The fear of bodily changes is an everyday occurrence. New wrinkles and age spots or unexpected lumps remind you that every minute that passes is one less for death. The body can become a difficult space to inhabit, causing pain and even repulsion. That is the premise on which horror works that belong to the horror genre are based. body horror (body horror in its Spanish translation), which in recent months has generated a lot of interest due to the appearance of some relevant works signed by women. They are not the first, far from it, but they are more. And her presence brings new perspectives to those stories in which the organs are the worst enemies because, women know a lot about that. Unfortunately.
Joyce Carol Oates, who just published Butcher, has been in charge of selecting the stories that are collected in Perverse. New body horror stories written by womena volume that the Horror Vacui publishing house has just published in Spain. The writer, also known as an ‘eternal Nobel candidate’, explains in the prologue that: “Body horror is directed more strongly at women and girls. To be a woman is to inhabit a body that by nature is vulnerable to forced invasion, susceptible to penetration and pregnancy, and condemned to suffer childbirth.” In this text, he goes back to the myth of Medusa to take a tour of the history of this subgenre, in which, of course, Mary Shelley also stands out with her Frankenstein or the modern Prometheus (1818).
In Perverse It brings together texts by writers such as Oates, Margaret Atwood, Tananarive Due, Megan Abbott, Raven Leilani, Aimee Bender, Lisa Lim and Cassandra Khaw, among others. They tell stories of voodoo dolls made with warts torn from the body, of brothers who live clinging to the insides of their twin, of dysmorphia that is passed from generation to generation, of spirits that usurp organisms to kill them by dancing. They are disgusting, disturbing, unsettling stories. They are bad vibes, basically, but they are also a pleasure to read because in this area what is disgusting can also be excellent.
The book has been well received by readers (it is already in its second edition and was released on the market at the end of September). Furthermore, its launch has coincided, more or less, with the premiere of The substance, Coralie Fargeat’s film starring Demi Moore and Margaret Qualley. For Sarai Herrera, editor of Horror Vacui with Sergio Chesán, this renewed interest in this horror subgenre is related to the current social state. “Our mental health has worsened and the diagnosis of autoimmune diseases caused by stress, depression and anxiety has increased,” he explains to elDiario.es. “Our body transforms, becomes monstrous and attacks us because it cannot bear the atrocities we are experiencing. In the end, the body is the last thing that belongs to us dispossessed, so it is the only terrain over which we can have control, consciously or not.
Our body transforms, becomes monstrous and attacks us because it cannot bear the atrocities we are experiencing. In the end, the body is the last thing that belongs to the dispossessed, so it is the only terrain over which we can have control, consciously or not.
Sarai Herrera
— Horror Vacui Editor
Herrera agrees in her reflection with the journalist Anne Elizabeth Moore, who has explained it in her book Body Horror: Capitalism, Fear, Misogyny, Jokes (Paperback Edition, 2023). In it, in addition to developing the research she carried out on the autoimmune diseases with which she was diagnosed, she reflects on the acts perpetrated against women’s bodies in the name of medicine or to stimulate consumption. “Originally [el término body horror] “It used to apply to any horror story that dealt with the body, but now it has come to refer to something more specific, a focus on bodily changes, particularly stories that offer a visceral sense of the body changing,” he says in an interview in LiteraryHub. “Having a monster in a horror movie doesn’t make it a horror movie. body horrorbut when the story is told from that monster’s point of view, yes.”
Visceral reviews (literally)
The substance has arrived in theaters at a time when extreme thinness is once again emerging as a paradigm of normative beauty. Months ago, the consumption of Ozempic, a diabetes medication that suppresses the desire to eat, became fashionable among celebrities. Their silhouettes lost volume and became so uniform that the term ‘Ozempic face’ was coined, which is not so different from that of Kate Moss and her colleagues. heroin chic from the end of the last century, but without dark circles and with neat hair. That was also the time of the epidemic of eating disorders, which marked several generations who now worry about the return of those meatless figures.
In the film, actress Elizabeth Sparkle (Demi Moore) loses her last remaining job on her birthday. The once-great Oscar-winning Hollywood star has become too old for the industry. Desperate, when she receives the offer of a substance that will put an end to her problems, she decides to accept it without worrying about where it comes from or what the side effects are. This injectable liquid (like Ozempic) will be the beginning of a transformation that goes from the beauty of youth to a mass of viscous flesh.
Coralie Fargeat uses her film, which contains many explicit references to other works such as The glow, The Portrait of Dorian Gray, Carrie or the priceless Death suits you so well by Robert Zemeckis, to make a bloody critique of the violence that the system exercises against women through aesthetics. The film has been classified as feminist (it is), like many others by directors of this subgenre, but this does not necessarily mean that it will become a category.
“I don’t know if it makes much sense to talk about body horror feminist, but obviously I do believe that horror films can be feminist, and that they have been very feminist in recent years. And also that several directors have recently resorted to body horror to explore the things that worry us, put the focus on them and denounce them,” declares Desirée de Fez, journalist and film critic specialized in fantasy genre and horror.
I don’t know if it makes much sense to talk about feminist ‘body horror’, but obviously I do believe that horror films can be feminist and that several directors have recently resorted to body horror to explore the things that concern us, to put the focus on them. and report it
Desiree of Fez
— film criticism
Sarai Herrera and Sergio Chesán agree with her when she points out American Mary (2012), by the Soska sisters, as another good example of the subgenre in relation to the issue of aesthetic pressure, although from different places. De Fez, who is the author of the book scream queen (Blackie Books) and hosts the film podcast Marea Nocturna (Radio Primavera Sound) also mentions the film The first prophecy (2024) “in which director Arkasha Stevenson uses a stunning scene of body horror to talk about obstetric violence,” he defines.
For Aida Méndez and Elena Lombao, also known as Bloody Girls on social networks and other internet spaces where they spread their knowledge, the body horror It is a subgenre “very subversive to the extent that it attacks the human body, suggesting its disintegration or monstrous drift,” they say. It is linked to the feminine, but, unlike what happens in others such as cinema slasherthe protagonists are not just passive victims. “In most films the protagonists are women and there are many also directed by women who express through metaphor a conflictive relationship with their own body and the changes that occur in it,” they comment.
They point out as possible examples the films titan (2021) by Julia Ducournau or in my skin (2002), directed and starring Marina de Van. “In it, the protagonist becomes obsessed with an injury she sustained after an accident and the situation escalates. There are also many related to the pregnancy and motherhood process. A very original one is Antibirth (2016), starring Natasha Lyonne,” they point out.
Sarai Herrera considers that horror fictions created by women were always there, but the space was assumed to be masculine and there was no place for them. With exceptions perhaps such as Mary Shelley, although they also questioned whether she was the true author of Frankenstein. However, he clarifies: “Although our works are crossed by our experience of being in the world, which is something that we cannot avoid, whether we realize it or not, I think we have to avoid that story that pigeonholes any work signed by a woman as a gender claim, since it does not allow us to position ourselves as complete human beings. “We exist beyond our pain.”
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