"what if the monsters were just women, and the real evil belonged to those who labeled them monstrous?"
Well, yes. A Seasian friend and I have posited that as the weaker, less powerful, more often brutalised sex, at all strata of society, it makes sense that traumatised women would come back as vengeful beings to haunt our collective psyches.
Would love to read this if you have written this up. The same psychological interpretation could be applied to another kind of monster, which I'm also studying through a Girardian lens. There are black giant monsters across Southeast Asia (Agta and Kapre in PH and according to AI Genderuwo in Indonesia and Hantu Raya in Malaysia). Through the same process, this might be the mythologizing of the killings of Orang Asli / Negritos (size instead of flying ability). They were in the region 40,000 years ago while Austronesian were only here 4,000 years ago according to genetic studies. Yet, the region is dominated by Austronesians in terms of population. The same displacement happened of kingless foragers and hunter-gatherers by chiefdoms all over the world. It appears that in Taiwan there's a festival that commemorates this. Saisiyat paSta’ay: a biennial ritual of apology/appeasement for the spirits of the Ta’ay, remembered as a short dark-skinned people killed by the Saisiyat.
"what if the monsters were just women, and the real evil belonged to those who labeled them monstrous?"
Well, yes. A Seasian friend and I have posited that as the weaker, less powerful, more often brutalised sex, at all strata of society, it makes sense that traumatised women would come back as vengeful beings to haunt our collective psyches.
Would love to read this if you have written this up. The same psychological interpretation could be applied to another kind of monster, which I'm also studying through a Girardian lens. There are black giant monsters across Southeast Asia (Agta and Kapre in PH and according to AI Genderuwo in Indonesia and Hantu Raya in Malaysia). Through the same process, this might be the mythologizing of the killings of Orang Asli / Negritos (size instead of flying ability). They were in the region 40,000 years ago while Austronesian were only here 4,000 years ago according to genetic studies. Yet, the region is dominated by Austronesians in terms of population. The same displacement happened of kingless foragers and hunter-gatherers by chiefdoms all over the world. It appears that in Taiwan there's a festival that commemorates this. Saisiyat paSta’ay: a biennial ritual of apology/appeasement for the spirits of the Ta’ay, remembered as a short dark-skinned people killed by the Saisiyat.