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The Monster and His Double
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16629 |
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Section : |
THE ARTS
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| Issue
Date : |
10 / 1989 |
2,332 Words |
| Author
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Paul Coates
Paul Coates is professor of literature at McGill University,
Montreal, Canada. |
There is no monster who does not tend to duplicate himself
or to "marry" another monster, no double who does not yield
a monstrous aspect on closer scrutiny.
Rene Girard may not have had Frankenstein in mind when he wrote these words, but their appositeness to Mary Shelley's work--and its appropriately deformed Hollywood progeny--is self-evident. In the world of cinema, monster and double stand at opposite ends of the same screen, the monochrome spectrum of the horror film.
We have films in which the principle of evil is made visible and clearly nonhuman (monster films) and those in which the alien creature is semihuman (Frankenstein) or only momentarily reveals his apartness from the human race (Dracula flashing his incisors).
In the least sophisticated form of the horror film, the principle of evil has been incarnated and thus can be fought, usually with the aid of high-powered weapons. Such films' capacity to provoke horror depends on their implicit address to a basically youthful audience. The monsters held at bay in this fashion can often be perceived as embodiments of class or sexual fears.
These films in which the monster resembles ourselves are perhaps the most unsettling and terrifying. They often make use of religious antidotes (The Omen, The Exorcist), more conventional responses being deemed insufficient to the threat posed. Here Lucifer comes clad as an angel of light--Satan being the invisible antihero of these films. The world these devil figures project is appallingly problematic. Indeed, they constitute a kind of ultimate--evil being invisible, how does one conjure up a form to match its monstrous deeds? Worst of all, the devil may appropriate one's identity through possession, without the individual's being aware of it.
The only apparent solution to the dilemma of possession is suicide, which would be very much to the taste of the great Adversary: Satan would escape from the death-destined body at the last minute.
Evil can be embodied in a prominent political figure, who is thus highly "visible" (The Omen, for instance); conversely, the film may (as in The Exorcist) use the images and words of Christian faith to compel the demon to betray its presence. Glimpsing the cross, the face of the possessed contorts with pain. The
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