ABSTRACT
With this chapter I begin to examine the use of trauma themes in popular culture. Monsters are an obvious metaphor for trauma in that people need ways to represent their traumas, and perhaps the perpetrators of those traumas, to themselves and others, especially if they are not able to articulate their trauma in literal terms. However, I argue that the monsters of popular culture tend to represent the fears and anxieties of the culture writ large, and those monsters are likely to have a different look and feel than some which represent the fears and anxieties of real persons who have suffered traumas. Popular culture monsters are likely to represent fears of social institutions run amok (capitalism, for instance), or anxieties about the dissolution of (proper) boundaries to social identity categories (such as proper femininity). Trauma-generated monsters, however, are often representations of more literal fears of personal annihilation.
