The Cultural Desires and Exploitation of Monstrosity in Semiotics
The field of semiotic exists because of the realization that society has a desire to create and produce signs because it serves as an important aspect and purpose to life. We are capable of performing semiosis and representation to demonstrate the knowledge in which we come to understand the world, and conversely, it is through the came process that the world becomes familiar with the culture in which we inhabit. Although signification is bounded by the individual's signifying order, it is however evident that cultural monsters exists very vividly across time and space, and is deserving in our examination of the purposes in which allows them to exist. The term monster, in itself is a name we produce by convention. Nothing is objective in the definition of this term because it is through highly connotative and annotative levels that we come to identify and categorize what is worthy of are label as being monstrous.
John Van Eyssen as Harker in the 1958 adaptation o...
English: The Fog at Slains. This is the famous Sla...
English: Cliffs South of Slains Castle. The castle...It is impossible to address a meaning to monstrosity, but through semiotics we are able to understand both the signified and signification of monstrosity. Like all cultural conventions, monsters exist because we allow them to exist; that is, they are necessary in communication within ourselves. Because culture governs and shapes the way in which we behave, monstrosity allows for a creation of identity to ourselves by separating our existence from those that do not fit within the societal rules of culture. That is the the underlying purpose to the desire of monstrosity.
Our purpose here is not to only explore the monsters in which we use, but rather how they are used. It is a cultural need to manifest social order and codes of behaviour, therefore monstrosity is the deviance to our norm. Through various narratives of...