doing here?” Scarlett asked in shock.

“You told me the address. You weren’t going to get in the car so I drove here and knocked on every door until I found your grandmother's house. I pushed her to the ground, dragged her in here, and tied her up. She tried to fight me, but she’s so frail. It would be a shame if she got hurt” He said looking at the blade he had pressed to her throat.

“What do you want?” Scarlett asked starting to shake.

“You’re going to let me tie you up and have my way with you. If you struggle, run, or scream I will kill her in front of you. Understood?” he said smugly knowing she had no choice.

“Understood” she cried. He walked up to her and started to tie her up. She started to struggle as a reflex. He slapped her across the face. Scarlett fell to the floor and through tears watched him kill her grandmother. She let out a bloodcurdling scream. He slapped her again then resumed tying her up. Just as he finished another man ran into the room holding a gun.

“Oh my God! What happened here?” The man with the gun asked, “Step away from the girl or I will shoot”. The man who tied up Scarlett tried to reach for his knife, but he was too slow and the other man shot him in the head.

“Are you okay? Are you injured?” The man asked putting down his gun.

“Physically I’m okay. Who are you?” Scarlett asked.

“My name’s John. I live next door and I heard someone scream so I ran over as fast as I could.” He untied her and she thanked him for everything and told him everything that happened. She got her purse in the living room to call the police to report what had happened.

“Don’t call the cops yet” John said.

“Why not?” She asked suspiciously.

“I saved you because I’m a nice person. Don’t I deserve something in return?”

She realized what he meant, “Nice people don’t need anything in return…”

“Of course you’re just like every other girl. I saved your life and all I get is a thank you? I’m sick of being so nice to girls and never getting anything in return. I try so hard to be nice to girls because that’s who I am a nice guy, but girls never seem to want a nice guy” He emphasized the last two words.

“It’s not that I don’t want to sleep with you because you’re a nice guy,” she said, “I don’t want to sleep with you because I don’t want to sleep with you. I don’t owe you anything. You chose to save me and I’m grateful, but it was your choice and I don’t have to give you anything in return”.

“Whatever you put yourself in this situation. You probably asked for it”. John rolled his eyes.

“Excuse me? How did I put myself in this situation?” She asked offended.

“You’re a drunk girl in tight revealing clothes. This is your fault. You’re dressed that way so you obviously wanted attention”

“Are you serious? It doesn’t matter what I’m wearing or how much I’ve had to drink. None of my actions make what he did okay. I did not ask for this. Now get out or I will mace you” She said firmly while pulling out the pepper spray in her purse.

“Whoa why would you pepper spray me? I saved your life. I’m a good person” He said leaving. Once he was gone Scarlett called the police and they escorted her back to her dorm safely.

The Boy in the Speakers by Natalie Finamore

The Boy in the Speakers

Once, not very long ago, a man and woman loved each other. This isn’t unusual, but their love was. High school sweethearts, everyone said that they would get sick of each other, but they never did. They spent years together in mutual bliss, eventually getting married.

The day came when they wished to have a child. For years and years they tried, but without any success. Eventually, they scraped enough money together for fertility treatments, and the woman soon discovered that she was pregnant. Before she told the happy news to her husband, she sat beneath the mimosa tree behind their house, looking up into the branches. A bird was perched in the tree above her, singing sweetly as the sun began to sink below the horizon. She whispered to herself, “May my child sing as beautifully as that bird does. May they be as free as its wings upon the wind.”

Her husband was overjoyed to hear that they had finally conceived a child, but their happiness was not to last for long. When the woman went into labor, she began to lose a lot of blood. The doctors did everything to save her, but she was dying, and dying fast. As she faded, she held her husband’s hand and said, “If I die, bury me beneath the mimosa tree.”

The doctors saved the child, named Jacob, and the man was allowed by the county to bury his wife beneath the mimosa tree. He held his son in the shade of the branches, and called his wife’s old number over and over just to hear her voice. Eventually, he stopped paying the bill, and he slowly forgot the sweet sounds of his wife’s voice.

He joined a dating site, and soon married again in the kind of whirlwind romance that the internet age has made us so familiar with. Soon, he and his new wife had a daughter, Marlene. The daughter and son were no more than two years apart, and they were attached at the hip. They grew up together, and Jacob would always sing Marlene to sleep at night. Jacob was Marlene’s protector and closest confidant. When Marlene got bullied at school, Jacob would scare the kids off, when Marlene was sick, Jacob would put his CDs on for her, when Marlene needed anything, Jacob was there to be her protector.

The stepmother was jealous of Marlene’s love for her brother, but as he got older, she became jealous of his singing talent. See, the stepmother was a failed artist, and she spent hours on the internet, wallowing in self-pity and obsessing over her passed days without making any effort to lift herself from her position in life. Her husband worked long hours, and often wouldn’t be seen around the house because he went out and got drunk after work with his old college buddies. It was no secret in the household that the stepmother took out her rage out upon Jacob. From the moment she moved in, she punished Jacob at every turn. When he was young, she would spank, pinch, and send him to time out for inordinate amounts of time for even the smallest infractions. She tried to control him by taking away his electronics, his CDs, grounding him, denying him dinner—and treating Marlene like a princess. Jacob’s good heart never resented his sister for the treatment he endured from his stepmother. Instead, he funneled all of his sadness and hatred into his music. He played whenever and wherever he could, his beautiful voice capturing all emotion perfectly.  Jacob had begun posting videos of himself singing with his guitar. He had gained a local following, and one of his videos had gone viral. Jacob was excited—his stepmother could only see her failure and jealousy. Every time Jacob had a success, she would punish him, but she could never stop his tenacity for his music.

Jacob was called to play a gig at a local venue, and he was going to be late coming home. Marlene begged her mother to let her go, but her mother angrily ordered her to go to bed. Marlene cried and cried in her room, and her mother screamed at her door while Jacob could not protect her, “You ungrateful child! I gave birth to you! He isn’t even your blood!”

Jacob got home around ten. He crept in the door, being careful not to wake anyone in the house, but he was surprised to see his mother sitting in the front room, staring at the front door where he stood.

“You’re up late,” his voice came out in barely a whisper. He was afraid, but he couldn’t say of what.

“It’s the perfect time to take care of things—get those pesky chores done that you just can’t get to during the day,” she walked over to where Jacob stood.

At this moment, Marlene was walking down the stairs to get a drink of water, careful to be quiet, as she didn’t want to incite the wrath of her mother. She saw her mother and Jacob from the bottom of the stairs, and she was frozen. They were just standing there; staring at one another like all hell was going to break loose. She didn’t know why, but she pulled her phone out of her pocket, turning the camera on, and started to record.

“What do you want…mom?” Jacob asked, “I was just going to head to bed.”

“I just wanted to tell you that I’m proud of you, son,” the stepmother reached her arms out, moving to embrace Jacob. A smile spread across his face, he was overjoyed to finally be appreciated and loved—even for a moment—by the stepmother that had rejected him for so long. This happiness, however, was short-lived.

His stepmother whipped a boxcutter out from the sleeve of her robe, and angrily cut across Jacob’s throat. Marlene screamed from the stairs, dropping her phone, and the mother turned around, eyes blazing with hellfire.

“If you tell a soul, I’ll do worse than kill you, you ungrateful child.”

Marlene shook and sobbed as she watched her mother walk into the kitchen. Jacob’s blood was spreading across the linoleum floor of the entryway, and Marlene wished that he would stand up—that he would be okay. Her mother returned, her bloody hands gripping the electric turkey knife.

“No! No mom, please!”

Jacob was dismembered over an excruciatingly long expanse of time. Marlene’s mother took pieces of his body and neatly cut them, placing them in plastic bags in the freezer. She wrapped his head, some of his organs, and his bones in a trash bag and shoved the heap into Marlene’s quivering arms.

“You bury these under the mimosa tree so he can be with his stinking slut mother where he belongs! If you try to run, you’ll end up in the freezer too.”

Marlene dragged the bag outside, her mother watching her from the kitchen window. She grabbed the shovel from the shed and dug a hole in the soft dirt under the mimosa tree. The hole took a long time to dig, but she managed to get it deep enough to accommodate the garbage bag. She gently placed what was left of her brother in the hole and filled it with dirt, trying to put the sod back on in the least suspicious-looking manner possible. No one ever really went in the backyard except for her and Jacob, so it didn’t really matter, but she wanted it to look good enough that she could pretend that none of it happened until the morning. Marlene plucked some of the mimosa flowers off of the tree just as the sun began to rise, and placed them on the soil where the pieces of her brother lay.

Marlene walked back in to find the house spotless and smelling of bleach, the sun streaming in through the front windows and illuminating the entryway that had been stained with her brother’s blood only several hours before. She smelled cooking meat, and her mother leaned out of the kitchen.

“Clean yourself up. Your father is coming to have breakfast with us, it’s his day off and I’m trying to do something nice for him.”

Later, Marlene sat across from her father as he ate what he seemed to think was “ham and eggs”. Marlene couldn’t even take a bite.

“Why aren’t you eating this delicious breakfast that your mother made, Marlene?” her father asked through a mouthful of food.

“I…” her mother grabbed her knee and dug her nails in, “I’m not feeling that well, I think I may have gotten the flu at school. Sorry, mom,” The grip on her knee relaxed.

“Where’s Jake?” her father seemed to have just only noticed

“He never came home last night. Stupid kid is probably out partying.”

Marlene passed the next month in a stupor. She did poorly in school. Her mother had put out a missing person report for her brother, but at each candlelight vigil, each search party, her mind was heavy with what really happened to Jacob. Every night, she went to talk to Jacob beneath the mimosa tree. She asked him to make it right, to expose their mother, to be her protector and her voice one last time.

Suddenly, one night under the tree, her phone lit up with a video of her brother singing, but it was a song she did not recognize. He sang,

“My mother, she slew me,

My father, he ate me,

And my sister, Marlene buried me,

With my mother under the mimosa tree.”

Marlene stared at the phone, and she knew, her brother was back to save her.

Her mother began getting phone calls. Marlene heard the same song wafting from the receiver, and each time her mother screamed for  the caller to “stop pranking her”. Jacob didn’t stop there. The lyrics to the macabre song began arriving in messages on the mother’s Facebook. They came out of the mouths of the newscasters on TV. They whispered from the car radio. They typed themselves in word documents on the mother’s laptop. It was driving her mad.

Marlene would go under the tree, and call her brother’s old number every night, and he would sing the song to her over and over again. One night, her mother came running out of the house into the backyard. Marlene could hear her brother’s voice from the laptop in the house.

“He’s taken everything from me! Everything!” her mother screamed, “I can’t even distract myself anymore. I’m digging him up! I’m digging that little shit up! I’m going to burn that fucking tree to the ground!”

Marlene’s mother began running toward the tree. Her father appeared in the door.

“What’s going on?” he asked, somewhat detached and not seeming to notice the disembodied voice of his song growing louder and louder through the Marlene’s phone.

Despite all of the commotion, and her mother marching toward the mimosa tree with revenge in her eyes, Marlene felt strangely calm. Her brother’s voice no longer seemed to be coming from her phone, but from below where she was sitting. The ground started to shake.

All of a sudden, the ground burst open, and there stood Jacob and his mother in all their glory. Marlene’s mother kept rushing headlong towards the mimosa, screaming. Jacob’s mother rushed forward and in a clap of light, reached into the wicked women’s chest and began pulling her into the ground by her heart. Jacob pulled Marlene away from the tree, and the ground swallowed up both of their mothers without a trace.

Marlene was overjoyed to see her brother in the flesh, and she buried her face into his chest. She lifted her head to express her joy to her father, but he was too busy searching the ground below the mimosa to realize his son was there.

“I don’t have long here, sis. Tell the cops what happened to me. Live your life. I’ll always be there in spirit to sing to you,” and with that, he faded into the ground.

Marlene wept, but she did as her brother asked. She showed the police the video that she had taken with her phone. She told them that she had been threatened with death by her mother and that’s why she had never come forward. When the police asked where her mother was, she told them that she had run off.

Marlene and her father had a rocky relationship at best after that. He dove even farther into drink after he realized that he had eaten his son, and that he had been too absorbed in his job and social life to even take notice of what had happened. Despite all of this, Marlene was still happy, for she sat under the mimosa tree every night, and though what was left of her brother had been taken for evidence long ago, she spread his ashes beneath the tree. He kept his promise, and sang to her through her phone. Wherever there was a speaker, Jacob could be heard singing,

“My mother, she slew me,

My father, he ate me,

And my sister, Marlene saved me

Marlene saved my soul.”

Important: Moodle Upload

Hi everyone,

When you upload your monster or fairy tale presentation project to Moodle, please combine everything into one file as Moodle only allows you to upload one file. You can separate them by a page if you like.  Put the analytical paper first.

If you have a visual aide that is a sculpture, drawing, etc, please scan it and include it after the end of your analytical paper.

You may include any links to videos or online creative components in the text box.

Thank you! Let me know if you have questions. Have a great break.

Prof D

FINAL ESSAY #4 PEER MENTOR REQUIREMENT

One requirement for your final essay is that you meet to go over your rough draft with one of your peer mentors.

You must have emailed them or talked with them to set up an appointment time no later than Friday, Dec. 2nd.

Please make sure to work with their schedules. Your appointment needs to happen no later than Dec 12th.

If you would like to meet with me about your final essay, please set up an appointment time with me during the last two full weeks of classes. Email me sooner rather than later to ensure I have a spot.

Please note that I do not plan to be on campus during finals week, but can answer specific questions via email.

Your final draft is due via Moodle by 6pm Friday, Dec. 16th. 

FINAL ESSAY OPTION 1

OPTION 1: RESEARCH A MONSTER

For option one, your paper must center on one particular monster other than the vampire. The definition of the word monster here is any real or imagined being that generally fits into at least two of the monster theses categories as outlined in Monster Theory, and about which there is enough research on to write a 3-5 page paper. 

You are to write an essay about your monster as a representation of a specific culture's fears and desires. Remember, a monster is a vessel in which certain cultural fears and desires are embodied. You will need to be specific about which particular fears and desires your monster embodies, as well as which specific culture (you need to be able to label explicitly a time frame and place; you may use a film or novel to help you locate these) they are in relationship with. For example, Dracula was an embodiment of 1800's Victorian England's specific fears of women's sexual expression, and the British colonization of various cultures and people across the globe, among other things. Mention the time and place and the specific fears and desires in your intro. You will likely want to focus on just two or three major fears or desires and unpack those, instead of going through a long laundry list. Make sure you can connect them to each other in a natural way.

A good strategy for beginning this assignment:

1. Make sure it’s a monster that you are intrigued by.  Do a little reading on basic Internet sites (Wikipedia is a good start, for instance) on the monster and its

context/background. Then look at the Monster Theses and see how your monster represents some of the research-worthy attributes of monsters.

2. Plan to spend some time reading in the library – or on the library’s online databases, free e-periodicals, or other scholarly websites – in order to get some weightier sources on the questions you want to answer, as well as your interest.  You may also want to read film reviews if you are basing your monster on a movie (sources such as the New York Times and Boston Globe are good ones). Learn what you know and what you still need to know.  As you research, your topic will keep expanding.  Go with it.  Don’t keep it in a box.  Be willing to question your position. And most importantly—make sure before you begin that there is enough scholarly, appropriate research for you to work with!

This preliminary research will help you turn a subject into a topic.  When you have a subject, you have something to talk (or write) about; but with a topic, you also have something to say about it (A CLAIM!). You do not want to write a “report” or informational essay on your monster—you must make a claim about its relationship to culture. Remember, the monster is only a lens through which you are exploring culture.

Note: It's your job to make sure you do not pick a monster until you've done enough preliminary research to ensure that you can write about it successfully for at least 3 full pages. 

TOPIC Example:

Belief in Bigfoot operates as a salve against the contemporary American fear of ecological destruction, in this era of global warming and other ecological disasters. As long as Bigfoot safely roams the forest as an emissary, this mitigates our guilt and calms our worries for the future.

The dinosaurs of Jurassic Park represent a fear of scientific technological advancement and the consequences of cloning, as well as a desire of American capitalism to turn everything into a commercial product, as represented by the "theme park" element of the story.

There are many, many more options.  Get thinking, get creative, and start asking questions.  

Some examples of monsters that could be good ones to write about: Sasquatch, aliens, witches, demons, serial killers, werewolves, zombies, ghosts, etc. You should talk about specific monsters within these categories such as, say, Hannibal Lecter the serial killer, La Llorona (the weeping ghost), George Romero's zombies in a specific film such as Night of the Living Dead, etc. Don't just generally talk about zombies, ghosts, etc. because there is too much to unpack.

Please note that if you are discussing a real person who has been deemed a monster in society's eyes, you need to consider primarily their representation in culture and how culture has "monsterized them." What does their representation in culture say about culture's fears and desires? Do not focus on "what really happened." For example, Ted Bundy the serial killer tapped into a fear that the innocent boy next door might not be so innocent after all, that America and the suburbs were not safe spaces, etc. If this sounds too hard, stick to a monster you know is "fake."

You may not select for your monster any creature, such as the Komodo dragon, who is in fact "real" and yet not particularly representational of any cultural fears or desires. A good way to test whether or not a “real” monster represents larger cultural concerns is to see if there is academic research on it, and if there have been any horror movies made about it.

Basic Requirements:

This essay will combine all the skills you've learned in INTD 100. It is a research essay, and it will require a strong thesis that is clearly arguable, well qualified, and specific. Stick to your thesis throughout—and make sure that your research supports your thesis and underscores its main points. Make sure to include a Works Cited page and note that this Works Cited page does not count toward the 3-5 page count requirement.

There must be sufficient research on your topic, so that you will not have trouble finding materials. 

You will be required to have at least three outside sources for this essay. Two must come from the library’s databases, and they must be articles and/or books. However, you may have additional acceptable (.org or .edu) web sources, or film sources. It is imperative, however, that you quote from and rely on your library sources and include your Monster Thesis notes in your essay.

Good luck and have fun!