Living reflection from a dream

“The concoctions of the culture industry are neither guides for a blissful life, nor a new art of moral responsibility, but rather exhortations to toe the line, behind which stand the most powerful interests. The consensus which it propagates strengthens blind, opaque authority.”

Paul Tillich, The Eternal Now

“In an age of body obsession, Gothic Dissections is a promotion of the body part. By dismembering the body and exploring the specific fears associated with each aspect of the human anatomy, this study has allowed for a greater understanding of the value of individual components and the multitude of ways in which they function. Throughout [Gothic Dissections in Film and Literature], parts have been the subject of severance, extraction, modification, replacement, exchange, transplantation and renewal. For, within Gothic fiction, the boundaries of the body are being creatively disturbed and redefined.

Skin as the border that retains and protects the body is also the organ with which we touch and are touched. In Gothic fiction, it is turned inside out, split open, tattooed, burnt and flayed—removed in its entirety to create the cover for the book of the dead or maximised as a canvas upon which books of blood are written on a living surface. Orifices permit an invasion of the body—the earwig crawling deep within the brain in Oscar Cook’s short story ‘Boomerang’ (1931)— while the body can also erupt from within, as in Dreamcatcher (2001; 2003). Limbs and hands have the ability to reach beyond or physically cross boundaries in space. The fusion of anatomy and technology creates a biomechanical marvel capable of extending the body into realms previously unexplored and forbidden. Both Cherry Darling in Planet Terror (2007) and Edward Scissorhands are forever positioned in the liminal space between states of wholeness and augmentation, their prosthesis a constant reminder of their loss and their difference. They contrast with the organic transplants of the body replacements—hands, hearts, and eyes—that bring with them the ‘ghost’ of the original owner.

The borders of the Gothic body can be redrawn, grown and expanded, with the elasticity of the human form taken to an extreme as parts mutate and develop independent power. From the rebellion of the tongue in La lengua asesina (Killer Tongue, 1996) and the hand in The Beast with Five Fingers (1919; 1946), to hair in Ekusute (Exte: Hair Extensions, 2007), this is the body disturbed, challenged by a rebellion from unruly parts wishing to redefine the borders: attempting a breakaway or a takeover of the traditionally more dominant anatomical parts. Some of these evolutions are the result of so-called ‘mad science’, as doctors transgress medical boundaries—swapping brains and hearts between species—experimenting on the body with horrific results.

The body can be rearranged—all-seeing eyes and snapping teeth appearing in unexpected places in Pan’s Labyrinth (2006) and Teeth (2007)—with internal borders adjusted. The Gothic body in fiction can equally be motivated by loss and its disguise—the facial mask, eyepatch and wig or the errant nose in Nikolai Gogol’s short story, ‘The Nose’ (1836). Hair grows and falls out, teeth decay and become loose, skin wrinkles and peels, bones become brittle and break. The body changes, ages and mutates, and is constantly poised on a threshold between a state of what it is and what it will become.”