What are you scared of? Do you have phobias? Perhaps arachnophobia? I came across this term in 1998 when I saw this movie called Arachnophobia. There was a notorious shower scene where a girl's shower session is invaded by a spider; it falls down her body and clings to her navel and then falls onto the tub. I've had a small fear of bugs since I was little. The past three apartments I've called home were roach-infested. Often times when I went to the bathroom I would turn on the light to find a bunch of these brown critters congregating on the basin. I would freak out when images of roaches were enlarged. Just picturing the antennae, the intelligible eyes, and the many legs of these insects make me cringe. Cringe as in what my mom calls "dut dut tew." It's almost like leaping up and down in disgust. I get this feeling when I picture myself being sliced in the neck. I don't remember the origin of this image but ever since I fell into a habit of watching horror movies and slasher flicks, I was always urgent to protect my neck.
The skin on the neck is an incredibly soft, delicate part of the body. My adam's apple is there as well. When I think of a knife slowly moving towards my neck and then abruptly slicing it, I cringe, I shiver, I pull back in panic. Sometimes when I ride the train I would doze off and I would lean my head back against the window recess. At this time my neck is the most pronounced and the most vulnerable because it is laid bare. I can picture an assailant approaching me and then slicing my neck. Blood would spew from the open gash and I would bleed to death. Not to mention I cannot utter an intelligible word because my vocal chords are damaged. I cannot imagine what it's like to cut the adam's apple apart. It is simply gut-wrenching to imagine being cut in the neck. I suppose the earliest memories of this nightmare can be traced to slasher films in which the main character gets beheaded by the demon or monster. His head would be sliced off in gruesome detail (similar to beheadings during wartime) and carried off as a prize, kind of like in the movie Predator 2 starring Danny Glover. I actually remember watching that movie with my mom on television. She thought it was an absolutely intense thriller that kept her on the edge of her seat. She loved every minute of it especially the part where Danny's character is stuck in the meat storage freezer with the Predator creature. I also remember Nightmare on Elm Street which began as a rather slow-paced horror film which instantly became a slasher on all counts. The color of the film and the music really makes the piece a horror movie. And all the blood-letting of course. These elements contribute to the horror that I feel when I watch the film. My earliest memories of horror films are Poltergeist the Legacy and The Outer Limits. These two shows pushed the envelope on sex and censorship at the time. The writers were also incredibly successful at creating bone-chilling plotlines that did not necessarily involve gore.
Of course there are films in which bloodletting is a sport. Slasher films and snuff films are notorious for pushing the envelope. Snuff films are shot as if the actors are real people who were randomly kidnapped and tortured for the audience's amusement. I'm sure the movie company would not release this film if there was a crime as the result of its production. But I have to admit that the graphics are incredibly neat. The torture scenes mirror those in the film Captivity. There's the nasty scene where toe nails are pulled out with pliers in graphic detail. There was a scene in House of Wax where a few fingers were clipped off with pliers as well. These scenes are disgusting and hard to stomach because limbs are being amputated with force. And as a result the blood that is normally hidden within my body, bursts out. This bursting of blood produces an undesirable effect inside of me. It causes me to cringe and close my eyes. Yet there are dozens of sickos out there who visit Rotten.com on a daily basis and get off to pictures of mangled car accident victims and gruesome surgery videos.
What is the fascination with blood? I am fascinated with it because it's amazing. A large amount of this red stuff flows through our entire body. But once it escapes we are no longer able to survive. It fascinates me to see a dismembering because it shows me what is inside of the body. Though it doesn't occur in a fit fashion or a morally-inclined fashion, it shows me what the inside of the body looks like. Context is everything. So if a doctor looks into a body it is normal. A surgeon has to operate on carcasses during training. Surgeons have to probe the inside of a body. This provides them with legitimacy while an average Joe caught on Rotten.com would be accused of having a sick, perverse fetish that is condemnable, especially when the images are those of real dead persons who cannot consent to their body's public access. Coroners and persons who work in the morgue deal with blood all the time. The medical examiners conduct autopsies which involve removing organs, weighing them, and accessing them manually and physically. This hands-on process is literally disgusting in my opinion. I cannot imagine holding a human heart in my hand. It was once pumping and moving. Now I'm holding it and I'm examining its veins, its texture, etc. This seems incredibly disgusting to even envisage this. When I look at images of the human body, the internal organs are repulsive mainly because of their red color, their veins, their arteries. The red color is repulsive and extremely terrifying. But could it be that it's not the color that causes me to become squeamish? Could it be that it's the fact that it's what the inside of my own body looks like that threatens me so?
It's such a horrible thing to even imagine the inside of a body splayed for public viewing. Until I came across Bodies, the Exhibit at the Seaport. I have not went because it looks extremely repulsive and disgusting. Besides the biggest controversy was using Chinese dead bodies for display without consent (to the relatives of the dead persons whose bodies are now proudly and anonymously on display). This exhibits glorifies the spread of dead bodies. But not in a way that is demoralizing to these anonymous dead persons. It praises the human body as an immense center of functions and homeostasis. It praises the human body's complexities and its wonder. Therefore it is less of a turnoff than visually cutting open human bodies and showing it to public. It is not the act of maiming or dismembering that is on display at the show. It's simply human bodies that are stripped, dissected, purified, treated, and preserved. Preserved the way a dried vegetable is preserved or the way an artifact is preserved for future generations. Somehow I cannot stop but think about the dead person's reputation (which they don't have anymore). I feel guilty for observing the insides of their body because I don't have their express permission.
I suppose there is preoccupation with the functions of the human body. I've been sick for an entire week. I wondered what the parts of my body were that kept me alive all this time. I flipped open this small encyclopedia. The human body section had illustrations on the five crucial systems of the human body which included the excretory and lymphatic. The lymphatic system was what was fighting for me and fighting against the germs. This system is my saving grace because it kept me alive when my immune system's defenses were down. Staring at the veins and small capillaries in these images made me realize how complex my body is. I am sure that there are microscopic openings that my naked eye cannot discern. These illustrations are just subsections and incredibly-magnified images of parts I will never to see. Especially when I cut myself open and stare at my own veins through a microscope.
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