Monsters in America: Our Historical Obsession with the Hideous and the Haunting Read Free Page B

have had living analogues in the history of the United States. These metaphors are something more than reflections of anxiety;they are interstitially connected to events of American history and the structure of American society. Analyze the terrors of the colonial era, and the complexity of nostalgia for that era, and you will meet the shapeshifter and the witch. Ask the victims of the American pharmaceutical and cosmetic industry at Holmesburg Prison if they believe in Frankenstein. Consider the experience of Vietnam through the eyes of Tom Savini and you will better grasp the gory monsters he created. Hear the rhetoric of religious conservatives and how it shaped the politics of the AIDS epidemic and you will know the power of the vampire.
    The American monster will not disappear. The Enlightenment bred hideous night things while Jefferson slept and, as cultural critic Mark Edmunds has argued, America entered a deeply gothic phase in the final years of the twentieth century that shows no sign of abating. The vampireand the zombie are likely to continue their reign in the American consciousness for some time. The themes that make them a current cultural obsession will create, and have already created, new monsters for Americans to see in their nightmares and embody in their history.
    At least one future of the American monster can be discerned in the related anxieties over medicine, disease, death, and the body that influenced the vampire and zombie craze. Technology has lengthened life, made possible miraculous bodily renovations, increased sexual fulfillment for aging Americans, and linked society together in the new social and cultural arena of cyberspace. Embryonic cloning and medicine grounded in the idea of cell and tissue regeneration has raised the possibility of what author and futurist John Harris has called “a new phase in Darwinian evolution” in which “our descendants will cease to be human in the sense in which we now understand this idea.” We are wired, both as a society and, increasingly, in our bodies. 4
    These new possibilities are becoming realities at the very roots of human consciousness in the study of our genetic code. The map of the human genome allows us to explore new territory, creating, shaping, and growing life in ways that Mary Shelley never imagined. The Dr. Frankensteins of the present have no need to go digging about in graveyards for body parts to reanimate in the lab. They can grow those parts in the lab, allowing them to develop in something that resembles an organic fashion. The modern geneticist’s model is not Prometheus, but rather the gods themselves. 5
    New technologies of the body, as well as science fictions about the augmentation of the body, have created a scholarly and popular discussion about the meaning of the posthuman world. Steve Nichols’ 1988 Posthuman Manifesto suggested that a new phase in human experience had begin already. Elaine L. Graham argues that a belief in the “technological sublime” has led to a “re-enchantment” of the world in which the mythical representations of science fiction and fantasy (what she calls “the promise of monsters”) have become forums for discussion of the nature of posthuman experience. Other thinkers, often labeled “bioconservatives,” are less sanguine about the benefits of posthuman technology. Francis Fukuyama in Our Post-human Future argues for a stable, unchanging human nature that serves as the basis for “human rights and morality.” This stance leads Fukuyama to argue for legislation restricting biotechnological research. 6
    American conservatism’s response to techno-human possibilities has been influenced by the religious Right. The Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues (PCB), appointed by George W. Bush in2001, published a number of controversial documents that made use of Jewish and Christian theological concepts to discuss cloning, stem cell research, and new reproductive