With its upcoming release in just two days, American Horror Story: Freak Show, is all over social media. The show has released multiple teaser trailers and has given us a preview of the several “freaks” that will be featured on the show. As the title states, the season will center around a freak show.

After looking into this season, I saw that the title of the first episode will be “Monsters Among Us.” This immediately caught my attention because a question arose in my head, “Are Freaks Monsters?”

The freaks in the show all have some sort of biological impurity. One freak is a conjoined twin, while another is a bearded lady. To a certain extent, these freaks are almost like Carroll’s fusion monsters. They are kind of combinations of categorically distinct beings. Others simply have a deformity of some sort. So are these freaks really monsters or they simply impure humans? A better question is then, is an impure human a monster? Should we simply focus on one’s physical appearance, or must we be able to determine their state of mind in order to call them monsters?

Hopefully the show will be able to answer these questions. We will learn about the different backgrounds of these freaks and maybe if we are able to understand them better, we will be able to judge whether or not they are monsters. Is it possible that all these freaks are simply hideous on the outside but beautiful on the inside? Or maybe these freaks turned into monsters because of constantly being ostracized by other humans. The only way to truly find out is by watching the show and finding out some more about the freaks.

Freak shows have always seemed really interesting to me. Since the first time that I have heard about freak shows and have seen them in movies, I had always wished to go to a real freak show. Although I may never see one, I am still delighted with the fact that this show is coming out and hopefully it will have a little twist to it as well.

As I was sitting in my Speech Communications class, the teacher asked “How many of you know how to kill a vampire?” Now it may be out of context but the professor was explaining a person’s “frame of reference” and wanted to show how many of us were knowledgeable about a certain topic. So as a random example, he asked about vampires. Personally, I am a fan of all of these different monsters and I knew the answer but what surprised me is that the whole class raised their hand with the exception of two people.

It came to my attention at this point that something as crazy as knowing how to kill a vampire is almost like common sense. This really shows us how closely monsters like vampires have been integrated into our culture. Every vampire movie that will come out or has come out in the past few years will not have to explain why a wooden stake in the heart would kill a vampire but will just include that since everyone knows that’s the only way to kill a vampire. Similarly, we know that in order to kill a werewolf, one needs to shoot him with a silver bullet.

It is clear that in today’s society we have a wide range of shows, cartoons, and movies that are based on monsters like vampires and they all seem to follow one particular model that was illustrated in the movie Dracula. This is the basic and “ideal” image that any regular person living in the United States has in their mind when they think of vampires. Noel Carroll uses vampires in his examples of fusion monsters and he too uses the Dracula model when he refers to them. According to his definition, a monster must be threatening and impure and surely this common Dracula model satisfies both conditions. The good thing though, is that if one of these threatening vampires try to suck our blood, we all know how to kill them.

As far as I can remember I have always found the supernatural very entertaining. The idea of  being something other than a human such as monster always seemed fascinating. Many monsters have superhuman abilities that can sometimes be useful for humans such as superhuman strength or speed or even walking through walls (always wanted to walk through walls).

Even though there were many movies and shows that came out during my childhood that including all of these monsters, they never caught my attention like the show “Supernatural.” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supernatural_(U.S._TV_series)) The show follows two brothers that hunt the supernatural after their mother gets killed by one of the creatures. What’s great about the show is that it includes a lot of historical and biblical background information on each of the creatures. This allows the viewer to forget that this is a fictional show and believe in the supernatural.

The show includes a variety of monsters and creatures including demons, ghosts, werewolves, vampires, shapeshifters, and even angels. Now you might be wondering why angels are on the list, but if you watch the show you’ll be able to see how even the most innocent and highly praised immortals are monsters as well. They too kill and harm humans in the show, which makes them no different from the other monsters. The monsters also take human bodies as vessels in order to fit in with all the humans because their natural form is gruesome and horrific. They will be immediately identified as outcasts and be shunned or killed. The show also gives each monster a story which is basically the “justification” for their actions. Despite the fact that these creatures are not humans, they all have the same problems that humans do which allows us to relate to them. And when they go about getting revenge, it makes us wonder whether we would react the same way and if that would make us monsters as well. The brothers might feel sympathetic towards some of the monsters but know that they still have to kill each and every one of them because they are still dangerous to the community. This makes me wonder sometimes, if we act like monsters once or twice in our lives and we can obviously do it again without being able to control it, and we are sometimes forgiven, shouldn’t we have some pity on the monsters? After all, most of these monsters become monsters because of role of societal values and morals and if we see something ugly and grotesque we simply turn it away; but if we simply accept these monsters and love them, and maybe they won’t be so cruel and will actually be able to coexist with us.