Why Are We So Fond of Monsters?

Human attraction to monsters is such that we could almost characterize Homo sapiens as ‘the species that loves monsters’. In fact, there is hardly a single human culture that finds itself indifferent to monsters; human culture either responds to monsters with fear or feeds on them joyously. This fascination is somewhat suspect and worth explaining. In this essay, I argue that Homo sapiens is a ‘monster’s animal’ just as we often speak of a ‘ladies’ man’.1