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Locating Queerness in the Monsters of 'Body Horror'

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Locating Queerness in the Monsters of 'Body Horror' Infestation, Transformation, and Liberation: Locating Queerness in the Monsters of ‘Body Horror’ by Fawwaz A. AlFares Bachelor of Arts, June 2009, Kuwait University A Thesis submitted to The Faculty of The Columbian College of Arts and Sciences of The George Washington University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts May 15th, 2016 Thesis directed by David T. Mitchell Professor of English Patrick Cook Professor of English © Copyright 2016 by Fawwaz A. AlFares All rights reserved !ii To my family, my friends, and the strangers I have yet to meet. !iii Acknowledgements I wish to thank the members responsible for reading and responding to my thesis for being wonderfully generous with their expertise and valuable time. A special thanks to Professor David T. Mitchell and Professor Patrick Cook for their invaluable support during the course of the semester, and for the countless hours spent reading through my haphazard writing and proving me with feedback to improve the quality of my work. I would like to thank them both for their patience, and also acknowledge Professor Marshall Alcorn’s guidance throughout the entire process. I would also like to acknowledge and thank the entire faculty and team of the English Department, without whom I would not have had the tools required for this undertaking. It was through the faculty’s dedication and encouragement that I was able to conduct my research with ease. There are too many names to list here, but I do hope that each member knows how much their contributions had been appreciated throughout each semester. Finally, I would like to thank my fellow peers and students for their excitement and skill. It was the culmination of all these different factors was I able to enjoy the process of completing this research. I will truly miss each and every one of you. !iv Abstract of Thesis Infestation, Transformation, and Liberation: Locating Queerness in the Monsters of ‘Body Horror’ Given the increased public enthusiasm for the genres of Horror and Science Fiction, as well as the renewed and ever-evolving interest in indie horror films (propelling them into the mainstream), there is a noticeable increase of public eagerness to consume films that toy with the ideas of anxiety and the body. While many of these films seem to fit the rubric of heteronormative and mainstream Hollywood productions that occupy a neat world of perfectly defined gender identities, we can still excavate bodies that fall outside of such neat definitions. On the one hand, we are presented with a defined female or male character, thrust into a chaotic situation through which they must endure tremendous anxiety and pain and strive to survive. On the other, these bodies seem to survive and thrive despite not fitting in with the simple heteronormative worlds in which they dwell. The purpose of this thesis is not to provide a stand-in or voice for the queer body, nor is its purpose to create an index of films that fall under the sub-genre of ‘Body Horror,’ but to explore how films in this genre that seem to privilege performances of able-bodiedness and heteronormativity actually treat queerness and queer topics in very different ways. This thesis wishes to explore these bodies as they cruise through their respective dystopian technofetishistic worlds; as their bodies are infected, their figures transformed, and their psyches liberated as they attain physical, sexual or psychological release. !v To facilitate both observation and maintain its central focus, this paper will be divided into three main parts. The first chapter will define key terms and phrases that are the central focus of this paper. The second chapter will explore the concept of ‘Infestation,’ which will focus on the queer and disabled bodies as they are occupied, annexed, and attacked by external forces or internal strife. This chapter will consider the concept of ‘Transformation’ and further examine the manner through which the “monstrous queer” emerges through the definition of normalcy and the anomalous. Lastly, the final chapter will revolve around the concept of ‘Liberation,’ and review these observations in terms of how these performances reconcile and imagine their own respective ideas of queer futures. This final chapter will expand the narrative of queer futurity while also dwelling on notions of the inevitable “queer dystopia” in ‘Body Horror’ films. The voices and scholarship in the fields of Queer and Disability Studies, Psychoanalysis, and Film Studies will guide this reading as it seeks out these bodies and unearths the deeply affective, psychological, and physical states of transformation they undergo. !vi Table of Contents Dedication iii Acknowledgments iv Abstract of Thesis v Thesis Introduction 1 Chapter One: Defining Key Terms 6 1.1 Queerness 6 1.2 Disability 7 1.3 The Psychological and Affective Conditions of ‘Body Horror’ 10 Chapter Two: Infestation, Transformation, and the Anxiety around Aliens 13 2.1 Chapter Introduction 13 2.2 Alien (1979): Queer Flesh and the Monstrous-Feminine 15 2.2.1 The “Monstrous-Feminine” 19 2.2.2 Queer Flesh and Failure 27 2.3 The Thing (1982): Queerness and the Grotesque 40 2.4 Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978): The “Monstrous Queer” 53 Chapter Three: Liberation, Release, and Reconciling Queer Futurity 69 3.1 Chapter Introduction 69 3.2 Reconciling Queer Futurity in Heteronormative Cinema and the Inevitable Queer Dystopia in Body Horror Films 70 Conclusion 76 Works Cited 78 !vii List of Figures Figure 1: Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Scene still 22 Figure 2: Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Scene still 22 Figure 3: Alien. Sigourney Weaver. Scene still 30 Figure 4: Alien Resurrection. Sigourney Weaver. Scene still 33 Figure 5: Alien Resurrection. Weaver and Winona Ryder. Scene still 36 Figure 6: Alien Resurrection. Sigourney Weaver. Scene still 38 Figure 7: The Thing. Scene stills: The “Thing” transforming 43 Figure 8: The Thing. Scene stills: The Thing transforming 43 Figure 9: Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Scene stills 62 Figure 10: Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Scene stills 62 Figure 11: Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Scene stills 64 Figure 12: Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Scene stills 64 !viii “There looms, within abjection, one of those violent, dark re-volts of being, directed against a threat that seems to emanate from an exorbitant outside or inside, ejected beyond the scope of the possible, the tolerable, the thinkable. It lies there, quite close, but it cannot be assimilated. It beseeches, worries, and fascinates desire, which, nevertheless, does not let itself be seduced. Apprehensive, desire turns aside; sickened, it rejects.” Kristeva, Julia, The Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection !ix Thesis Introduction Monstrous births, deformed bodies, and deviancy from the norm have been the hallmarks of the genres of Horror and Science Fiction since the conception of monsters in early gothic fiction by notable figures such as Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley and H. P. Lovecraft. Their talents spawned multiple incarnations of terrifying monsters and fascinating creatures that have transcended the genres to which they were bound. In today’s mainstream Hollywood productions, the sub-genre of ‘Body Horror’ was able to locate the intersection of horror, science fiction, fantasy, drama, and other genres. This results in performances that aim draw out every intense affective response possible by thrusting the audience member into the paranoid worlds of the films. This scholarship began with a very simple meditation on readings of this very complex genre. It is a genre that thrived and continues to flourish around controversy, anxiety, fear, and the body that binds these three nouns to one another. A tremendous amount of research has been done around the genres of Horror and Science Fiction, as well as the category of ‘Body Horror’. But in an age which bears witness to a multitude of films that are being churned out by the second by production companies in hopes of financial success, it might have become easy for producers as well as audience members to neglect certain layers of reading that seem to permeate these mainstream films. It becomes crucial to recover observations that might seem to slip through our fingers or fall between the cracks in the viewing process, and explore ways through which usually normative and ableist productions can offer up non-normative ideas and conceptions. !1 Films such as Alien, The Thing, and Invasion of the Body Snatchers offer up certain literary richness that begs to be re-examined in a different light. These films present audience members with bodies that traverse space, time, psychological states, and explores the endeavors of their main characters as they suffer through indignation, humiliation, and pain. Taking a page from Steven Shaviro’s The Cinematic Body, this paper hopes to travel across the disciplinary boundaries of Queer and Feminist Theory, Disability Theory, Psychoanalysis, Film Theory as well as the multiple concepts propelled by postmodernist thinking to further explore the politics, aesthetics, and affective layers of the non-normative body in such films. The scholarship of José Esteban Muñoz, Judith Halberstam, and others will serve as the basis for our considerations of the concepts of queerness and disability, and how they factor into to the crafted world of the film. Their work will aid us in both locating and defining what these terms entail as well as unpack our ever-evolving understanding of concepts that seem to resist definition. Additionally, the work of Alexander G. Weheliye will inform our reading of the politics of the gendered and branded body. Finally, no research in this area of film can be fulfilled without utilizing the works of film theorists, horror writers and the psychoanalytical in the category of ‘body horror’.
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