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11/8/23, 12:57 PM
Topic: Table 6a: Monsters, Misfits and del Toro in depth (posts due FRI and SUN this week)
This is a graded discussion: 10 points possible
due Nov 10
Table 6a: Monsters, Misfits and del Toro in depth (posts due FRI and SUN this
week)
1
By Friday (a little more time this week to take it all in): View the film(s) and read the
instructions for the essay. (https://deanza.instructure.com/courses/32190/assignments/995760)
After reading my lecture notes about monstrosity on the essay instructions, write a one paragraph
freewrite response to get out some of your ideas. Think about how you want to answer the essay
question and get out some of your initial ideas, and once you have that pre-thinking done, review
the writing prompt again and then review what you have written and begin to develop a tentative
thesis. Share your freewriting and your tentative thesis statement by posting it to this week’s
discussion board by Friday so I can give you feedback. rough draft introduction/freewrite for your
essay and underline your tentative thesis statement and post it here to this week’s discussion board.
By Sunday: Respond to at least two classmates’s paragraphs. In your response, you must do three
things: make one observation, share one quote, and ask one question.
An observation may be a reaction you have to the thesis, a thought you have to contribute, a
connection you can make
A quote will come from ANY of the links I have been sharing each week. You will need to peruse the
articles (for the writer and for yourself) and find one you think relates directly to author’s thesis.
Share it with them with a note on how you think they could use it.
A question should invite the writer to think more about their paper. How will you explore . . . What do
you think about . . .
Search entries or author
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Deciduous Kessler (They/Them) (https://deanza.instructure.com/courses/32190/users/201919)
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11/8/23, 12:57 PM
Topic: Table 6a: Monsters, Misfits and del Toro in depth (posts due FRI and SUN this week)
Intro Draft:
Storytelling that fears and revivals the other is as old as storytelling itself. These are stories
where the other takes the form of a monster, something wicked to be despised on principle,
and this reflects and informs real world actions surrounding real world others. Guillermo del
Toro’s films reject this framing. In his films, the other, the monster, is frequently a person, while
the human, the person, is frequently a monster. His films use the two figures of the person who
is a monster and the monster who is a person to explore and embody the mechanics of bigotry
through a fantastical, yet utterly grounded lens.
Note: as I have not yet written the rest of the essay, it’s quite difficult to write an intro for it. I
don’t know exactly what I’m introducing yet.
Freewrite:
Del Toro’s works often inversely correlate outward and inward monstrosity. This can be seen as
a kind of metaphor for how ‘others’ get stigmatized, to the point that a society sees the ‘other’
as pure evil without recognizing that this view is, itself, monstrous. For example there is
cronos, where the villain stays fully human the whole time, while the hero, a far better person,
becomes transformed to resemble monstrosity. I specifically think of anti-queer bigotry, where
people are able to convince themselves so strongly that the queer is dangerous, that they fail
to recognize the harm they do by holding, professing, and enforcing this view. It’s more broadly
applicable though. Basically, del Toro decouples the image and appearance of monstrosity
from the actual threat of monstrosity. The worst characters in his films are typically fully human,
while many of his most sympathetic characters are monstrous, but still fully PEOPLE.
Sometimes however, the monstrous appearance really does correlate with a monstrous
interior, such as with the pale man in Pan’s Labyrinth. Also, though I have not yet seen it, I
know del Toro’s take on Pinocchio deconstructs the message of the original story, where
humanity is this thing to be aspired to. The happier ending is that Pinocchio gets to be himself,
not that he gets to be turned human. The film rejects the concept that being a ‘real boy’ is
actually something to aspire to. Its easy to read this as allegorical for real world ‘others’
refusing to assimilate in search of acceptance, and for how they shouldn’t need to.
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