How do monsters reveal the cultures in which they were made?

Written in the style of a therapy session, "How do monsters reveal the cultures in which they were made?” is a critical dialogue between a symbolic  the character of Saiint (a young artist of colour studying at UAL) and a clinical therapist. Ideas from  the writing of Gerbner, Deleuze and Guattari make up the voice of the therapist while Saiints’ responses combine anecdotes and  musings on trauma, that I use here to meditate on the challenges of naming and confronting the idea of  ‘monsters’. The monster’s here are that of “marginalisation”.  The kind facing a young person from London’s Afro Caribbean community who lives with the proverbial demons of being a child in the diaspora, and oppressive structures in Higher Education. The echoing writing style used to characterise Saiint is disjointed and at times, is a stream of consciousness designed to reflect the complexities of a mind trying to make sense of feeling unseen, of finding the confidence to share and of looking for a vision of social justice.

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Saiint: A friend called me a monster the other day... At first, I really wasn't sure how to react.  Now, a part of me is beginning to accept the idea.  

Therapist : What was the context? Of them calling you a monster I mean.

Saiint : We were having a discussion about positionality. Mine, Theirs, our circle. But also, story writing.  I suggested that collectively if we allowed the historic monsters that still have cultural and literature relevancy to win, the movies would not only then have a worthy sequel but we’d be moving towards inclusivity for the mentally ill.

  

Therapist : How did your friend respond? 

Saiint : she said that the characters we watch are bad out of choice.  That encouraging harmful behaviour is not only dangerous it's just as evil as the do-er themselves, and that being mentally ill is not the same as something declaring war on humanity. 

Therapist : When I say monster what is the first thing you think about? 

Saiint: I mean, besides the obvious monsters such as Dracula, Werewolf, Frankenstein and my personal favourite, the sirens, the monster I was scared of was the one living in the night of my house. I remember being 7 running down the stairs to escape him - his presence lingering in the dark. My legs and arms waving around me as I race to get from one room to another in record speed time. 13 years later, I still won't risk running into this mysterious creature of the night.

 

*Saiint notices the therapists eyes light up*

Saiint : Before you say I have nyctophobia you are wrong. I work in a darkroom with the only light source being an ominous red light. 

Therapist : So why do you think you run from the dark, if you're able to work in a pitch black space? 

Me: Working as a photographer and specialising in the traditional darkroom printing process as long as I have will change you.

I’m going to get a little scientific but essentially the eye has two types of photoreceptors, cones and rods. Cones detect colour and function with the light so you are able to pick up the fine details such as whiskers and crooked teeth, whereas rods are ‘incapable of discriminating colours’ (Fairchild) and are extremely sensitive to light. At first it needs some getting used to; as all the colour leaves the room, shapes morph together and assemble shadows that contort your perception of what you believe to be true. Am I pressing the on button or another one? Is the paper shiny on this side or the other side? However , in  ‘about 20 minutes, your rods will be doing their best and you will see as well as possible “in the dark”’(Fairchild).  Like magic, the mysterious flips, buttons and shadows become your friend and like ‘Beauty And The Beast’ exempt the singing,  they will invite you into your new home for the next 6 or so hours. So I guess to answer your question, I’m scared of the dark because of the ambiguity of the space itself rather than what is in the space. 

The beast being the unknown, perhaps even me...

Maybe I’m scared of myself. 

Maybe I'm a monster. 

Therapist : So you ‘think’ you're a monster? 

Saiint : Maybe, apparently I’m blunt. Aggressive. ‘They’ call me outspoken. A socially detached person. My nickname growing up was ‘the devil’. You should see the looks I get as I enjoy my French blue steak and tartare. 

Saiint awkwardly laughs

When my mum and I used to fight she’d say, ‘You're the spitting image of your dad when you're angry.’

I hate when she says that. 

Therapist : Why? 

Saiint: I know that anger. I’ve seen it. It doesn’t growl its teeth , it doesn't claw. It grabs your face and looks into your eyes. 

‘What big eyes you have’. (Perrault )

And just as you think it’s lowered its defence, BAM! The Wolf attacks.  

Therapist: I want to throw you a thought I’ve just had. From what you’ve said your mothers perceives your anger as a representation of who your father was to her. If we are considering Freud’s archaic Opedius and Electra theories, proposing that you are resentful of your mother ‘castrating’ you (Legg), has this created a dynamic of dislike or hate for your mum?  

*Saiint chuckles, picking at their fingers*

Saiint : Oh, definitely. When I was in my teenage years we would argue a lot. One thing about caribbeans is that they pronounce their feelings. Extremely. Loudly. She would yell at me for not returning home on time, and I would just want to say ‘I’m sorry. and brush it off… Yet she would insist, and keep insisting until the wolf would huff and puff the house down. 

Therapist : What would you do? 

Saiint : Mostly screaming, if I was really angry however I’d storm out the house and go around the block and punch any wall that looked to be in my way. 

Saiint looks at their feet and awkwardly laughs

Saiint : I hated when she said that because she was right.

My dad… He wasn’t a good man to my mum. He would use his physical strength as a way to intimidate and hurt women. Unfortunately my mum wasn’t the only one. So when my mum says I remind her of my dad when I’m angry… It makes me more angry. When I used to punch walls… I can't believe I'm admitting this… but I’d be pretending to punch my mum. Just for her to shut up… just for her to listen - and every time I came home I’d run upstairs to the medicine cabinet and bandage up my wounds, so my mum couldn’t see what I had done. I used to hate myself. So much. For even thinking that was an acceptable way to view my mum. I want to punch my mum… who thinks that? I think that's why I would leave and hit walls, I knew that becoming my dad… becoming the wolf who sits and waits will only end with red everywhere. So yes, I used to hate my mum. 

Therapist: We’ve discussed previously how trauma, especially within families can be generational and impact those who weren’t around to witness the trauma take place. ‘This form of psychological trauma can lead to physical and mental health problems as well as social and emotional difficulties.’(Chapple, 2023) You mentioned that it's ‘very caribbean’ to have a parent cuss and a ‘slipper to the bum’. As an English man, I haven’t been accustomed to this form of punishment in my personal life, could you perhaps suggest where that could’ve come from?

Saiint : Slavery. I blame slavery. ‘This trauma can be mapped out onto the molecular and cellular level.’ (The University of Glasgow) My grandmother's grandmother's grandmother was a slave. A woman who most likely endured punishment way bigger than a slipper on the bum.

*Saiint looks directly into the therapist eyes*

Saiint : Yeah. That’s the only thing I can see developing this cultural disciplining method of ‘if mum grabs her slipper you better run’. I think the worst form of punishment was how Christianity was used to dehumanise them. 

Imagine. You're in chains 6 days a week, seen as an animal and then on one day of the week your told you can wear your most formal attire you own. ‘Sunday best’ (Cambridge Dictionary) The only time you can freely sing songs, rejoice and be free only for it to be another form of abuse, conditioning your mind to the imprisonment of your life. After the abolishment of slavery, Christianity had developed new racial categories… ‘whiteness’ and ‘purity of blood’ were transformed within the context of slavery, as enslavers sought to reconcile slaveholding with christian practice.’(Gerbner)

Therapist : So you're suggesting that the colonisation of black bodies is the reason why you think of yourself as the monster, or at least a bad person? 

Silence fills the room

Saiint : When we think about black as a colour, we think about darkness, nothing and the unknown. This is going to sound crazy what I’m going to explain but just let me land. 6 and ‘the notoriety of 666 traces back to a single passage in the New Testament book of Revelation.’ (Eames), stating that ‘the person who has insight calculate the number of the beast, for it is the number of a man. That number is 666.’(The Holy Bible, Revelation 13:18). ‘It is assumed by Biblical Scholars,  the number 7 typically signifies…perfection especially of God, the number 6 is one shy of that…imperfection of man and the sin and weakness he has.’

(Medium).‘In the periodic table the element for the number 6 is carbon, which in its natural form comes as a black rock. ‘it makes up only about 0.025 percent of  Earth’s crust — yet it forms more compounds than all the other elements combined’ (“Carbon | Facts, Uses, & Properties”. You could basically say carbon is in everything we have in our day to day lives. These facts compiled together could suggest that the hate for black bodies is elemental and within the chemistry of our western society and religious studies. 

*The therapist looks at Saiint, encouraging them to continue their point*

Saiint: Deleuze and Guttari denote this thought process as rhizomatic, ‘as a nonlinear network that connects any point to any other point”'. (Lin) ‘An organism that is deterritorialized in relation to the exterior necessarily reterrorializes on its interior in relation to the exterior necessarily reterroritorializes on its interior millieus’ (Deleuze and Guattari 62).

Through this passage of thinking, I can link these points together to conclude such a feeling of internal hatred for not only my black body, but the inherited darkness that is bred within black communities.

‘That they are responsible for it, and that before engulfing the edifice of Western, Christian  civilization in its reddened waters,it oozes, seeps and trickles from every crack. (Césaire 36) 

Therapist : What if you gave these monsters another name? You’ve called them wolves, Frankenstein and the mark of the beast referred to in the Bible. But who are you talking about really?  

Saiint : I don’t know. From our therapy sessions, who would you consider these monsters to be? 

Therapist: Let me throw that back to you. It seems you feel that parts of your black identity, or at least the way people perceive it can at times be monstrous. If monsters are enigmas or devices that are used to contextualise our anxieties and fears, is there a part of that identity you are trying to keep hidden? 

*Saiint goes back to twiddling their fingers*

Saiint : I actually like staying within the shadows. I think that's why I love the darkroom so much, the beauty isn’t in what's being seen, it's what has been done. So… when I am put under the spotlight or at least in a room where I can assume people are looking, judging and assuming, there's a heightened sense of defence and responsibility for the darkness I possess. 

I want to stress now that my issue isn’t being black. I love my cultural identity and history as it carries a strength that we could refer to being in all of our atomic structures. My issue is, when that strength is exploited, being black becomes a lonesome room with a broken mirror. A familiar disfigurement of someone you knew but don’t fully recognise, or worse. You can’t recognise. 

I think my main issue is that I don’t really give many people a reason to look or think about me. I am a very quiet person and keep to myself, I think the fact I am a photographer makes me somewhat of a wallflower, a spectator. If that. 

Therapist  : Do you think your career path as a photographer has conditioned you to look at people more at a deeper level? 

Saiint: Yeah. I would even go so far to say it's made more aware of being othered. Of being stared at, gazed upon. I like to stay hidden within the darkroom as it allows me to expose particular parts of my identity without the confrontation of the outside world. I am seen without being actually seen.  

Therapist: So to quote  Nietzsche, “Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.” (Nietzsche 146). Is that why you had sympathy for these ‘monsters’ when discussing movie plot lines with your friend? 

Saiint : Probably, I’m not saying the monster's actions shouldn’t face consequences, I just believe in rehumanizing the monster in question. ‘For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.’ (Space Center Houston) so we can safely say monsters aren’t monsters because they want to be, rather that something equally as monstrous has caused them to morph into a beast. It's within the discomforting truth and mentally crippling personal anecdotes of these monsters that humans and monsters can cohabit and be free from misunderstood judgement. 

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References :

Fairchild, M.D. (2019). How do my eyes adjust to the dark and how long does it take? The Conversation. https://theconversation.com/how-do-my-eyes-adjust-to-the-dark-and-how-long-does-it-take-124044.

Perrault, C. (1993). Little Red Riding Hood.

‌Healthline. (n.d.). Electra Complex: Definition, Freud, Examples, Symptoms, and More. https://www.healthline.com/health/electra-complex#description.

‌Chapple, R.  (2023). What Is Generational Trauma? Symptoms & More. [online] Talkspace. Available at: https://www.talkspace.com/blog/generational-trauma/.

The University of Glasgow. (n.d.). Punishment, sexual violence and colonial social control. https://www.futurelearn.com/info/courses/slavery-in-the-british-caribbean/0/steps/167918.

Gerbner, Katharine. “Church and Slavery - Atlantic History.” Oxford Bibliographies, 26 May 2022, https://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/display/document/obo-9780199730414/obo-9780199730414-0361.xml

Eames, Christopher. “The Number 666—in the Hebrew Bible? | ArmstrongInstitute.org.” Armstrong Institute of Biblical Archaeology, 16 January 2024 <https://armstronginstitute.org/983-the-number-666-in-the-hebrew-bible

The Holy Bible: King James Version. Hendrickson Publishers, 2004. 

“Carbon | Facts, Uses, & Properties.” Britannica, 22 February 2024, https://www.britannica.com/science/carbon-chemical-element

Lin, Thomas. “Exploring Deleuze's Rhizomes, Organ-less Bodies and Changing Territories.” Medium, 26 December 2022, https://medium.com/@thomas_lin03/exploring-deleuzes-rhizomes-organ-less-bodies-and-changing-territories-ce5cf98fcd32

Deleuze, Gilles, and Félix Guattari. A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Translated by Félix Guattari, Bloomsbury, 2013

Césaire, Aimé. Discourse on Colonialism. Translated by Joan Pinkham, Monthly Review Press, 2000.

Nietzsche, Friedrich. Beyond good and evil. Edited by Rolf-Peter Horstmann and Judith Norman, translated by Judith Norman, Cambridge University Press, 2002. 

Space Center Houston. “Science in Action: Newton's Third Law of Motion.” Space Center Houston, 22 February 2022, https://spacecenter.org/science-in-action-newtons-third-law-of-motion/

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