Watching scary movies and dressing up as monsters are long-standing Halloween traditions. For some people, that enjoyment extends beyond the October holiday as they play the hero in video games, killing “bad characters” for pure entertainment. People get pleasure out of horror and being scared — it’s an exciting and natural part of the human experience, acting in many ways as catharsis.
But for Sarah Stang, an assistant professor of game studies at Brock University, there is much more to delve into beyond the entertainment, with conversation to be had about what monsters, and enjoyment of them, has to say about the world in real life and on screen. Stang studies game culture, analyzing video games through a feminist lens specializing in gender representation. Her research pertains monsters — her own personal obsession and a crucial part of video games.
Monsters are “exciting but also terrifying, fascinating things in our society” and have been part of storytelling since ancient mythology, she said. In gaming and media, monsters represent such things as metaphors of society and social commentary on the behaviour of humans. They can be threats from the outside, such as alien invasions — Stang noted films in the 1960s about aliens were metaphors for the Cold War — or zombie apocalypse infection stories that play into fears of widespread diseases.
Monsters also often speak to one’s anxieties. “Frankenstein’s monster — the whole point of the story is he i.