mr magorium's opera emporium

“The word “monster” comes from the Latin “monstrum”, “that which is shown forth or revealed.” The same root also appears in the English word “demonstrate” and several less common words (such as “remonstrance”) that share the same sense of revealing, disclosing or displaying. In the original sense of the word, a monster is a revelation, something shown forth. This may seem worlds away from the usual modern meaning of the word “monster” - a strange, frightening, and supposedly mythical creature - but here, as elsewhere in the realm of monsters, appearances deceive. Certainly monsters are strange, at least to those raised in modern ways of approaching the world. […] The association between monsters and terror, too, has practical relevance, even when the creatures we call monsters fear us far more than we fear them. The myth, the terror and the strangeness all have their roots in the nature of the realm of monsters and the monstrous - a world of revelations where the hidden and the unknown show furtive glimpses of themselves. If we pay attention to them, monsters do have something to reveal. They show us the reality of the impossible, or of those things that we label impossible; they point out that the world we think we think we live in and the world we actually inhabit may not be the same place at all.”

“This is also the message of classic horror: if the monster learns appropriate restraint, it becomes an angel.”

peril my beloved