“Monsters are tragic beings. They are born too tall, too strong, too heavy… They are not evil by choice. That is their tragedy.” – Ishirō Honda, director of Godzilla
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To empathize with a monster is to go against thousands of years of storytelling precedent. The traditional mythic role of a monster is to be a kind of living obstacle, typically one that embodies dominant fears in its culture of origin.

I remember as a child seeing images depicting the legend of a knight slaying a dragon. But I didn’t have the reaction to these pictures I was supposed to. The dragons didn’t look evil. They looked sad.

And the older I’ve become, the more media I’ve seen where monsters suffer… the less monstrous they seem.

0:00 Sympathy for the Monster
1:20 The Monster You Created
4:00 Villainy and Tragedy
6:04 Fear of the Unknown
7:35 King of Kong
9:56 Godzilla's Secret Tragedy
13:39 Alien Nation
15:32 The Shape of the Outsider
17:04 Modern Monsters
18:19 Virtual Monsters and Paarthurnax
21:42 Who Will Know Something of Me?
23:57 Seeking Understanding

Media Shown: Frankenstein, Dracula, The Man Who Laughs, Joker, The Mummy, The Invisible Man, Hunchback of Notre Dame, Star Wars, The Lost World, King Kong (Various), Toho Godzilla (Various), Shin Godzilla, Godzilla vs. Kong, Kong: Skull Island, Creature from the Black Lagoon, The Shape of Water, District 9, Arrival, E.T., Jaws, Gremlins, Ghostbusters, Monster’s Inc., The Wolfman, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, World War Z, Dawn of the Dead, The Last of Us, The Witcher III, Minecraft, Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, Super Mario Bros, Super Mario Galaxy, Castlevania, Dark Souls III, Dark Souls: Remastered, Shadow of the Colossus, Subnautica, Rain World

Copyright Disclaimer: Under section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976, allowance is made for “fair use” for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, education, and research. All video/image content is edited under fair use rights for reasons of commentary.

I do not own the images, music, or footage used in this video. All rights and credit goes to the original owners.

Additional Sources:
"We Are All Monsters" by Andrew Mangham: https://thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/ho...
Frankenstein and 19th Century Experiments, Article by Alan S. Brown: https://www.insidescience.org/news/sc...
Cultural Legacy of Dracula, Article by Savannah Wahlgren: https://trinitonian.com/2019/09/05/th...
History of Map Monsters, Article by Hannah Waters: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/scienc...
Creation and Cultural Legacy of King Kong, Article by Ray Morton: https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/mov...
Del Toro on Shape of Water, Article by Ryan Lambie: https://www.denofgeek.com/movies/guil...

♫ Music by Karl Casey @ White Bat Audio:
Mysterious Green Fluid, Sanity Unravels, Haddonfield Horror, Alone in the Dark, Dusk, The Witch, The Vanishing, Tenebrae, The Guardian

♫ Additional music by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com):
Beauty Flow, Graveyard Shift
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/b...

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