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Session 9a: Monsters Televised and Online
Chair: C.D. Sebastian

Our Gods are Monsters: Representations of the Origins of Religion in Popular Culture
Charlene Burns
Associate Professor of Religious Studies, University of Wisconsin Eau Claire, Wisconsin, USA

A culture’s monsters possess a kind of “ontological liminality” because they are projected constructs of a geography that is “always a contested cultural space” (Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, “Monster Culture,” in Monster Theory: Reading Culture, 3). A culture’s most popular modes of entertainment are a very rich source of information about the monstrous, and the genre of science fiction is especially so. In this paper, I examine the longest running American science fiction television series, Stargate SG-1 to explore constructions of monsters, the monstrous, and religion in 21st century American popular culture. I sketch a map of the geography of the monstrous gods of the program using a Jungian template to identify myths and ideologies at work in the series and posit that the contested cultural space we find there is a manifestation of the fear that unless we become more moral than our gods, we may not survive as a species.

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Moral Relativism in David Milch’s Deadwood
Diane Cook
RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia

One of the most fascinating aspects of contemporary American television drama, arguably, is the popularity and controversy garnered by various series that have taken latter-day moral absolutism to task. Either overtly or implicitly, they have raised crucial ethical questions by exploring complex moral dilemmas; most importantly, they have frequently posited these dilemmas as indissoluble. For example, The Sopranos, The Shield, Oz, the Law and Order franchise, and Deadwood have utilised the arena of crime and punishment (across several genres) to explore moral issues with candour and sophistication.
Within these shows, evil is not manifest in metaphorical, supernatural, metaphysical or any other external agencies, but solely in the human psyche, so it cannot be vanquished readily; and moral absolutism offers only a panacea. Such identification of a human locus for the phenomenon of evil has historically made for a number of engaging ethical perspectives, but Deadwood is an especially interesting case in point because of creator/producer David Milch’s stated views on morality, and the thematic points he has intended Deadwood to make.
The serieshas attracted concerted attention; its use of profanity and violence has generated a high profile from its inception – these elements both celebrated on grounds of integrity and lambasted on grounds of obscenity. But this is a hackneyed area of debate. What’s more interesting, when we examine Deadwood alongside Milch’s public statements about it, is the profound humanism beneath its viscerally disturbing surface, and Milch’s particular brand of moral relativism.
Because as much as it might seem at surface level a grim portrait of a savagely Darwinian hierarchy,  what Milch offers in Deadwood is a definition of evil partly as a failure to recognise our interdependence and our consequent tendency towards laissez-faire justice – especially in the absence of viable legal/moral boundaries. Reading Deadwood in this context offers an unusually rewarding examination of the notion of evil.

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ur-Real Monsters: The Rhetorical Creation of Monsters in Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games (MMORPGs)
Marlin Bates
Department of Communication, University of the Pacific, California, USA

The fantasy fight against monsters dates back for years beyond reckoning. Given the age of such stories, it would be logical to assume that the current era of computer games has long since dispensed with tales of undead creatures come to life (a la Shelley’s Frankenstein) or rampaging orcs (everyone from Lloyd Alexander to J.R.R. Tolkein).
However, a brief look to some of the most popular games demonstrates that those stories are still very much in vogue. One wonders, therefore, how the monstrosities of the past have been reconstituted in the modern era of computerized video games, specifically, the massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG). The MMORPG represents the most recent step in the evolution of what I term the ur-Real world. In specific, the gamespace is not virtual, nor is it an ersatz copy of the Real; it is ur-Real. To be in the ur-Real world means to be in a world that is just as enrapturing as the non-electronic community.
The creators of online gamespaces have unlimited narratives at their disposal, yet their representation of monsters and the monstrous almost exclusively focus on a fantasy world. The focus on the age-old narratives is, as this paper will argue, a rhetorical tool to invite users into a worldwide community. This paper will examine how two of the most popular MMORPGs, World of Warcraft and Everquest, use specific rhetorical narratives to not only present age-old representations of monsters for the player-characters to fight, but also to enmesh the player-character further into an online community of identity and belonging. Specifically, the paper discusses how the rhetorical constructions of these games blur the line between the Real and the ur-Real. The paper culminates by demonstrating an ongoing rhetorical cycle that adapts to continuous change both inside and outside the game.

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