Beautiful Monsters: Sickness, Disability, and the Extraordinary Body

Catherine Pugh

doi:10.18573/sgf.19

Abstract

This essay builds on work by disability scholars such as Rosemarie Garland-Thomson and Kate Ellis to discuss the progression of the physically disabled body into the extraordinary body in horror films, including Alien: Resurrection (1997), Planet Terror (2007), and A Quiet Place (2018). Applying disability studies research in parallel with theories about the non-normative Gothic body, it argues that contemporary horror builds on the subversive Gothic; avoiding physiognomical prejudices, which suggest that external physical difference is caused by deviance within. This work draws from practitioners such as Fred Botting, Susan Sontag, Joshua David Bellin, Sharon Snyder, and David Mitchell, as well as director Breck Eisner, developing theories such as the transgressive – sometimes dangerous – figures of the supercripple and the hyper alive, before going on to discuss the fear of sickness underlining metamorphic monster narratives. The transgressive nature of the Gothic aligns with the metamorphic properties of sickness and disability, disrupting the healthy/sick, human/monster binaries. Therefore, this work argues that the key to characters with disabilities surviving – or even thriving – in horror and science fiction is to accept and create a symbiotic relationship with their disability, transforming the non-normative body into the extraordinary one.

Highlights

This essay builds on work by disability scholars such as Rosemarie Garland-Thomson and Kate Ellis to discuss the progression of the physically disabled body into the extraordinary body in horror films, including Alien: Resurrection (1997), Planet Terror (2007), and A Quiet Place (2018)
Applying disability studies research in parallel with theories about the non-normative Gothic body, it argues that contemporary horror builds on the subversive Gothic; avoiding physiognomical prejudices, which suggest that external physical difference is caused by deviance within
This work draws from practitioners such as Fred Botting, Susan Sontag, Joshua David Bellin, Sharon Snyder, and David Mitchell, as well as director Breck Eisner, developing theories such as the transgressive – sometimes dangerous – figures of the supercripple and the hyper-alive, before going on to discuss the fear of sickness underlining metamorphic monster narratives

Summary

Transgressing Boundaries

No “Other” positioned against the “norm” has the potential to affect as many people as disability, with at least 25% of people disabled, obese, or both (Rodan et al 8). (Extraordinary Bodies 5) Parallels can be drawn between anxieties of the physically extraordinary figure and those of the Gothic creature Both are concerned with excesses of transgression, suggesting that monstrosity can be found in “deformation” and that this deformation is catalyzed by monstrosity itself; in other words, illness/disability on the outside reflects monstrosity or evil on the inside. Despite illness and disability existing on a spectrum, strict boundaries have been socially and ideologically established between the healthy, intact or whole person and the fragmented, diseased unhealthy patient. Everyone must cross these boundaries at some point, but, as Sander Gilman asks, “What happens [...]. Everyone must cross these boundaries at some point, but, as Sander Gilman asks, “What happens [...]. when our sense of ourselves as ‘the patient,’ of ourselves as existing on the wrong side of the margin between the healthy and the diseased, becomes salient to our definition of self?” (4-5)

Sickness and Monstrosity

Findings

Displaying the Extraordinary Body