DR has published a conversation from the P1 program “Damerne Først” in which three commentators discuss why monsters fascinate audiences, and what that fascination reveals about people themselves.
The discussion was broadcast on DR’s radio channel P1 and published on DR’s website on September 13, 2026. As DR reports, the three hosts are Weekendavisen culture commentator Anne Sophia Hermansen, parish priest Sørine Gotfredsen, and Berlingske op-ed editor Anne Sofie Allarp.
Hermansen opened by describing her childhood fear of Dracula, the human-like monster broadcast on DR in the 1970s. According to DR, her older brother asked why Dracula would bother stopping by her, and the teasing actually eased her fear.
The hosts agree that supernatural creatures once treated as repulsive now appear more attractive than ever. A real monster, they said, is not only evil, but also boundless, supernatural and unpredictable.
What the fascination reveals
Allarp noted that people can be drawn to figures who break rules and do what others do not dare. That same attraction, she said, transfers to the behavior of the monster.
Gotfredsen argued that evil draws people more than good, because people carry evil within themselves. Per DR’s account, the hosts concluded that monsters allow people to set aside guilt, since no one can be as evil as the monster itself.
Allarp described the monster as the embodiment of what people fear in one another. Gotfredsen linked the same split to religion, faith and superstition, calling it the dualism between good and evil.
Monsters, like some gods, are human inventions with the sign reversed, Gotfredsen said. Gods represent justice, while monsters represent pure destruction, and both are attempts to create beings in which people see themselves.
The recurring vampire
The flattering vampire figure returns again and again, from Bram Stoker’s classic to the Twilight series, which revived the appeal for young female readers. Hermansen described Stoker’s Dracula as young, attractive and metrosexual, a monster that creeps in and destroys from within.
DR notes that the myth still gathers crowds. In 2022, on the 125th anniversary of Stoker’s Dracula, 1,369 people assembled in vampire costume and set a record for the largest such gathering.
Allarp pointed out that the areas of the brain associated with violence and sex overlap in many ways. The instincts sit close together, she said, which may explain the erotic charge attached to the vampire.
The hosts said they are not unreservedly pleased when monsters are made too human. They mentioned Norman Bates in Psycho, Darth Vader in Star Wars and Voldemort in Harry Potter as examples.
Gotfredsen said people should not ally themselves with monsters, and that monsters are more useful when they remain cruel. Something is lost, she said, when they are made therapeutically understandable.
