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The relationship with our bodies has always been a complicated one. But it is also a deep one. We are born with this one body and we carry it around with us throughout our whole life.
We sometimes see it as a separate entity from us. We also realize that it is a part of ourselves. We look in a mirror and can fail to recognize ourselves, or we can feel each and every part of it as an extension of us.
Such a deep and intrinsic connection has provided storytellers many opportunities to spin their tales around the very composition of our bodies. They can examine the human form and stretch it, twist it, deform it, and ultimately abuse it. It is such an extensive opportunity for storytelling that there is a whole genre for it.
Body horror
But why all the horror?
A brief history
The term body horror was first used by Phillip Brophy in his 1983 article “Horrality: The Textuality of the Contemporary Horror Film”. While body horror is more tied to the world of cinema and specifically to a slew of ’80s horror flicks, this concept and approach to the human body can be traced back to…
