The relationship between beauty and goodness is a tricky one. The 19th century concept of inner goodness being evident in outward beauty was always a bit shaky. The traditional and much-loved fairy tale about Beauty & the Beast is only one example of a curse or bad choice hiding the natural, inner beauty of a character in a monstrous candy coating. Oscar Wilde certainly wrote Dorian Gray as eye-candy with a rancid center. His story still resonates with us today, because we’ve all met attractive people with rotten cores.
Today we have a wealth of human-faced monsters with interiors and exteriors that don’t match. The nasty Queen Bee cheerleader is usually a pretty girl. The gorgeous model with a heart of stone is beautiful but bad news. And the super-attractive and charming businessman/sociopath is fun as a character because he uses his good looks with callus disregard for the feelings of others. They are relatively new popular stereotypes in fiction — all monstrous in their own way and, occasionally, supernaturally enhanced to complete MONSTER status.
But every time I think we’ve arrived at a time and place where outer appearance isn’t considered indicative of the inside, I get a harsh reminder. Halloween witches are, inevitably, ugly as well as wicked. Given the outward beauty of the witches with a “B” all over TV, movies and books, you’d think that Halloween costumes would catch up…but not yet.
I guess we’ve simply added to our army of monsters — with beautiful monsters as well as ugly — while not entirely giving up the old link between the outside and the inside. The challenge for writers is to create monsters and monstrous humans that ring true. Sometimes this means turning a time-honored stereotype upside down and sometimes it means enhancing what we, as readers, accept as familiar and natural. In my own storytelling, I’m beginning to tap into the power of the ordinary. Characters neither beautiful nor ugly, with surprises stashed inside perfectly normal exteriors can be fun!
I agree with you on the character into monstrous humans that ring true, because I am creating the spiders, they’re humans that are actually spiders, but are created so by the spider priest, pisces in the spitting image of humans and live their lives accordingly to humans in every manner. Today’s characters have to be created in the image of near human or human in a way that’s convincing to audiences and the personality of the character makes it all the more exciting and convincing, it’s amazing what writers, including myself can create with these monstrous characters. I love the looks and the way writers are recreating classic characters and/or creating new characters. I’ll say for instance, Supernatural, or Fringe and American’s Horror Story: Asumlyn are all – and there are more- are great and eyes glued to the screen attention getter, I know my eyes are when I watch them, as well as vampire diaries, etc.
Spiders! OOOOOOOOOOooooooooo I know more than a few people who are frightened at just the word.
The recreating of classic characters, and classic stories, is at the heart of my Candy’s Monsters series. Those old stories continue to echo so it’s an invitation to writers of all stripes. The trick is to update and reinvent these stories so that they resonate with 21st century readers.
I think your spider idea taps into some classic fears — and classic horror movies. I remember shivering while watching those black and white movies on TV. Great memories!
I have updated my spiders in a major way; they are not like the classic creepy type, these spiders are like us humans. They live in their elegant and plain homes and drive fine cars and act in the same way as the beings of a daytime soap opera with drama, viloence and dark secrets and deep revenge for the humans on earth. I won’t go into any further details about the spiders of underground NorMarie for that will spoil the book and I am near done with it and ready for publication.
Sounds totally cool and contemporary!
they are, the origins of human spiders begin in1805 with an great spider aunt named VORNALLA WALCKENAER, the story is so dark and beautiful and I am near done with the first part of the book. In all I plan on it being a two story or three story book series.
Cool!
thanks!
If you could be any type of spider what type whay you want to be?
Umm… I’ll have to give that some thought.
When I say human spiders what is the first thought that comes to your mind? If you were to meet a human spider what would be your question to them?
I’m not sure if I’d have time to ask a question as I ran away, but I’d be wondering about their webs.
well, now they have this thing where they can build a technique of a spider web without building a web. It’s sort of like invisible. It’s cool I think. I read it in wiki dictionary. I use it in my book. I am just worried about correct editing to make it a bestseller.
Ah, the bestseller… on every writers to-do list.
I hope it makes it to the international best seller list, I have worked hard on this!
This post reminded me of the old fairytale ‘Snow White’. I think folk tales were more in touch with the human condition than most of the stereotypes we have today. I wonder if the connection between beauty and goodness is a more modern invention, of say Hollywood? Or maybe the obsession with youth and beauty is itself a fairly basic human trait…
There was a lot of in the 19th century — Beauty is truth, truth is beauty… (Keats). The Grimm brothers did collect a few tales where the ugliness of a character, like the queen in Snow White, is hidden behind her beauty. I don’t think Hollywood can be credited with the invention or the destruction of the beauty myth, but it certainly exploits it in all sorts of story-lines. Hollywood’s big flaw in this department is the limited vision of beauty. But I’m not going to indulge in a rant here. It’s dinner time and I’m hungry. Just fill in a good, solid rant about expanding beauty beyond the supermodel image. (#S@@@XXX@#&#####0***!!!!?)
Witch hunts are a good example of “ugliness” used to target individuals. The smart, rich, wise, clever or, most likely, skilled with herbal medicine mid-wife/witch was a solid member of a community until she got in the way and then it was easy to use her appearance (not being a pretty, young thing) against her in an accusation of bad magic.
beauty is a thing of evil depending on the circumstance or the being, and in this case I feel it’s more of greed for things like money, love and power in this case when it comes to characters of great jaw dropping unspeakable beauty.
Jaw dropping unspeakable beauty… wow.
Yes indeed!