Sympathy for the Monster

“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 --- 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