Reddit’s Sympathetic Monsters
While we have gone some time since looking at monsters, I thought I’d take a moment to talk about one of the aspects of monsters I never got around to. This is the fact that not all monsters are monstrous, but they sometimes are bearers of sympathy, empathy and compassion. One of my favourite places to go for compassionate monsters is the subreddit Sympathetic Monsters.
What makes reddit’s sympathetic monsters so interesting is how it treats what is considered monstrous. The images presented are what we typically think of as “monsters” – creatures who echo demonic bodies, or hybridized forms which cross boundaries of our categories of specific animals or animal types. These monsters are not presented in situations which capitalize on their horrid forms, however. They, instead, are portrayed in caring and – well – sympathetic ways.
One of the better examples from more recent days is the comic on summoning a demon. In it, we see a young person summoning a demonic form. When the demon arises and demands repayment, it pulls out a small demonic puppy and says the person must dog-sit.
This comic puts an unexpected perspective on the monster. It shows the demon not as a shambling beast of a creature, but one with a caring heart and a cute little demonic dog. The comics and images on the subreddit are meant to shift perspectives – alter the perceptions of what a monster is and what it means to be monstrous.
Sympathetic monsters on reddit works to shift the focus of the monster – not the monster itself but the examples and understandings the word provide for us. This shift also makes us reconsider a monster’s personhood. We’ve been looking into personhood as a concept a lot in our previous monster series, for example how Oogie-Boogie’s monstrosity was because it made us reconsider what it meant to be a person. Unlike Oogie-Boogie whose shift in the identity of personhood was meant to cause fear, reddit’s sympathetic monsters are meant to carve out a place of sympathy and connection. It shifts our understanding of what kind of person is worthy of our respect and admiration, and even who we consider on par with humans when it comes to personhood.
In our example of the demon summoning, we have our expectations shifted from seeing a demon to seeing a demon who wants to have their dog cared for. We can understand and connect to a demon who wants to have their dog cared for because we want to have our dogs cared for as well.
During our Anatomy of a Monster series, I talked about how monsters break the boundaries between categories. In many ways, sympathetic monsters more complicates boundaries than breaks them. The sympathetic monsters begin the process of humanising or personifying them, and thereby are making them gradually more and more un-monstrous. Unlike the conversation of personhood we had for Oogie-Boogie, the personhood given to the sympathetic monsters is not meant to cause fear, but rather to cause sympathy and personal connection.
The appeal of reddit’s sympathetic monsters is how these un-monsters flip the nature of the depiction of the monstrous. The typical categorical breaking of the monster is actually supporting the cultural and social boundaries and categories that have been built. Monsters have typically demonstrated differences between the Us and the Them for social and cultural groups, often used to further aspects of xenophobia, as philosopher Noël Carroll has pointed out. While some monsters do this kind of shifting, the shift back – which sympathetic monsters can do – can illicit new perspectives on old sentiments of fear and othering.
In one comic in which the sympathetic monster does not harm someone due to them having “other monsters” to fight, the monster shows empathy towards those battling problems such as depression. In this particular comic, depression becomes the monster, a more monstrous monster to wrestle with than the physical one. Its positioning of empathy shifts our societal definitions of monsters away from the physical breaking of boundaries to more complicated concepts of what is the Other.
The point is to get society to focus on both monsters and monstrosity in metaphorical or even human forms, rather than the physical demonic monsters we come to expect from the word. Because there are more monsters in the world than vampires and demons.
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