Bodyshock

Hello friends, readers, and everyone in between.

 

This time around, I want to talk to you about the body. The human body, to be precise, and its role in horror fiction. The aim here is twofold; to paint a brief generalisation of what I consider to be a vitally important aspect of the horror genre, as well as to touch upon how the concept inspires me personally. So, huddle up tight in your favourite corner of the room, put your dinner to one side (especially if it’s a nice, rare steak), turn any mirrors to face away from you, and here goes…

I’ve found that a frequently recurring theme in much of my own written fiction is a somewhat overt concern with the human body, fitting quite neatly into the sub-genre of body horror, if you like. For want of a better way of putting it, this is one of the niches of dark fiction with which I have grown to feel particularly comfortable, probably because writing becomes that little bit more authentic when the author can relate to the subject. It is easier to write about something when aspects of that thing are disturbing to you on a personal level.

And the human body is something that at times disturbs me greatly. 

Now for the get-out statement: I don’t mean to offend. Let's be clear, I don't find people repellent in general. I don’t walk down a crowded street and think; Christ, why is everyone so ugly? Not often, anyway (though I’d gladly bet that most of you do, some of the time at least – I’m guessing it’s one of those things that pops into everyone’s head from time to time). No, when I say that I find the body disturbing, I’m referring primarily to my own body. Don’t get me wrong – I’m sometimes creeped out when I see someone who exceeds the bounds of what most would consider acceptable normality. In his great book, Danse Macabre, Stephen King refers to the feelings of horror that can be evoked by such people, such as those who are so overweight as to be a level somewhere beyond obese that gives rise to feelings from sympathy…and sometimes revulsion. Such reactionary emotions are the kind that few would willingly admit to feeling, mainly because society teaches us that it's wrong to do so, as well as just plain rude, especially in a modern world where things such as body shaming are considered a cultural no-no. Instead, we're taught that it's almost taboo, that we shouldn't feel such things. But most of us still do all the same. It's probably the reason why certain television programmes on TLC are so vicariously popular. 

 

But I digress. I’ll admit, I’m disturbed by myself, by certain aspects of my own physicality. I don’t suffer from dysmorphia, I'm certainly no oil painting, but I don’t even consider myself to be particularly ugly and there isn’t that much about myself that I would gladly change, I'm completely average, and I'm okay with that. Rather, I’m wary of certain aspects of my own skin coat, wary of its limitations and weaknesses…and how they can be so easily exceeded, usually to a devastating effect. The human body is far from perfect, so vulnerable to corruption by chemicals or disease that are capable of destroying or altering it from the inside out...or the outside in. Film director David Cronenberg built his initial career on such conceits, with stories set in a world where sex and disease were things to be feared, things that would lead only to violent, bloody death. In early Cronenberg works such as Shivers (aka The Parasite Murders) and Rabid, stark characters inhabit equally bleak, sterile landscapes, where manufactured parasites turn their victims into murderous sex maniacs, or synthetic body modifications result in a modern-day form of vampirism. By many, Cronenberg is regarded as the father of body horror, or venereal horror, as it is sometimes more narrowly referred. Its second title is one that I’m not so fond of personally, the implication being that the primary focus is upon sex. Whilst I agree that sex and the sex act can be a rich seam for the horror writer to mine (a subject I touched upon just recently), there is more to the human body than that one facet. Oh, but there is so much more…

 

A primary feature of such horror is the violation or corruption of the body to some degree, leading to its alteration or destruction. This violation can be in any number of ways, be it by disease, injury or some other physical manipulation. I maintain that this is in itself, a staple of the horror genre and has been since the early days of macabre fiction. The use of corruption of physical humanity as a means of evoking fear is apparent in all of the classics of genre fiction. Don’t believe me? Consider Dracula, and most other works of vampire fiction, where the usual interpretation of the undead protagonist is basically a monster in human form. In F W Murnau’s silent great Nosferatu, this idea is taken to an extreme where the vampire, although taking on a human appearance of sorts, is nevertheless physically repellent, a kind of twisted, Uncanny Valley version of human, if you like. Likewise in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, the enduring image is that of a deluded man seeking to play God, contrasted with his creation, a being so outwardly fearful as to seek recourse in violence when shunned by the conventional. The creature might not be the true monster of the tale, but it's still his image burned into everyone's memories. Even Oscar Wilde and Robert Louis Stevenson, with Dorian Gray and Edward Hyde respectively, created characters with whom the accepted normality was distorted into something grotesque, something for the rest of us, the so-called normal people, to shudder at. It is this obsession with the perception of ugliness as something to be feared, that has percolated through the genre over the years, to be shown in the work of those such as Cronenberg, Brian Yuzna, and early Peter Jackson (it's still hard to believe sometimes that the man who brought us Lord of the Rings also blessed us with Bad Taste and Braindead), as well as in some of the fiction of H P Lovecraft. Influences can even be spotted in some of the early work of one of my favourite authors, Ray Bradbury (check out such gems as Skeleton, The Jar and The Man Upstairs). It is my opinion that many of Bradbury's early tales rank among his best, most vital stories of stark terror.

I hope I’ve already pointed out that so much of horror depends upon the squeamish dread that can be evoked from the human form in some way or other. But why? To me, the answer is simple: As is so often the case, people fear – are often disgusted – by things they don’t understand. In reference to body horror, the fear stems from the notion that something familiar should be perverted into something wholly unfamiliar, into something alien, something different. Hence, the success of tales such as Doctor Jekyll and Mister Hyde, and Frankenstein, which hold up the mirror to show something we don’t like. The emotion tapped into is a primal fear, something that has been recognised by so many horror writers and movie makers alike, best exemplified again by David Cronenberg. The best body horror shows us the real monster: It is us. It is that which we are all too capable of becoming. We are the alien, the freak, the mutant. The fear of body horror is the fear of the body itself, the fear of humanity.

 

It is the most powerful fear of all. The fear of the self. We have seen the monster - the real monster - and it is us.

Until next time, 

- L