Edward Scissorhands

The Prompt: The strange bodies – and their “origin stories” – we have met so far all prompt questions about the historical forces that produce large scale transformations in global industrial and information societies. Each body’s mixed composition is the narrative’s “personification” of complex historical problems; each monster embodies those conflicting forces, dynamics, or violences of history that each text is grappling with in narrative form. Then, too, if these monsters’ “origin stories” tell us something about the historical conditions in which their bodies appear, stories of their deaths or their endings tell us yet more about the large-scale problems of knowledge, materiality, and action that are operative in each case. How are we supposed to respond, as readers or viewers, to the historical conditions portrayed through these monsters’ stories? Now that you have described in paper #2 how these bodies are “born,” here, in paper #3, consider their vulnerabilities: how do they “die”? What do these endings tell us about the cultures in which these stories are created and received? (3-5 pages; cite the course reading, and cite at least three additional piece of peer-reviewed research that you have found to support your argument.)
A Simpler Version of the Prompt: So far, you have payed attention to the significance of hybrid/metamorphic bodies related to the places they come from (origins/past) and details of how they appear in the present (composition/presence in the narrative). Now, you are being asked to pay attention to the death or weaknesses (aka potential sites of death) built into a metamorphic body. What does it or would it look like, according to the narrative, for this metamorphic body to stop existing? What breaks down its existence? Beyond that, what does it mean/ why is it significant socially, culturally, economically, politically, historically, conceptually, etc., for this body to stop existing? What violences, values, ideals, fears, etc. does the (potential) ending of that body reveal about the “real world”?
Focal Points (in the form of thesis bits):
– What a Focus on the site of ending you want to analyze. What is the thing that makes your chosen hybrid body vulnerable or what literally ends its existence in the narrative? How would you explain what vulnerability is? What do you find that vulnerability/death refers to or reveals about the world of the narrative?
– How a Focus on specific moments or the literary/filmic devices that reveal the nature of this ending.
– Why a Focus on the larger implications of your ending. How does your chosen ending and the thing(s) it reveals within the narrative relate to the real world? What historical, social, economic, political, cultural, conceptual reality does it comment on? What is the comment being made or why is the fact that it is commenting at all important? Dig deep!