Why We Love Monsters

Interesting discussion. My take is borrowed from the burgeoning field of Monster Studies. I see monsters as way by which we can first identify (Adam’s impulse to name creation), and then contain (if we have power to name, we have power over the creature) what it is we fear. In this way we can vocalize what frightens us (supernatural! undead! Russians! the wild!) and then subvert it, showing that we can conquer (perhaps to domesticate: as you mention, Casper or Twilight) whatever threatens to remove our humanity. Monsters are always tied to technology (because this is the most visible and constant change in society) – hence Grendel comes from the fens (which the Danes were draining and changing to farmland), Dracula from scientific investigation (if we cannot measure the soul, can we believe man has one? what if he didn’t), Frankenstein’s monster and anatomical advances (the body as a machine), aliens with space exploration (what if we get out there and find something that doesn’t like us), zombies and computers (what role does our mind play if computers remember and think better? what if we become mindless?) – and immediately they are subverted as symbols to political and social issues: immigration, centralized authority, invasion & defeat, war, adolescence, hegemony, love, strife. Hence vampires go from soulless perversions of man, to hipster anti-authoritarian terrors, to disenfranchised love interests.