Monstrosity and Global Crisis in Transnational Film, Media and Literature

Monsters have always rampant border crossers, from Dracula’s journey from Romania to Whitby, to the rampaging monsters of Godzilla movies across global cities. This volume studies how their transnationality reflects an era of global crisis. Monstrosity has long been explored in a number of ways that connect gender, sexuality, class, race, nationality and other forms of otherness with depictions of monsters or monstrosity. This book, however, explores cultural flow as it relates to the construction of a transnational genre, by both producers and audiences. It also examines the ramifications of representations of monstrosity in socio-political terms as they relate to a tumultuous era of global crises. This era has of course been amplified and altered by the Covid pandemic, which frames much of the content of this collection. This ongoing crisis imbues the discourses of monstrosity, global catastrophe and societal and human vulnerability with its significant expression in artistic terms.