DEREK AUSTIN JOHNSON
  • Home
  • Bibliography
  • About
  • Media
  • Contact
  • Maple Street Dispatches

Body Horror: Abusing the Human Body for a Reason

4/15/2025

0 Comments

 
Found on Medium today, a short essay on body horror and its appeal. 
Horror offers the unique opportunity to experience and feel, in a controlled setting, all the things you would definitely want to avoid in real life — fear, violence, and death. It is like a simulation. It allows us to take a deep plunge into the darkest depths of our existence, while being assured that no real harm can come of it.
I post this paragraph because the real-world seems passive in the unfolding never-ending horror show. It’s part of the reason people gravitate toward horror. We can make sense of it when it’s confined to a controlled environment. 
The subtitle of the article reads “On twisting the human form to make a point” and discusses Shelley’s Frankenstein, Dali’s “Surreal Drawers of Psychoanalysis”, Munch’s “The Scream”, Caos Diz’s “Story Twist”, as well as the works of David Cronenberg, Julia Ducournau, and Coralie Fargeat.
​

At its best, body horror confronts our fears of change, especially through age, and challenges us by suggesting we aren’t much more than mobile meat. Body horror also is one of the subgenres willing to “go there.”
0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    Picture
    Derek Austin Johnson has lived most of his life in the Lone Star State. His work has appeared in The Horror Zine, Rayguns Over Texas!, Horror U.S.A.: Texas, Campfire Macabre, The Dread Machine, and Generation X-ed. His novel The Faith was published by Raven Tale Publishing in 2024.

    He lives in Central Texas. 

    Archives

    July 2025
    June 2025
    April 2025
    March 2025
    February 2025
    December 2024
    November 2024
    August 2024
    May 2024
    April 2024
    August 2023
    May 2023
    April 2023
    February 2023
    January 2023
    December 2022
    November 2022
    September 2022
    July 2022
    May 2022
    June 2021
    January 2021
    November 2020
    October 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    March 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    May 2019
    January 2019
    August 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    July 2017
    May 2017
    January 2017
    October 2016
    July 2016
    January 2016
    September 2015
    July 2015
    May 2015
    March 2015
    November 2014
    July 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    January 2014
    October 2013
    August 2013
    May 2013
    April 2013
    March 2013
    December 2012
    October 2012
    August 2012
    July 2012
    June 2012

    Categories

    All

    RSS Feed

  • Home
  • Bibliography
  • About
  • Media
  • Contact
  • Maple Street Dispatches