The swell of my belly increases with each new dawn, my joints all filled with useless fluid, hindering movement and completion of daily tasks. I abhor my present state, but termination is not an option.” – Zin E. Rocklyn, ‘Flowers For The Sea’
We’re about halfway through Behind With Knife! Hope you’ve been enjoying. This week, we’ve had chapter 11, chapter 12, and chapter 13 so far. Here’s chapter 1, if you want, and here’s the Behind With Knife page on this website. Enjoy a slasher—or, here’s the slasher edition of Sub-Genre Slam!
And now, body horror! I’m going to talk about movies, but if you want some book recs: Invisible Monsters by Chuck Palahniuk, Sister Maiden Monster by Lucy A. Snyder, Flowers For The Sea by Zin E. Rocklyn, Our Wives Under The Sea by Julia Armfield, and The Devourers by Indra Das. The majority of those aren’t body horror, specifically, but definitely contain elements of body horror. Certainly they all achieve a level of sensuousness that fit the subgenre.
Since quitting drinking, I love having a body. Alcohol numbs your senses, is full of sugar and calories, and is a depressant. Marijuana, on the other hand, either makes your kick brain into high gear, or gives you a body high. Being the parent of a high-energy kid, I’m realizing I’m a high-energy person—not just fidgety, but fast-walking. I’m 37, and I love lifting weights, playing basketball, and kayaking. I’m down to sprint with my kid, I can still pick him at age seven. I love to eat—I think food tastes just great in my mouth, you know? And I never want to be the writer who talks too much or too little about sex, so let it be said that I enjoy sex the normal amount and encourage you to, as well.
All that said, having a body fuckin sucks, dude. I can’t see outta one eye. I’m runny nosed and coughing if it’s under 75 degrees. I’m 37, which should be retirement age, for crissakes. On a serious note, even though I stay up until midnight most nights, it’s hard to see taking a job that would regularly require me to be on the clock at midnight. Not that I think I couldn’t, just, there comes a time when I wanna have my socks off, you know? I have to stretch every single night or I WILL have a non-contact injury the next day. Much like Kobe Bryant, I would have to heroically play through it, but instead of something glamorous like shooting free throws, I’d just be walking my kid to school. That old Nyquil ad about parents never having a sick day? You can’t believe how accurate that is.
You might notice a lot of “I” statements in those first few paragraphs, for which I apologize. The thing about body horror movies is that they are necessarily over-the-top. It’s very hard to show normal maladies on-screen and have them sufficiently gross out audiences, especially without seeming really mean. John Turturro’s character in The Night Of is struggling with some sort of painful skin irritation—possibly eczema, I’m not sure—and it makes him more of a sad sack than being a public defense attorney does (shoutout to public defense attorneys, you do honorable work). A body horror movie has to show spectacle. This is not new. The Substance will one day be a rite of passage instead of shocking. We had chestbursters almost 50 years ago.The Fly is older than I am.
This is not arguing for escalation, for the record. Only novelty. The Substance is addressing how brutally Hollywood treats women. Perhaps most importantly, it feels like the two lead actresses and the auteur behind the movie have complete control of the story they’re telling. That’s the foundation for how far the body horror is pushed, and therefore the metaphor really works. Spectacle is a huge part of it, metaphor makes it truly memorable. For that reason, I’m going to continue to use some “I” statements. Gonna get a little vulnerable. Gonna talk about the ways certain body horror movies really hit home with me, a relatively in-shape yet completely fragile pacifist with emotional problems.
*****Mild spoilers for The Fly and The Substance*****
The Substance reminds me of basketball. My stubborn refusal to get old, my insistence that my legs will never give out, that if I just stretch enough, my back will hold up. It seems possible. My dad still plays tennis.
But wait, that’s the coward’s discussion. Let’s talk about something I’ve been too embarrassed to discuss publicly before. Fuck it, though, maybe someone out there could benefit from this information. I have gout.
No one knows how you get gout. There’s a genetic component, and a dietary one. I am pretty certain I developed gout in my late 20s thanks to a diet of roast beef sandwiches, cheeseburgers, lengua tacos, bacon on the weekends, and Jack-and-Pepsi every night. There was a sense, when I got the diagnosis, of something about me being irrevocably changed, thanks to my own behavior. Who knows if I’m actually right about this, but I do believe that the disease never would have expressed itself if I had just been more in control of my compulsions. Now it’s something that will never leave me. My diet has radically changed1. I’m more susceptible to joint damage when I’m older. I have to have emergency pills on hand, and will likely have to be on daily medication later in life. Yes, everyone’s on daily medication2, but I’d rather not be.
In The Substance, there is no “her and you,” it’s all “you.” Drinking is a little like that—everyone’s a different person when they’re drinking. So when Elisabeth is trying to get out of that chair but her gnarled and decrepit knee won’t bend? I know that feeling intimately, from the pain in her legs to the look of defeated shame that crosses her face. It’s so easy to vow to be a different person tomorrow, to do things right this time. Addiction is powerful, though. Remember that scene when Elisabeth is supposed to go meet that guy for a date, but she can’t stop redoing her makeup, eventually clawing at her own face and retreating to the bed? Remember when Sue steals that little bit of fluid just so she can get laid, but it costs Elisabeth a whole body part? Any drunk feels those scenes in their kidneys, man.
What I want to talk about with The Fly is kind of a continuation of this, but zoomed out a little. The Fly is particularly effective at something that I suppose you could say about a lot of body horror movies: a person unwilling to admit mistakes keeps digging their own grave faster and faster.
The “I” statements will continue, but I bet you can think of plenty of people like this: I have, at various times in my life, been a person so convinced of their own rightness/intelligence that I’ve made myself annoying at best and monstrous at worst. I get on rolls where I can’t stop talking, even if what I’m saying is stupid or mean. I have (metaphorically) vomited acid all over situations, relationships, whatever, and still carried a strong “I can fix this” attitude.
One of my favorite things about The Fly is how it opens. The first second we see him, wide-eyed and center frame, Brundle is sweatily bragging about “working on something that will change the world, and human life as we know it.” Have you ever been so excited about an idea that your whole body buzzes? That any time anyone tries to help you course-correct, to come back down to Earth, you only hear fuzz? Even if part of the reason for the transformation in The Fly is accidental, Brundle keeps doubling down. I’ve been this person before, and it’s not fun to reflect on. Brundle’s brain is so addled that he can’t admit the physical reality before him. Or maybe he can admit the physical reality before him, but can doing nothing except remain on the course already charted. That’s even more terrifying.
Jesus had a whole bit about getting the plank out your own eye before trying to remove a speck from your neighbor’s. Brutal to realize that you’ve been that person. Almost as brutal as being slowly transformed into a six-foot-tall fly.
Sorry you got an email,
Chris
- in a good way, honestly. Aside from an Italian sub like once a year, I do not miss lunchmeat. Kinda find it gross, actually. I don’t miss bacon on everything, which means the rare times I do have a bacon cheeseburger, it’s a treat. I am an unrepentant-yet-guilty carnivore, and anything that makes me eat less meat is an undeniable good thing. What sucks is how I have to be careful with pears, plums, pistachios, mushrooms, and juice. ↩︎
- especially if you count weeeeeeeeeed ↩︎