The course this year will focus on a particular theme: monsters in popular culture.
Monsters have become frequent characters or figures in the field of popular culture in cinema, in graphic novels, in advertisements, in shopping malls, in pop music, and even in fashion (say, Lady Gaga’s haut couture outfits). Pixar’s animation Monsters, Inc. and its prequel Monsters University, for instance, have introduced us to a fantasy world inhabited by monsters. Another example is the film Pacific Rim whose tagline remarkably reads, “To fight monsters we created monsters.” For what, we may ask, are these monsters created?
In response to this cultural phenomenon, this course endeavours to address some of the following questions: How do we define “monster”—as a word that paradoxically defies definition and categorization? Why would monsters appeal to the audience? In what ways do the figures of monsters relate to the emotion of horror, the imagination of the unknown, and the incomprehensibility of strangers?
Monsters have become frequent characters or figures in the field of popular culture in cinema, in graphic novels, in advertisements, in shopping malls, in pop music, and even in fashion (say, Lady Gaga’s haut couture outfits). Pixar’s animation Monsters, Inc. and its prequel Monsters University, for instance, have introduced us to a fantasy world inhabited by monsters. Another example is the film Pacific Rim whose tagline remarkably reads, “To fight monsters we created monsters.” For what, we may ask, are these monsters created?
In response to this cultural phenomenon, this course endeavours to address some of the following questions: How do we define “monster”—as a word that paradoxically defies definition and categorization? Why would monsters appeal to the audience? In what ways do the figures of monsters relate to the emotion of horror, the imagination of the unknown, and the incomprehensibility of strangers?
- Enseignant: Yiu-Tsan Ng