Line Henriksen ---- Here be Monsters

Ever heard of smile.jpg? It is said that it appeared online for the first time in the 1990's, and that it is supposed to be a picture of a dog-like creature with a broad grin, a human hand reaching out from the darkness behind it. Anyone who has ever seen the jpeg is rumoured to have been visited by the creature, smile.dog, in their nightmares. It tells them to “spread the word” by showing the jpeg to others. Then it will leave them alone. Promise. 'The Curious Case of Smile.jpg' is a so-called creepypasta. These are online urban legends, which often claim to be stories of ‘real’ encounters with the paranormal. In this sense, creepypastas have a lot in common with many other contemporary narratives of the paranormal found in for example web series [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_series ], Alternate Reality Games [Link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternate_reality_game ] and so-called point of view/found footage horror films, most of which flirt with documentary-style aesthetics. In this chapter I would like to explore monstrous encounters in narratives of the ‘authentic’ paranormal through the lens of materialist feminisms. Most materialist feminists argue that the materiality of the world is never still, but always engaged in active processes of materialization. In the midst of such movement and transformation, one will encounter monsters, that is, the strange(r) and the ‘other’ that cannot be completely anticipated nor fully known, but which one must learn to live with and respond to in respectful ways. This is the beginnings of a posthuman ethic as well as an opening up of what Donna Haraway calls the ‘promises of monsters’ : the possibility of changing the world by disturbing it with accounts of virtual, liveable elsewheres. But how does one respond to ghosts and ghouls, monsters and phantoms? And how does one explore and navigate in worlds that are in constant transformation? These are some of the questions I would like to touch upon in this chapter. In the meantime, if you are looking for an encounter of your own, just follow this link [insert link to picture] and spread the word. You will be doing me a favour, and it is really not that bad. Promise. 1.See for example: http://www.creepypastaindex.com/creepypasta/the-curious-case-of-smile-jpg Last accessed on 7 May 2012. 2.Donna Haraway: The Promises of Monsters – A Regenerate Politics for Inappropriate/d Others, in: Lawrence Grossberg, Cary Nelson, Paula A. Treichler, eds., Cultural Studies, 1992, Routledge