Ilyse: This is keeping it 101 a killjoys introduction to
religion podcast. In 2022-2023, our work is made possible
through a UVM Reach grant as well as a Loose AAR Advancing
Public Scholarship grant. We're grateful to live teach and
record on the current ancestral and unseeded lands of the
Abenaki Wabanaki and Aqua Cisco peoples. As always, you can find
material ways to support indigenous communities on our
website.
Megan: What's up, nerds? Hi Hello, I'm Meghan Goodwin, a
scholar of American religions race, gender and politics.
Ilyse: Hi, hello. I'm Ilyse Morgensein-Fuerst, a historian
of religion Islam race and racialization and South Asia.
Megan: I'm really excited about today's episode.
Ilyse: I know you are. I'm so very pleased that we get to give
you something that gives you so much joy.
Megan: It does give me so much joy. Okay, so today's question
is one that I opened Well, I should say today's episode is a
"So Glad You Asked". And nerds I am so glad so glad that y'all
asked...
I get this question a lot. If I work on religion, how come I
teach classes about monsters? What do monsters have to do with
religion anyway? I'm so glad you asked. So glad you asked.
Ilyse: She really is, this is not false, this is not false
pantomime for the podcast. This is like if you ever went to
Megan's house, and you shouldn't, don't stalk her.
Don't go to them. But there are monsters everywhere to the point
where my my youngest. First of all, in a show of true animosity
is refers to your house as John's house and, and is like
there are so many monsters there's monsters everywhere.
Megan: Everywhere. I don't know that he's not wrong, I don't
think we have a room without monsters.
Ilyse: You don't. You don't. You don't thankfully, the very scary
monsters were like deffo out of his eye like his eyeline last
time we visited but like the cuddly monsters this silly
monsters a snarky monsters. They're everywhere. Your house
is filled with monsters including, occasionally, my
children.
Megan: They're such good monsters. I love them. This is
great. Okay, so I love monsters. And I'm obsessed with monsters.
And yeah, I'm just I will I will briefly give you a primary
sources, primary sources on how I started teaching about
monsters. This is extremely nerdy. And I know you are
shocked, I know. But I first got the idea to teach a religion and
monsters class because I was trying to get students to think
differently about what religion is. Right? So we always do our
religion is what people do. And I say it but it never really
lands. So this was back when I was teaching at Elon a million
years ago, Pacific Rim had just come out. It's an amazing
Guillermo del Toro movie about monsters as all of his films
are. And I was explaining it. Okay, all I'm saying explaining,
but I'm not sure that this actually added a ton of clarity
to the conversation except for me. Anyway, I said that people
think about religion like a Kaiju, like a large monster that
runs around making huge violent messes. Kind of like a Godzilla.
Right. But actually, religion is more like a Jager, which is a
big powerful construct-like robot built by humans who use
that robot to make large, sometimes violent messes, but
also to try to solve some really big problems that affect us all.
Ilyse: And, and you thought this was clarifying.
Megan: I did actually it made a lot of sense to me, but not so
much to everybody else, which is why I had to work on the class a
little bit.
Ilyse: And, and we're still leading the podcast with this
example.
Megan: So we are...
Ilyse: Yeah, have you learned?
Megan: Nothing clearly, but my favorite thing is monsters,
which is both a true statement and also an outstanding graphic
novel about religion and monsters, among other things I
highly recommend I'm gonna put it in the show notes. But here
are some reasons that I think monsters are a great way to
learn about religion. Are you ready?
My reasons are fourfold. One: Monsters are about where we draw
the line between humans and nonhumans, acceptable versus too
much. Number two: monsters are culturally contingent and so are
the ways we deal with monsters. So monsters tell us really
important stuff about where we are and who we are. Number
three: a fan favorite. Yeah, God in a Christian context, kind of
a monster. We are, we are gonna get letters, please though
direct them to me, this is my fault. It is it is my fault. But
I stand in my truth. And then number four: might be my
favorite honestly, there has been a movement in marginalized
communities and particularly queer communities about
reclaiming a monstrosity as like, Yeah, fuck you, I am too
much I don't fit. And that's great. And God actually loves me
for that. And so that also hits a very squishy piece of my
heart. And so that is why I think monsters are a good way to
think about religion.
Ilyse: Okay, so it sounds like we have a lot going on. And as
usual monsters here seem to be something that A) you care a lot
about, and B) are really about how we define communities. And
so...
Megan: I'm so excited.
Unknown: I know, I know, I'm trying very hard to keep you in
your own pants, but it's not working. So go for it....
Megan: Good luck to you, larger people than you have tried and
failed. But okay, so monsters number one: are about where we
Okay, so that's a lot. So what I hear you saying around this
draw the line between humans and nonhumans, who deserves to live
versus who has to die, who is acceptable, versus who is too
much to be allowed, and how we maintain and create and define
community by who and what we exclude. So particularly this
distinction of acceptable versus too much is one that is near and
dear to my heart, as I am both professionally and personally
often on the latter side. To be honest, the too much side, so
yeah, monsters they speak to me. Monsters are also negotiations
of social boundaries, though. Religion as you well know,
Ilyse, plays a large part in setting and maintaining social
boundaries, which means religion also plays a large part in
stories about monsters and how we exclude them, how we
recognize them, how we take care of them, and how we, I want to
say make sure that they don't happen again. But the thing
about monsters is they always come back. So as you might
imagine, monsters are also a big place where we see folks work
out issues around race, and gender and sexuality and age and
ability, also deeply infused and invested in religious
distinctions. I am going to have honestly so many more resources
in the show notes, because I might have mentioned this, but I
really like monsters. I honestly have just linked you to all of
my monster syllabi. But the super short version of monster
theory, and I'm borrowing here from Edward Engebretson, who is
both a Jesuit priest and a theorist of monstrosity.
Monsters tell us it's, it's not just that the monster has to die
or be banished or gotten rid of, it's that the monster has to be
seen to die that we need to collectively punish it for being
too much or unclean or destructive. And the fact that
the monster has to die is the monsters fault, not ours can't
blame us. It's the monsters fault that it gets killed. So
it's not just that it's a threat. And it's not just that
we're reinforcing boundaries by getting rid of the monster, it's
that we make sure that the entire community sees us get rid
of this "too much" thing. The spectacle is the point, the
spectacle is a warning to everybody else about what
happens when you're too different to be allowed to live.
"boundary drawing", is that there's a space where the
community gets to define what is normative and normal. And the
monster, whether we want to agree with it or not, is
construed as "well beyond the pale" of that normative,
normality. Ff I may, and it's not enough just to exclude or
ignore there's a real sport here in making sure that everyone
collectively witnesses the exclusion, the detriment like
the the deterioration, and ultimately the death of this
monstrous thing.
Yeah. And that affective of peace is actually really
important. Engerbretson gets into that as well. It's not just
that we do this, it's that we like to do it. It feels good to
indulge in that like, "oh, in other circumstances it would be
wrong to wish death on something but here you get to indulge in
that because well, it's the monsters fault". The monster is
too wrong, too scary, too much to be allowed to continue.
Ilyse: Can I ask a really basic question? Yeah, we keep saying
monster, we have not defined monster. I am assuming this is
on purpose, because we can make a monster out of anything or
anyone.
Megan: We sure can.
Ilyse: But is that true? Like is that what we're using as
monster? Just the thing that we have decided is beyond the pale?
Megan: Yes...and, because the spectacle part is important
here. So Engebretson points out that monster comes from, I'm
sorry this is so dorky, but I'm just going to do it, comes from
the Latin monstrare, right, is to look to, to demonstrate. So
it's not just that it is a thing that is too much, that is beyond
the pale, and the paleness is important, let's come back to
that. It's not acceptable, but also you have to see it be
unacceptable and see it be punished and ultimately
destroyed for being unacceptable. And I mentioned
that beyond the pale thing, very much on purpose. Because
sometimes monster stories are about things like a Godzilla or
a sexy Dracula or any number of other things. But sometimes, we
see language of monstrosity deployed against real humans
like the way Darren Wilson described Mike Brown before he
murdered him.
Ilyse: Yeah, there's no there's no if ands or buts about it.
This is often if not always, racialized.
Unknown: So racialized, and so so very gendered and sexualized,
and often, again, often about age and ability, right? So old
women are very scary in many of these stories, because, "Ew,
gross a woman but not sexually attractive, disgusting, cannot
be allowed to live." Someone with body parts we perceive as
missing? Absolutely not a monster. Yeah okay, so point 1.
Ilyse: Yeah. Okay, so, point 1. Monsters beyond the pale,
literally, and spectacle. Tell me what point two is....
Megan: Point two: monsters are culturally contingent, and so
are the way we deal with them. So, this is interesting to me
for a number of reasons. But the very short version here is,
monsters are one of my favorite ways to get to know things about
cultures, because they tell us where different cultures draw
the line. And that's not the same everywhere in all times in
all places, right? Even if you just look at what's now the
United States, in the last 30, 40, 50 years, we have moments of
monstrosity, where the 90s Vampires, very hot, and then we
got into zombies. And then we were back into vampires. And the
reason vampires were interesting, in Twilight was not
the same reason that the vampires were interesting in,
Interview with a Vampire, the earlier having more to do with
HIV-AIDS epidemic. So it tells us what kind of issues we're
working through as a culture. What do we find? The scariest?
Yeah. But not the same at all times in all places. So like,
one of the things that I point out in the monsters class that I
taught ages ago, is it like ghosts, for example, there are
very few cultures that you will run into that don't have some
kind of ghosts, right? A remnant or a revenant. Or, formerly
alive, people are formerly embodied people who are no
longer embodied in the same way or embodied at all hanging
around messin with people alive people stuff, or causing
problems or just trying to communicate with us, right? That
happens all over the place. But and, this is a mean trick that I
play on my monster students, we tend to assume that the way our
culture or cultures think about ghosts, is the way that
everybody thinks about ghosts. And when I say I mean what I
mean as I assigned to the ring, which is an American version of
the Japanese Ringu, right. And if you have ever watched the
ring, which so scary, it messed me up so bad and messed me up so
bad, like I truly had nightmares for weeks. But the thing that's
really mean about it is if you watch three quarters of the way
through the film, it looks like everything's fine. Like they
found out what happened to the little girl. And they like lay
her body to rest. And it should be fine. Except that it is not
in American context. Very often what ghost want is like revenge
or justice, or to have their story resolved and to be
remembered in the right way and to be put to rest. Right? It's a
it's a very Christian way of thinking about resolution,
right, right, right. But the ring is based on Japanese
folklore and Shinto concepts of a specific kind of woman ghost.
And the point of that ghost is nobody ever gets to feel good
again, because I was fucking murdered. The last quarter,
films are coming back just making sure that she gets
remembered forever or else motherfuckers gonna die. And my
poor students who were too young to have seen this in the
theater, we're like, what? Cuz it's, it's messed up and then we
all had to go sit out in the sunshine and not talk for a
while. That was the last 10 minutes of class.
Ilyse: I mean, bold pedagogical choice. Yeah, yeah, but really
good, good way to hammer home that like we, even if similar
concepts exists, the way that they play out is culturally
contingent.
Megan: The other quick example that I use is Joss Whedon sucks
as a human but Cabin in the Woods is an interesting film to
get students thinking about religion and monsters, and if
you watch there are monsters being fought over the world and
the monsters fought in Japan, very different than the monster
is being fought in what's now the United States. So, my other
piece about cultural contingency is that I was raised Catholic
and American monster remediation techniques are Catholic as fuck
Ilyse: Oh my God all the time. Did it can I tell you like, to
for some reason.
cut you off you know, please, as a young person, famously not
Catholic. The ways in which you would like vanquish a monster
was like holy water and like crosses through the heart and
like saying, like saying like our father or a Hail Mary or
something like that. I did not know that any of that shit was
Catholic until, until like my cohort of like, Italian
Catholic, like New Jersey buddies are all getting
confirmed. And I like so I'm like, old and I'm like, wait a
second that shits Catholic? I thought that was just like, just
like... Like that's just the remedy for monsters like you
throw holy water on them. It did not dawn on me that holy water
was like a very specific genre of thing. I knew it wasn't ours.
Like I wasn't like this is Jewish, but I was like, I think
this is just like goy water. You just throw, you are screaming
into the mic, yeah, anyway, I thought it was just going water.
And it turns out it is pope water.
Megan: So this is a space where we see the messiness of
religion, and, and also the messiness of me, being messy
about the messiness of religion. But it is fascinating to me the
way that Catholicism jumps out when Americans are confronted by
a monster, right? It is the literal point of The Exorcist is
that it actually doesn't matter whether you believe in this or
not ontologically, this is how the divine works and how you
combat evil. But also, like I said, I tore through the trashy
media that I consume, but From Dusk Till Dawn is honestly one
of my favorite vampire films. It's so stupid. It's so stupid.
But I think that I deeply love about it is that you have a
Baptist preacher creating holy water to deal with vampires.
Now, the complexities of many different kinds of Christianity
are a lot but here's the thing that I know because I did some
school in the south, Southern Baptists not big on Catholics,
not not loving them as a as a people. And there's a lot of
dismissiveness around the like, I don't know. jiggery pokery of
Catholic fufa right. It's it's magic. It's not religion, except
that it is interesting to me that when you have a monster,
you need that magic, and it honestly isn't even attached to
Catholicism. It's just the thing that you do when there are
monsters. You just need that pump water. fascinating to me.
Ilyse: Okay, I'm gonna take a left turn, please. I actually
care the most about this bullet point on your list. I don't I
don't you know, I don't love or hate monsters. I love me a
muppet. They seem like monsters. Yeah. The reason I care about
the most about this cultural contingency piece, and you got
it, some of it right. Like, I watch a lot of Asian TV both
like K dramas and South Asian movies and Pakistani drama. And
so the ways that ghosts work and like afterlives, like eerie
creatures, super different, really interesting. I love that
but the thing to care about,
Megan: can I just ask, do you Korean ghosts care about subway?
Ilyse: Not as much as Kdrama stars do you, but no I have not
yet seen a Kdrama ghost
Megan: yet yet anyway, sorry. Go ahead. Anyway,
Ilyse: the reason I care about this one is that because
Europe's monsters are a subject near and dear to my heart, which
is to say like Jews and Muslims and Roma and sometimes
Catholics, but later on various "Eastern" things I mean that in
the most orientalist so like, Europe's monsters are very often
just religious minorities. Like they're like Muslim Jews.
They're like the Semite in the like the broadest. The Jew and
the Arab well yet more than like full stop fantastical beasts
that are actually just what people imagined Jews or Muslims
to be, like a vampire, right? These are people who blend in
during the day but at night, they be blood sucking baby
eaters like and they and they talk like our grandmas. Right,
they're like I vant to go to the market. But like
Megan: They're their baby eaters, but they're also
predators upon nice white. Yeah, women women, white, Christian
women's like white, Western European Christian women.
They're coming to pollute the bloodstream. Sorry, but this is
why I know you know, I know you know more than me.
Ilyse: I am well aware, I just I want our nerds to hear not the
specifics of the vampire story or the werewolves, but the ways
in which the like hiding in plain sight of the religious
minority who is out to kill your baby and fuck your women. That's
the real danger. And it's never it's not even like cloaked it's
like Roald Dahl, that great anti-semite writing the witches,
one of my favorite childhood books where I read it truly, and
my grandmother's accent where like...this is just how she
talks like Ws are Vs. And, and why are you making her out to be
like a no Toad, no haired monster. Like a literal child
eater, here are a mouse, the mouse magic. Anyway, let's keep
going. What is our third point about monsters here on this pod?
Megan: Okay. The third thing about monsters on this pod today
is that the Christian God is kind of a monster, kind of. And
here's what I mean by that. So a lot of these stories,
particularly Western monster stories have what we think of as
a dyadic worldview, right? If evil exists, if monsters exist,
then good also has to exist, then the highest good also has
to exist, then we must have God. Right? Here's the thing that
equation is transitive. It goes both ways. does that also mean
that if God, then we must have monsters. Which gets us into a
nerdy philosophical problem called theodicy, word of the
day, "it's our secret word of the day", which is just the
problem of evil, like how comes, we have evil if God is good? So
we have this whole day in my monsters class and also my
meaning of death class about the problem of evil, the problem of
evil is basically a math problem. So evil happening
suggests that God either must be limited, beyond our
understanding, or both. So the math problem that is theodicy is
one: God is all powerful or omnipotent, two: God is all
knowing, or omniscient and three: evil exists. So the nerdy
philosophical conversation of the day is people debating about
the nature of the Divine and freewill and that sort of thing.
And the way that they solve this is either God is not
all-powerful, or God is not all good, or what we understand is
evil is actually something else and that's where the freewill
thing comes in. It honestly winds up in a very Time Bandits
place in my class, I show a number of clips from Time
Bandits, even though Terry Gilliam kind of a douchebag. But
that film, sort of perfect. But yeah, the short version is that
this equation leaves us either with God unable or unwilling to
intervene to stop monsters, which kind of makes God a
monster gods own self.
Ilyse: I'm gonna shock you right now. Okay. I don't care at all
about theodicy. Of course, you're so goy-acai, t's like so
boring. But I can't I'm like nerds, you know, I don't care
because it like it assumes this Christian worldview, which
always somehow shits on Jewish divinity whilst making our own
theological framework such that the monster is both unstoppable
or it's God's plan. But also people are never response. Like,
it's never your job. Like, there's never the responsibility
that Jews have to like, well, the world might be terrible, but
like, you probably have to make it better. That's the whole
thing. Like that's the real like, that's the covenant you
got to do some fucking work here. And goyim are like, God,
God's supposed to do it. And like, you're just lazy like,
Whoa, you're causing. Anyway, the other reason I don't care
about this besides like, I guess anti goetia worldview, is that a
lot of religious traditions, god or gods or the divine, or "the
all" can be an are monstrous themselves without this being a
problem. Like there is an understanding that, that if God
is all things, then God is probably evil also, because that
exists. And so why are you limiting? Not that like God is
limited and therefore evil exists? But why are you limiting
God? Of course, God is also a bad guy, because bad shit
exists. And if God is everything, then God is good and
bad. We're like, so sometimes in these traditions, monstrosity is
the point. So to get us out of the Abrahamic universe, and like
you're like, out of catholicism this is my guest. Like never
like he knew, like Hindus stories about deities, there are
demons who are different than gods, but whose power and
attributes kind of line up there's also gods who are are
sometimes deeply monstrous. And the texts and the stories are
asking the listener or the reader or the devotee to think
about monstrosity in ways that are like, quite frankly, deeper
than like, good and evil, if I'm being honest. Like a lot has
been made specifically of Hindu deities by white people as being
too bloodthirsty or too sexed or powerful, which tells us again,
a lot more about the gaze of the people deciding what is
monstrous than whether or not say a rakshasa is a monster or
gali is monstrous, or jagannath is a destroyer on its own. Yeah,
but I want I both like I hear you, you're right. This is how
monstrous and monstrosity works in a theological concept, or
like, the Christian God, colin is, is that a monster is like a
great and hilarious hook. But like, there are other religious
traditions that are like, yeah, the gods are doing all the
things. Why is that confusing to you up on?
Megan: Yeah, no, absolutely. And I'm really glad that you brought
up that this framework of theodicy of the problem of evil
is obviously Christian as all get out. And also because
Christianity functions imperially it is imperialist,
it's Western imperialist as all get out. So one of the
conversations that we have in my classes, is looking at the way
that Gloria on the Lula talks about Native traditions in
what's now Mexico. And it's precisely this pushback of like,
yeah, the Divine is scary and destructive and creative and
wondrous. Because if it's all things, but it's not just the
things that good call.
Ilyse: Alright, moving on, we did three things so far. What's
Megan: Fourth and final thing, lots of queer people in
your fourth thing?
particular have reclaimed and are reclaiming monstrosity and
celebrating their difference as divine. And this is more than
just deciding that like the Babadook, and mock man are
boyfriends, although they are and they are ours now. But it's
also about looking at stories of differently gendered or abled
bodies and seeing something divine in that difference. So,
again, so very many links in the show notes, but I particularly
want to shout out Elena Rose Beras, beautiful meditation on
gender, monstrosity and survival. It is called the Seam
of Skin and Scales, if you will allow me a mini storytime. She
talks about a number of different monsters in this
piece, but one of the ones that jumped out at me was her
reference of the Lilliam, the children of Lilith, who was
Adams first wife, who fled Adam, because he's not the boss of her
and she frankly wanted to be on top during sex. So she's too
much sexually she's too resistant. And her curse is that
she has hundreds of children every day and they die by
midnight, and this is why she becomes a child predator in the
Midrash about her. So Reverend Vira says, this is for the limb
because you forget that the next part after you're co opted icon,
Lilith parts ways with Adam and goes her own way is and she
begat monsters and she becomes terrifying. This is she says,
for all of them with teeth. It's time to look the monstrous in
the eye. It is time it is time to say that we are beautiful in
our fierceness and that we are our own. We are not the rejected
of what we can never be. We are what we were meant to be. We are
not pieces of holes thrown together incorrectly. We are not
mistakes. All of which is to say monsters are queer as fuck and
their transit Spock and they are divine end of list, I said, good
day.
Ilyse: it seems like we're so so glad that the nerds asked Megan
about monsters.
Megan: We really are are so happy. Yeah,
Ilyse: I would sum up I suppose that we can we can get our nerds
on their way to go I guess watch a horror movie or something.
Hey, monsters tell us about religion, the boundaries of both
religion, religiosity, communitiesm, insiders,
outsiders, how we construct our communities the violence of
constructing communities, who gets left out, who gets murdered
for being for being extra extrasized from the community
and our senses of belonging? What did I miss besides the fact
that you love horror and monsters and the The Babadook is
hella gay?
Megan: Babadook so gay and religion is the cause of and
solution to, all life's monsters.
Ilyse: All right. Megan, you definitely have homework.
Megan: So much homework, so much homework. I am actually going to
cheap though and just direct you to my syllabi because infinity
amount of resources so I've got syllabi on the meaning of death,
witches, some of my favorite monsters, just religion and
monsters and then I did a class on religion and specifically the
monstrous feminine. They are all, and I say with all
humility, awesome and just check out the syllabi and anything
that's public facing I think is hyperlinked on there so you can
get to all of it. If you can't find something. Holler at me
because I've got PDFs for days. Past that, just check out the
show notes. I am going to limit myself to one more. I want you
to check out Midnight Mass and I give you permission to fast
forward through the interminable monologues I just conceptually
really interesting the writing could do some work. But once you
watch Midnight Mass, you should check out this piece that I'm
linking to on midnight mass and real versus imagined religious
horror by a friend of the pod Matthew J kressler. For the
Atlantic, the end.
Ilyse: Awesome. I know that I only have a couple of things to
add Goodwin and I know that these actually exist on your
syllabi, so it might sound repetitive, but since we haven't
shouted them out. Let me shoutout, let me give it out
loud shout out to Sophia Rose our Arjanas book on monsters
called Muslims in the Western Imagination. Yes. And Hey, Alma
ran a great history of vampires as anti-semitic about a year ago
or so. And yeah, I'll stop there, because that's enough,
but those are those are the two that pop out to my mind. Yeah.
For now. Shout out to Evie Wolfe, Rachel Zieff and Juliana
Finch the KI-101 team who's worked make this pod accessible
and therefore awesome. Listen to both social media of all among
many other things for which we are grateful
Megan: We are, you can find Meghan, that's me on Twitter at
@NPGPhD and Elise @profirmf or the show at keepingit_101 Find
the website at keepingit_101.comFind us on
Instagram. And now tick tock. It's not something that we're
not allowed to be on tick tock. Drop us a rating or review in
your pod catcher of choice and with that peace out nerds do
your homework it's on the syllabus.
Unknown: My son, you will pay a man
to go Wolfin clang Clang, you will stand at the Bema and pray
tonight. gains at the moon damn Bay. Werewolves permits Spooky
Scary poems to become a main they've become a rule where
we'll permits Spooky Scary poems to become a main they become a
bull. All right, that
was that was great Trey okay, it's all but that's a wrap up