We all have one monster that we don’t like (some of us maybe have more). I’m not sure what it is about the idea of mummified human remains that makes me unhappy. They give me the whim-whams, the shivers, the willies. I like to brag that I’m not afraid of anything; at least not the usual things people are scared of like the dark or monsters or ghouls or home invasions or progress but there is something about mummies and I try to avoid them at all costs. This is especially true in the case of the original Universal Studios movie, The Mummy, as portrayed by Boris Karloff. Maybe I saw it when I was a tot on our little Zenith black and white TV as a ‘creature feature’. Perhaps I had a nightmare about it. Whatever it is, mummies are my least favorite monsters and I now realize that they always have been.
My dislike for mummies was probably compounded by the fact that there is a public museum in Reading near where my family lived and in that museum, inside a glass case—rather like Lenin’s tomb—lay an Egyptian mummy. Most of that poor ancient human was wrapped and laying in a Ptolemaic sarcophagus. Called Nefrina, this mummy's head was not covered, revealing a remarkably preserved and yet horrible face with sunken eyes very like those of The Mummy. Because I was so little when I was brought there, this ancient human artifact stuck in my head and shuffled in my youthful nightmares. It might have been the lights or the reflection on the glass case, but I used to imagine its dark eyes gleaming with evil intent. I haven’t mentioned this to anyone in years.
I do like scary stories and movies, though, especially within the monster genre. I recently procured a beautiful blu-ray collection of the old Universal Studios monster movies, including (sadly) The Mummy. I was happy to get this treat, because horror has its place in human society, mainly as a way to experience fear in a safe and controlled manner. It's fun to watch these nearly century-old (in some cases) films and feel the childhood chills again. As I was paging through the booklet accompanying the set, I saw that picture again and all my childhood feelings rushed back. Those dark eyes set in a desiccated face, fezz jauntily perched atop the recently bandaged head, the outline of the skull just below sallow skin. Nightmare inducing. No thank you, Mummy.
I have long believed that nightmares are where the concept of monsters were born for our ancestors. Humans hiding in hovels or settled around a small fire in a misty forest told stories of monsters not only to scare their children into behaving but also to put a name to their deepest fears. We dreamed about them and told our friends and families. Those stories became our mythologies and legends and eventually our best selling books and movies.
Some of the greatest and most memorable stories ever written revolve around the unspeakable beasts and creatures that haunt the twilight realm between our conscious and unconscious selves. There are thousands of variants, but most of them participate in some aspect of physical change or hybridization of human and beast; becoming ravening animals or developing terrifying physical proportions or failing to be killed by normal means, are the standard soil for good monster tales. There are also curses, bites, forgotten organisms (like Bigfoot), the creations of science run amok and of course, the mummified high priest who was buried alive because of forbidden love.
The miserable transformation from human to monster is clearly a recollection of the growth of a child into an adult or maybe the transformation from hale middle age into geriatric infirmity. All teenagers go through a monster phase, usually about the time that their bodies begin experiencing puberty. Young people relate very well to the horrors of morphing from a small child with a piping voice to some spotty, gangly thing that lurks in its lair, eating everything in sight and becoming by the day more grotesquely adult. The ramping up of adolescent hormones, the sprouting of hair all over the body, the terrible vicissitudes of mood and personality are all deeply unsettling, both for the person who experiences them and anyone in close proximity. A teenager in the house can be an astoundingly unsettling thing and we can suppose that it has always been this way. Likewise, losing our strength, our teeth, becoming wrinkled and, as the poet Kipling said, “a rag and a bone and a hank of hair” can be ghastly. Little old ladies eating children to maintain their powers and youthfulness has deep associations with antisemitism (church fathers preached that the blood of children was used in Passover matzah) and the natural knowledge that older women had might have proven the dogmas of the church’s claims frail and futile, giving rise to fear of witches and hags.
Monsters also provide a way for us to explain away or take power from the worst parts of ourselves; our vicious, violent, dangerous natures that Darwin said are only one step away from, ‘the indelible stamp of our lowly origins’. Throughout human mythology, creatures that were part human and part something less definable dogged human civilization. For all of that time, we have tried to reconcile and explain our fears by telling stories to each other as a kind of apotropaic against the wild thing that hunts within.
The werewolf, half man; half beast, holds an ancient grasp on our human collective psyche. The savage animal inside, only appearing when the moon is full and thereby linking the transformation to lunacy, is older than human civilization. Lycanthropy (werewolfism) is found everywhere in human myths, from ancient India and Greece,to the Old Testament and the Norse sagas. Some literature professors blame our close historical associations with actual wolves, claiming that ancient humans saw much of themselves in their lupine companions. This could be due to our extremely similar genetic makeup, too (think of how close we feel with our canid pals). Others think that the wolf-man isn’t actually a wolf at all but a representation of our fearful simian cousins, the vicious ape waiting to burst forth in brutal primal ferocity. Few cinematic representations of the werewolf manage to hide the primate-like nature of the beast as it hurdles along killing and feeding. Anyone who has seen a troupe of chimps hunting lesser apes or monkeys will see the potential for violence that we share with our Great Ape cousins and that no doubt led to this fear.
If we think about it carefully, most monsters have a simple and definable explanation, but our fear is irrational and blurs our ability to see those connections clearly. Vampires are an excellent example of this. Ask anyone and they will tell you several things about vampires that are common knowledge. Vampires cannot survive daylight, they hate garlic, they drink human blood and they can only be truly destroyed by driving a stake through their heart. All of these bits of knowledge are gathered from folklore, both popular and ancient, which has been passed down for generations. Scholars of myth believe that the first conceptions of the vampire actually have roots in the fear of venereal diseases. Dread of blood, of lurking deviants, the underlying concept of a contagion that rendered people into lustful, subhuman creatures hiding in the darkness all seem to fit uncannily well. Primitive understandings may have convinced people that sunlight or herbs could kill these pestilences or the people who carried them and those "cures" are with us today.
Later, during the Victorian era, as science was beginning to clear away the cobwebs of superstition (at least in part), authors like Bram Stoker took the idea of vampires a step farther, creating Count Dracula, an Eastern European aristocrat who prowled the gaslit streets of London looking for innocent young women to prey upon. The underlying sexual implications and distrust of European aristocracy was not lost on the prurient or repressed in that age.
Science, too, became a kind of monster as the clock ticked toward the 20th Century. Fear of the headlong race for scientific discovery; repercussions of humanity’s inability to moderate scientific discovery with respect for nature; our attempt to become gods in our own right is the theme of several monster mythologies. Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley’s “Frankenstein” tells the tale of a scientist who will stop at nothing to create life using his own scientific power. HG Wells' masterpiece of science and madness, “The Invisible Man” shows how a sociopath (a term not yet fully understood in Wells’ time) devotes his entire personality to attaining invisibility and then loses the cure. The Invisible Man then goes on a reign of terror, using his newfound power to drive others to his bidding.
Our lost connection with other hominids like cro magnon and zinjanthropus and australopithecus and neanderthal (likely all killed off by homo sapiens—see above) has given rise to another, less appetizing reality. If we wandered out of the oceans at some point in the dim past then perhaps one of our ancient relatives was some kind of fish/human hybrid. The Creature from the Black Lagoon captures this fear, but it also betrays another, more potent dread that many of us still have. Called thalassophobia, the fear of deep water and what might be lurking in the depths that our eyes have not yet perceived is ancient and pervasive.
A similar dread, albeit in the opposite direction, was beautifully captured by Wells again in his earth shattering novel, War of the Worlds. Far worse than any human horror, the invasion of blank, inhuman creatures from a neighboring world, cold and alien, land here to displace us or use us for food. This fear of the unknown and of the life that could dwell in the frozen depths of space comes directly from the more advanced observations made as observers ground more powerful lenses allowing us to see clearly our closest solar planets and wonder who dwelt there and if their intentions were nefarious or benevolent.
Between them all, vampires, wolves, fish and invisible men, reanimated corpses and the other ancient frights from myth and folklore, stands The Mummy. The sight of this bandage-wrapped undead Egyptian priest is too unsettling for me to consider. Imhotep, punished for trying to use death magic to resurrect his forbidden love, wanders in the dark under the eaves of my imagination. Other people, I know, like the aesthetic of ancient Egypt and I have had my moments. Thinking of hieroglyphics and pyramids is interesting, engaging. But not mummification, and not The Mummy.
I've been a fan of all the Universal monster movies—all but one—and while I will forever extoll the virtues of literary and cinematic monsters, I’ll stop with him. Monsters provide mysterious and terrifyingly beautiful criticisms of the state of human psychology and fear. Still, nothing will ever induce me to sit still and watch as that shuffling, hollow-eyed monster reaches its stiff, 4,000 year-old fingers for the throats of those that buried him in the sand. If it is up to me, he and all his wrapped colleagues would stay buried forever.
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