The Monsters in Us

11.7.24

As mentioned last week, today’s episodes highlight variations on some classic monsters.

In Ep 306, we meet the curmudgeonly Queens vampire Iglesias, who may or may not help Agent Stoker based on what will get him more blood.  And in Ep 307, a decompensating werewolf tracks down Agent Stoker at Yankee Stadium; he’s been trying medications and technology to control his transformations but it’s just not working.

When we were young, we thought these monsters were the boogeymen.  Now that we’re older, we realize the true horror is that we could become the monsters ourselves. Our bodies may need something that makes our minds curdle in terror.

Alice B. Sheldon, the acclaimed science fiction visionary who wrote under the name James Tiptree Jr., was the subject of a masterful biography by Julie Phillips.  In her introduction, Phillips writes of the Tiptree stories: “…the reality of human flesh and emotions was what terrified, and fascinated, Tiptree.  Can the body be trusted?  Will it betray us?  What does it want?  Can we get rid of it?”

As we enter today’s episodes, this idea is already front and center.  Dianne, aka Agent Steerpike, has had her own body hijacked by cyborg bacteria in the control of a malevolent AI.  Helpless to resist, she’s being walked against her will through New York in the service of a mysterious agenda.

And the whole idea is part of the very DNA of our lead character himself.  It’s been established since the first season that Agent Stoker is haunted by the touch of an elder god.  This dark legacy may be why he needs to drink.  It’s also why he sometimes escapes danger, because at least one demonic force can’t touch his soul while it carries this corruptive energy.

Werewolves show us the fear that our animal instincts might overtake us.  Vampires show us the fear that our hunger, which must be satisfied to keep us alive, can go further than we can handle.  Even zombies and ghouls, with their predatory drive to feast on flesh, exist on a variation of the old thesis that cannibalism is just love taken to its extreme conclusion.

We strangely love these stories, which is perhaps our way of convincing ourselves that these fears remain under our control.  We dress up as these characters on Halloween and at parties, conventions, everywhere.

It all recalls Kurt Vonnegut Jr.’s counsel: “We are what we pretend to be, so we must be very careful what we pretend to be.”