Lock-Ness! at the Disco #22: The Monster Episode

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Lock-Ness! at the Disco #22:

Monster Hunters, take note: You don’t have to search too far and too wide to discover a monster. They’re everywhere and amongst us and within us. Sometimes what has been perceived as monstrous is actually an unconventional mode of humanity worth celebrating and saving. And other times, these monsters need to be faced and fought and vanquished for our own safety and wellbeing and survival. When fighting monsters, remember: All monsters are human, honey – and they’re of our world, not beyond it. Sometimes that’s for the better, and other times not. It’s all about balance.

As cheerful German nihilist Werner Herzog once said, “What would an ocean be without a monster lurking in the dark? It would be like sleep without dreams…” 

Quite. 

TRACK ONE: “Human Fly” – The Cramps

*in spooky voice* Good evening – come in, get comfortable, and let your monstrous side out, honey! I’m spooky girl Amy Roberts and you’re listening to episode #22 of Comics Youth Radio presents Lockdown! at the Disco and this is The Monster Episode where we’ll be dissecting what a monster truly is – and by the same account, what a human really is too? As the Tories prove time and time again, all monsters are human.

And remember, if you work in the creative industries like we do, then you can always retrain as a Tory and make billions of pounds by simply biting the heads off the poor and feasting on the miserable, gory scraps of an impoverished country. Which is where we’re at right now, innit? And there are few things scarier…

ANYWAY! This episode is part of our Halloween Spook-Tacular this year and as ever it has been completely produced and curated with the much appreciated help of our fabulous and amazing Safe Spaces squad here at Comics Youth.

If you’re new to all this and don’t have a clue what I’m on about, Comics Youth is a Liverpool based youth organisation made by and for marginalised young people and we do a whole bunch of creative workshops and work where make things like zines, comic books, and blog posts and develop artwork, poetry, activism and other such valuable creative tools with which to fight back against this very very not so nice or fair world – to put it politely.

And remember – the people in power might hate the arts and not see the value in it, but Comics Youth does and always will. If you’re a creative of any age feeling worn down and a devalued by the work of this government, please keep tight hold of your spirit and your skills – we need the arts and we need you more than ever. Keep on creating and don’t let them dull your voice – we will always find ways to platform and exhibit it.

Now, this is our usual content disclaimer for the episode that while every effort is made to keep naughty, inappropriate language out of this podcast that occasionally some words do slip through in the odd song here or there, so may not be suitable for some younger listeners and parental discretion is advised.

But now, let’s get a monster groove on the go. This is “Dracula’s Wedding” by OutKast feat. Kelis.

TRACK TWO: “Dracula’s Wedding” – OutKast feat. Kelis
TRACK THREE: “She Wolf” – Shakira

That was “She Wolf” by Shakira, Shakira – so nice they named her twice. And that might be the greatest pop song ever written about lycanthropy – I strongly urge everyone to watch the music video on YouTube because it’s been 84 years and I’m still trying to contort my body in the same way that Shakira does in that video.

Clearly, me and Shakira were not born of the same stardust. Which is heartbreaking, really.

To get away from my own personal existential crisis of not being even remotely close to Shakira’s level of goddess, I wanna talk about monsters as metaphors. Now, I know for a fact that I go on about Buffy the Vampire Slayer far far far too much – in life and on this podcast – BUT, I really credit Buffy as being one of the first narratives that really made me understand and realise the significance and power of using monsters as metaphors.

In that show, of course, a variety of monsters are used to symbolise some of the various challenges not just of growing up, and puberty, and going to school – but also just of the various fights that we all have to face in our everyday lives.

You know, the very fact that Buffy’s high school is located on a literal gateway to hell symbolises a great deal of how I think many teenagers feel about their own school and experiences there.

But once I understood that part of the show, it really opened my eyes and my curiosity to how monsters have symbolised various things throughout literary history. For instance, there’s been much literary analysis done on the fact that vampires were partly written to symbolise how the rich – for generation after generation – continue to feed on the poor.

There’s also notoriously a great deal of academia done on the symbolism of zombies, particularly in something like George A. Romero’s Living Dead movies in which hoards of zombies are said to symbolise societal unrest and a culture of mindless, subservience where people can no longer think for themselves. Romero infamously denied that was ever any such subtext to any of his films, but the symbolism is too rich and overt to argue against.

Night of the Living Dead, for instance, has some astounding commentary about the rising class conflicts and still prevalent racism of the late 60’s while Dawn of the Dead – set completely within a shopping mall full of the shuffling undead – has a lot to say about the rising consumerist and new capitalist dawn of the late 70’s in the United States. And it actually made some prescient statements about that prior to the booming mall culture and mass consumerism of the 80s.

Basically, there’s a lot to sink your tooth into when it comes to horror. Horror narratives aren’t just for scares most of the time – the best horror makes profound statements about the monsters within our society, and sometimes within ourselves too.

So, next time you watch a scary movie, have a think about what the monster may represent beneath the scares and the costume. Dig deep and give your brain a wiggle.

And now, we’re gonna howl at the moon a little more and scratch our hairy heads about the symbolism of the werewolf with this treat of a tune requested by Lucas M who says that he loves it because his dad has always played it on guitar and got the rest of the family to sing the howls on it with him. This is Warren Zevon with “Werewolves of London”:

TRACK FOUR: “Werewolves of London” – Warren Zevon
TRACK FIVE: “Tokyo (Vampires & Wolves)” – The Wombats

That was The Wombats with “Tokyo (Vampires & Wolves)” a song where bad feelings and memories from the past manifest themselves as creatures of the night. And I really wanna swing back to the idea of monsters as metaphor too because werewolves are also very interesting monsters in terms of what they may symbolise.

There are a fair few werewolf stories, for instance, which fixate on the idea of the teenage werewolf. So films like Ginger Snaps, The Company of Wolves, and even on a ridiculously literal level with Teen Wolf, where puberty is made into this very obvious physical change.

In Ginger Snaps, which in our opinion is one of the greatest werewolf movies ever made, menstruation manifests as lycanthropy with a teenage girl experiencing the most extreme PMS ever encountered when she’s bitten by a werewolf.

But there’s also something very interesting about how werewolves are controlled by the lunar cycle – and naturally that’s something that works very well in Ginger Snaps when we think about the links between moon phases and menstrual cycles.

There’s been a lot of dissections exploring the meaning of the moon in relation to the werewolf with some horror and literary academics arguing that such stories are about humans in their most primal, natural state: That perhaps we’re all a type of monster deep down. Meanwhile, others have argued that the idea of werewolves being controlled by the moon is actually owes a great deal to old fashioned ideas about mental health.

After all, the word lunacy is derived from lunar, the moon. The suggestion being that the werewolf is a manifestation of mental illness – and of the unkempt, wild and prowling victims of mental illness. Which is not very nice, really. For those of us with mental health issues and mental ill-health, we can safely say that we’re not exactly howling at the moon and baring our teeth at passers by just cos we’re feeling anxious or low.

But it’s interesting nonetheless – and these depictions reveal a very interesting trajectory in terms of how things like puberty, the human condition, and mental health have been viewed by society throughout history.

And on that note, this is Cat Power with “Werewolf”:

TRACK SIX: “Werewolf” – Cat Power
TRACK SEVEN: “Dark Hours” – Ainsley Farrell

That was wonderful “Dark Hours” by Ainsley Farrell, and it was requested by Bell who says that it’s ‘a love song from the perspective of a queer vampire’. Which we stan – for all the obvious reasons.

If you’re looking for some queer-friendly, trans-inclusive feminist dissections of horror and of monsters then we heartily recommend the podcast The Faculty of Horror – in which two very sassy, super smart Canadian academic women break down a different horror movie each month by analysing its subtext and core text.

And if you’re looking for something to read then Sady Doyle’s phenomenal book, ‘Dead Blondes + Bad Mothers: Monstrosity, Patriarchy, and the Fear of Female Power’ is an awesome dissection of modern horror movie tropes. It’s very funny as well as being super smart, and it’s also extremely queer friendly and trans-inclusive.

But now, to the important stuff. We’re here today to ask What is The Monster Mash? In a couple of the Safe Spaces sessions we do in our HQ every Saturday at 3pm, we’ve been doing investigations into what in the heck The Monster Mash actually is.

Because if you really listen to the song, it’s deeply unclear as to what it is – and we’ve got a whole wall full of red string and post it notes and pictures of ghouls with random words and question marks around them in exploration of this question.

Because, on the surface The Monster Mash sounds like it’s about a dance. One that all the monsters do together. And we’ve all discussed how The Monster Mash could be a song like The Macarena or Saturday Night, say, in which a song is about a dance and exists solely to make the listener do the dance. 

But when we delved deeper into the maddening lyrics of the song, we discovered that it’s not chattin’ much about no dancing – oh no. The Monster Mash is hiding some wild mysteries and acts of pure corruption and conspiracy, and we’re gonna get into them a little while after we’ve listened to the track…this is Bobby Pickett & The Crypt-Kickers with “The Monster Mash”:

TRACK EIGHT: “Monster Mash” – Bobby “Boris” Pickett & The Crpt-Kickers
TRACK NINE: “Dragula” – Rob Zombie

That was”Dragula” by Mr. Robert Zombie and it was requested by Raf – cheers for the great tune, pal!

And now we’re swinging back to our dissection of The Monster Mash – the scariest line of which, by the way, is this very troubling couple of lines which state, “For you, the living, this mash was meant too/ When you get to my door, tell them Boris sent you”.

No thanks. Don’t want none of what Boris is selling, thank you very much.

We were also very troubled by the suspect guest list for this party, which includes all the usual monsters – the Wolf Man’s there, some random zombies have gatecrashed by the sounds of it, but some reason Dracula is here – with his son.

Now, I dunno – I haven’t heard about Dracula ever having a son, firstly. Secondly, if you’re to party Drac, don’t be palming your kid off on someone else to look after if you’re here for a kick off.

And he is – what’s really strange about the Monster Mash, is that it’s revealed in the middle of the song that Dracula – who, based on these lyrics, has arrived still encased in his coffin which is diva behaviour if I’ve ever heard it – turns up to this party with his son where he comes out of his coffin, quote ‘troubled by just one thing’ end quote – and he opens the lid to his coffin, shakes his fist, and asks, “Whatever happened to my Transylvania twist?” and the band – The Crypt-Kickers – tell him, It’s now the mash, it’s now the Monster Mash.

So what we’re listening to is a song in which Dracula attends a party in which only one song gets played on a maddening loop, and he attends this party specifically to attack this song because it’s ripped off his song – The Transylvanian Twist.

He’s fumin! And the band are just like, Nah, it’s all good fam. And they solve it by making Dracula a member of the band. Which I don’t think is how copyright infringement is solved – and quite frankly, I reckon my boy Drac was still fumin and likely wrecked that party before he left.

And they probably had to slam his coffin shut and wheel him out to get rid of him.

So there you go. That was The Monster Mash. And I think we’ll all sleep better for knowing the truth about it now.

This is “My Beloved Monster” by Eels and it was requested by Anna.

TRACK TEN: “My Beloved Monster” – Eels
TRACK ELEVEN: “Monster” – Paramore

That was “Monster” by Paramore and my lovely Saturday Safe Spaces pal and co-worker Kay Dale requested that one and reminded me that allegedly she asked for it at the start of October and I said no because it was on the soundtrack to Michael Bay’s Transfromers – that doesn’t sound like something I’d do. I think you’re mistaken Kay.

Before that we had Eels with “My Beloved Monster” which Anna asked for and then felt bad about asking for it because it’s from one of the Shrek soundtracks and she doesn’t want to be known as some Shrek superfan – just own it, girl. You love Shrek. Don’t feel no shame. Embrace that Shrek love. Live it. Love it.

And that brings us to the end of our Monster Episode. Next week, we’re doing our Horror Movie special and we want to know what the scariest film you’ve ever seen is and why, and we’re also looking for your fave songs from horror movies. These can be theme tunes like the theme from Rosemary’s Baby or The Exorcist – both of which continue to haunt me to this day – or they could be just really great songs that have been appeared in horror films such as Nick Cave’s “Red Right Hand” from the Scream films or the Tethered remix of “I Got 5 On It” from Jordan Peele’s Us.

Let me know what you want and send me your spooks via Amy@comicsyouth.co.uk.

Until then, remember: Everything is not cool, but it can be. Stay safe, stay sassy, and my goodness stay monstrous when you need to, honey. This is “Bark at the Moon” by Ozzy Osbourne and it was requested by Tom and this is Amy Roberts signing off until next time – byeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

TRACK TWELVE: “Bark at the Moon” – Ozzy Osbourne