On Monsters

Once upon a time--well, back in 2002--I took a course on Literary Monsters.

We read lots of lovely stuff that I don't have lying around to reference right now (but if you want a deeper post on the subject, you can buy me this book, thanks). But the main gist of our study of texts like Beowulf, Interview With the Vampire, and Shakespeare's The Tempest was seven monster theses that my professor outlined for us at the beginning of class.

I've watched this primary campaign go from a spirited competition into a mess where each candidate's supporters firmly believe the other candidate is a monster. We've looked at the actual reasons for that, and I believe that especially with Hillary Clinton, but with Obama as well, the press portrayal of the candidates can be looked at through these theses. And yes, there's probably a much longer paper in this, but what the hell.

1. The monstrous body is a cultural body.

Both candidates reflect our culture. The older woman, past being seen as sexual...the old queen and the wicked witch, simultaneously, as I said in an earlier post. And the outsider, the younger black man. Both of them arise from categories we know well, but are breaking those rules just by running.

2. The monster always escapes.

Over and over again we've thought this horrendous campaign was over, only for one candidate to stage a comeback. We've thought Clinton was done after Iowa, then Obama after New Hampshire and Nevada, then Clinton again after Obama's post-Super Tuesday wins, then Obama again after Clinton won Ohio and the Texas primary and then Pennsylvania, and now...

3. The monster is the harbinger of category crisis.

Of course, they're bringing on category crisis just by being a white woman and a black man running for President, and certainly by having defeated more typical white male candidates. Hillary Clinton has always been disconcerting--at first she was too masculine a woman, then she was too feminine, standing by her man. Now she's both uber-masculine--"obliterate," "if she gave Obama one of her balls..."--and feminine, when her angry supporters accuse Obama and his camp of sexism.

Obama, of course, is both American and not-American, black and white, masculine and feminine (at least according to Carville), rich and poor, elitist and community activist, and if you'd believe the crazies, Christian and Muslim.

4. The monster dwells at the gates of difference.

You see the fear of difference much more with Obama, especially with the reports of overt racism and the repeated cries that he's Muslim despite Rev. Wright's best attempts to remain part of the media cycle. Hillary Clinton's problem is more that she is not different enough. Obama supporters hate her as part of the culture that they despise and reject--not alien, but all too familiar. But Hillary Clinton is still a woman, and still different.

5. The monster polices the borders of the possible.

Is it really possible for America to elect a (white) woman? A black man? And does some of the intense anger at the other side stem from the fact that it feels like not just a rejection of Hillary Clinton or of Barack Obama, but of all (older) women or all black Americans? How much change can America handle? And what ugly truths about ourselves do we have to confront in the process?

6. Fear of the monster is really a kind of desire.

Obama is too well-spoken, too charismatic, too seductive. We can't have that. It must be bad because we can't quite quantify it. And Clinton is too determined, she wants it too badly, how dare she?! But secretly, the need to over and over again reiterate what's wrong with the Other candidate (yes, I capitalized that for a reason) is to remind ourselves that we don't want it, we don't want it, we don't want it...

7. The monster stands at the threshold of becoming...

President?

Joking aside, one of the first ways that people learn to commit atrocities is by Othering the opponent, making them not just the enemy but something monstrous and not-human. Soldiers in Abu Ghraib, or in Nazi concentration camps, rapists, police who shoot an unarmed man or drag people from their cars and beat them, the people who killed Matthew Shepard or Brandon Teena or Sanesha Stewart. It always seems easier to do that when the hated person is already different in some visible way--female, black, Arab, gay, transgender.

So we have a presidential primary campaign, supposedly in the party of tolerance, the party that supports people who are women, black, Arab, gay, transgender, Latino, Jewish--at least more than that other party does. And we get this polarized mess, and I can't help but wonder if this would be quite so angry if it were between, say, Hillary Clinton and John Edwards (it would be for me, because I'd be in the position of trying to care which one of them won when they both rub me the wrong way), or even Barack Obama and John Edwards, to say nothing of Joe Biden and Chris Dodd or some other grey-haired white men. To what degree does all that category crisis, those border issues, that Difference affect our view of the candidate we don't support?

(Cross-posted to Season of the Bitch)