there's a monster in me

A friend and I were talking about Frankenstein, then I read this article in Geez! Magazine and it all echoed the same thoughts and I thought some of you would enjoy them:

"I say it with trepidation, but in some ways these homeless men, these addicted and infirm, these societal cast-offs, were strangely akin to the creatures of my Saturday night passion [classic monster movies ] Alien in appearance, ominously "other" their humanity blurred by sundry ravages of experience-- and yet I was drawn to these men in ways I couldn't fuly understand. Beneath their disfigurements and diminishments, there stirred a quality of humanness that touched me deeply."

"... What moved me was more than pity or lofty idealism. In the deepest parts of my heart I longed to know, to touch, and affirm what is sacredly, inviolably human in all of us -- especially when that humanness is assulted, vilified, or violated. .... Unconciously I was recieving from them [the monster movies] mysterious lessions in accepting the human spirit in all its harsh and alien forms. ... We label, fear, and discriminate against those whom we percieve as different, abnormal, or deformed. Just as the monsters in old movies do, they manifest some supposed defect of our humanness or some threatening "otherness" that we don't want to face."

"In a culture that prizes physical beauty and perfection, we don't want contact with the disabled and infirmed. ... [During the mob going after the monsterscene] I usually cheered for Frankenstein's monster to escape. I habored some instincitve sympathy for the misunderstood creature who has been needlessly tormented. .... What about the real monsters in our midst? Do they really exist? Are they the malformed, the abnormal, the different... the ugly. Or are they simply our own shadow side, the acute and painful awareness of our own deforminites, our own flaws and diminishments? In this interplay of life and art, I suppose we are not so muh afraid of imagined monsters are we are of the parts of ourselves that we do not want to face. Like Dr. Frankestien, perhaps it is we who create the monsters through our fears, our prejudices, and our refusal to open up to the sublime mystery of our humanness in all its forms."