Sometimes It is Their Painful Beauty, or Untrammeled Individuality
For the monster pleasures as well as polices, although we rarely talk about the pleasure. The monster-face is a mask placed on someone whose offence is obliquely desirable to us, however much we disguise that knowing from ourselves or call it something else~ for instance, news, or interest in the moral tone of the community, or whatever. Monsters have, or seem to have, freedoms we lack. They transgress, cross over, do not stay put where~ for the convenience of our categories of sex, race, class or creed~ we would like them to stay. Sometimes it is their painful beauty, or untrammeled individuality; other times it is simply the liberties they take (and that they take them in the first place) that so astonish us. They get away with murder and that fascinates us. Monsters are supposed to do just what they desire, and that frightens us.
~Edward J. Ingebretsen
At Stake: Monsters and the Rhetoric of Fear in Public Culture
Chicago : U of Chicago P, 2001 / pg 4
