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Session 2: H.G.Wells and Friends
Chair: Roger Davis

Transforming Monsters Into Humans: The Island Of Dr. Moreau
Antonio Sanna
Department of English Literature, University of Westminster, London, United Kingdom

In my paper I shall argue that the Beast People shown in Wells’s 1896 work (explicitly defined by Prendick – the tale’s narrator – as monsters) are actually a representation of human beings. This affirmation will be based, on the one hand, on an analysis of specific parts of the novel which show the real humans as more monstrous and unethical than the laboratory-creations of Dr. Moreau. On the other hand, my argument shall be furthered by reference to the suggestion (made by various critics during the past twenty years) that Moreau is depicted as a representation of God. By arguing that the characters of Montgomery and Prendick respectively represent Christ and the Holy Ghost, I shall suggest that this religious trinity represents divinity as set against the humanity of the Beast People. I shall also argue that Prendick’s narrative is actually a fantasy provoked by the experience of cannibalism he supposedly enacted in the dingey. Thus, Prendick thinks of the Beast People as the cannibalistic natives of Noble’s island. They are an imaginary construction of his traumatised mind projecting cannibalism onto others in order to forget his own evil. This reading corresponds to the thesis (introduced by Arens in 1979 and supported by many critics up to the present) that cannibalism is a concept invented by Westerners in order to legitimate both empirial expansion and the cruelties inflicted upon natives. My reading shall be supported also by reference to the novel’s passages demonstrating the unreliability of the narrator’s words and the prejudiced nature of his analysis of reality. My suggestion that humans and monsters are therefore inverted in The Island of Doctor Moreau shall be based on a detailed analysis of the text as well as on reference to the recent academic debates on the subject of cannibalism and the empirial representation of the native.

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Spielberg’s Tale of Two Americas: Post-modern Monsters in War of the Worlds
Kirk Combe
Department of English, Denison University, Granville, Ohio, USA

In my paper, I use monster theory together with a postmodern critique of power in order to read Spielberg’s 2005 film as a political indictment of Bush’s war in Iraq as well as a condemnation of neo-conservative doctrine in general. My fundamental argument is that War of the Worlds offers us two stark views or versions of America: a good, egalitarian, savvy, and fundamentally working class America embodied by the beleaguered hero, Ray Ferrier, and a bad, imperialistic, purblind, and fundamentally upper-middle class America represented by the Martian invaders. Thus, the two worlds at war in the movie are not Earth and Mars, but these two different Americas.
To define my terms, by “monster theory” I mean the idea that the fictional beasts a culture creates provide insights into that culture–its fears, its anxieties, its hatreds, its prejudices, its most troublesome problems, even its innermost secret desires. By “postmodern,” I have foremost in mind the idea that there is no fixed and forever concept of Truth. Instead, language and culture–that is, human experience–is an ever-pliable construction, one most conspicuously molded by the plutocrats of a given society. The term “postmodern monsters,” therefore, expresses my belief that certain of our fictional beasts can be read as embodiments of anti-Truth, that is, as the opposite of whatever illusion of modern stability we’re being told at the moment. Postmodern monsters depict the unsaid, the uncomfortable what’s-not-supposed-to-be-spoken. They are gaps in the ongoing construction of Truth by power. If deciphered by us, such fictional creations can function to dissociate power (fundamentally, the control of language, wealth, and weapons) from the Truth it conspires to formulate.
One great “Truth” being force-fed to Americans today is imperialism masquerading as national defense. The current administration desperately wants us to believe that Bush’s offensive war in Iraq is a defensive war against “terrorism.” Spielberg’s Martians scaring the pants off of us is, in my view, a manifestation of artistic anti-ideology that challenges this neo-conservative fabrication.

Shadow of the Colossus: The Monster in the Landscape
Ewan Kirkland
Buckinghamshire Chilterns University College, High Wycombe Campus, Buckinghamshire, United Kingdom

Shadow of the Colossus, released for the PlayStation 2 in 2006, was the acclaimed spiritual successor to the Japanese art game Ico (2002). Structured as a series of elaborate boss battles, players explore a vast and hauntingly-realised landscape searching for a succession of giant monsters. These huge creatures must be defeated through elaborate battle sequences in a quest to resurrect the protagonist’s dead lover. However, through the game’s progress, the player becomes increasingly unsettled by the virtual genocide they are required to perform, and increasingly ambivalent towards the game’s hero.
This paper explores how this mounting ambivalence is generated. Initially the game established a David vs. Goliath scenario, pitting a tiny avatar against enormous monsters twenty-times his size. But as players’ prowess grows and successive creatures fall - each accompanied by mournful music and slow motion death sequences - the power dynamic shifts, instead constructing the protagonist as villain and the monsters as underdog. Creature design, their bodies an amalgamation of rocks, crumbling architecture, moss, grass and ivy, represents the monsters as natural elements within a landscape in which the player is the intruder. Destroying these creatures constitutes a form of desecration, upon defeat each monster’s temple effigy collapsing in a pile of dust, releasing smoky spirits which bow over the protagonist in silent judgement. Moreover the technical and artistic skill involved in bringing these enormous animated figures to the screen enhances the impression of senseless destruction players wreak upon these magnificent creations. 
Gradually the player realises that the avatar and not his adversaries, is the real monster in this landscape.

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