EV003: Creature Features In an Anxious Age

In the 1970s, the sometimes-garish world of monster-movie pop culture was a comfort, an external expression of grotesquery and strangeness that the culture was feeling inside but had no name for. Rather than making us more afraid, monsters mythologized our own abstract worries about sexuality, nuclear war, race and the other, as well as personifying our collective sense of being untethered from mystery and enchantment.

Peter’s talk will trace the changing face of monsters as mythic and literary creatures as our culture’s own lingering unease began to morph, moving from the shadowed myths of the past into the daytime horrors of serial killers and gore. Peter will argue that we need monsters again to learn how to reimagine what frightens us in a way that remythologizes our anxieties and offers a path for re-enchanting our imaginations. Tracking their monstrous footsteps, Peter will guide us as we explore the modern monster in film, television, and comics, and seek the face of the monster we need today.