Why do we, as a culture, need monsters Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Why do we, as a culture, need monsters - Essay Example Most parents use excuses relating to imaginary monsters in order to straighten out their children and make them behave in a certain manner. This paper thus helps to provide an insight regarding the need of monsters in our culture with respect to monsters in popular culture. (Cohen, Jeffrey Jerome Cohen) Most human beings are scared of the unknown; they are afraid of chancing upon people that belong to or have extraordinary powers or are of the supernatural. People are used to living normal lives without such elements of mystery popping up in their lives. However, people worship God and regard him as the highest power or omnipotent and omnipresent being in everyone’s life. Just like there is God, people have also created monsters, just so they can be doubly sure of keeping each other in check. Scaring someone makes them think about the situation in a better manner and also helps people to get disciplined as they feel that they are being threatened. Thus, most people started men tioning the presence of monsters in everyday life in order to scare others and make them do certain things or carry out specific actions. (Asma, Stephen) Most parents had a habit of putting their children to sleep or making them do tasks only by talking about monsters and scaring them in order to ensure that the children are scared enough to follow through with the task perfectly. For example, most children are scared of the dark and that is only because parents tell their children that monsters come in the night. However, no one knows what exactly a ‘monster’ is, it simply has been defined as an abnormal ray of light in the form of a figure that lurks around in the dark and scares and messes around with people. Children thus are scared of what they do not know, i.e., they believe their parents and have this sense of fear inculcated within themselves right from the very beginning. When they grow up, they use the same measures on their children, so on and so forth. Some people even say that monsters have been created by people in order to answer questions that people have not yet been able to answer. For example, the use and creation of characters such as Dracula, vampires, werewolves and Frankenstein are names that have been given to extraordinary creatures that in reality may or may not even exist. Monsters are thus generally metaphors for things that people are not able to comprehend or relate to in their lives. They are thus a personification of the worst fears of mankind and exist on the planet just to be able to keep a man in check with respect to whatever he does in order to scare him as and when the need arises. This is how the spread of monsters has been possible in popular culture because with the help of such knowledge about monsters people have been able to express their views on the same subject matter of interest, in books, movies as well as song and dance. Culture has amalgamated the use and existence of â€Å"monsters† as an essential aspect of a human being’s life because as the years have progressed, people have found it increasingly important to have an element of fear in their lives which can further motivate and instigate them to do better in different fields. In reality, there have been rumours about monsters existing under the sea as well as in broken down and remote areas of the world. For example, the Loch Ness Monster in