Civilization converts fear of the novel into desire for the bizarre

Evidence

The savage is afraid of strange appearances; the difficulties and dangers that beset his career cause him to scent danger in anything new which he does not understand and which he cannot assign to a familiar category. Civilization, however, transforms this affectation into its very opposite. Whatever is exceptional, bizarre, or conspicuous, or whatever departs from the customary norm, exercises a peculiar charm upon the man of culture, entirely independent of its material justification. — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 719

Categorization

• XREF: This inversion — security breeding appetite for novelty and the exceptional — is a mechanism the essay could use: Simmel’s blasé observer in New York consumes the strange precisely because security makes it ‘piquant’ rather than threatening. — connects to: People can simultaneously dread and desire the catastrophic events they anticipate — Julien Gracq, Balcony in the Forest, 509; Oriental female monsters gave Victorian anxieties about race and desire a place of expression; Science fiction monsters shifted from representing communism to representing Islam

Broader Connections

• People can simultaneously dread and desire the catastrophic events they anticipate #expands (0.70) — Julien Gracq, Balcony in the Forest, 509
• Oriental female monsters gave Victorian anxieties about race and desire a place of expression #exemplifies (0.55)
• Science fiction monsters shifted from representing communism to representing Islam #exemplifies (0.50)