Horror for Scaredy-Cats: Monster High and Me
If someone asks you to picture something in your mind, can you do it? If someone asks you to imagine a three-legged dog riding a skateboard, can you see one, tail wagging, rolling down the sidewalk? If you’re like most people, you probably can. I, however, thought the phrase “see it in your head” was a metaphor until I was 25.
I have something called aphantasia – there are several variants, but the most common way of describing it is a “lack of a visual imagination.” I have no mental images, no visual recall, zip, zilch, nada. It is not a thing that exists in my brain. I found out about the condition after reading a Facebook post in my mid-twenties that put so many puzzle pieces into place.
As a direct result of my aphantasia, my brain likes to interpret seen images as real, unless they are extremely exaggerated and typically comical. My entire life I’ve stayed away from visual media that registers in the ‘real’ category – films, television shows, and more that feature violence, gore, extremely stressful situations, people being hurt – I cannot handle it whatsoever.
This, of course, describes what a lot of people think of as ‘horror.’
I have always, always loved the softer side of horror. Halloween is my favorite holiday. I loved watching Scooby-Doo mysteries and I loved the idea of the Universal Monsters films. The Haunted Mansion is my favorite ride at Disney World. Horror elements that don’t have the ability to cause harm? That’s my jam. I hate being scared because of the reaction I know my brain will have to it. I dated a guy in college that was really into movies, specifically horror movies. The one I bowed to going to see – Sam Raimi’s Drag Me To Hell - traumatized me so badly I couldn’t sleep for three days. And I was an adult! It was safe to say that this was not a genre for me, and I was content to be on the outside.
That is, until Monster High found me.
Monster High is a toy line and media franchise that ran from 2010 to 2016. Created by Garrett Sander and produced by Mattel, the line kicked off with seven familiar movie monsters – Frankenstein’s monster, a vampire, a werewolf, a zombie, a gill-man, a mummy and a gorgon – only they were the children of these monsters, all attending the same high school. Frankie Stein, the daughter of Dr. Frankenstein; Draculaura, the daughter of Dracula; Clawdeen Wolf, the daughter of werewolves; Ghoulia Yelps, daughter of the zombies; Lagoona Blue, daughter of The Creature; Cleo DeNile, daughter of The Mummy; and Deuce Gorgon, son of Medusa.
I was in my last year of grad school. I was doing double duty freaking out over my master’s thesis and working. On a random trip to Target, I detoured down the toy aisle and found a rather unusual corner in the standard sea of pink. Ghoulia was the one to first catch my eye – her bright blue hair sitting on the shelf – and I reached over and picked up the box. The copy on the back let me know that though she was unable to speak English, she was the smartest one in the class. Everyone spoke Zombie, and everyone knew what Ghoulia was saying. I brought her home that night and it was all downhill from there.
Through Monster High’s “webisodes” - small, five-minute-or-less animation clips on Youtube – I would learn about the students’ lives, day to day activities, and – most importantly – their friendships. Though they may have been monsters, they were more relatable than any Barbie had ever been. As the line took off, the roster of characters diversified at a rapid pace. There were new characters ranging from children of Japanese yōkai, regional cryptids, Greek myth, and more commonly known movie monsters. Aside from being diverse in their origins, the dolls were, intentionally, culturally and ethnically diverse. It may not have opened the doors of representation, but it certainly held its place. Not all of the attempts made the mark – the vaguely indigenous Isi Dawndancer comes to mind – but for every Isi, there’s a Skelita Calaveras, created by a Mexican doll designer, and one of the most beautiful cultural tributes I can think of that exists in a space intended for tween girls. They were normalized and expected, which is more than I can say for pretty much every other doll line.
What stuck out to me most about everything was that though there were arguably horror elements – they were monsters, after all! – and they were spooky, they weren’t scary. They weren’t intended to be such, even. They were just kids going to school that just happened to be monsters. And it just...clicked. Over the course of the line’s six-year tenure, I ended up buying one doll of each character. There’s an entire bookshelf in my living room dedicated to their display. I loved their creepy-cute aesthetic, and soon enough I built up the courage to adopt one of my own.
Monster High’s toy line popularity was undeniable. They were second in sales only to Barbie, and it came as no surprise when their five-minute webisodes got expanded into a whole movie franchise. It’s easy to do a cash grab movie tie-in, but it’s hard to do movies that expand on the world, characters and themes and do it well – which they surprisingly did. They weren’t all fluffy fun, either – there are movies where the students are captured by “normies” for being different, where hybrid monsters are afraid to go public because they’re afraid of the backlash they’ll face, and a genuinely scary movie about the punishments of Haunted High, a separate high school just for ghosts. Delicate themes are dealt with in a way that is approachable for children, but not so played down that it’s not watchable for adults.
It wasn’t until my adult reflection that I realized what else I loved about these characters – they portrayed girls in horror without being victims. There were no women in refrigerators, no disposable women, no need for a Final Girl in a series where nobody died. As a kid in the 90s, my general association was that horror was almost exclusively slasher films. Starting with the legendary Freddy, Jason and Michael and following all the way through to Ghostface, contemporary ‘monster’ movies came with a generous portion of violence against women. Monster High...were monsters with no violence. They were friendly, thoughtful, and caring characters. They weren’t going to murder me, they were going to bake me cookies and go shopping with me. Each character had their own personality with varied interests – there was no “wrong way” to be a ghoul.
It was a welcome reprieve.
In 2016, after pushback from several parents’ groups, the line was rebooted. It’s unclear as to the exact motivation behind it – some say it’s because the dolls were too provocative for children, some say it’s because they were too scary, some say it’s because they were cutting too much into Barbie’s profits – but suddenly the dolls were less detailed, worse quality, simplified and made way more juvenile. The thought and care that had gone into the original series was completely overwritten. Entire characters were removed in favor of arguably worse ones (Remember Ghoulia? She was written out in favor of Moanica D’Kay, a new Mean Girl with an army of zombies ready to take over Monster High – yeah, it’s about as contrived as it sounds). The charm was gone. Within the year, dolls started being relegated to discount chains and made a quiet departure by the end of 2017.
I owe Monster High a great deal of thanks. If it weren’t for my initial curiosity, I don’t know if I would have ever chosen to explore a more spooky way of life. Without Monster High, I wouldn't be the Ouija board bitch I am now. I wouldn't have had that entry point. But because of that, I’ve been a lot more open to the concept of horror as a genre. I still can’t handle slasher movies or gore porn, but I’m a lot more appreciative of how people can adapt horror to be something for them.
If Monster High had been around when I was a child, or if I had been a child when Monster High sprung from the brain of Garrett Sander, you can be certain that I would have been all over it. With a storyline I could follow, established characters with distinct personalities and the ability to work with them alongside my aphantasia (as opposed to Barbie's character traits of "occupation" and "blonde" depending on the doll), Monster High would have hit every niche that spooky little kid me loved. With the line now defunct, all I have left are my dolls, but I am so happy that I was able to exist when Monster High did.