Mutations and Metamorphoses: Body Horror is Biological Horror

Cruz, Ronald Allan L.

doi:10.1080/01956051.2012.654521

Cited by 17 publications

(11 citation statements)

References 15 publications

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“…Take the example of Alien (Scott, 1979). The Xenomorph poses an existential threat to the characters, communicated to them and the audience through its powerful and unnerving physiology; the full force of the Xenomorph’s terrifying design lies in its embodying the recognizable properties of a dangerous predator while simultaneously displaying nonterrestrial properties, both in its surface-level appearance and its abnormal ontogeny—the “bizarreness of its metamorphic pathway” (Cruz, 2012, p. 164). By exploiting this design, the film elicits the fear of being hunted by a deadly but exotic animal.…”

Section: Representing Grief Through Horrormentioning

confidence: 99%

Horror Films and Grief

Millar

Lee

2021

Emotion Review

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Many of the most popular and critically acclaimed horror films feature grief as a central theme. This article argues that horror films are especially suited to portraying and communicating the phenomenology of grief. We explore two overlapping claims. First, horror is well suited to represent the experience of grief, in particular because the disruptive effects of horror “monsters” on protagonists mirror the core experience of disruption that accompanies bereavement. Second, horror offers ways in which the experience of grief can be contained and regulated and, in doing so, may offer psychological benefits for the bereaved. While our focus will be squarely on film, much of what we say applies to other media.

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Section: Representing Grief Through Horrormentioning

confidence: 99%

Horror Films and Grief

Millar

Lee

2021

Emotion Review

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“…Scientific innovation and the business of science and medicine became part of the genre and reflected broader considerations of how the male-dominated medical profession viewed and commodified the patient body. The Exorcist revelled in ‘body horror and its powers of revulsion’ (Cruz, 2012: 161), and advances in medicine were ‘recast’ as the ‘unknown’ in the place of supernatural spectres or monstrous humans (Boss, 1986: 19).…”

Section: Science the Body And The Devilmentioning

confidence: 99%

‘Somewhere between science and superstition’: Religious outrage, horrific science, and The Exorcist (1973)

Chambers

2021

History of the Human Sciences

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Science and religion pervade the 1973 horror The Exorcist (1973), and the film exists, as the movie’s tagline suggests, ‘somewhere between science and superstition’. Archival materials show the depth of research conducted by writer/director William Friedkin in his commitment to presenting and exploring emerging scientific procedures and accurate Catholic ritual. Where clinical and barbaric science fails, faith and ritual save the possessed child Reagan MacNeil (Linda Blair) from her demons. The Exorcist created media frenzy in 1973, with increased reports in the popular press of demon possessions, audience members convulsing and vomiting at screenings, and apparent religious and specifically Catholic moral outrage. However, the official Catholic response to The Exorcist was not as reactionary as the press claimed. The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Office of Film and Broadcasting (USCCB-OFB) officially and publicly condemned the film as being unsuitable for a wide audience, but reviews produced for the office by priests and lay Catholics and correspondence between the Vatican and the USCCB-OFB show that the church at least notionally interpreted it as a positive response to the power of faith. Warner Bros. Studios, however, were keen to promote stories of religious outrage to boost sales and news coverage – a marketing strategy that actively contradicted Friedkin’s respectful and collaborative approach to working with both religious communities and medical professionals. Reports of Catholic outrage were a means of promoting The Exorcist rather than an accurate reflection of the Catholic Church’s nuanced response to the film and its scientific and religious content.

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“…At the same time, urban horror films are also about bodies. Film scholars have characterized horror as a "body genre," a low cultural form that traffics in graphic displays of bodily sensation while attempting to elicit affected bodily responses from spectators (Clover, 1993;Cruz, 2012;Wester, 2012;Williams, 1991). Like melodrama or pornography, horror films aim at stirring bodily impulses-revulsion and fear-rather than engaging the audience's faculties for critical reflection.…”

Section: Precarity Thanatopolitics and Ambient Horrormentioning

confidence: 99%

It Follows: precarity, thanatopolitics, and the ambient horror film

Kelly

2017

Critical Studies in Media Communication

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In the 2014 horror film It Follows, a teenage woman is terrorized by a fatal curse that passes from victim to victim via sexual intercourse. The subject of the curse is relentlessly pursued by vacantminded assassins that take the form of friends, loved ones, and strangers. The film is set near the infamous dividing line of Detroit's 8 Mile Road, between what remains of the suburban workingclass and the sacrifice zone of post-industrial urban triage. I argue that It Follows confronts audiences with the spectral manifestation of precarity: the deliberate and unequal redistribution of human fragility to populations who are the most socially and economically vulnerable. First, the generic shift from a specific monster to an anonymous and relentless force redeploys horror convention to draw attention to the conditions that induce horror within the prevailing socioeconomic order. Second, the film renders such precarity visible by contrasting the mise-en-scène of the suburban enclave with zones of postindustrial ruin, the relative comfort of the former predicated on the vulnerability of the latter. The film maps a landscape of postindustrial ruin, enacting a visual and narrative critique of thanatopolitics, the biopolitical organization of death under late capitalism.

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Mutations and Metamorphoses: Body Horror is Biological Horror

Cited by 17 publications

References 15 publications

Horror Films and Grief

Horror Films and Grief

‘Somewhere between science and superstition’: Religious outrage, horrific science, and The Exorcist (1973)

It Follows: precarity, thanatopolitics, and the ambient horror film

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