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Monsters University and the importance of failure in pop culture

When losing is the only way to grow

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We have always been obsessed with winning when it comes to our pop culture. Good defeats evil, true love triumphs in the end and the plucky underdog will almost always pull through. Almost all adversity can be overcome in around 90 minutes, unless you're setting up the sequel.

Nobody has perfected the art of the success story better than Disney. If you set your heart to something and believe in it enough, their films tell us, you will succeed. Mulan saved China against all odds. Milo made his way to Atlantis despite working in a boiler room, and Ratatouille's Remmy became a chef. If you're a good person, you win. Even Simba overcame his sense of shame and inadequacy to ultimately become king.

While these stories are lovely and heart-warming, they also place an unrealistic emphasis on the importance of succeeding. Disney presents success as the one, true, correct goal in life. The underlying belief for so many of Disney's films is that if you just believe, then things will all fall into place. We've all been primed to so readily expect success, for a lot of people failure is seen as the unequivocal ‘bad ending.'

Why this is an issue

Stories about failure are important because they allows us to understand and see the bigger picture when it comes to our own mistakes. "Life goes on" can be one of pop culture's most powerful messages, and yet it's also one of its most underused.

There is one film in Disney's repertoire that goes entirely against these common themes, however: Monsters University.

Monsters University is all about personal failure, and how it doesn't have to be the worst possible outcome. It could be one of the most interesting Disney films to date for this reason, despite it often being disregarded as nothing more than a silly prequel to Monsters, Inc.

It also has personal meaning. Monster's University pulled me through my first, and worst, year of university. It did that simply by telling me that life will go on, even if I fail.

University started well for me; I was on an exciting course with good job prospects. I had friends and was adapting well to life in further education.

I then started drifting more and more from my peers as the year went on. The assignments were piling up, and the pressure of "making the most" of my time at University — clubbing, drinking, partying — became more and more overbearing to the point where I found it difficult to attend lectures, make new friends or muster up any sort of interest in what I was learning. By halfway through the second semester, I was the most miserable I have ever been in my entire life.

Everyone else seemed to have made their own groups of friends and were actively participating in "the University lifestyle," and there I was feeling completely useless and cut off from that idealized experience. I barely attended classes, was often needlessly aggressive to people when I deigned to show up  and considered dropping out every single day.

People treat other people badly when they don't like themselves, and I didn't like myself. It was a brutal cycle.

I watched a lot of Disney films to cheer myself up during the summer break. They were colorful, cheerful, had lovely music and they did a good job of taking my mind off of the coming academic year. Eventually, I got around to re-watching Monsters University , and I was alarmed at how many similarities there were in it to my own life. It also became very clear how rarely this sort of story is told.

Monsters University follows Mike Wazowski as he attends the titular Monsters University to learn how to become a scarer. Scarers are valued highly, and it's a competitive career in the Monster world. You're tasked with scaring human children for their "scream energy."

Usually, the role is left to the creepiest or toughest looking monsters, and so Mike, the little, green cyclops, naturally struggles with fitting in. After being constantly told he "doesn't belong," Mike takes it upon himself to prove to the world that he doesn't have to be big or loud to be a good scarer, he just has to "want it more than anybody."

This is where Monsters University takes a sharp turn from standard Disney fare, as Mike invades the human world in a bid to prove he is scary enough - putting himself and the rest of the monste world at risk of discovery. This is enough to result in him getting expelled from Monsters University and dashes all of his dreams of ever becoming a scarer.

Despite him "wanting it more than anybody," fighting against all the odds to get back into the scaring program, and despite pulling off the biggest scare in Monster history in the climax of the film, Mike ends up being work partners with his new best friend, Sulley. While Sulley goes on to be one of the best scarers to have ever lived, Mike never, ever realises his initial dream. He fails. Wanting it more than everyone else just wasn't enough.

And yet, ultimately, he's still happy. Monsters, Inc. shows that Mike enjoys and is respected in his job and has healthy relationships with his best friend Sulley and girlfriend Celia. Through the entirety of Monsters, Inc., Mike is the more positive, upbeat character, and never shows a hint of disdain or jealousy towards Sulley for having his dream job.

Despite everything that happened to him in the prequel, Mike losing isn't the "bad ending" of Monster's University . It's a course correction. It's a rare moment in pop culture where losing is met with grace and dignity, and we see what happens next. And that next step can be as positive as you want to make it, even if your dreams don't always come true.

This is why stories about failure are more important than the stories about success. Particularly in Disney films, success is chalked up to fate or "the power of love," which, for as sweet as they sound, do not work in the real world.  People can become disillusioned with "and they lived happily ever after" when the road to it seems so based on unrealistic luck. I thought it was just a matter of sticking with my present plan, and of wanting it enough. If I beat my head against the wall long enough, I could wear through it, even though that path was making me miserable.

This realization was the spark I needed to make some changes. I quit the course I was so unhappy with and decided to start all over again. I had failed. The time was ultimately "wasted" in the grand scheme of things, but instead of becoming bitter I saw it as a necessary step to learning more about myself. I'm chugging along in my own way, and it's what works for me. It's different to what I expected going into University, but it's by no means a bad ending.

Mike, and Monsters University , taught me that you can try your absolute hardest at something and still not be cut out for it. We both failed and ended up just fine, and that's the sort of story that needs to be told more.

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If you were worried that animation giant Pixar was dipping into the same old wells too often (" Toy Story 3 ," " Cars 2 ," et al), the announcement of a prequel to their 2001 hit " Monsters, Inc. " might have given you pause. Luckily, the result is more than reassuring. "Monsters University", which pictures Billy Crystal's one-eyed goblin Mike and John Goodman's fuzzy blue scare-master Sully as students attending Scare U, is true to the spirit of the original film, "Monsters Inc.", and matches its tone. But it never seems content to turn over old ground.

The tale begins with a brief prologue establishing Mike as a young monster. He's not what you'd call a natural. He's a model student, one of those grinds who gets good grades but lacks that spark that marks the special talents. Sully, the big blue party animal Mike meets at college, is the opposite. He's the son of a family acclaimed for its multi-generational scaring ability, coasting through life on his name. But Sully's one of those guys for whom success only seems to come easily. When Mike and Sully try to enter the school's "Scare Program" by winning the annual campus scaring competition — to avoid getting roped into a "boring" career track, such as manufacturing scream canisters — their strengths and weaknesses become clear. Mike wants to be an all-time champion scarer the way a tiny, chubby kid wants to be in the NBA; there's hope for him, but not in the way that he thinks. Sully is Mike's opposite. He's lazy and a smart-aleck. He doesn't have as much imagination as some of his classmates assume, and he's so terrified of failure that he's turned underachieving into a kind of self-protective performance art. (The first time Mike meets him, Sully shambles into a class that's already in progress, sans pencil or paper.)

You'll notice that I've already said quite a bit about the two main characters, and I haven't even gotten to a summary of the plot yet. That's because Sully and Mike are such richly-drawn individuals, so fully imagined in terms of psychology, body language and vocal performance, that they feel more "real" than the live-action heroes in almost any current summer blockbuster you can name. This is a specific Pixar talent, and for all the goodwill that the company has generated over the years, they still don't get enough credit for it. Sully's thinner in this film than he was in the first one, and he has the jockish, meathead energy of the young Nick Nolte . Look at how he slouches semi-sideways in classroom desk chairs, or tilts his strong jaw while half-listening, like a man (er, monster) who was told as a child that he had a nice face and never forgot it. Look at Mike's schlumpy posture, his permanent-wedgie walk, and how he shrugs as if warding off blows that it hasn't occurred to anyone to deliver yet. These touches and others are marvelous, and they go a long way toward making the central relationship equal to, yet different from, Mike and Sully's friendship in "Monsters Inc."

The supporting players are just as vivid. Like characters in a classic Preston Sturges or Ernst Lubitsch comedy, they enter the film as caricatures and emerge as fully-formed individuals, the sorts of people (monsters!) that you'd remember fondly if you knew them in life. The members of Oozma Kappa, the uncoolest fraternity on campus — the only one that will take Mike and Sully — are a ragtag bunch, the classic underdogs of sports movie cliche, but they're physically bizarre, a gaggle of bouncy doodles. There's a seemingly permanent student with an upside-down bat wing for a mustache, a portly salesman who's older than some of the teachers. There's a spazzy goofball who's basically a pair of legs plus a face (he sure can breakdance, though). There's a two-headed fellow whose heads argue with one another (one head wants to be a dance major, the other doesn't). There's an entitled jock fraternity that tries to recruit Sully, with a self-regarding leader whose puffed-up chest and melon head dwarf his stick legs, and a super-competitive sorority full of giggly monsters who dress in pink and seem chirpy and harmless until you see their eyes light up with a hellish intensity that would frighten Medusa herself.

Lording it over everyone is the dragon-winged, centipede-bodied Dean Hardscrabble ( Helen Mirren , in one of the best cartoon voice performances I've heard). She's a founding mother of Monsters University who designed the Scare Program and the scaring contest, which unfolds over several days in a variety of menacing and colorful settings. Hardscrabble seems to have been modeled on John Houseman in " The Paper Chase ." She's an imperious, intimidating master instructor who brooks no fools, but she pays such close attention to every student's progress that deep down you know that her withering putdowns are a form of toughlove, a way of testing her charges and making sure they have thick skins, or hides, or scales.

"Monsters University" is the sort of film that's easy to undervalue. It's not deep, nor is it trying to be, but its goals are numerous and varied, and it achieves every of them with grace. If you've ever seen a sports picture, you know how things have to go, and the movie hits every beat you'd expect; but it never arrives via the most obvious route, and it's so attuned to the way modern audiences watch genre films that there are times when it seems to anticipate our objections and tease them out so that it can answer them later, to our satisfaction and delight. (When a moment feels a bit off, there's a reason for its off-ness.)

The script is filled with lines that are quotable not just because they're funny (though many are) but because they're wise, such as Mike telling Sully, during an inspirational trip to watch the professionals at Monsters Incorporated, "The best scarers use their differences to their advantage," and Mike's follow-up, a reaction to watching a legendary and now very old scaremaster do his thing, "He doesn't have the speed anymore, but his technique is flawless." My former colleague Manohla Dargis was right to object to Pixar's decision to tell yet another guy-centric story after releasing the quietly revolutionary " Brave " — but considering the warmth and intelligence radiating from every frame of this film, it's far from a dealbreaker. There's a decency and lightness of spirit to "Monsters University" which, in a time of tediously "dark" and "gritty" entertainment, is as bracing as a cannonball-dive into a pool on a hot summer's day.

Never do you get the sense that director Dan Scanlon , his cowriters, his voice cast, or his army of animators are putting our affection for the first film in the place of true creativity. Every moment contains five or six things worth admiring: a great line, a shameless but expertly timed sight gag, a swarm of marginal details, or a composition or camera move that connects the picture with the three genres it most often invokes, the coming-of-age tale, the campus comedy, and the sports picture. Randy Newman's drumline-saturated score recalls Elmer Bernstein's classic work on "Animal House" and " Stripes ", but so subtly that it takes a moment to register what he's doing. There are times when the film is juggling so many different kinds of pleasure simultaneously that when it adds one more unexpectedly perfect touch, the whole scene seems to erupt like a string of firecrackers. (My favorite occurs during a wild infiltration-and-escape sequence, when a character you'd never expect to say such a thing shrieks, " I can't go back to jail !")

That the film may also teach children, and perhaps remind grownups, what it truly means to be honest, honorable, loyal and fair is a bonus, but to my mind a big one. When the characters take ethical shortcuts, they're punished in ways that seem quite reasonable, provided they get caught. If they don't get caught, their consciences do the punishing for them -- and the characters that obviously don't have consciences are the ones that the movie treats most harshly. The film's lessons are never self-congratulatory, and they're always backed by real empathy for human — or in this case, monstrous — frailties.

In its own sweetly laid-back way, this is perfect family entertainment. Pixar may not have the speed anymore, but its technique is flawless.

Matt Zoller Seitz

Matt Zoller Seitz is the Editor at Large of RogerEbert.com, TV critic for New York Magazine and Vulture.com, and a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in criticism.

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Film credits.

Monsters University (2013)

110 minutes

Steve Buscemi as Randall Boggs (voice)

Jennifer Tilly as Celia Mae (voice)

John Goodman as James P. "Sulley" Sullivan (voice)

Billy Crystal as Michael "Mike" Wazowski (voice)

Helen Mirren as Dean Hardscrabble (voice)

Charlie Day as Art (voice)

Alfred Molina as Professor Knight (voice)

Frank Oz as Fungus (voice)

• Dan Scanlon
• Pete Docter
• Andrew Stanton

Original Music Composer

• Randy Newman

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Research essay: a ‘monster’ and its humanity.

Professor of English Susan J. Wolfson is the editor of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein: A Longman Cultural Edition and co-editor, with Ronald Levao, of The Annotated Frankenstein.  

Published in January 1818, Frankenstein: or, The Modern Prometheus has never been out of print or out of cultural reference. “Facebook’s Frankenstein Moment: A Creature That Defies Technology’s Safeguards” was the headline on a New York Times business story Sept. 22 — 200 years on. The trope needed no footnote, although Kevin Roose’s gloss — “the scientist Victor Frankenstein realizes that his cobbled-together creature has gone rogue” — could use some adjustment: The Creature “goes rogue” only after having been abandoned and then abused by almost everyone, first and foremost that undergraduate scientist. Facebook creator Mark Zuckerberg and CEO Sheryl Sandberg, attending to profits, did not anticipate the rogue consequences: a Frankenberg making. 

The original Frankenstein told a terrific tale, tapping the idealism in the new sciences of its own age, while registering the throb of misgivings and terrors. The 1818 novel appeared anonymously by a down-market press (Princeton owns one of only 500 copies). It was a 19-year-old’s debut in print. The novelist proudly signed herself “Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley” when it was reissued in 1823, in sync with a stage concoction at London’s Royal Opera House in August. That debut ran for nearly 40 nights; it was staged by the Princeton University Players in May 2017. 

In a seminar that I taught on Frankenstein in various contexts at Princeton in the fall of 2016 — just weeks after the 200th anniversary of its conception in a nightmare visited on (then) Mary Godwin in June 1816 — we had much to consider. One subject was the rogue uses and consequences of genomic science of the 21st century. Another was the election season — in which “Frankenstein” was a touchstone in the media opinions and parodies. Students from sciences, computer technology, literature, arts, and humanities made our seminar seem like a mini-university. Learning from each other, we pondered complexities and perplexities: literary, social, scientific, aesthetic, and ethical. If you haven’t read Frankenstein (many, myself included, found the tale first on film), it’s worth your time. 

READ MORE  PAW Goes to the Movies: ‘Victor Frankenstein,’ with Professor Susan Wolfson

Scarcely a month goes by without some development earning the prefix Franken-, a near default for anxieties about or satires of new events. The dark brilliance of Frankenstein is both to expose “monstrosity” in the normal and, conversely, to humanize what might seem monstrously “other.” When Shelley conceived Frankenstein, Europe was scarred by a long war, concluding on Waterloo fields in May 1815. “Monster” was a ready label for any enemy. Young Frankenstein begins his university studies in 1789, the year of the French Revolution. In 1790, Edmund Burke’s international best-selling Reflections on the French Revolution recoiled at the new government as a “monster of a state,” with a “monster of a constitution” and “monstrous democratic assemblies.” Within a few months, another international best-seller, Tom Paine’s The Rights of Man, excoriated “the monster Aristocracy” and cheered the American Revolution for overthrowing a “monster” of tyranny.

Following suit, Mary Shelley’s father, William Godwin, called the ancien régime a “ferocious monster”; her mother, Mary Wollstonecraft, was on the same page: Any aristocracy was an “artificial monster,” the monarchy a “luxurious monster,” and Europe’s despots a “race of monsters in human shape.” Frankenstein makes no direct reference to the Revolution, but its first readers would have felt the force of its setting in the 1790s, a decade that also saw polemics for (and against) the rights of men, women, and slaves. 

England would abolish its slave trade in 1807, but Colonial slavery was legal until 1833. Abolitionists saw the capitalists, investors, and masters as the moral monsters of the global economy. Apologists regarded the Africans as subhuman, improvable perhaps by Christianity and a work ethic, but alarming if released, especially the men. “In dealing with the Negro,” ultra-conservative Foreign Secretary George Canning lectured Parliament in 1824, “we are dealing with a being possessing the form and strength of a man, but the intellect only of a child. To turn him loose in the manhood of his physical strength ... would be to raise up a creature resembling the splendid fiction of a recent romance.” He meant Frankenstein. 

Mary Shelley heard about this reference, and knew, moreover, that women (though with gilding) were a slave class, too, insofar as they were valued for bodies rather than minds, were denied participatory citizenship and most legal rights, and were systemically subjugated as “other” by the masculine world. This was the argument of her mother’s Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), which she was rereading when she was writing Frankenstein. Unorthodox Wollstonecraft — an advocate of female intellectual education, a critic of the institution of marriage, and the mother of two daughters conceived outside of wedlock — was herself branded an “unnatural” woman, a monstrosity. 

Shelley had her own personal ordeal, which surely imprints her novel. Her parents were so ready for a son in 1797 that they had already chosen the name “William.” Even worse: When her mother died from childbirth, an awful effect was to make little Mary seem a catastrophe to her grieving father. No wonder she would write a novel about a “being” rejected from its first breath. The iconic “other” in Frankenstein is of course this horrifying Creature (he’s never a “human being”). But the deepest force of the novel is not this unique situation but its reverberation of routine judgments of beings that seem “other” to any possibility of social sympathy. In the 1823 play, the “others” (though played for comedy) are the tinker-gypsies, clad in goatskins and body paint (one is even named “Tanskin” — a racialized differential).

Victor Frankenstein greets his awakening creature as a “catastrophe,” a “wretch,” and soon a “monster.” The Creature has no name, just these epithets of contempt. The only person to address him with sympathy is blind, spared the shock of the “countenance.” Readers are blind this way, too, finding the Creature only on the page and speaking a common language. This continuity, rather than antithesis, to the human is reflected in the first illustrations: 

In the cover for the 1823 play, above, the Creature looks quite human, dishy even — alarming only in size and that gaze of expectation. The 1831 Creature, shown on page 29, is not a patent “monster”: It’s full-grown, remarkably ripped, human-looking, understandably dazed. The real “monster,” we could think, is the reckless student fleeing the results of an unsupervised undergraduate experiment gone rogue. 

In Shelley’s novel, Frankenstein pleads sympathy for the “human nature” in his revulsion. “I had worked hard for nearly two years, for the sole purpose of infusing life into an inanimate body. For this I had deprived myself of rest and health ... but now that I had finished, the beauty of the dream vanished, and breathless horror and disgust filled my heart. Unable to endure the aspect of the being I had created, I rushed out of the room.” Repelled by this betrayal of “beauty,” Frankenstein never feels responsible, let alone parental. Shelley’s genius is to understand this ethical monstrosity as a nightmare extreme of common anxiety for expectant parents: What if I can’t love a child whose physical formation is appalling (deformed, deficient, or even, as at her own birth, just female)? 

The Creature’s advent in the novel is not in this famous scene of awakening, however. It comes in the narrative that frames Frankenstein’s story: a polar expedition that has become icebound. Far on the ice plain, the ship’s crew beholds “the shape of a man, but apparently of gigantic stature,” driving a dogsled. Three paragraphs on, another man-shape arrives off the side of the ship on a fragment of ice, alone but for one sled dog. “His limbs were nearly frozen, and his body dreadfully emaciated by fatigue and suffering,” the captain records; “I never saw a man in so wretched a condition.” This dreadful man focuses the first scene of “animation” in Frankenstein: “We restored him to animation by rubbing him with brandy, and forcing him to swallow a small quantity. As soon as he shewed signs of life, we wrapped him up in blankets, and placed him near the chimney of the kitchen-stove. By slow degrees he recovered ... .” 

The re-animation (well before his name is given in the novel) turns out to be Victor Frankenstein. A crazed wretch of a “creature” (so he’s described) could have seemed a fearful “other,” but is cared for as a fellow human being. His subsequent tale of his despicably “monstrous” Creature is scored with this tremendous irony. The most disturbing aspect of this Creature is his “humanity”: this pathos of his hope for family and social acceptance, his intuitive benevolence, bitterness about abuse, and skill with language (which a Princeton valedictorian might envy) that solicits fellow-human attention — all denied by misfortune of physical formation. The deepest power of Frankenstein, still in force 200 years on, is not its so-called monster, but its exposure of “monster” as a contingency of human sympathy.  

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Analysis of the “Monster University”

• Author: arsalan
• Posted on: 24 May 2018
• Paper Type: Free Essay
• Subject: English
• Wordcount: 1378 words
• Published: 24th May 2018

Organizational behavior is considered a crucial paradigm for the overall proper functioning of organizations and institutions. Culture is known as the necessary feature that provides the necessary direction to the overall facet of the existing organizational behavior in any organization. The movie “Monsters University” is selected to explain the different features of the organizational culture concerning the particular organizational setting described in the movie. The particular movie “Monsters University” is characterized as an amazing animated movie that successfully provides effective indications of the organization structure. This specific movie was presented by Pixar Studios in 2001 and directed by Dan Scanlon. It explains the life of the monsters working in the scare factory to scare children as much as possible (Monsters University, 2013). Sully and Mike are the two main characters who want to attain the maximum power to attain the best monster position.

Organizational culture is one of the significant features discussed in the movie. Monsters University explains the idea of the organizational structure which successfully relates to the different features of organizational culture. The specific form of organizational culture helps to understand the behaviors and values adopted by the different individuals closely concerned with the organization of the monsters. It also helps to explore the idea of the overall community behavior of the monsters to achieve the ultimate objective of scaring children.

Organization Culture

The prospect of organizational culture provides the necessary understanding of the prevailing beliefs and values specifically related to the different organizations. It explains how an organization manages its features to achieve the ultimate objectives of the organization (Alvesson, 2012). Organizational culture is one of the significant features that can be a witness in the case of “Monsters University.” The overall structure of the college described in the movie is based on the features of the competition. The overall culture of Monster Incorporated can be defined as a form of bureaucracy that encourages to use of power to attain the ultimate objectives.

Characteristics of Organization Culture

Undoubtedly, the organization’s culture is a complex facet that comes up with different necessary characteristics. The overall concept of culture in any organization can be understood by the existence of the necessary features of the cultural settings in the organization (Harris & Hartman, 2001). The following are the main levels of the organizational culture, which will be discussed in consideration of the organizational setting of Monsters University.

Organizational Behaviors

The overall cultural positioning of the organization of Monsters University can be identified in multiple forms. The feature of cooperation and necessary assistance can be witnessed in the form of general monsters, while there was also an immense level of competition to achieve the power to attain the highest position among all the monsters.

The overall prevailing values in the organization of Monster University are helpful in understanding the true features of the organization’s culture. There was the existence of a specific value system that encouraged the aspect of safety of all the monsters. The purpose of the organization was to provide the factors to encourage all the enrolled monsters to scare children.

Fundamental Assumptions

Fundamental assumptions related to the organization’s culture provide the necessary explanations for underlying assumptions that might prevail. Different employees in Monsters University were characterized by different levels that interact with each other as individuals who scare children.

Cultures of Conflict or Cultures of Inclusion

It is essential to understand that, in the case of a specific organization of Monsters University, it comes with the managerial features of the hierarchy. The roles of management and the employees were defined. The position of management and workers interact with each other to attain the objective of scaring children. The Monsters University effectively addresses the aspect of the culture of inclusion. This particular organization raises the value of diversity. The feature of the conflicts can be witnessed through the characters of Mike and Sully who were expelled from the college. Both monsters devise an agenda to achieve the highest rank as monsters in their community.

Technology and Innovation

The organization’s management adopts the necessary features to overcome the previous flaws that might hinder the development process for the organization of Monsters, as explained in Monster University. The organization comes with the feature of scaring children which can be characterized as the specific work of the monsters world. The organizational culture comes up with the necessary adoption of technological advancement, allowing the organization to achieve its ultimate objective. A high-tech door system permitted monsters to enter the children to scare them easily.

Socialization

Socialization is a crucial feature of the organizational culture as it helps all the employees understand the necessary values and norms that prevail in the particular organization. The aspect of hierarchy was immensely considered in the case of the organization of Monster University as managers can interact with employees but maintain the necessary form of distance. Students also participate in parties to enhance their positive energies and achieve the assigned targets.

The overall organizational structure of Monsters University helps to understand the prevailing form of culture in the organization. All the monsters come up to attain the highest rank of the monsters by scaring children. Monsters Inc. is going through different deteriorating features that have been addressed through the organization’s revitalization element.

Alvesson, M. (2012). Understanding Organizational Culture . SAGE Publications. Retrieved from https://books.google.com.pk/books?id=BDsV8eHp0_MC

Harris, O. J., & Hartman, S. J. (2001). Organizational Behavior . Best Business Books. Retrieved from https://books.google.com.pk/books?id=SK50UyMvE4IC

Monsters University (2013) Full Movie . (2018).  YouTube . Retrieved 6 February 2018, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=71H_f8atyFE

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7 Life Lessons from Monsters University

By JESSIE CHIANG.

I'm going to be really honest with you all: growing up, I never liked Monsters Inc. I know, I'm despicable! It's fair to say I didn't go crazy when the prequel,  Monsters University hit cinemas. I ended up watching it anyway and I'm extremely glad I did. Not only was I kept guessing throughout the film, there was a lot of hidden wisdom! I've compiled a list of seven life lessons that everyone should take away from Monsters University . Be warned: some of these come with lots of cheese. (Disclaimer: If you haven't watched this movie, what are you doing with your life? Go watch it now and then come back.) (But seriously do it. There are spoilers below. Don't say I didn't warn you.)

1.    There is no 'I' in team.

That thing we've all heard from peer support camp. At the start of the Scare Games, Sulley and Mike were battling it out, trying to show off their own talents and be the best. This nearly got them both eliminated in the first round! As a student studying communications at university, I know there is no way to escape group work. Now, I've had a few bad experiences, but the best ones have been when everyone has done their bit and helped each other out. Seriously, when your goal is to do what is best for the team, instead of for yourself, everything else falls into place. (Of course, this is provided that everyone else in the group shares your goal, otherwise you're screwed. You're welcome.)

2.    Revenge makes you ugly.

As soon as Mike opened the door to his dorm room and we all saw Randy Boggs standing there with his cute little glasses, we went, "Say what?!" This was not the Randy we knew from Monsters Inc. That Randy was ruthless, sneaky and hateful. Monsters University showed him to be kind-hearted, extremely shy and totally lacking in confidence. So what happened? Our chameleon monster wasn't able to forgive and forget. Yes, Sulley's roar cost Randy a good score in the final round. But to let that simmer and rage for all eternity did more harm to himself. When you are so focused on making someone else's life miserable, when you are so full of hatred, you are robbing yourself of happiness.

3.    Be careful who you are trying to fit in with.

I could definitely see aspects of myself in Monsters University Randy. All he wanted was to be accepted and fit in with the 'cool kids'. He wanted to be appreciated and feel important. However, there are times when we need to step back for a second and look at who we want to be associated with. In the film, Roar Omega Roar ran the show. They were the top dogs who everyone wanted to be in with. Did that make them nice, though? It's important to sort out your priorities, whether you would rather be popular with shady morals or ostracised with integrity. And if you have seen Monsters University , you know what our Oozma Kappa brothers chose.

4.    Don't hate me 'til you know me.

Humans are so quick to make judgments about each other with only the tiniest bit of information about a person. Take any X Factor audition, for example. As soon as someone walks out on the stage, people take in their physical appearance: "Oh, that guy is really fat and he's wearing Crocs. I bet this is going to be a joke!" All before the person has said a single word. In Monsters University , Mike thinks Sulley has had everything handed down to him, that he has never had to really work for anything. But Mike doesn't understand the pressure that comes with being a Sullivan. Everyone expects big things from Sulley. To use a really old, cheesy cliche, we really don't know a person until we've taken a walk in their shoes.

5.    You never win just because you want it more.

You hear winning rugby teams say it all the time: "I guess we just wanted it more in the end." Not true. The idea that someone wins the game, gets the job, or passes the test because of their supposedly greater desire to do so, is ludicrous. This kind of attitude degrades the effort put in by the opposition. So what, they obviously didn't care if they won or lost? At his lowest point in the film, Mike is sitting by the lake and he tells Sulley: "I wanted it more than anyone. And I thought if I wanted it enough, I could show everybody that Mike Wazowski is something special." Our favourite green monster wanted to be a scarer ever since he was a kid, dedicating his whole life to it. To look at him and say he just didn't want it enough demeans all the planning and hard work Mike put into reaching his goal. I wish our success was based on the extent of our desire and dedication, but that's just not reality. You may still get that B even though you studied your butt off for the exam, while your friend who literally did nothing aces it with an A+. So should you just give up then? No. Take a look at life lessons number six and seven. (Yes, I'm trying to get you to finish my article.)

6.    Everyone has different strengths; know yours!

One of my favourite scenes in the film is when Mike takes the team to Monsters Inc. Apart from some quality bonding time and Art's outburst of "I can't go back to jail again," what I really enjoyed about it was the fact that every scarer was different. Mike points out to his fellow Oozma Kappa team mates that each scarer used their different strengths to maximise their scaring ability. There was no one style which was better than another. We all have different things that we are good at! Stop comparing your strengths to someone else's. Instead devote yourself to being the best you can be.

7.    There is no one path to get from A to B.

Mike had a life goal to be a scarer, so he made a plan on how to get there. Go to Monsters University. Get a scaring degree. Graduate and work for Monsters Inc. as a scarer. Although they may not be as detailed as Mike's, I'm sure you have plans as well. Plans to finish school and become a musician, engineer, journalist - you fill in the blank. How do you get there? Well, there is no one correct way. Mike thought that getting a scaring degree was the only way to fulfil his dreams, but at the end of the film we see him and Sulley slumming it out in Monsters Inc's post office, rising up the ranks until they are scarers. There is a huge lie floating around society today that if you don't get a degree, you must be dumb. But everyone learns in different ways, everyone wants to do different things, so it should be obvious that university isn't for everyone! And so what if you finish high school and you don't know what you want to do? Why waste a heck load of money on a degree that you don't even know you'll like? Seriously, take a gap year, travel, give yourself some time to think and make your friends jealous by all the cool Instagram pics you have. By now your arteries have probably clogged up from all the cheese you've absorbed. I'm sorry for that. But our childhood friends are definitely onto something. So, if you're ever feeling down, just remember, at Oozma Kappa, we are OK!

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Monsters University

• A look at the relationship between Mike Wazowski and James P. "Sully" Sullivan during their days at Monsters University, when they weren't necessarily the best of friends.
• Mike Wazowski (Billy Crystal) and James P. "Sully" Sullivan (John Goodman) are an inseparable pair, but that wasn't always the case. From the moment these two mismatched monsters met, they couldn't stand each other. This movie unlocks the door to how Mike and Sully overcame their differences and became the best of friends. — Disney/Pixar
• When Mike Wazowski (Billy Crystal) is young, he visits Monsters University on a tour of his primary school. A senior student gives his hat to Mike, and he plans to become a scary monster. Years later, Mike joins the Monsters University and on arrival, he receives a flier of the Scare Games that will take place soon in the campus. Mike also befriends his roommate Randall (Steve Buscemi). When the lazy student James P. "Sully" Sullivan (John Goodman), who belongs to a family of famous "scarers", breaks into his room, they start a competition in class. Their dispute ends when they accidentally break the pride and joy of Dean Abigail Hardscrabble (Dame Helen Mirren), a cylinder with her greatest achievement - a powerful scream of a boy. They are expelled from the scare classes by Hardscrabble who says that Sully is lazy and Mike is not scary, and they become enemies. When Mike recalls the Scare Games, he sees his only chance to return to the scare course. He makes the application to participate, but he learns that he needs a fraternity. Mike joins the Oozma Kappa that is the only fraternity available with four losers, but he is informed that the fraternity needs to have six members. Sully offers to complete the team and Mike has no other alternative but accept Sully in his team. Then he bets with Hardscrabble that if he wins the games, she will accept them in the scare classes. Soon the game begins. — Claudio Carvalho, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
• When Little Mike Wazowski went onto the Scare Floor, he wanted nothing more than to become a scarer. Years later, he spends the rest of his days at Monsters University. But, then he meets the lazy student James P. "Sully" Sullivan (John Goodman), who is way more of a scarer than he is and is the family of the famous scarers. Then, Mike (Billy Crystal) competes for the Scare Games. But, little does he know he needs a fraternity. Soon, he has a team of four losers who are no good at anything. Then, Mike has to be friendly to Sully when he joins their team. Now, Mike and Sully have to win this in order to not just become the best of friends, but get themselves and their fraternity into the Scare Program. It's gonna be a lot of hard work.
• A younger Mike Wazowski (Billy Crystal), the one-eyed monster we all know and love, attends Monsters University, the school of his dreams. However, when he meets a blue and purple polka-dotted student, James P. "Sully" Sullivan (John Goodman) in his same program, things go downhill from there. Mike must compete in the Scare Games to prove to everyone, especially the dean, that he is scary, but Sully, his enemy, has joined his team. In the end, Mike must learn that some things cannot be taught. — Eric
• Michael "Mike" Wazowski, a six-year-old monster, visits Monsters Inc., a scaring company, on a school field trip. During the visit, the class meets Frank McCay, an employee of the company who works as a "scarer", entering the human world to scare children at night and harvesting their screams as energy to power the monster world. Mike, enchanted with the idea of being a scarer, slips through Frank's door before anyone can stop him, where he watches Frank's scare performance, then follows him back through the door to the monster world. Frank scolds Mike, but is impressed with his ability to have followed him unnoticed, and gives him his Monsters University hat as a souvenir. Oblivious to his teacher's later admonishments, Mike dreams of being a scarer when he grows up. Approximately eleven years later, Mike is a scare major at Monsters University. On his first day, he meets his new roommate, Randall "Randy" Boggs, a nerdy monster that can turn invisible. During the first class of the scare program, as Mike is answering a question, he is interrupted by another scare student, an arrogant large blue monster named James P. "Sulley" Sullivan. The class is also informed by Abigail Hardscrabble, the strict Dean of the scare program, that they must pass their final exam of the semester to continue in the program. While Mike is studying one night, Sulley inadvertently barges into his room to hide the pig mascot he stole from their rival college, Fear Tech. While the two bicker, the pig steals Mike's MU hat and escapes. Mike and Sulley give chase, but when Mike finally manages to capture it, Sulley takes credit, and is invited to join Roar Omega Roar, the elite fraternity on campus. Mike wishes to join, but is rejected, magnifying the rivalry between the two. Mike studies hard and repeatedly answers questions in class correctly, while the privileged Sulley, convinced all he needs is his natural scaring ability, begins to falter. At the final exam, Mike and Sulley's rivalry causes Hardscrabble to fail them both and dropping them from the program, which prompts Roar Omega Roar to remove Sulley from the fraternity. Dissatisfied in his boring new major, Mike decides to prove himself by entering the Scare Games, an extracurricular scaring competition. As the games are only for fraternity or sorority members, Mike joins Oozma Kappa, a small fraternity of misfit monsters. When Mike and Oozma Kappa are denied entry as they are one team member short, Sulley offers to join, seeing the competition as his ticket back into the scare program, and Mike eventually reluctantly accepts. Mike also makes a deal with Dean Hardscrabble, who remains skeptical, to re-admit their entire team to the scaring program if they win, whereas if they lose, Mike must leave Monsters University. Sulley expects to carry the team by himself, but Mike believes that with enough training, the whole team can succeed. With the last-placing team in each round of the Games being eliminated from the competition, Oozma Kappa fails the first challenge miserably but miraculously advances when another team is disqualified. They then attend a party at Roar Omega Roar house where initially the other competitors appear to accept them, but the fraternity pranks and humiliates them instead. The group is discouraged as they are now the laughingstock of the entire campus, so Mike arranges a secret visit to Monsters, Inc. to lift their spirits. After that, Oozma Kappa uses their wits and training to advance to the final round against Roar Omega Roar. Even having advanced so far, Sulley does not think that Mike can be a true scarer because of his lack of natural ability. After the team wins the final round, Mike discovers that Sulley manipulated the equipment to improve Mike's score. Mike is heartbroken and wants to prove that he is capable of becoming a scarer, so he breaks into the school's door lab and enters a door to the human world, but discovers that the door leads to a summer camp and he is unable to scare the cabin full of children. Back at the university, Sulley confesses to The Dean, Hardscrabble, that he cheated, just as she is notified of the break-in. Realizing what happened, Sulley enters the door to look for Mike. After finding Mike and reconciling, the pair, now being pursued by human adults, attempt to return, but find themselves trapped in the human world, as Hardscrabble has deactivated the door waiting for the authorities arrive. Mike realizes that the only way to get back into the monster world is to generate enough scream energy to power the door from their side. Working together, Sulley and Mike terrify the adults, generating an overwhelming amount of scream energy and allowing them to return to the lab. Their actions lead to their expulsion from the university, but the other members of Oozma Kappa are accepted into the scare program the next semester as Hardscrabble was impressed with their performance in the games. They share goodbyes and as Sulley and Mike leave, Hardscrabble tells them they are the first to have surprised her, and wishes them luck for the future. Mike and Sulley work at Monsters, Inc. in the company mailroom with the Abominable Snowman as the mailroom's manager. Working their way up through the company, the two eventually become part of the Scarer Team.

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Monsters university college life.

308 words | 2 page(s)

Monsters University is not only an entertaining animated movie but also a good reflection of the college life in the U.S. including the struggles faced by many students. One of the lessons in the movie is that success is not the outcome of natural talent only but also hard work and disappointments are part of the college life. Mike was rejected from the fraternity he so wanted to join and similarly, he had trouble gaining credibility as a student in the beginning despite being a hard worker. But despite failures and disappointments, Mike didn’t give up.

The movie also shows us that personal development and character building in college doesn’t only take place in classrooms but also outside classrooms such as in extra co-curricular activities. Extra co-curricular activities are especially beneficial at developing soft skills such as leadership and teamwork. The movie also teaches us that the pressure to succeed in college is intense and may even tempt some into unethical behavior which is why more and more colleges are emphasizing ethical education. Similarly, we also learn that students care for their social status in college just as they did in high school.

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The movie also shows that students can have moments of self-doubt, thus, having a support group can make a huge difference whether instructors or friends. We also learn about the importance of rules and regulations at college and how violating them can have serious unintended consequences. Probably, the most important lesson in the movie is that while college does help build a strong foundation, success in life is not just determined by one’s performance in college. One can succeed through persistence and hard work in life even if they fall behind their expectations in college. College is just a stopover along the way to a bright future rather than the destination.

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Monster classroom (seven theses), no comments:.

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In the outrage that erupted when an American dentist killed a lion, the trophy hunter was branded a 'monster'. Natalie Lawrence, a PhD candidate in the Department of History and Philosophy of Science, explores notions of the monstrous and how they tie into ideas about morality.

The market for monstrosity motivated the literal creation of monsters: 'mermaids' were assembled from pieces of fish, monkeys and other objects Natalie Lawrence

What do we mean when we talk about 'monsters’? The word conjures up figures from gothic horror, such as Frankenstein or Dracula, classical images of exotic peoples with no heads or grotesquely exaggerated features, and the kinds of impossible chimerical beasts inhabiting the pages of medieval bestaries. How monsters have been created over the centuries is much more indicative of the moral and existential challenges faced by societies than the realities that they have encountered.

The etymology of monstrosity suggests the complex roles that monsters play within society. 'Monster' probably derives from the Latin, monstrare, meaning 'to demonstrate', and monere, 'to warn'. Monsters, in essence, are demonstrative . They reveal, portend, show and make evident, often uncomfortably so. Though the modern gothic monster and the medieval chimaera may seem unrelated, both have acted as important social tools.

Dr Walter Palmer, who illegally shot Cecil the Lion in Zimbabwe, has been labeled a 'monster'. Given the moniker 'The Dentist', he has had to resign from his practice, flee his home, and hire armed guards to protect himself and his family as a result of public disgust at his actions. He has even received death threats and been described as 'barely human'. Trophy hunting, and anyone who takes part in or has involvement with it, has been similarly vilified in the media and by animal rights groups.

Such public 'monsters' serve a similar role to gothic monsters, images that embody the cultural or psychological characteristics that we as a society find difficult to acknowledge. By excising them, through fantasies of execution or simply professional exclusion, we rid ourselves of the undesirable attributes they are perceived to carry. The 'murdered' lion becomes the innocent white-robed victim of the archetypal gothic tale, while murderous 'Dentist' plays the role of social scapegoat.

Until relatively recently in history, monsters close to home, such as deformed babies or two-headed calves, were construed as warnings of divine wrath. Monstrous depictions in newspapers and pamphlets expressed strong political attitudes. The monstrous races or traditional monstrous beasts such as basilisks or unicorns, that were banished to distant regions in maps, represented a frightening unknown: 'here be dragons' effectively filled cartographic voids.

Simultaneously, however, monsters represented the wonderful diversity of divine creation, a playful ‘Nature’ that could produce a multitude of strange forms. Exotic beasts brought to Europe for the first time in the 16th century, such as armadillos or walruses, were often interpreted as 'monstrous'. More accurately, they were made into monsters: things that did not fit into the accepted natural categories. An armadillo became a pig-turtle, while a walrus was a fish-ox.

It might seem counter-intuitive, but beasts that seemingly mixed the characteristics of different natural groups were not troubling. Rather, they reinforced categories by clarifying the defining criteria for these groups. By transgressing, they helped to determine boundaries. To define a deviant form, such as a 'deformed' baby or calf, or a 'monstrous' exotic creature, you have to define 'normal'.

For example, the simple Aristotelian definition of a 'bird' was something that had two legs, two wings, could fly and walk. Two new creatures arrived in the 16th century that seemed to violate this definition. Firstly, birds of paradise were brought to Europe in 1622 as trade skins with stunning, colourful plumes but no legs or wings. Their limbs were removed by the hunters who supplied the birds in New Guinea. The birds were interpreted by European naturalists as heavenly creatures that never landed, inhabiting the boundary between the avian and the angelic.

At the other end of the avian spectrum, Dutch sailors landing on Mauritius at the end of the 16th century encountered dodos. Though rarely brought to Europe physically, the descriptions and detached parts of dodos were used by naturalists to depict ungainly, fat birds. Not only did dodos not fly, they could hardly walk. Lacking the typical feathers and wings of other birds, they were almost mammalian in form.

Monsters are not self-evident; they were created to serve these roles. Even beautiful creatures like the birds of paradise could become monsters due to their lack of limbs and imagined ascetic lifestyles. Making monsters added value. They were commercially lucrative things: oddities, curiosities and rare things were very marketable.

The market for monstrosity motivated the literal creation of monsters: 'mermaids' were assembled from pieces of fish, monkeys and other objects while 'ray-dragons' were created from carefully mutilated and dried rays. These objects could be sold to collectors or displayed in menageries and freak-shows. Writing about and portraying virtual monsters helped to sell books and pamphlets.

The tale of Cecil and 'The Dentist' is not so different. It is certainly highly saleable, as details about this particular monster's life and activities provide valuable fodder for media outlets.

Animal monsters could have very specific roles. The dodo, for example, was depicted as vast and gluttonous in late 17th-century accounts. It greedily consumed everything it came across, even hot coals. It was described as nauseatingly greasy to eat: one bird could apparently feed 25 men. This image was created by writers who had never seen the bird, and is not supported by current paleobiological evidence.

The idea of the avian glutton embodied European anxieties about the rapacious colonial trading activities in the Indian Ocean, which brought a surfeit of riches to Europe. The engorged dodo became a scapegoat for the European sin of gluttony.

What catharsis does the 'monsterification' of Palmer and other trophy hunters provide?  Perhaps focusing on the tragedy of one 'personality' lion distracts from the greater horrors of illegal poaching and human-animal conflict occurring in similar regions. It also masks the fact that, though controversial, regulated commercial hunting is an important source of conservation funding in many countries.  

On the one hand, excising this monster reinforces our conceptions of social boundaries of morality: don't kill creatures we perceive as having human traits, like names or personalities. On the other, it offers the illusion of absolution from the underlying horror at what all of us are doing to the natural world.

Inset images: The 'Monster of Cracow', a monstrous creature born to honourable parents, from Pierre Boaistuau's 'Histoires Prodigieuses' (1560, Paris) (Wellcome Library, London); 'Draco alter ex raia' or a ray-dragon from Ulysse Aldrovandi's 'Serpentum et draconum historiæ' (1640, Bologna), p.316.

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The Final Judgement in “Monster Culture”

Article sidebar, main article content.

“In this distribution of functions, the scholar is the delegated intellect. In the right state he is Man Thinking. In the degenerate state, when the victim of society, he tends to become a mere thinker, or, still worse, the parrot of other men’s thinking.”

—Ralph Waldo Emerson

It is rare for a writer to put his or her theory at risk by exposing its secret vulnerability, to set out on that fragile, shaky wooden bridge stretching across a chasm—the gap between the two cliffs of understanding. Daunting is the possibility of trust collapsing. One would be a fool to turn one’s idea against oneself. Yet, Jeffrey Cohen leads readers of his essay, “Monster Culture,” on this bridge of uncertainty when he poses a polarizing question that could either make the readers believe him completely or doubt his entire theory: “Do monsters really exist?” (20).

In “Monster Culture,” Cohen extensively discusses and analyzes monsters in connection with the cultures from which they rise. “What I will propose here by way of a first foray, as entrance into this book of monstrous content, is a sketch of a new modus legendi : a method of reading cultures from the monsters they engender,” he begins (3). Maintaining the formal tone of an academic, he contends that monsters rise at the “crossroads” of a culture, where differences emerge and anxiety heightens. The monster is an embodiment of difference—of any quality, whether it be ideological, cultural, sexual, or racial, that inspires fear and uncertainty in its creators (7). The monster is frequently a “disturbing hybrid” that defies categorization––its hybridity rebels against nature (6). And though there are fictional monsters, real people can become monsters too. In order to bring “freaks” under control, those who abide by the standard code of the day impart monstrous identities to those who do not. Anxiety is what breeds them and defines their existence. Thus locating the origin of monsters, Cohen strives to reveal our culture’s values and tendencies. For the vast majority of the essay, the monster is simply the subject of our examination, an otherworldly creature under our scrutiny.

It is when Cohen approaches the end of his essay that he adds another dimension to the monster’s entity and exposes its vulnerability:

Perhaps it is the time to ask the question that always arises when the monster is discussed seriously (the inevitability of the question a symptom of the deep anxiety about what is and what should be thinkable, an anxiety that the process of monster theory is destined to raise): Do monsters really exist? Surely they must, for if they did not, how could we? (20)

In an essay in which monsters are central, he chooses to investigate in his final paragraphs whether monsters even exist after all. This query boldly shifts the focus away from the discussion of his monster theory and introduces a counter argument, pushing readers to either end of the spectrum of their belief in monster theory. They will have to choose whether monsters exist, and whether they will believe or disregard Cohen’s work. Pressing his readers to decide, Cohen places his readers in this foggy gap between the two extremes in order to, paradoxically, eliminate their indecision about his theory.

From the first page––in fact, the first sentence––Cohen seems to be building up to this eruption, the boom moment. Grave and rather stiff in his tone, he is full of purpose––“What I propose here . . . is a sketch of a new modus legendi ” (3). By starting with a rather abrupt announcement, he lays out his objective plainly and explicitly as he launches into a “foray,” a sudden raid, to destroy the protective walls of convention and comfort (3). The risk he takes in unveiling his argument’s potential flaws and testing the readers’ judgments will bring forth the anxiety that permeates not only his essay, but also people’s minds. This sense that a quest is underway reappears in the diction of his concluding passage. His language and tone, departing from the academic study of monsters, demonstrates a serious yet playfully provoking attitude toward the audience. We see the subtle, ironic sense of humor that he has well hidden under the seriousness and technicalities of an academic. Imagine him smirking as he encourages, “Surely they must, for if they did not, how could we?”—content that he has the power to spark trouble and uneasiness in his readers. But to arrive at this point, he detoured from his scholarly discussion of his theses.

Let’s return to the beginning of the passage. The word “perhaps” marks a careful interjection that brings a pause to the flow of his ideas. It is a gentle motion to stop and think. The following phrase “it is time” displays Cohen’s anticipation: he has been building up toward this moment. Thus pulling his readers out of the text and back into reality, he raises the central question: “Do monsters really exist?” (20). The answer to this question holds the key to his theory’s credibility. Can we trust his theory, which is wholly based on the assumption that monsters do exist? His answer is a testament to his confidence, for he replies, “Surely they must” (20). Sly and expectant, his response is not only a challenge to the conventional understanding that monsters are forms of our imagination, but also a design to trigger a little indignation from the readers. For example, the word “surely” gives a sense that his answer is an obvious one that “surely” everyone should know (though he provides no more concrete evidence than his emphatic interpretation of common sense). Indeed, Cohen’s use of “must” suggests that there is no other rational answer that can be true. With these subtly forceful word choices, he appears to challenge readers’ knowledge or, more importantly, their pride in what they know. We can start to see here that Cohen is aiming at a specific part of the subconscious—the ego—that will allow him access and even control a reader’s sense of what is real.

Cohen demands a definite answer, a conviction—whether it be disregard or trust—for vacillating on that unsteady bridge is a source of anxiety in itself. But under the appearance of a perfectly probable motive lies a more intricate pursuit. By calling the question’s inevitability a “symptom of the deep anxiety about what is and what should be thinkable,” he challenges his audience’s scope of thought (20). Notice his inclusion of the word “should.” The clear, crucial distinction between what “is” and what “should” be thinkable serves to differentiate the mundane, average thinking ability from the sophisticated intellect Cohen requires from his readers. It is his way of coyly, maybe even with a hint of haughtiness, asking, “Can you handle my ideas?” In an ever-so-charming manner, he prods our ego—something that we so treasure that we will go to extreme lengths to save it from damage or belittlement. With his suave patronization as the bait, he is fishing for our overprotectiveness of our egos.

And as Cohen’s prey, the readers may feel their ego threatened and become perceptibly anxious. When Cohen calls “the inevitability of the question a symptom of the deep anxiety,” “symptom” is also a carefully chosen word that appropriately renders a disease-like quality. According to this notion, anxiety is a contagious epidemic––one that takes over people’s reason and causes them to constantly feel insecure, leading them to eventually produce monsters. Interestingly, anxiety in Cohen’s text is a revisited subject—a constantly reoccurring term—that mirrors the prevalent, lingering nature of a disease. It is ironic that his own monster theory, which analyzes the anxieties that create monsters in the first place, might itself engender anxiety—both his and his readers’. The anxiety can rise simply from the essay’s content (a solemn discourse on monster), which Cohen says inevitably prompts his central query, or it can also come from ambivalence regarding the question (of the monster’s existence) itself. “Monster Culture” brims with uncertainty and tension.

In many ways, then, reading “Monster Culture” is not just reading but rather thinking and questioning, and all the while coping with anxiety. Fueling the anxiety, Cohen establishes a dependent relationship between monsters and us. According to the rhetorical question in “Surely they must, for if they did not, how could we?” we cannot exist if monsters do not (20). But consequently, if their existence equates to our existence, does that not mean we are monsters? Here is the epitome of the break between thinkable and unthinkable. We all are monsters, and in choosing whether or not one can accept that fact is the key to complete comprehension of Cohen’s theory—and deciding on which end of the bridge we will land. In fact, with the question, Cohen allows the readers to actively experience the making of a monster. As Cohen says, we detest monsters. So, we naturally don’t want to be monsters ourselves—or casted out as different or freakish. But when Cohen suggests that we are all monsters, a non-monster (who is thus unlike all others) becomes a monster nonetheless. With this prospect, anxiety turns into panic, and as a result, his question “If they did not, how could we?” acts as reverse psychology: rather than be appalled, we are tempted to swiftly accept Cohen’s bait and concur, “Yes, you are right. I, too, am a monster.” We don’t want to be left behind on that bridge. When the essay ends and the bridge falls, we could either plummet down and flounder in that bottomless gulf of uncertainty and anxiety—with no one to pull you out, to persuade you to either side. Or, we could escape the easy way: follow his lead.

Thus, Cohen’s concluding inquiry was not a question at all, but a powerful shove to his readers toward believing him completely. Though in a glance, he appears to be simply questioning the existence of monsters, he is really testing the readers’ level of thought and urging others to question everything and everyone (even him, the author, and themselves). But, even in this, there is deception because he in fact is pushing the readers to the side the bridge that corresponds to trust and belief in him. By speaking to the readers’ egos, he actually makes readers, afraid of humiliation, want to agree with him. And with the suggestion that everyone is a monster, he entices them to accept it as a plainly apparent reality. Rather than putting his theory at risk, Cohen has convinced his readers––by causing their anxiety to rule over their reason––to want to be on his side even if they aren’t necessarily his believer. Thus, the vulnerability exposed isn’t that of his theory, but that of his readers. “Monster Culture,” then, is Cohen’s lonely battle against “un-thought,” which ironically, and unfortunately, shows the prevalence and inevitability of it (3).

WORKS CITED

Cohen, Jeffrey Jerome. “Monster Culture (Seven Theses).” Monster Theory: Reading Culture . Ed. Jeffrey Jerome Cohen. Minneapolis: U. of Minnesota Press, 1996. 3-25.

Emerson, Ralph W. “The American Scholar.” Speech. Phi Beta Kappa Society, Cambridge, MA. 31 Aug. 1837. EmersonCentral.com . Web. 20 Feb. 2013.

SUE BAHK '15SEAS is an undergraduate student in The Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science. Though she is an engineer, she considers herself also as a humanities person who believes in the value and power of writing. She was born and raised in Seoul, South Korea, but started studying in the States since the 6th grade. In her free time, Sue enjoys reading, listening to music, and traveling.

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Monsters University Essay Movie Review

16 Monday Jun 2014

Posted by 10hsalmansaurus in Uncategorized

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Monster University

This film is a prequel for the famous story, monster inc. This film tells the story of mike and sully in their youth, when they are in university. The story tells us about their struggle in becoming the best student in the university and to not get drop out from the school. This film contains many moral values and exemplary attitude, such as bravery, motivation in learning, and to never give up towards a matter/problem in this life.

This film is a prequel for monsters inc, directed and written by Dan Scanlon. And was produced and made in 2013. In this movie, mike was voiced by Billy crystal, and sully was voiced by john Goodman. This film is nominated for 1 BAFTA film awards, and got 11 wins and 36 nominations. And rated 8 from 10 ratings in imdb.

Unlike in the monster inc. film, early on in this film, mike and sully were rivals until then they become friends at the end of this film. Sully was described as the lazy-selfish-but-scary nonetheless. And he is the descendent of the famous scarer/worker of monster inc, that makes him bloat about his family name, his only reputation. And mike was described as the smart-motivated-nerd-but not scary student of the university. That makes them rivals in becoming the most popular, the smartest, and the most talented student in the university. Both of them was threatened to be dropped out of school, until there are no other way for them except to work together as a team in an event called ‘scare games’. They made a promise with the headmaster of the monsters university that if they became the winner of the event, they wont be dropped out of the school. This film tells the story of their struggle in winning the tournament so that they wont get dropped out of the school.

This movie shows a surprising idea about the story. In the sequel before this pre-sequel, mike and sully was described as a very good bestfriend that works at the monsters inc, and works together to break the monsters inc. record of scaring children in the human world, rivaling with their rival, randal. But, surprisingly, in this film, mike was rivaling with sully to become the model pupil for students in the university, and became bestfriend with randal.

I recommend this movie for everyone mean to watch a movie to entertain themselves that give them moral values. This movie will be suitable for everyone from kids to adults to the elderlies. This movie contains many moral values, interesting story line, and of course, entertaining characters.

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The Monster and the Humanities

The creation of a pedagogy for the humanities in mary shelley’s frankenstein ; or, the modern prometheus, by eric meljac, west texas a&m university.

One of the more remarkable points I find in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is when the monster, watching cottagers and their daily lives, stumbles upon books and reads these texts in an effort to make himself more “human.” The monster, a creation of scientific experimentation and not human by birth, seeks to become more human, more acceptable, and more understood. Indeed, the questions he asks of himself are central to the core of human self-understanding. He says, “My person was hideous and my stature gigantic. What did this mean? Who was I? What was I? Whence did I come? What was my destination? These questions continually recurred, but I was unable to solve them” (91). Most curious to me as I read these lines, and associating them with my position as an instructor of English, is that these questions appear to plague college students as they grow, mature, discover, and become functioning members of society. In fact, I am particularly struck by how Frankenstein ’s monster could become an example for up-and-coming college students who, quite lost in the modern university, could discover themselves and learn about their own humanity through significant study in the humanities. The monster, feeling un-human (and quite honestly he really is) turns to the humanities to become a more functioning member of European society. His self-education is an attempt at creating selfhood. “Who am I?” the creature asks. He finds some answers in reading the classics of literature. And, while critics question the notion of how well this reading really humanizes the creature, I think it provides at the very least an example of how we can speak to our students about becoming educated and informed members of a modern and increasingly global, liberal society.

In “Teaching the Monster: Frankenstein and Critical Thinking,” Melissa Bloom Bissonette, a professor of theater, discusses how she uses Frankenstein as an educational tool in the creation of critical thinking. Studying the effect of the Frankenstein story on students (referring quite often both to the novel itself and film adaptations of the text), Bissonette discusses the natural sympathy students reserve for the monstrous creation of Victor Frankenstein. She notices that, “Armed with good-hearted native sympathy, students are quick to find parallels in our world” (108). Such an observation piques my interest. Obviously, students connect with the story. It is that connection that I encourage us to exploit in this essay. If students can find sympathy with the monster, perhaps too they can learn with and from the monster, and become not only better students, but also students who are, in a world where this is ever decreasing, well-versed in the humanities.

Bissonette’s essay provides interest, but her study does not speak to the whole of my project. Her concern is how to complicate students’ readings of Frankenstein and move beyond simple dichotomies and hasty generalizations. In her experience students are quick to reduce the novel and the monster to “this-and-that” analysis, rather than more complicated and probing analyses. Still, her work shows me that the novel can really promote learning for the college student. Complications in the novel reinforce the necessity of critical thinking, and in my estimation, one can look particularly toward what I call the “humanities portion” of the novel for a broader human education.

I assert that students can learn to learn from the monster. What does that mean? I attempt to avoid the vague and superfluous here. I am concerned with details and lessons. In searching for his humanity, the creature looks at particular texts, all of which have a keen critical eye. The monster reads Milton’s Paradise Lost , portions of Plutarch’s Lives , and Goethe’s Sorrows of Young Werther . While many critics examine the texts in terms of their relation to different Romantic literary movements, I am more concerned with the effects of these texts on the monster himself. What did he learn and how did he experience it? Perhaps it is best to use the creature’s own words to show exactly how he learns from these books and how the books affect his hopeful humanity. The creation says, “I learned from Werter’s imaginations despondency and gloom: but Plutarch taught me high thoughts; he elevated me above the wretched sphere of my own reflections, to admire and love the heroes of past ages” (91). He goes on, “But Paradise Lost excited different and far deeper emotions” (92). In reading Milton’s masterpiece, the creature realizes his position as part of a creation: “Like Adam, I was apparently united by no link to any other being in existence; but his state was far different from mine in every other respect. He had come forth from the hands of God a perfect creature [. . .] but I was wretched, helpless, and alone” (92). Now, while the monster finds himself particularly troubled by reading Milton, his reading is not a total loss.

Indeed, all of his reading manifests in itself a very pertinent lesson for teachers of higher education and beyond, for it is through this reading that the creature realizes his position in the world. Is this not what we ask of our students? Putting this question aside for the moment, I would like to turn to Andrew Burkett’s wonderful essay “Mediating Monstrosity: Media, Information, and Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein .” In this essay, Burkett mentions that “the text’s themes and structures themselves generate, if not beg for [. . .] analysis, research, and application” (583). This is an important observation. If we can teach our students these skills, and if we can use the styles of texts the creature uses to become “humanized,” can we not develop and indeed “create” students who have a better understanding of the necessary humanist skills necessary for innovative critical thinkers? As Burkett suggests, “Having ‘continually studied and exercised [his] mind’ upon Paradise Lost , Plutarch’s Lives , and the Sorrows of Werter —not to mention Victor’s own journal of his creation—the creature has become a wise and deeply self-conscious subject” (594). Such wisdom and self-consciousness seems to me to be precisely what we expect of our students. Everyone has heard of the demise of the humanities, so I will not need to address this here; armed with this knowledge, however, couldn’t we look to Frankenstein as an example of what we can do with literature and the humanities to give students a greater understanding of themselves as human, social, political, and independent subjects in a widely democratic nation and world where self- consciousness becomes an essential tool for negotiating an increasingly political climate? I think we can. And, furthermore, I think we must.

Of course, not everyone agrees with my assessment of the lesson of the humanities in Mary Shelley’s masterwork. While we disagree on fundamental levels, I admire Maureen Noelle McLane’s splendid essay “Literate Species: Populations, ‘Humanities,’ and Frankenstein .” For McLane, Shelley’s novel is a one of “pedagogic failure” (959). As she puts it, the novel exhibits “specifically a failure in the promise of the humanities, in letters as a route to humanization” (959). She goes on, “The novel demonstrates, perhaps against itself, that the acquisition of ‘literary refinement’ fails to humanize the problematic body” (959). Instead of the humanities acting as the victor in Shelley’s novel, it seems as though McLane promotes the advent of modern science as the victor. In fact, she mentions what she calls the “ruse of the humanities” as a particular danger for Frankenstein’s monster. As she puts it, “In entertaining humanist fantasies, the monster forgets his corporeally and nominally indeterminate status: the community of letters presupposes a human community, and the humanities presuppose humans. The monster presupposes his potential humanity; in this he succumbs to the ruse of the humanities” (975). For McLane, the humanities only enable the monster to realize his own marginality. He is a non-being, and in reading the humanities, from what McLane suggests, the monster only marginalizes himself more. In a very deep and difficult study, McLane suggests that Frankenstein is a novel that appears to promote the sciences over the humanities. For, it is through science that the monster gains his being; the humanities only complicate his situation and make him realize that, indeed, he is not human, and as a creation of science he is simply not what he hopes to be.

While I admire McLane’s study, and in many ways can understand her thesis and evidence, I still think that the lesson one can learn from the novel is that the humanities can immediately humanize an individual who otherwise finds him- or herself awash in a world that excommunicates the individual and enforces conformity. Shelley promotes individual thought, and the monster’s knowledge gained by reading core texts in the humanities enables him to understand, at the very least, his position in the world. This is what we expect of our students. Each essay assignment, each argument, is an opportunity to promote individuality and self-development. We insist upon this in our classrooms, and our reading of Frankenstein can help to promote this in our students.

As educators, we value critical thinking. What the monster finds in his reading is just that. As the monster puts it, “[These books] produced in me an infinity of new images and feelings, that sometimes raised me to ecstasy, but more frequently sunk me into the lowest dejection” (91). While I am sure McLane would argue that the dejection shows the failure of the humanities to educate an individual (again the “ruse of the humanities”), I argue that this becomes evidence of completing the human individual. One cannot be completely and constantly affirmed.

Unlike McLane, I believe the monster learns how to be human. I suggest that this is a product of studying the humanities. Science and technology may represent progress, but the humanities teach one how to feel, how to cope, how to experience life, and also how to nurture a sympathetic imagination.

Consider for instance the following lines spoken by Frankenstein’s monster; in these lines I think we get an idea as to what the monster really learns by studying the humanities:

As I read, however, I applied much personally to my own feelings and condition. I found myself similar, yet at the same time strangely unlike to the beings concerning whom I read, and to whose conversation I was a listener. I sympathised with and partly understood them, but I was unformed in mind; I was dependent on none, and related to none. “The path of my departure was free,” and there was none to lament my annihilation. (91)

The effects of these lines, of course, are mixed. At once there is the experience of education and the emotional trigger of brutish sadness. Of course, the monster is alone, a scientific creation almost solely. Such is McLane’s trigger; she would argue that the humanities fail the monster because they bring him to pity. Still, this is what I see as valuable in the monster’s growth as a thinker, one with a sympathetic imagination. Despite this “ruse of the humanities,” I think the monster actually gains a rational, emotional, and critical-thinking mind, which I believe anyone devoted to the humanities would argue is one of the most direct aims of studying the arts. The monster says, “I read of men concerned in public affairs, governing or massacring their species. I felt the greatest ardour for virtue rise within me, and abhorrence for vice, as far as I understood the signification of those terms, relative as they were, as I applied them, to pleasure and pain alone” (92). One cannot argue that the monster is not learning human emotion. In fact, he develops a sympathetic imagination—a sympathetic imagination that gives him knowledge to contemplate the very nature that afflicts him.

His brief (and rather incomplete) course in the humanities allows the monster to understand his own position in the world, a position he tries to establish by observing the cottagers to no avail. After gaining language and reading (which many critics cite as a hole in Shelley’s story—how does this creation learn to read without tutorial?), the monster finally becomes able to decipher papers that discuss his creation. Reminding the reader of the journal he finds in the pocket of what are now his clothes, he says:

At first I had neglected them; but now that I was able to decipher the characters in which they were written, I began to study them with diligence. It was your [here he speaks to Victor Frankenstein] journal of the four months that preceded my creation. [. . .] Every thing is related in them which bears reference to my accursed origin; the whole detail of that series of disgusting circumstances which produced it is set in view; the minutest description of my odious and loathsome person is given, in language which painted your own horrors, and rendered mine indelible. (92-3)

Now armed with knowledge, the monster renders himself able to colloquially “put together the pieces” of his quasi-humanity and understand his mind and spirit, just as those who study the humanities do by reading Wordsworth’s “The Prelude,” by studying Picasso’s “Blue Period,” by navigating the history of saints’ lives in pursuit of religion, or any multitude of examinations into the liberal arts and humanities.

Once again, armed with this knowledge, the monster says in one short sentence, packed with power, “I sickened as I read” (93).

How else but by studying could the monster learn to have a visceral reaction to words on a page? This transformation, from pure tactile experience to complex critical thinking, comes as a result of a pedagogy of the humanities. By learning from books, from the arts, the monster becomes informed enough to detest himself in an entirely different way. He sees his spirit, his mind. He learns to appreciate—and abhor—his creation.

This is the teachable moment. Bringing this back to the classroom, much as Bissonette does, students can see that through reading these classics the monster gains capability. He matures from pure beast to critical thinker. He moves from the realm of bodily experience to mental configuration. The humanities—as exhibited by Milton, Plutarch, and Goethe—give the monster the capability to ponder his existence in an entirely new way, and if we can show our students that these few—merely four or so— pages of Shelley’s work reveal how the humanities can transform the mind, we can envision a pedagogy that helps us to nurture critical thinking and a sympathetic imagination in the minds and spirits of our students. This is how we can create a pedagogy of the humanities with Frankenstein . Urging our students to follow the monster’s lead will lead them to wonder about their own place in the world, and this is the lesson of the humanities. How the students use that knowledge is a lesson for another day, time, and essay, but clearly, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein provides evidence that the humanities are not lost, are not a ruse, and are certainly essential for mature intellectual growth.

Works Cited

Bissonette, Melissa Bloom. “Teaching The Monster: Frankenstein And Critical Thinking.” College Literature , vol. 37, no. 3, Summer 2010, pp. 106-20.

Burkett, Andrew. “Mediating Monstrosity: Media, Information, and Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein .” Studies in Romanticism , vol. 51, no. 4, Winter 2012, pp. 579-605.

McLane, Maureen Noelle. “Literate Species: Populations, ‘Humanities,’ and Frankenstein .” ELH , vol. 63, no. 4, Winter 1996, pp. 959-88.

Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein . Dover, 2014.

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Introduction: Monster Studies

University of Toronto Quarterly

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Hungarian journal of English and American studies /

ildiko limpar

Asa S Mittman

The field of monster studies has grown significantly over the past few years and this companion provides a comprehensive guide to the study of monsters and the monstrous from historical, regional and thematic perspectives. The collection reflects the truly multi-disciplinary nature of monster studies, bringing in scholars from literature, art history, religious studies, history, classics, and cultural and media studies. The companion will offer scholars and graduate students the first comprehensive and authoritative review of this emergent field. Contents: Foreword, John Block Friedman; Introduction: the impact of monsters and monster studies, Asa Simon Mittman; Part I History of Monstrosity: The monstrous Caribbean, Persephone Braham; The unlucky, the bad and the ugly: categories of monstrosity from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment, Surekha Davies; Beauteous beast: the water deity Mami Wata in Africa, Henry John Drewal; Rejecting and embracing the monstrous in Ancient Greece and Rome, D. Felton; Early modern past to postmodern future: changing discourses of Japanese monsters, Michael Dylan Foster; On the monstrous in the Islamic visual tradition, Francesca Leoni; Human of the heart: pitiful oni in medieval Japan, Michelle Osterfield Li; The Maya 'cosmic monster' as a political; and religious symbol, Matthew Looper; Monsters lift the veil: Chinese animal hybrids and processes of transformation, Karin Myhre; From hideous to hedonist: the changing face of the 19th-century monster, Abigail Lee Six and Hannah Thompson; Centaurs, satyrs, and cynocephali: medieval scholarly teratology and the question of the human, Karl Steel; Invisible monsters: vision, horror, and contemporary culture, Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock. Part II Critical Approaches to Monstrosity: Posthuman teratology, Patricia MacCormack; Monstrous sexuality: variations on the vagina dentata, Sarah Alison Miller; Postcolonial monsters: a conversation with Partha Mitter, Partha Mitter with Asa Simon Mittman and Peter Dendle; Monstrous gender: geographies of ambiguity, Dana Oswald; Monstrosity and race in the late Middle Ages, Debra Higgs Strickland; Hic sunt dracones: the geography and cartography of monsters, Chet van Duzer; Conclusion: monsters in the 21st century: the preternatural in an age of scientific consensus, Peter J. Dendle; Postscript: the promise of monsters, Jeffrey Jerome Cohen; Bibliography; Index.

Diem-My Bui

Frank Jacob

co-authored with Verena Bernardi

Lo Sguardo - Rivista di Filosofia

This article attempts to delineate the history of the monstruos by recognizing inside it the manifestation of severance between the contingent and the trascendent world. The monster embodies the boundary of the everlasting paradox of human existence, in the balance between the desire of knowing and the impossibility of drawing completely on knowledge.

Holger Pötzsch , Juliane Constanze Bockwoldt

John Edgar Browning

Palgrave Communications

helen hendry

There is a continued fascination with all things monster. This is partly due to the popular reception of Mary Shelley’s Monster, termed a ‘new species’ by its overreaching but admiringly determined maker Victor Frankenstein in the eponymous novel first published in 1818. The enduring impact of Shelley’s novel, which spans a plethora of subjects and genres in imagery and themes, raises questions of origin and identity, death, birth and family relationships, as well as the contradictory qualities of the monster. Monsters serve as metaphors for anxieties of aberration and innovation (Punter and Byron, 2004). Stephen Asma (2009) notes that monsters represent evil or moral transgression and each epoch, to speak with Michel Foucault (Abnormal: lectures at the Collège de France, 1975–75, 2003, p. 66), evidences a ‘particular type of monster’. Academic debates tend to explore how social and cultural threats come to be embodied in the figure of a monster and their actions literalise our deep...

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