Copyright 2018 by Gary L. Pullman
In a nutshell,
metaphysical dualism is the belief that the mind and the body are
distinct from one another. The former is physical; the latter is not.
However, in some mysterious manner, they interact. The French
philosopher Rene Descartes, a dualist, expressed the mind's
imprisonment, as it were, inside a body of flesh and blood as “the
ghost in the machine”—The Ghost in the Machine:
what a fantastic horror story title that would make!
It's not difficult to see
why Descartes would describe the plight of the mind in such a
fashion. The center of consciousness, or awareness and self-awareness
(the awareness of the self as a self), of memory, and of will,
among other aspects of intelligence, the mind controls the body, but
only partially. The mind is also a prisoner of the body, which goes
through changes during puberty, middle age, and old age that the mind
does not experience, or at least not in the same ways and to the same
extent. Thus, adolescent boys are embarrassed by their “changing”
voices, girls are concerned about the development of their breasts
and the onset of menstruation, middle-aged men and women sometimes
undergo a “mid-life crisis,” and the elderly say they're “young
at heart,” despite their balding pates, wrinkled faces, and
flagging strength and stamina. The body limits the mind in many other
ways as well, demanding food and drink, sleep and rest, medical care
and equilibrium.
The body is also
constrained and controlled to some degree by the mind, which can push
it to the limits of its endurance, compel it to attempt feats both
unwise and dangerous, and entertain thoughts and memories that cause
stress or depression.
Metaphysical dualism,
whether it is true or not (no one seems to know for certain), is the
basis for the horror subgenre known as “body horror.” In body
horror fiction, the changes the human body undergoes are much more
extreme than those of puberty or aging; they're also horrific, often
involving deviant sex, violence, injury, deformity, or death. They
remind us that, as Descartes suggests, our conscious selves, our
minds, are, indeed, imprisoned within our bodies. As Edgar
Allan Poe observes, horror fiction is about exaggeration,
sensationalism, luridness. Fans of horror fiction (and of other
popular genres) want not just the ordinary, but the
extraordinary—indeed, the paranormal or the supernatural, if they
can get it; in short, the public wants:
The ludicrous heightened into the grotesque: the fearful coloured into the horrible: the witty exaggerated into the burlesque: the singular wrought into the strange and mystical. . . . To be appreciated, you must be read, and these things are invariably sought after with avidity.
Such grotesque exaggeration is typical of body horror no less than it is of any other type of popular fiction. The body in which the mind is trapped frequently experiences deviant sex, violence, injury, deformity, or death of the most horrific kinds, as these examples attest:
Bentley Little's novels. As we observe in “Bentley Little: Aberrant Sex as Symbolic of the Nature of Sin,” this author frequently describes scenes of deviant sex acts, not only to titillate his readers, but also to suggest that such behavior “is a shorthand way of suggesting the sinfulness and impiety of modern humanity.” Since we've already examined Little's use of sadistic and other deviant forms of sex in this previous post, there's no need to revisit it in detail in this essay. Those interested in the discussion need only access the link (above).
Slasher movies and splatter films. Violence and injury are staples of most horror fiction, but they are especially prevalent in such slasher flicks as I Know What You Did Last Summer (1997), A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984), Scream (1996), and Halloween (1978), to name but a few, and in splatter films, such as Dawn of the Dead (1978), I Spit on Your Grave (1978), Cannibal Holocaust (1980), Hostel (2005), Turistas (2006), Saw (2004), and many others. In many splatter films, the violence is so extreme and so gratuitous that this subgenre is also known as “torture porn.” Even these movies, though, don't deliver the shock and horror of the exploding head in Scanners (1981).
The mutant cannibals of The Hills Have Eyes (1977; sequel, 1995), the Phantom in the silent film The Phantom of the Opera (1925), Dr. Phibes (The Abominable Dr. Phibes [1971]), Belial (Basket Case [1982]), Freddy Krueger (the Nightmare on Elm Street series [1984-2010] [so far]), and Seth Brundle (The Fly [1986]) are among the most grotesque and, in some cases, to some extent, the most pitiable deformed characters in horror movies.
Death is so ubiquitous in horror movies that a list of the movies in which it appears is probably unnecessary, but films in which the causes of death are among the most horrific include Elvira Parker's smashed head (Deadly Friend [1986]) (although it does look less than realistic) and, again, it's hard to top the exploding head in Scanners (1981). A runner-up might be the death inflicted by the otherworldly embryonic “chest-buster” in Alien (1979).
Movies are good at showing the blood, guts, and gore associated with body horror, but they can't compare with the printed word, because body horror is not as much about blood, guts, and gore as it is the suffering that goes on in the mind. Body horror is more about the mental anguish that we suffer as minds trapped inside the prisons of our flesh. It is in the mind, not the body, that horror, terror, and disgust occur. These emotions are the effects of these afflictions, but, in body horror, the effects count more than their causes. That's the reason that a master of horror such as Poe can cause mental anguish—more horror and terror and disgust—in a short story such as “The Premature Burial,” which takes place inside the coffin of a man who's been buried alive, than even the best horror movie producer can create. Poe has the power of the written word, the medium of cognition, at his command; the director must rely on nothing more than pictures and sounds. The body, without the mind, is only an object. A corpse has no fear of the dentist—or of the psychotic serial killer. It is only when the mind and the body are alive and the mind is trapped inside the body, a “ghost in the machine,” that the dentist's drill or the serial killer's knife is a thing of terror beyond imagining.
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