James Duncan (zoologist)

Transcription

>>Female Presenter: So W. Scott Poole blames repeated viewings of shock theater at an impressionable age for his monster obsession. Associate professor of history at the College of Charleston, he's also a prolific pop culture critic. His reviews and commentary can be found at popmatters.com, religiondispatches.com and other sites. In addition to "Monsters in America", his other books include "Satan in America: the devil we know". And "Never Surrender: Confederate memory and conservativism in the South Carolina upcountry" which was the 2004 winner of the George C. Rogers Award for best book on South Carolina history. Poole lives in Charleston, South Carolina with his partner Beth Phillips, two dogs, an extensive comic book and vinyl record collection. Please help me to welcome Scott Poole. [Applause] >> Scott: Well thank you. And thank you for letting me come talk to you about monsters and hopefully talking back to me about monsters as well. I hope we've got some time. I'm planning for some time for Q and A so anything I don't cover in the discussion can I hopefully answer for you. So this is a weird book in certain kinds of ways. This is a book that's a weird combination of some different things. I am a historian. I'm a traditionally trained historian even if I'm not a traditional historian in some ways. And so, this book really is a cultural history of the idea of the monster. It's not a cultural history of horror movies although there's a lot of horror movies in it. It's a cultural history of how narratives of monsters have intersected with American history from the colonial -- first period of colonial settlement all the way to the present. So that's part of it. Part of what makes it weird -- if that's not weird enough to try to do that -- is that this is also a book written by and for horror nerds. [audience chuckles] I am absolutely a horror geek. I consider myself kind of part of that community. I see this book in a way as a kind of valentine to the genre that I love so much. And that kind of community that gathers around it. So, you know, it's -- it's a book that is different things. It has sort of an underlying seriousness. You'll find phrases in there like 'landscapes of corpses' [laughter] and that kind of thing that suggests, in fact, I really am after exploring some of the darker parts of American history. But then, I think also horror fans will find a lot in it as well. Hopefully finding ways to look at layers of the kind of pop culture entertainment they already enjoy and encounter those things in a different kind of way. Now, as Shannon mentioned, I do, in fact, owe -- blame -- whatever part of this fascination to a lifelong fascination with classic horror and also more contemporary horror. The fact of the matter is, I spent a number of long Saturday afternoons in the late 70s -- I've told my college kids before during the Clinton years but in fact it was during the Carter years. [laughter] Sitting down in front of my parents ginormous console television set which I also have to explain to them didn't mean it was a wide screen TV. [laughter] It means it was this gigantic piece of furniture with this little tiny screen on it watching shock theater. If you're not familiar with shock theater. Shock was actually a package of films that Universal Studios started marketing in the late 1950s to local TV stations. And they actually marketed two packages -- one that was called Shock Theatre, the second that was called Son of Shock. And it actually was this combination of kind of the universal monsters -- Bride of Frankenstein, Frankenstein, Dracula, Wolfman, all that kind of stuff along with the 1950's creature features. The giant bugs. The 50-foot women. All of those kind of radioactive terrors that were very much part of the Cold War mentality in America. And so, you know, for me in a sense that's kind of where my own obsessions along those kinds of lines began. Now, the question though becomes, "Fine, okay. We get it, Poole. You're a weird kid. [audience laughs] There's no doubt about that. But how does that connect to serious historical work?" And is that kind of material serious enough for real historical inquiry?" Well, I think that it is. And I think it is, in part, because of what one of my favorite historians -- who's not actually a historian -- Greil Marcus -- has to say. A quote that in some ways -- you'll find it in the book -- but it's really informative about what I explore. [reading] "Parts of history, he says, because they don't fit the story a people wants to tell itself, survive only as haunts and as fairy tales." So there is as with every country and as with every society and every culture, there's this master narrative. There's this story that we get out of the textbooks. There's the story that the guy up in front of the classroom in the tie tells us. There's the chronology that we're taught to believe is essentially the story of American history or the story of any culture for that matter. But most of us have the sense that there's something lying underneath. Something's under the bed. Something's hiding in the closet. There's something in kind of the darkest part of the forest. And that's why I see monsters as a kind of access point into secret histories. And I'm almost afraid to use that term, because you know now there's sort of the secret history of everything. But I think when it comes to exploring the master narratives -- particularly of history that we've been told to accept--, it's an important idea. And I think that monsters have become -- as I've explained in other contexts -- a kind of a map to hidden topographies. A map to where the bodies are buried in American history. Now, in the book, I don't actually give a definition of the monster. I don't actually say, "Monsters are this." There's a lot of different reasons for that. Partially because monsters today are all different sorts of things. But I think also it's because what the monster is depends on the historical context that they emerge in. Monsters actually kind of soak up meaning. They're sort of these sponges that collect meaning out of the historical context in which they appear. So, for example, when I talk with my college students about the universal monster cycle -- Dracula, wolf man etcetera. They, almost the first thing they always say is, "you know, that stuff just isn't scary. How could people have thought that that was scary?" Even more interesting I've had the experience of watching the exorcist with graduate students -- which I and even some of you still find a frightening film -- and their response has been, "you know, I just don't get it. This is too slow. The special effects aren't that great. I just really don't find it frightening." Well, I think the fact of the matter is, that different things are frightening at different periods and they're frightening because of the context they're in. They're frightening because they're kind of sticking in and playing around with parts of others that are connected to that larger cultural aegis. They're kind of soaking up meaning while at the very same time they're these powerful social constructions -- monsters are -- all by themselves kind of helping to contribute meaning in certain kinds of ways to the era that they appear in. That's a little abstract. So let's talk about a couple of very specific examples that I think will help you see this. And what I've decided I'll talk about today is first of all the 19th century American obsession with the sea serpent. You may not know that there was a 19th century American obsession with the sea serpent, [audience chuckles] but after today you will be aware how obsessed Americans were with this creature and then something that you probably know a good bit more about. That is the obsession with the serial killer and with the slasher. Kind of the murdering maniac, hook for a hand. All that kind of stuff from the 70s and 80s. So kind of a more historical example -- the way we tend to think about that term -- and then a more contemporary one. But let's get to the sea serpent first. Indeed, Americans were obsessed with this creature in the 19th century. And when I say "obsessed," I don't just mean as a pop culture phenomenon. I don't just mean that there were sort of marginal people in American society who were interested in the possibility of these creatures. I actually mean that, even in the emerging scientific community in America. Sort of the beginnings of natural science. There was a real interest in whether or not sea serpents were real. In fact, no less a scientific name than Charles Lyell the geologist was absolutely convinced, based on eyewitness accounts, that sea serpents were an undiscovered animal. A creature that we simply didn't have an exhibit or specimen of and that we were eventually going to find. Now, at least one of -- and this is not the only -- but one of kind of the trigger points for interest in this creature was a series of sightings not too far from here. In 1817, there were a series of sea serpent sightings in Gloucester Harbor. In fact, hundreds of people claimed that this creature, and they actually drew a picture of it, this creature showed itself in the harbor. Was seen by whalers who got out in their row boats and went out to get it in true American style when they saw this marvel, they decided "hey let's get our harpoons and our muskets and let's go kill it." [laughter] And so, hundreds as you can see here -- well, make you can't see it very well -- but it's the largest ever seen in America. Just made its appearance in Gloucester Harbor, Cape Ann, and has been seen by hundreds of respectable citizens, people claim. Not a bunch of crazies. Not slack jawed yokels and that kind of thing. Hundreds of respectable citizens saw this creature, it was claimed. Now, there was so much interest in this that an early American scientific society -- in fact a very elite scientific society -- known as the New England Linnaean Society, located in Boston featuring a number of kind of America's emerging scientific elite. They took a special interest in the sea serpent, decided they were going to work up a zoological profile of it. Started collecting a variety of eyewitness accounts including the eye witness accounts that came from the Gloucester Harbor siting. And then at one point, actually believed they had found a specimen. And here's a drawing of it that a member of the society did. Thought that they had found a specimen of one of the sea serpent's babies -- one of its spawn essentially -- about three feet in length. And there had actually been a lot of discussion about the spawn of the sea serpent. There was all this talk in 1817, 1818 -- well, maybe this thing has shown up in Gloucester Harbor because it's going to spawn and that's going to be really terrible for the fishing industry. They were taking it this seriously they thought how is this monster going to ruin the local economy was the discussion. Well, the Linnaean Society found this creature -- three feet long -- very strange markings on it. They could not identify it as any known zoological specimen. Unfortunately for them but good for science, Louis Agassiz famous zoologist connected to Harvard took a look at at it and said, "you know, this isn't actually a spawn of a sea serpent. This is actually a fairly common New England water snake that happens to have a skin disease, some kind of skin infection that has caused it to have all these strange markings." New England Linnaean Society disappeared about two years later. Essentially in kind of complete embarrassment. They only formed in 1818, so they weren't around that long. There were other reasons for their dissolution, but I think this was part of it. So after this, the scientific or emerging professionalized scientific community in America sort of takes a turn when it comes to the sea serpent. They start saying things like eyewitness accounts are not enough. That's not what we mean by scientific evidence. Scientific evidence has to do with having a specimen in a lab that is confirmed. Doesn't have to do with how many people have seen it. And the American public's response to this was, "Well, okay, fine. But sea serpents are awesome. And what if they do exist?" [laughter] And so, the sea serpent becomes a really important part of American popular culture. As you can see here. This is from the 1850s. This is a piece of sheet music from the 1850s. Sort of the 19th century version of the CD or the download. And I actually discovered in an issue of Harper's Magazine that this particular sheet music was on whoever was the 1850s version of Ryan Seacrest's top ten list of best-selling sheet music. So the Sea Serpent Polka. Very, very popular. Captains started naming their ships the USS Sea Serpent. It just became a very important part of American culture and representation. It even showed up in the side show and sort of the history -- the emerging history of the American carnival tradition. And I wanted to show you this image, in part, because you can see where this is going and you can see where the turn away from science fits in with this. This great wonder of the world -- Hydrarchos -- sea serpent. Supposedly 114 feet in length. This traveled all over the country. This is actually from an advertisement for a show in Brooklyn. And unfortunately you can't see the small print in there. You can see it in the book. The image is reproduced in the book. But it essentially makes the claim not that this is an unknown animal, not that this is an animal we haven't discovered yet, but rather that it is a supernatural creature. In fact, it specifically says -- the promoter claimed -- what we've got here is the skeleton of Leviathan. This beast from the Hebrew Bible. From the Old Testament this kind of chaos monster that existed from the beginning of time. So you see there, as the scientific community has said, "no, we need evidence." Sort of the American public in the popular imagination said, "We don't care about that and in fact, maybe it's supernatural. Maybe that's the explanation for these creatures." As you might guess, I do draw some connections in the book between sort of popular misunderstanding of what counts for scientific evidence today -- the whole debate over intelligent design. I mean in certain kinds of ways, it's the same sort of discussion. By the way, just side note, that in fact was an actual set of fossils. It's simply that it was fossils that had been taxidermied together to look like a sea serpent and became so popular that Herman Melville actually mentions it in Moby Dick. There's a reference in Moby Dick to these fossils that have been discovered in northern Alabama that some people believe are the bones of fallen angels, he says. Became quite a important part of sort of the American psyche in the 19th century. Now, not all monsters are quite so friendly and interesting as the sea serpent. And in fact in some ways at least one of the new monsters -- the late 20th century monsters -- that have obsessed Americans is sort of the knife-wielding maniac. The psycho. And of course, this begins in the late 1950s with one of America's first modern celebrity serial killers -- Ed Gein. The Ed Gein killings which directly influenced the 1960 film Psycho. And then, by the 1970s, certainly by the 1980s and for sure in the early 90s, there was this mountain of films, books, sociological material, even criminological material on the dangers of the serial killer. And in fact, the alleged dangers of the serial killer to essentially everybody. To every American. Even though statistically, all the homicides in the United States during the 1980s taken together -- only about 0.01 percent of those murders were actually ever traced to an actual serial killer or stranger killing as they were often called. And yet, there was this mountain of material produced about them. Why is that? Why did the serial killer become the monster of that particular moment? Well, I think there's a number of answers to that. And part of it has to do with the sort of political climate during that period. There were some who made a connection -- kind of a direct connection -- between what they saw as the changes to American society during the sexual revolution. During the 1960s and counterculture and what they saw as an increasingly quote unquote degenerate society in the 1970s and 1980s. And some of these claims actually came from some relatively surprising sources. So, for example, in 1984 -- which was kind of the beginning really in a way of the serial killer becoming a major obsession in American society. A New York Times Editorial reported that quote many officials -- no officials named, no agency actually linked to them, just simply "many officials," believe that a link exists between sweeping changes and attitudes regarding sexuality that have occurred in the last 20 years and the emergence of the serial killer. So that very vague assertion suggested that the sexual revolution -- maybe second wave feminism as well -- the direct result of that had been serial murder. Now, some made this -- connected these dots -- dots not easy to connect in an even stranger sort of way. One of the most popular genres during the 1980s and in fact it's remained a very popular genre -- true crime book, the true crime novel. And in fact, there was a particular author, Ann Rule, R-U-L-E, who was a particular best seller. I mean, her books were just insanely popular. If there are any -- this is a strange way to put it -- but if there are any Ted Bundy fans [laughter] out there. Then [chuckles] you probably have heard the name Ann Rule. Because she wrote the book "Stranger Beside Me," which has become classic in the true crime genre. Now Ann Rule is an interesting person. She actually got her start during the 1960s writing these kind of under-the-counter -- literally kept under the counter-- magazines with names like Spicy Detective. True Crime. That kind of stuff. And yet, by the 80s, she's a best-selling author and she's writing for magazines like Good Housekeeping and Family Circle. And she's making claims like these. In her book about Ted Bundy, she suggests part of the reason that Bundy becomes a serial killer is that he came from an unstable home. An unstable domestic environment. She says and I quote, "his mother was deeply involved in the promiscuous culture created by the 1960s." And so, her equation there is "single mom; dates a lot -- Ted Bundy." [laughter] Now obviously this was sort of a -- these were sub-political kinds of statements. She was not openly allying herself with the emerging Christian right, which it's no accident I think the Moral Majority was formed in 1978 almost on the emergence of this serial killer epidemic quote unquote. Nevertheless, she is using a kind of political language -- certainly a culturally political language. And she wasn't alone in this. The true crime genre did this a lot, talked about the monster as really the production or the produce of the counterculture. Now, part of this era -- part of the era of the 1980s and part of really the American fascination with the serial killer-- was the emergence of the popularity of the slasher film. Now, there's a whole political discussion around the slasher film that I get into in the book that I won't really get into here. The really short version of it was that at least part of the critique of the slasher film was from second wave feminist critics who argued that essentially these are movies are killing women. These are movies about how the sexual revolution was bad. These are movies in which the first couple that had sex is the one that dies and the only woman that lives is the one that's a virgin. That's kind of really in a way I would argue a simplistic understanding of these films. And that did come out of and was important part of second wave feminism's critique of these. Third wave feminism has a much more complicated view of these movies. And I should add even in talking about this that I consider myself a feminist scholar. And so, some of the things I'll have to say about them should be read in that light. I actually want to bracket that whole discussion -- although I'm happy to answer some questions about it and talk to you instead a little bit about kind of a different -- maybe a sort of new interpretation of these films. I actually see the slasher films as what I call subversive fairy tales. Stories that are overturning certain kinds of stories that had already been circulating in American society. Specifically, cautionary tales about the dangers of the counterculture, the dangers of sexuality. Urban legends and social rumors that had suggested basically young people -- particularly young women -- were completely out of control. So let me give you a couple of examples of that. In talking about what I call the dangerous babysitter stories. And then, also the babysitters in danger stories. Let's talk dangerous babysitters first. Now, believe me I didn't think that a book about monsters would lead me into researching the history of babysitting but it certainly did and it actually turned out to be a important part of this story. You probably all heard the urban legend of the cooked baby. The cooked baby story as it's generally told today. Although this isn't the original version of it. I'll tell you the original version. But as it's usually told today. Babysitter -- she's talking to -- who of course is female, right? Always female. Babysitter is talking on her phone to her boyfriend. She's watching TV. She's raiding the refrigerator. She's been told to put the roast in the oven and the baby to bed and [laughter] instead she puts, you know, the roast to bed and she puts the baby in the oven. It's terrible, right? And everybody knows somebody who knows somebody who's cousin knew somebody that saw this on the news. [laughter] It's an urban legend, right? Well, the original version of this story -- folklorists refer to it as the hippie babysitter. Because it's a story that started circulating in the 1960s. And it basically went like this. It's similar to the version I just repeated, except the babysitter is a counter-cultural teen that shows up high. And for whatever reason -- parents decide, "okay, she's high. We're going out to dinner anyway." They leave her with the baby. And because she's smoking pot, that has led her to put the roast to bed and the baby in the oven. Now, there's an even later version of the story that started making the rounds in the 1970s that made it not a babysitter but rather a single mom who's taken too much Valium. And that's what caused this horrible thing to occur. So these were -- these were sort of social cautionary tales. These kind of social rumors that were meant to be warnings about what happens if you trust young people, if you let counter-cultural kids too close to your own kids, and about why you ought to, for goodness sakes, stay within a traditional marriage. You're liable to cook the baby otherwise essentially. [laughter] Now, allied to those stories is the babysitter in danger story. And this is so famous, I don't even have to tell it. In fact, there was a movie made about it in the 70s and a recent remake. The whole story about the babysitter. She's at home. There's a call being made. The call, it turns out, is from inside the house. The mad killer is actually up stairs. It is sometimes called the story of the man upstairs. That's sort of the folklorist version of it. It's related to the dangerous babysitter in that it's yet another story about how, really, young women don't know what they're doing. They really cannot be left in charge of things. They're going to be -- they're going to become victims. And both of these versions -- both of these types of stories -- either say young women are victimizers or they're victims. Now, what does that have to do with the Slasher genre? Well, the Slasher genre in different ways turns these stories on their heads. It takes these social cautionary tales, which have basically been around for 20 years, and tells a very different version of them. John Carpenter's Halloween, for example, in 1978, it's a story about babysitters in danger. Laurie Strode is a babysitter in danger. Jamie Leigh Curtis is a babysitter in danger. Does she become the victim? Does she show herself ultimately to be irresponsible? No. In fact, she becomes the monster hunter. She's kind of the Van Helsing of the story -- the one that kills the monster at least until the sequel. And of course they didn't know there was going to be a sequel when Halloween first came along. So for all practical purposes, the monster was dead. Now, quickly -- there is a related sort of genre of these. Related to the American summer camp. And again, as with babysitting, I really didn't think examining monsters was going to end up leading me to examine the history of the American summer camp, but it certainly did. And let me give you kind of a brief version of that. After World War II, the summer camp becomes very important, as does a whole network really of civic organizations, church groups, neighborhood organizations, sports organizations -- all which had the purpose of kind of reining in young people who were increasingly seen as getting totally out of control. We think of that as, "That's a 1960s phenomenon," but it's not. 1950s was the age of Marlon Brando and the Wild Ones; nobody wanted their kid to be Marlon Brando. It's the age of "Rebel Without a Cause." Everybody's afraid, "my kid -- he's wearing a leather jacket; he's going to turn out to be James Dean." It was the age of the juvenile delinquent . The idea of the juvenile delinquent became important. So there's the emergence of all this whole system of things meant to become sites of social discipline. Meant to turn kids into good citizens, basically. And the summer camp was very much a part of that. Now, a very strange side to summer camp, which we think of as, you know, encouraging the values of teamwork. Everybody sits around the campfire and sings the praises of Camp Watchatoochee -- whatever it happens to be. Kids go out and they encounter nature. Fresh air. Exercise. Blah, blah, blah. That's what it's supposed to be about. And yet, there's this other side to the summer camp, which many of you are probably familiar with -- in which sitting around the campfire also means hearing stories of monstrous murdering maniacs [laughter] who are hiding in the woods, [laughter] hiding in the darkness just right beyond the light of the campfire. The escaped lunatic with a hook for a hand -- which by the way, lunatics who have lost their hands. Why give them a hook? [laughter] Ever thought about that? Doesn't make rational sense. Not a hook. Worst idea ever. And yet, almost every camp -- and actually examined kind of the alumni memories and this kind of thing of camps all over the country. And what I found was camps in central Kentucky had stories of Headless Hattie. This horrible sort of female demonic presence that was going to come after the kids. I learned about -- some of you maybe have seen the documentary about "Cropsey", this disfigured hermit in Staten Island but also camps around upstate New York. And the warnings always were, "it's the kids who aren't practicing the values being taught at summer camp that the creature is going to get." So, if you're the kid smoking pot out in the woods, then Headless Hattie is going to get you. If you're the kid who's off by themselves instead of swimming and doing archery practice and that kind of stuff, then that's going to make you the victim. In the strangest -- in a way most offensive thing I've found-- was from one of these upstate New York camps that kind of emphasize that it's the kids who don't follow the fresh air, physical regime aspect of summer camp that the monster gets. In fact, the specific quote -- and I am quoting here -- was that "we learned that Cropsey always goes after the fat kids" unquote. So it's literally the kids that are physically unfit that aren't living up to this sort of standard of health and good citizenship that the monster is going to go after. Well, this is part of what makes Friday the 13th -- at least in its first two versions -- so interesting. You think, "well, it actually sounds very similar. There's a summer camp. There's a maniac out in the woods surrounding the summer camp. But guess what? He doesn't go after the kids. He goes after the counselors. And in fact, he goes after the counselors who are telling the stories around the campfire of the thing that is going to to get you. So in a certain kind of sense, the Friday the 13th films -- particularly again the early ones -- I'm talking 1981, 1982, become sort of these vengeance narratives for kids who had sort of heard this stuff from counselors for ten years, for 20 years, the monster becomes not a moral custodian, but rather just this force that's going to wreak vengeance on all these forces of control that they've had to encounter at summer camp and in other kinds of situations. I would add really briefly that at least part of my response to kind of the political discussion around the Slasher film has to do with the birth of the idea of the final girl, which is not my phrase at all. There's a scholar by the name of Carol Clover who wrote this book with this great title called Men, Women and Chain Saws [laughter] in which --she as a feminist scholar herself-- as well explores these films and talks about the fact that -- first of all, they're not simply about women being killed, they're about women fighting killers. And in fact, Halloween, which you see here with Jamie Lee Curtis as we've already talked about. That's the story. And I actually think a lot of these films are the background to a figure that's now essentially ubiquitous in popular culture -- the idea of the female action hero, which Buffy is part of, but you could name ten other examples in many kinds of ways. That doesn't make them feminist films, but also problematizes the idea that they're simply films about killing women. You could make a stronger argument that they're about women killing monsters. Which is also an interesting kind of, part of a discussion given the political climate of the 1970s and 80s when these films were born. So, just to wrap up and to hopefully give us a bit of time for questions as well, I just like to say that part of what my analysis does and what the book tries to do is to make the argument that really story and history are not separate. It's not that monsters are about popular entertainment that's here. And then actual events -- the events that people are actually living as history are over here. Narrative and social structure are always together. Now, we tend to pull them apart. I guess I've pulled them apart today just kind of for purposes of analysis. I'm not sure that that's how people actually experience the world though. I think that the images that they see in popular narratives -- whether that's more recently in film or longer ago in discussions about sightings of the sea serpent -- has a lot to do with how they experience history. And so, then the monster becomes not just a sort of marginalized entertainment or interesting pop culture, it does become this guide into this underground America -- a way for us to go places that maybe there's not any other way for us to go. So thank you very much. And if you have any questions or anything you'd like to talk about. Thank you. [Applause]. >>Scott: Any more of this you'd like to talk about, I'd love to. >> Male #1: Could you talk about what's happened to vampires in the last 20 years? [laughter] >> Scott: Oh gosh. In fact, interviewer a couple of weeks ago asked me a interesting question. "if you could re-title your book, what would you re-title it?" And I've not seriously answered. I think I would call it, "yes, there is stuff about vampires and zombies in here." [laughter] Because you're definitely not the first person. I actually spent a whole chapter on this. A chapter entitled "Undead Americans," in which I explore -- not just the recent -- certainly not the recent interest in vampires and zombies as well. But the fact that that's part of a longer trajectory. Really kind of going back to the 1970s in certain kinds of ways. In fact, although I'm not going to blame Anne Rice for Twilight. Not at all. I do think kind of this image of the tormented brooding vampire with a soul, who wants a soul, and also in love, [laughter] and that kind of thing. I mean, that really goes back to -- that really goes back to the incredibly popular Anne Rice novels which were 1970s. Came out of the 1970s. And is part of -- both that and the zombie phenomenon. I see as part of kind of a -- well, actually I talk about Reagan talking about the post-Vietnam syndrome, which, in part, has to do with a fascination with and an awareness of the dismembered body. Gore as kind of a popular culture in certain ways obviously more of an influence on the zombie mythology than vampire but certainly kind of a fascination with death that's very much in the background. Yeah. >> Male #2: Regarding the serial killer fascination. [inaudible] Jack the Ripper. [inaudible] Like the time where people sensationalize. >> Scott: Oh, actually in the 1880s. One of the most popular American -- not English -- American narratives was Jack the Ripper. Americans were more into Jack the Ripper than the British were. In fact, so much so there were all these claims Jack the Ripper was an American. There were claims that Jack the Ripper -- [audience member comments inaudibly] [laughter] It's hilarious. Because actually that's exactly what it was. It was kind of like this. [laughter] Their monster can't be better than our monster, you know? [laughter] It's exactly it. I mean, there were stories about -- oh, there's been these weird killings in Texas -- got to be Jack the Ripper. Weird killings in New York. He's come over here or maybe he was an American in the first place. There were novels written in which the Pinkerton agents, that sort of secret service -- private secret service, pre-Black Water Black Water of the 19th century they go over to England to investigate the White Chapel murders and they discover it's actually a Native American who's doing this and that that accounts for the quote unquote savagery of the killings. And so, yeah. Many of you if you've ever read Larson's excellent book, "Devil in a White City." That talks about the serial killer, H. H. Holmes, who in some ways was kind of America's first real celebrity serial killer of the 19th century. In fact, received like 10,000 bucks from Hearst to write his story. It was kind of the first true crime story. Then it went away. For a really long time. And comes back. But there's definitely a big background. I wish I had put that in the book "USA, USA". [laughter] That would have been a great section title kind of for that really.. >> Male #3: So earlier you were talking about how they watch these movies -- shock movies. And you said that it was basically the culture at the time didn't find this scary. Could it also be these things have been subsumed into the culture. They've seen these things before so it no longer -- like out there and scary. >> Scott: I think that could be it. I think that, you know -- so for example, you know, thinking about -- thinking about the universal -- the universal monsters. They're in some ways almost a kind of an iconography now. And kind of immediately recognizable. You know, I thought of them before as kind of an almost literal iconography in the sense that religious symbols that at one time may have had this powerful "oomph" kind of punch. You know, even -- especially some of the gory stuff like stations of the cross and saints with arrows sticking out of them and all that kind of thing. I mean, after a certain point, that just becomes that stuff on the church wall. And I think in a certain kind of way, that maybe has happened with those kinds of monsters. Although, I do still think that it has to do with the moment that makes things scary. I mean, I think it's really interesting for example that what's sometimes called the torture porn genre -- The Hostel and Saw and that kind of stuff. I mean, those movies appear right in a moment when we're having an actual conversation about the ethics of torture. And so, it seems like the monsters are really hard wired into the moment in a way that makes them frightening. Which means that horror is a historical experience, you know, in a kind of way. >> Male #4: Along those same lines, what are your thoughts about Colonial New England and kind of unique circumstances then, whether it's sea serpents on Gloucester or the Salem witch trials, what was going on in this part of the country that caused so much of it to happen here? >> Scott: That's easy. Puritans. [laughter] No, yeah -- in a way that's true. Actually, the first sea serpent sightings in New England were in the early 17th century. Although the Gloucester serpent that I talked about. There was a lot of discussion about what that meant and even some efforts later to connect it to the supernatural. The very first sightings by Puritans in 1630s, 1640s, they were convinced these were manifestations of Satan. Big surprise with them, right? Because everything was. These were people who even thought black bears were manifestation. Black dogs were manifestations of the devil. And so, it's really interesting that you move from that to -- in the very same part of the country -- in the early 19th century -- a kind of quasi, turned out pseudo, kind of discussion of the same kinds of creatures. But yeah, it's certainly the influence of Puritanism seeing all kinds of phenomenon through the filter of Calvinism and all its associated terrors, you know? Yeah? >> Female #1: Fascinating to think about the path of social discussion next to what's happening in pop culture. Just curious think about today and monsters in the news today of the history or even broader catholic church to Penn State. It's the national social dialogue that you would kind of think was running in parallel to that-- experience, if there is one. >> Scott: Well, you know, there actually is always -- always -- horror narratives connected to dangers to children. And that is nothing new at all. I mean, in fact, the Slasher phenomenon, the serial killer phenomenon, was connected to that. The witch craze was connected to that to some degree. Because there were all these discussions about, "it's women who are infertile, who are unable to become mothers who are the ones most likely to become witches." And that's kind of an anxiety about, "what's happening with the children?" Yeah, I think sort of -- a good example of this in the 1980s, we had the missing child panic in the 1980s. Even though statistically there were actually fewer missing children during that era than in earlier kinds of eras. But it all got tied into -- not just the serial killer panic -- you mention my Satan In America book for example. I talk about the Satanic panic of that era where, you know, there was this whole discussion of every time somebody's pet went missing, they were convinced there was a Satanic ceremony of some kind being performed. My grandmother actually thought Satanists were stealing her cats. [laughter] Serious.. >>Male #5: Have we seen changes in like the tenor or the subjects of the monster over the years, sort of like the waves of immigration that we've seen? >> Scott: Yes, although what came to mind when you first said that was that there's been a tendency obviously through American history to monsterrize the immigrant in certain kinds of ways. I actually think that that's one of the interesting things about the popularity of Dracula in 1931. Dracula is essentially an immigrant. And in fact, he's an eastern European immigrant, which American culture during that period was especially nervous about. People with Bela Lugosi's accent were seen as a threat. And a specific kind of threat. Don't know if you're familiar with the white slavery panic of the early 20th century. This is what it was called. This kind of rumor panic that essentially said, "you know, these young innocent Anglo women from the farms of the Midwest are going to places like Chicago. And what they're finding there are these immigrants from eastern Europe, often Jews, who are seducing them, turning them into prostitutes." Sort of early ideas about sex traffic about. That kind of stuff. Never any actual evidence that this was actually happening, as with most of these things. There were novels being published about it, discussions of it. Then you have the very same period Dracula that's about this eastern European immigrant who has this incredible power to seduce women with a simple look and to actually kind of make them part of his harem. And so, again, I think that kind of goes to this idea of, "what is it about history that makes things frightening at particular moments?" I mean, in the background of those people's minds would have been all of those ideas. Whether or not it was sort of conscious when they were watching it is hard to know. I've also thought about the fact today when we watch the original Frankenstein, James Whale's 1932 Frankenstein. He comes across. And I think this was actually Whale's intention. He comes across as this very sympathetic kind of monster. I'm not sure many 1932 audiences would have seen it that way. You know, there's kind of a lynch mob that forms in Frankenstein. The whole angry villagers with torches kind of stuff. And they form because he essentially kills this young girl. It's an accident, but he kills her anyway. One of the things that struck me as I was reading and writing about that was, you know, in 1932, film that showed all over the country, film that also showed in rural theaters in the American South, there would have been people -- I don't mean this as a joke at all -- there would have been people watching that film who had taken part in a lynch mob. I mean, lynching was relatively common during that period in the South. And so, how they would have viewed that story as opposed to how contemporary viewers would have seen it is an interesting thing to look at it. I mean, some of the same people would have thrilled to the heroics of the Ku Klux Klan in Birth of a Nation, right. And there's actually similar imagery in Frankenstein and Birth of a Nation. And so, I think in a way history is what's scary. It's what's happening at that particular historical moment. >> Male #6: When you're talking about history is what's scary. If you look at how things have progressed. These supernatural creatures and then there's Satanism and there's magic and supernatural. And I'm looking at movies now -- particularly the Saw genre. Are people scared of mechanical engineers? [laughter] >> Scott: Yes. [laughter] People are also increasingly scared -- you know, historians aren't really supposed to prognosticate, but people are also increasingly scared of sort of the terrors of the digital frontier. This may be a good place to talk about this. You know, I think about films like Source Code, Duncan Jones' Source Code, where there's this idea of -- it's not killer Androids -- it's not killer robots. It's our humanity locked into the technology. And also, the terrors that I think are kind of implicit in the fact that, almost all of us exist as ourselves and also as Internet constructs of one kind or another. I mean, my publicist made me get on Twitter this month. Been on Facebook forever. So now there's me. But then there's also these things that aren't really me out there, you know? And what's that? That's the doppelganger. I mean, that's sort of the terror as old as Gothic literature itself. Things that are you but really isn't you. And I actually think that in film and maybe even in ethical reflection on these kinds of things, we're going to see more and more monsters on that digital frontier. Let's call them the Google monsters for example. [laughter] Yeah? >> Male #7: In 9/11 something very, very scary happened. And we sort of started a national conversation about fear became 'we have to protect ourselves from fear' -- we're being too driven by fear. We need to be driven by hope. All these things. And I [inaudible] on that translating itself to monsters in the pop culture over the last 10 years. Is it because it was all above board that there wasn't any need to create things below board? Or [inaudible]. >> Male #8: That's like when the Muslim subculture, the Arab terrorism started being very big. That's the fear of where that fear really started growing. It wasn't a big thing before that. Before that when you heard about people terrorism, they were blowing buses up in London and the IRA? >>Male #7: So I'm so close to it that the fear that sounds credible, although overblown to me, is what historians 50 years from now will be studying as the Muslim scare. >> Scott: Yeah, I think there will be some of that. I think it's also true though that – and I think part of your question was, "why haven't there been fantasy scenarios that have obstructed that, reflected that, become metaphors of that." And I actually think there has been to some degree. I actually think that part of the new terror of Contagion -- the movie, Contagion -- the terror of infection. The terror of sort of out of control disease -- has to do with anxieties about everything from dirty bombs to bird flu to bio-weapons to -- all of that. And if you think about films like Contagion, if you think about Rise of the Planet of the Apes. If you think about 28 days Later. I mean, all of these are films that are in certain kinds of ways tapping into fears of uncontrollable outbreaks of infection sometimes related to military -- quasi military -- actions of one kind or another. I haven't seen Contagion yet, but I have a friend, horror novelist Jonathan Maberry who said after he saw Contagion, he wanted to do Jell-O shots of sanitary soap. [laughter] So I don't know if any of the rest of you have seen it yet, but anyway. Yeah? >> Male #9: Potential source just like much of the TV series 24 particularly [audience members speak simultaneously] -- >>Male #10: There's a lot of stuff I don't think it falls into the horror of the genre. It falls into action adventure more than horror. >> Male #11: Well, so 24 is a great example. I think it is trying to look at it 40 years later. The story of the pervasive underground conspiracy. He has to not just find the first guy. But the guy behind and the guy behind. >> Scott: Right. And the threat that's being faced is so terrible that any means necessary becomes possible to deal with it is often the case in the horror genre. Like, if you're fighting the monster, then everything becomes fair. You can sort of suspend ethical reflection, and you can just burn the whole town down, right? All right. >> Multiple audience members: Thank you. >>>>Scott: Thank-you [applause]