Body Genre: Anatomy of the Horror Film

David Scott Diffrient's groundbreaking work explores understudied facets of cinematic horror, arguing for a tactile mode of textural analysis. He challenges the tendency to privilege human over nonhuman beings and calls into question ableist assumptions about sight and sound. The volume examines the role of animals in human-centered fictions and asks what it means for audiences to consume motion pictures in which actors and stunt performers have put their own bodies and lives at risk.

Format: Hardback
Length: 277 pages
Publication date: 15 December 2023
Publisher: University Press of Mississippi

In this groundbreaking work, author David Scott Diffrient delves into largely understudied aspects of cinematic horror, encompassing a wide range of elements. From the diverse odors permeating classic and contemporary films to the wetness, sliminess, and stickiness of these productions, Diffrient argues that these elements practically demand a tactile mode of textural analysis, alongside more traditional forms of textual analysis.

Dating back to the pioneering work of Carol Clover and Linda Williams on horror cinema, film scholars have long conceptualized this once-disreputable category of cultural production as a body genre. However, despite the growing recognition of the important biological and social functions that horror serves in our lives, scholars have only scratched the surface of this genre in terms of its affective, corporeal, and sensorial appeals.

Diffrient approaches horror films in a manner akin to a mad scientist dissecting the body, meticulously separating and recombining constitutive parts to create a new analytical whole. Moreover, he challenges the tendency of scholars to prioritize human beings over nonhuman entities and questions ableist assumptions that prioritize sight and sound in horror films, almost to the exclusion of other forms of sensory experience.

In addition to exploring the role that animals, both living and dead, real or fake, play in human-centered fictions, this volume raises crucial questions about the implications of audiences consuming motion pictures in which actors, stunt performers, and other creative personnel have risked their own bodies and lives for our amusement. Historically grounded and theoretically expansive, Body Genre: Anatomy of the Horror Film takes the study of cinematic horror into previously uncharted waters, injecting new life into a subject that is closely intertwined with the broader realm of br.

Dimension: 235 x 156 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781496847966