SO GLAD YOU ASKED about Monsters

It’s spooky season, nerds, and we’re so glad you asked us about supposedly secular monsters, scary stories, ghouls and goblins. Shocking no one, we tell you that monsters are rarely just secular specters, and things that go bump in the night are often tied to religious imperialism. 

Be sure to check the show notes for transcripts, homework and more at keepingit101.com. 

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Keeping It 101: A Killjoy's Introduction to Religion is proud to be part of the Amplify Podcast Network.

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Ilyse: 0:18

This is keeping it 101 a killjoys introduction to religion podcast. In 2022-2023, our work is made possible through a UVM Reach grant as well as a Loose AAR Advancing Public Scholarship grant. We're grateful to live teach and record on the current ancestral and unseeded lands of the Abenaki Wabanaki and Aqua Cisco peoples. As always, you can find material ways to support indigenous communities on our website.

Megan: 0:41

What's up, nerds? Hi Hello, I'm Meghan Goodwin, a scholar of American religions race, gender and politics.

Ilyse: 0:48

Hi, hello. I'm Ilyse Morgensein-Fuerst, a historian of religion Islam race and racialization and South Asia.

Megan: 0:54

I'm really excited about today's episode.

Ilyse: 0:58

I know you are. I'm so very pleased that we get to give you something that gives you so much joy.

Megan: 1:03

It does give me so much joy. Okay, so today's question is one that I opened Well, I should say today's episode is a"So Glad You Asked". And nerds I am so glad so glad that y'all asked... I get this question a lot. If I work on religion, how come I teach classes about monsters? What do monsters have to do with religion anyway? I'm so glad you asked. So glad you asked.

Ilyse: 1:37

She really is, this is not false, this is not false pantomime for the podcast. This is like if you ever went to Megan's house, and you shouldn't, don't stalk her. Don't go to them. But there are monsters everywhere to the point where my my youngest. First of all, in a show of true animosity is refers to your house as John's house and, and is like there are so many monsters there's monsters everywhere.

Megan: 2:10

Everywhere. I don't know that he's not wrong, I don't think we have a room without monsters.

Ilyse: 2:12

You don't. You don't. You don't thankfully, the very scary monsters were like deffo out of his eye like his eyeline last time we visited but like the cuddly monsters this silly monsters a snarky monsters. They're everywhere. Your house is filled with monsters including, occasionally, my children.

Megan: 2:31

They're such good monsters. I love them. This is great. Okay, so I love monsters. And I'm obsessed with monsters. And yeah, I'm just I will I will briefly give you a primary sources, primary sources on how I started teaching about monsters. This is extremely nerdy. And I know you are shocked, I know. But I first got the idea to teach a religion and monsters class because I was trying to get students to think differently about what religion is. Right? So we always do our religion is what people do. And I say it but it never really lands. So this was back when I was teaching at Elon a million years ago, Pacific Rim had just come out. It's an amazing Guillermo del Toro movie about monsters as all of his films are. And I was explaining it. Okay, all I'm saying explaining, but I'm not sure that this actually added a ton of clarity to the conversation except for me. Anyway, I said that people think about religion like a Kaiju, like a large monster that runs around making huge violent messes. Kind of like a Godzilla. Right. But actually, religion is more like a Jager, which is a big powerful construct-like robot built by humans who use that robot to make large, sometimes violent messes, but also to try to solve some really big problems that affect us all.

Ilyse: 3:48

And, and you thought this was clarifying.

Megan: 3:51

I did actually it made a lot of sense to me, but not so much to everybody else, which is why I had to work on the class a little bit.

Ilyse: 3:59

And, and we're still leading the podcast with this example.

Megan: 4:05

So we are...

Ilyse: 4:06

Yeah, have you learned?

Megan: 4:09

Nothing clearly, but my favorite thing is monsters, which is both a true statement and also an outstanding graphic novel about religion and monsters, among other things I highly recommend I'm gonna put it in the show notes. But here are some reasons that I think monsters are a great way to learn about religion. Are you ready?

My reasons are fourfold. One: 4:34

Monsters are about where we draw the line between humans and nonhumans, acceptable versus too

much. Number two: 4:41

monsters are culturally contingent and so are the ways we deal with monsters. So monsters tell us really important stuff about where we are and who we are. Number

three: 4:54

a fan favorite. Yeah, God in a Christian context, kind of a monster. We are, we are gonna get letters, please though direct them to me, this is my fault. It is it is my fault. But I stand in my truth. And then number four: might be my favorite honestly, there has been a movement in marginalized communities and particularly queer communities about reclaiming a monstrosity as like, Yeah, fuck you, I am too much I don't fit. And that's great. And God actually loves me for that. And so that also hits a very squishy piece of my heart. And so that is why I think monsters are a good way to think about religion.

Ilyse: 5:32

Okay, so it sounds like we have a lot going on. And as usual monsters here seem to be something that A) you care a lot about, and B) are really about how we define communities. And so...

Megan: 5:49

I'm so excited.

Unknown: 5:53

I know, I know, I'm trying very hard to keep you in your own pants, but it's not working. So go for it....

Megan: 5:58

Good luck to you, larger people than you have tried and failed. But okay, so monsters number one: are about where we Okay, so that's a lot. So what I hear you saying around this draw the line between humans and nonhumans, who deserves to live versus who has to die, who is acceptable, versus who is too much to be allowed, and how we maintain and create and define community by who and what we exclude. So particularly this distinction of acceptable versus too much is one that is near and dear to my heart, as I am both professionally and personally often on the latter side. To be honest, the too much side, so yeah, monsters they speak to me. Monsters are also negotiations of social boundaries, though. Religion as you well know, Ilyse, plays a large part in setting and maintaining social boundaries, which means religion also plays a large part in stories about monsters and how we exclude them, how we recognize them, how we take care of them, and how we, I want to say make sure that they don't happen again. But the thing about monsters is they always come back. So as you might imagine, monsters are also a big place where we see folks work out issues around race, and gender and sexuality and age and ability, also deeply infused and invested in religious distinctions. I am going to have honestly so many more resources in the show notes, because I might have mentioned this, but I really like monsters. I honestly have just linked you to all of my monster syllabi. But the super short version of monster theory, and I'm borrowing here from Edward Engebretson, who is both a Jesuit priest and a theorist of monstrosity. Monsters tell us it's, it's not just that the monster has to die or be banished or gotten rid of, it's that the monster has to be seen to die that we need to collectively punish it for being too much or unclean or destructive. And the fact that the monster has to die is the monsters fault, not ours can't blame us. It's the monsters fault that it gets killed. So it's not just that it's a threat. And it's not just that we're reinforcing boundaries by getting rid of the monster, it's that we make sure that the entire community sees us get rid of this "too much" thing. The spectacle is the point, the spectacle is a warning to everybody else about what happens when you're too different to be allowed to live."boundary drawing", is that there's a space where the community gets to define what is normative and normal. And the monster, whether we want to agree with it or not, is construed as "well beyond the pale" of that normative, normality. Ff I may, and it's not enough just to exclude or ignore there's a real sport here in making sure that everyone collectively witnesses the exclusion, the detriment like the the deterioration, and ultimately the death of this monstrous thing. Yeah. And that affective of peace is actually really important. Engerbretson gets into that as well. It's not just that we do this, it's that we like to do it. It feels good to indulge in that like, "oh, in other circumstances it would be wrong to wish death on something but here you get to indulge in that because well, it's the monsters fault". The monster is too wrong, too scary, too much to be allowed to continue.

Ilyse: 9:33

Can I ask a really basic question? Yeah, we keep saying monster, we have not defined monster. I am assuming this is on purpose, because we can make a monster out of anything or anyone.

Megan: 9:44

We sure can.

Ilyse: 9:46

But is that true? Like is that what we're using as monster? Just the thing that we have decided is beyond the pale?

Megan: 9:53

Yes...and, because the spectacle part is important here. So Engebretson points out that monster comes from, I'm sorry this is so dorky, but I'm just going to do it, comes from the Latin monstrare, right, is to look to, to demonstrate. So it's not just that it is a thing that is too much, that is beyond the pale, and the paleness is important, let's come back to that. It's not acceptable, but also you have to see it be unacceptable and see it be punished and ultimately destroyed for being unacceptable. And I mentioned that beyond the pale thing, very much on purpose. Because sometimes monster stories are about things like a Godzilla or a sexy Dracula or any number of other things. But sometimes, we see language of monstrosity deployed against real humans like the way Darren Wilson described Mike Brown before he murdered him.

Ilyse: 10:45

Yeah, there's no there's no if ands or buts about it. This is often if not always, racialized.

Unknown: 10:50

So racialized, and so so very gendered and sexualized, and often, again, often about age and ability, right? So old women are very scary in many of these stories, because, "Ew, gross a woman but not sexually attractive, disgusting, cannot be allowed to live." Someone with body parts we perceive as missing? Absolutely not a monster. Yeah okay, so point 1.

Ilyse: 11:15

Yeah. Okay, so, point 1. Monsters beyond the pale, literally, and spectacle. Tell me what point two is....

Megan: Point two: 11:29

monsters are culturally contingent, and so are the way we deal with them. So, this is interesting to me for a number of reasons. But the very short version here is, monsters are one of my favorite ways to get to know things about cultures, because they tell us where different cultures draw the line. And that's not the same everywhere in all times in all places, right? Even if you just look at what's now the United States, in the last 30, 40, 50 years, we have moments of monstrosity, where the 90s Vampires, very hot, and then we got into zombies. And then we were back into vampires. And the reason vampires were interesting, in Twilight was not the same reason that the vampires were interesting in, Interview with a Vampire, the earlier having more to do with HIV-AIDS epidemic. So it tells us what kind of issues we're working through as a culture. What do we find? The scariest? Yeah. But not the same at all times in all places. So like, one of the things that I point out in the monsters class that I taught ages ago, is it like ghosts, for example, there are very few cultures that you will run into that don't have some kind of ghosts, right? A remnant or a revenant. Or, formerly alive, people are formerly embodied people who are no longer embodied in the same way or embodied at all hanging around messin with people alive people stuff, or causing problems or just trying to communicate with us, right? That happens all over the place. But and, this is a mean trick that I play on my monster students, we tend to assume that the way our culture or cultures think about ghosts, is the way that everybody thinks about ghosts. And when I say I mean what I mean as I assigned to the ring, which is an American version of the Japanese Ringu, right. And if you have ever watched the ring, which so scary, it messed me up so bad and messed me up so bad, like I truly had nightmares for weeks. But the thing that's really mean about it is if you watch three quarters of the way through the film, it looks like everything's fine. Like they found out what happened to the little girl. And they like lay her body to rest. And it should be fine. Except that it is not in American context. Very often what ghost want is like revenge or justice, or to have their story resolved and to be remembered in the right way and to be put to rest. Right? It's a it's a very Christian way of thinking about resolution, right, right, right. But the ring is based on Japanese folklore and Shinto concepts of a specific kind of woman ghost. And the point of that ghost is nobody ever gets to feel good again, because I was fucking murdered. The last quarter, films are coming back just making sure that she gets remembered forever or else motherfuckers gonna die. And my poor students who were too young to have seen this in the theater, we're like, what? Cuz it's, it's messed up and then we all had to go sit out in the sunshine and not talk for a while. That was the last 10 minutes of class.

Ilyse: 14:39

I mean, bold pedagogical choice. Yeah, yeah, but really good, good way to hammer home that like we, even if similar concepts exists, the way that they play out is culturally contingent.

Megan: 14:53

The other quick example that I use is Joss Whedon sucks as a human but Cabin in the Woods is an interesting film to get students thinking about religion and monsters, and if you watch there are monsters being fought over the world and the monsters fought in Japan, very different than the monster is being fought in what's now the United States. So, my other piece about cultural contingency is that I was raised Catholic and American monster remediation techniques are Catholic as fuck

Ilyse: 15:20

Oh my God all the time. Did it can I tell you like, to for some reason. cut you off you know, please, as a young person, famously not Catholic. The ways in which you would like vanquish a monster was like holy water and like crosses through the heart and like saying, like saying like our father or a Hail Mary or something like that. I did not know that any of that shit was Catholic until, until like my cohort of like, Italian Catholic, like New Jersey buddies are all getting confirmed. And I like so I'm like, old and I'm like, wait a second that shits Catholic? I thought that was just like, just like... Like that's just the remedy for monsters like you throw holy water on them. It did not dawn on me that holy water was like a very specific genre of thing. I knew it wasn't ours. Like I wasn't like this is Jewish, but I was like, I think this is just like goy water. You just throw, you are screaming into the mic, yeah, anyway, I thought it was just going water. And it turns out it is pope water.

Megan: 16:41

So this is a space where we see the messiness of religion, and, and also the messiness of me, being messy about the messiness of religion. But it is fascinating to me the way that Catholicism jumps out when Americans are confronted by a monster, right? It is the literal point of The Exorcist is that it actually doesn't matter whether you believe in this or not ontologically, this is how the divine works and how you combat evil. But also, like I said, I tore through the trashy media that I consume, but From Dusk Till Dawn is honestly one of my favorite vampire films. It's so stupid. It's so stupid. But I think that I deeply love about it is that you have a Baptist preacher creating holy water to deal with vampires. Now, the complexities of many different kinds of Christianity are a lot but here's the thing that I know because I did some school in the south, Southern Baptists not big on Catholics, not not loving them as a as a people. And there's a lot of dismissiveness around the like, I don't know. jiggery pokery of Catholic fufa right. It's it's magic. It's not religion, except that it is interesting to me that when you have a monster, you need that magic, and it honestly isn't even attached to Catholicism. It's just the thing that you do when there are monsters. You just need that pump water. fascinating to me.

Ilyse: 18:22

Okay, I'm gonna take a left turn, please. I actually care the most about this bullet point on your list. I don't I don't you know, I don't love or hate monsters. I love me a muppet. They seem like monsters. Yeah. The reason I care about the most about this cultural contingency piece, and you got it, some of it right. Like, I watch a lot of Asian TV both like K dramas and South Asian movies and Pakistani drama. And so the ways that ghosts work and like afterlives, like eerie creatures, super different, really interesting. I love that but the thing to care about,

Megan: 19:00

can I just ask, do you Korean ghosts care about subway?

Ilyse: 19:05

Not as much as Kdrama stars do you, but no I have not yet seen a Kdrama ghost

Megan: 19:12

yet yet anyway, sorry. Go ahead. Anyway,

Ilyse: 19:15

the reason I care about this one is that because Europe's monsters are a subject near and dear to my heart, which is to say like Jews and Muslims and Roma and sometimes Catholics, but later on various"Eastern" things I mean that in the most orientalist so like, Europe's monsters are very often just religious minorities. Like they're like Muslim Jews. They're like the Semite in the like the broadest. The Jew and the Arab well yet more than like full stop fantastical beasts that are actually just what people imagined Jews or Muslims to be, like a vampire, right? These are people who blend in during the day but at night, they be blood sucking baby eaters like and they and they talk like our grandmas. Right, they're like I vant to go to the market. But like

Megan: 20:03

They're their baby eaters, but they're also predators upon nice white. Yeah, women women, white, Christian women's like white, Western European Christian women. They're coming to pollute the bloodstream. Sorry, but this is why I know you know, I know you know more than me.

Ilyse: 20:19

I am well aware, I just I want our nerds to hear not the specifics of the vampire story or the werewolves, but the ways in which the like hiding in plain sight of the religious minority who is out to kill your baby and fuck your women. That's the real danger. And it's never it's not even like cloaked it's like Roald Dahl, that great anti-semite writing the witches, one of my favorite childhood books where I read it truly, and my grandmother's accent where like...this is just how she talks like Ws are Vs. And, and why are you making her out to be like a no Toad, no haired monster. Like a literal child eater, here are a mouse, the mouse magic. Anyway, let's keep going. What is our third point about monsters here on this pod?

Megan: 21:07

Okay. The third thing about monsters on this pod today is that the Christian God is kind of a monster, kind of. And here's what I mean by that. So a lot of these stories, particularly Western monster stories have what we think of as a dyadic worldview, right? If evil exists, if monsters exist, then good also has to exist, then the highest good also has to exist, then we must have God. Right? Here's the thing that equation is transitive. It goes both ways. does that also mean that if God, then we must have monsters. Which gets us into a nerdy philosophical problem called theodicy, word of the day, "it's our secret word of the day", which is just the problem of evil, like how comes, we have evil if God is good? So we have this whole day in my monsters class and also my meaning of death class about the problem of evil, the problem of evil is basically a math problem. So evil happening suggests that God either must be limited, beyond our understanding, or both. So the math problem that is theodicy is

one: 22:15

God is all powerful or omnipotent, two: God is all knowing, or omniscient and three: evil exists. So the nerdy philosophical conversation of the day is people debating about the nature of the Divine and freewill and that sort of thing. And the way that they solve this is either God is not all-powerful, or God is not all good, or what we understand is evil is actually something else and that's where the freewill thing comes in. It honestly winds up in a very Time Bandits place in my class, I show a number of clips from Time Bandits, even though Terry Gilliam kind of a douchebag. But that film, sort of perfect. But yeah, the short version is that this equation leaves us either with God unable or unwilling to intervene to stop monsters, which kind of makes God a monster gods own self.

Ilyse: 23:04

I'm gonna shock you right now. Okay. I don't care at all about theodicy. Of course, you're so goy-acai, t's like so boring. But I can't I'm like nerds, you know, I don't care because it like it assumes this Christian worldview, which always somehow shits on Jewish divinity whilst making our own theological framework such that the monster is both unstoppable or it's God's plan. But also people are never response. Like, it's never your job. Like, there's never the responsibility that Jews have to like, well, the world might be terrible, but like, you probably have to make it better. That's the whole thing. Like that's the real like, that's the covenant you got to do some fucking work here. And goyim are like, God, God's supposed to do it. And like, you're just lazy like, Whoa, you're causing. Anyway, the other reason I don't care about this besides like, I guess anti goetia worldview, is that a lot of religious traditions, god or gods or the divine, or "the all" can be an are monstrous themselves without this being a problem. Like there is an understanding that, that if God is all things, then God is probably evil also, because that exists. And so why are you limiting? Not that like God is limited and therefore evil exists? But why are you limiting God? Of course, God is also a bad guy, because bad shit exists. And if God is everything, then God is good and bad. We're like, so sometimes in these traditions, monstrosity is the point. So to get us out of the Abrahamic universe, and like you're like, out of catholicism this is my guest. Like never like he knew, like Hindus stories about deities, there are demons who are different than gods, but whose power and attributes kind of line up there's also gods who are are sometimes deeply monstrous. And the texts and the stories are asking the listener or the reader or the devotee to think about monstrosity in ways that are like, quite frankly, deeper than like, good and evil, if I'm being honest. Like a lot has been made specifically of Hindu deities by white people as being too bloodthirsty or too sexed or powerful, which tells us again, a lot more about the gaze of the people deciding what is monstrous than whether or not say a rakshasa is a monster or gali is monstrous, or jagannath is a destroyer on its own. Yeah, but I want I both like I hear you, you're right. This is how monstrous and monstrosity works in a theological concept, or like, the Christian God, colin is, is that a monster is like a great and hilarious hook. But like, there are other religious traditions that are like, yeah, the gods are doing all the things. Why is that confusing to you up on?

Megan: 25:57

Yeah, no, absolutely. And I'm really glad that you brought up that this framework of theodicy of the problem of evil is obviously Christian as all get out. And also because Christianity functions imperially it is imperialist, it's Western imperialist as all get out. So one of the conversations that we have in my classes, is looking at the way that Gloria on the Lula talks about Native traditions in what's now Mexico. And it's precisely this pushback of like, yeah, the Divine is scary and destructive and creative and wondrous. Because if it's all things, but it's not just the things that good call.

Ilyse: 26:45

Alright, moving on, we did three things so far. What's

Megan: 26:48

Fourth and final thing, lots of queer people in your fourth thing? particular have reclaimed and are reclaiming monstrosity and celebrating their difference as divine. And this is more than just deciding that like the Babadook, and mock man are boyfriends, although they are and they are ours now. But it's also about looking at stories of differently gendered or abled bodies and seeing something divine in that difference. So, again, so very many links in the show notes, but I particularly want to shout out Elena Rose Beras, beautiful meditation on gender, monstrosity and survival. It is called the Seam of Skin and Scales, if you will allow me a mini storytime. She talks about a number of different monsters in this piece, but one of the ones that jumped out at me was her reference of the Lilliam, the children of Lilith, who was Adams first wife, who fled Adam, because he's not the boss of her and she frankly wanted to be on top during sex. So she's too much sexually she's too resistant. And her curse is that she has hundreds of children every day and they die by midnight, and this is why she becomes a child predator in the Midrash about her. So Reverend Vira says, this is for the limb because you forget that the next part after you're co opted icon, Lilith parts ways with Adam and goes her own way is and she begat monsters and she becomes terrifying. This is she says, for all of them with teeth. It's time to look the monstrous in the eye. It is time it is time to say that we are beautiful in our fierceness and that we are our own. We are not the rejected of what we can never be. We are what we were meant to be. We are not pieces of holes thrown together incorrectly. We are not mistakes. All of which is to say monsters are queer as fuck and their transit Spock and they are divine end of list, I said, good day.

Ilyse: 28:42

it seems like we're so so glad that the nerds asked Megan about monsters.

Megan: 28:46

We really are are so happy. Yeah,

Ilyse: 28:50

I would sum up I suppose that we can we can get our nerds on their way to go I guess watch a horror movie or something. Hey, monsters tell us about religion, the boundaries of both religion, religiosity, communitiesm, insiders, outsiders, how we construct our communities the violence of constructing communities, who gets left out, who gets murdered for being for being extra extrasized from the community and our senses of belonging? What did I miss besides the fact that you love horror and monsters and the The Babadook is hella gay?

Megan: 29:23

Babadook so gay and religion is the cause of and solution to, all life's monsters.

Ilyse: 29:31

All right. Megan, you definitely have homework.

Megan: 29:38

So much homework, so much homework. I am actually going to cheap though and just direct you to my syllabi because infinity amount of resources so I've got syllabi on the meaning of death, witches, some of my favorite monsters, just religion and monsters and then I did a class on religion and specifically the monstrous feminine. They are all, and I say with all humility, awesome and just check out the syllabi and anything that's public facing I think is hyperlinked on there so you can get to all of it. If you can't find something. Holler at me because I've got PDFs for days. Past that, just check out the show notes. I am going to limit myself to one more. I want you to check out Midnight Mass and I give you permission to fast forward through the interminable monologues I just conceptually really interesting the writing could do some work. But once you watch Midnight Mass, you should check out this piece that I'm linking to on midnight mass and real versus imagined religious horror by a friend of the pod Matthew J kressler. For the Atlantic, the end.

Ilyse: 30:40

Awesome. I know that I only have a couple of things to add Goodwin and I know that these actually exist on your syllabi, so it might sound repetitive, but since we haven't shouted them out. Let me shoutout, let me give it out loud shout out to Sophia Rose our Arjanas book on monsters called Muslims in the Western Imagination. Yes. And Hey, Alma ran a great history of vampires as anti-semitic about a year ago or so. And yeah, I'll stop there, because that's enough, but those are those are the two that pop out to my mind. Yeah. For now. Shout out to Evie Wolfe, Rachel Zieff and Juliana Finch the KI-101 team who's worked make this pod accessible and therefore awesome. Listen to both social media of all among many other things for which we are grateful

Megan: 31:26

We are, you can find Meghan, that's me on Twitter at@NPGPhD and Elise @profirmf or the show at keepingit_101 Find the website at keepingit_101.comFind us on Instagram. And now tick tock. It's not something that we're not allowed to be on tick tock. Drop us a rating or review in your pod catcher of choice and with that peace out nerds do your homework it's on the syllabus.

Unknown: 32:11

My son, you will pay a man to go Wolfin clang Clang, you will stand at the Bema and pray tonight. gains at the moon damn Bay. Werewolves permits Spooky Scary poems to become a main they've become a rule where we'll permits Spooky Scary poems to become a main they become a bull. All right, that was that was great Trey okay, it's all but that's a wrap up