Pretty Monsters

Happy Halloween, everyone!
Remember when vampires used to be scary? Or for that matter ghosts, demons, were-creatures, faeries, and anything else that might go bump in the night?

Twilight takes a lot of the heat for turning blood-sucking monsters into insipid, sparkly and thoroughly harmless props for teens to squee over, but it's only one of a plague of urban fantasy stories-- the True Blood books and TV show and the Anita Blake series being prominent offenders-- where supernatural creatures of all kinds are essentially stripped of any qualities besides supernatural sex appeal and maybe a few pretty powers.

On one level, my problem with this is that it's dull. You might as well write an ordinary romance, since you've stripped away a major potential conflict (even if you give it some lip service). But on a more fundamental level, removing the element of danger from the supernatural undermines what the fantasy genre is all about-- illuminating human nature by showing characters who confront things far more threatening than anything we would encounter in our everyday lives. It's about exploring the extremes by taking characters into situations where our carefully constructed social scripts are useless and our ethical frameworks are challenged.

Monsters are supposed to represent our fears, both about the outside world and the worst impulses in our own psyches. At the same time, many parts of western society are fixated on ignoring all things bad, even if that means sugar-coating them or brushing them aside for someone else to deal with. When I worked at a zoo, a surprising number of visitors would ask if they could pet the various large predators and seemed shocked at the idea that such an animal might actually hurt them. Part of me wonders if excising the scary bits has to do with the reduction of immediate physical danger and unpredictability in the lives of many people in the western world, particularly among the more privileged sub-groups over-represented among authors.

Perhaps it's time for the rampaging werewolf to retire in favour of something more subtle, and more in keeping with our modern fears and challenges. But whatever that monster is needs to retain an element of danger.