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Reviewed by:
  • Tracking Classical Monsters in Popular Culture by Liz Gloyn
  • Susan O. Shapiro
Liz Gloyn. Tracking Classical Monsters in Popular Culture. London: Bloomsbury, 2020. Pp. x, 228. £65.00. ISBN: 978-1-3501-0961-2.

In this intriguing but uneven book, Liz Gloyn examines the classical hero/monster myths from the monster’s point of view, with a particular focus on how and why these monsters continue to appear in contemporary British and American popular culture.

By way of a definition, Gloyn lists the characteristics that most monsters share: “they are, for instance, abnormally large, they perform hideous acts of violence, they break down barriers in our understanding of the world, they demonstrate physical hybridity, they resist or reject human control” (p. 3). For classical monsters, Gloyn concentrates particularly on their transgressive physical enormity and their hybrid human/animal form. The first two chapters of the book are by far the most interesting; in them, the author explores the emerging academic field of monster studies, and shows how some of its tenets can fall short when applied to classical monsters. In the remaining six chapters, Gloyn considers how classical monsters have appeared in films (from the sword-and-sandal flicks of the 1950s and 1960s to Ray Harryhausen’s Clash of the Titans [1981], to more recent films, such as Pan’s Labyrinth [2006] and Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief [2010]), television shows (such as Hercules: The Legendary Journeys [1995–99], Xena: Warrior Princess [1995–2001], and Doctor Who [1963–89 and 2005–present]), as well as an assortment of novels, paintings, sculptures, advertisements, and video games.

One of the most arresting examples of classical monsters in popular culture comes right at the beginning of the book: Gloyn describes a 2017 British television advertisement for a Mitsubishi Outlander Hybrid SUV in which a series of [End Page 120] classical “hybrid” monsters (a centaur, Medusa, the Minotaur, a siren and Pegasus) look with wonder as a hybrid SUV passes them by, and a narrator’s voice intones: “In a world of hybrids, some follow—others lead.”1 This stunningly produced video brings Gloyn to her focus question: “Why do ancient monsters still wield this kind of influence in contemporary culture, to the extent that a car commercial feels they are mainstream enough to present without comment?” (p. 7). Gloyn begins to answer this question by examining the theory and practice of monster studies, an academic field that Gloyn dates from J. J. Cohen’s 1996 edited volume, Monster Theory: Reading Culture.2 According to monster theory, monsters are culturally specific; they symbolize what their culture finds most threatening. Monsters usually dwell on the borders of the civilized world. Similarly, in a metaphorical sense, they usually inhabit the borders of the possible; they represent the farthest limit of acceptable behavior (sometimes crossing over into what the society deems unacceptable). Thus, in addition to representing their culture’s greatest fears, they can also embody its forbidden desires. And finally, because the monster represents a living fear-cum-desire, “the monster always escapes”; that is, while a hero may temporarily defeat it, the monster can never be finally destroyed. The monster always escapes, reappears, or is reborn, to challenge us and our sense of order anew.3

While the field of monster studies has been dominated by scholars in the fields of English, folklore, and modern languages, who study medieval, early modern, and modern monsters (such as werewolves, vampires, and zombies), Gloyn notes that a few classicists have discussed the ways in which our understanding of classical monsters can benefit from the scholarly insights of this field.4 But Gloyn points out that the widespread presence of classical monsters in contemporary popular culture has been largely ignored by scholars in this field. If the fear of monsters is culturally determined, why have so many classical monsters transcended their cultural boundaries and found a place in our modern world (pp. 12–13)?

Gloyn considers several possible ways of answering this question (using an anthropological approach and a Freudian psychoanalytical approach) before settling on what she calls a Foucauldian approach, that of distinguishing between negative control (repressing our fears) and positive control (understanding, managing...

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