A modern monster that I find interesting and somewhat overlooked in mainstream media (literature and film) is the alien race of Lizard People who rule the world. The most recent series that I saw these creatures depicted in was a Netflix show called, “Inside Job” and it basically depicts Lizard People to a tee. Lizard People are a race of aliens that have populated Earth and have taken over our planet through their abilities to transform themselves into human forms, and in doing so have run the planet for thousands of years, through politicians, rulers, celebrities and just your average person. The depiction of Lizard People became popularized more recently than some other monsters, really becoming at large in the late 1990s through David Icke a British Soccer Player, broadcaster and I believe politician to a degree. He has written over 20 books on the subject of how these humanoid creatures came from a far off star system, live underground, have bloodlines including the Royal Family, and the Bushes, a superior species that lives on our planet and is the reasoning for who is in charge, this conspiracy ranked in the top ten conspiracies theories in America in 2013 with 4% of voters believing. 

I believe that Lizard People are a 21st century monster due to the nature of humans wanting to find reasons, whether good or bad, for the way things are how they have become. In the past, as Cohen recites, many of the atrocities that have been committed to many races and cultures of people were enforced by the ideology that they were some monstrous beings that were threatening our way of life. Cohen’s Thesis Four: The Monster Dwells at The Gate of Difference, encapsulates the idea of Lizard people amongst humans through the descriptions of other monsters. “Political or ideological difference is as much a catalyst to monstrous representation on a micro level as cultural alterity in the macrocosm. A political figure suddenly out of favor is transformed like an unwilling participant in a science experiment by the appointed historians of the replacement regime: “monstrous history” is rife with sudden, Ovidian metamorphoses, from Vlad Tepes to Ronald Reagan. The most illustrious of these propaganda-bred demons is the English king Richard III, whom Thomas More famously described as “little of stature, ill feature of limmes, croke backed, his left shoulder much higher then his right, hard fauoured of visage. . . . hee came into the worlde with feete forward, . . . also not vntothed.”14 From birth, More declares, Richard was a monster, “his deformed body a readable text”15 on which was inscribed his deviant morality (indistinguishable from an incorrect political orientation). The almost obsessive descanting on Richard from Polydor Vergil in the Renaissance to the Friends of Richard III Incorporated in our own era demonstrates the process of “monster theory” at its most active: culture gives birth to a monster before our eyes, painting over the normally proportioned Richard who once lived, raising his shoulder to deform simultaneously person, cultural response, and the possibility of objectivity.16 History itself becomes a monster: defeaturing, self-deconstructive, always in danger of exposing the sutures that bind its disparate elements into a single, unnatural body. At the same time Richard moves between Monster and Man, the disturbing suggestion arises that this incoherent body, denaturalized and always in peril of disaggregation, may well be our own”(Cohen 8-9). As Cohen states throughout this passage the purpose for some creatures to be created is to due to the dislike or “out of favor” individuals that may not have the popularity when placed into a high ranking position such as a King in the case of King Richard, or even the President of the United States as for all of the presidents for at least the past twenty years. People will find reasons to show as to why people in high ranking positions such as politicians, or celebrities have reached their status especially when an “average person” does not like or agree with the actions that the “Lizard Person” encapsulates. Although not as popular of a monster in the mainstream media the Lizard Person Monster still garners attention through conspiracy theorist and many others at time to time to an extent, which I believe, to give a reason for our own inadequacy and inability to reach the heights that these individuals have reached through hardwork and dedication, so in saying that they are a superior Lizard person with an almost divine like right to their high ranking and importance in our society makes us feel more adequate and content with the faults in our lives.