Myths & Monsters (TV Series)
The Wild Unknown (2017)
Diane Purkiss: Self - Keble College, Oxford
Quotes
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Self - Keble College, Oxford : People will fill the wilderness that surrounds them with what they fear in themselves, what they fear in their own society. The wilderness is the place where we expel all the stuff we don't like in ourselves, in our culture, in our society.
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Self - Keble College, Oxford : [about the Hafgufa] It's a sort of sea-going nightmare that illustrates the way that the ocean's depths are the ultimate wilderness, the ultimate unknown space.
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Self - Keble College, Oxford : Forests are the places where people who haven't succeeded in the arable lands end up. They end up there because they can afford to live there; because nobody owns the forest, you can't stop them from living there. They're therefore associated with the fear of not making it, with the fear of failing your family, your children, failing to provide.
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Self - Keble College, Oxford : I suspect that the violent and abusive nature directed towards children may have unfortunately reflected not a social reality but a social fear. We tend to credit other people with abusive and violent tendencies towards children rather than regarding ourselves as having those tendencies. We're getting with the parents in "Hansel and Gretel" who are hungry and therefore abandon their children in the woods because they can't work hard enough to provide for them properly. The reason we need to tell ourselves these stories is because we need to be sure that we're not those people. We need to differentiate ourselves from those people and make out that we are much more loving and careful as parents.
