Merlin rewatch | 1x13 “Le Morte d’Arthur”
I was just passing through. I said to myself, “I wonder if my brother remembers his brother.” Did I do wrong? It doesn’t matter–I’m very happy.
The idea that being recognised in the depths of despair can save your life is something I believe in. During my worst eating-disordered years, I got most of my nutrition through the written word. I copied out fragments of prose and held them like amulets, convinced that a day would dawn when their wisdom would turn a key that restored my health. The loneliness of illness is hard to convey. There is a difference between occasionally feeling alone and the grip of an alienation that makes you question whether you are human in any sense beyond the immediate physical. In this state, meaningful communication is elusive. Everyday conversation can’t hold the SOS that sweats out of you.
Sophie Monks [x]
Medieval island: Le Mont-Saint-Michel in Normandy, France.
Still can’t believe I went here on a school trip in year 9 and spent most of the time hiding from the teachers down a back alley smoking. Teenagers, am I right?!
“Body Horror,” as an official designation, is a term that comes from horror cinema but its literary origins can be traced back as far as Frankenstein. It is a trope that springs from primal fears—from the knowledge of oneself as a physical object and the consciousness of pain—and its roots wind through the Gothic, to the fin de siècle and the birth of science fiction. As a sub-genre, it broadly encompasses the concept of bodily violation, whether that be via mutilation, zombification, possession, or disease, but arguably one of its most pervasive themes is that of transformation. From Ovid to Cronenberg, transformation occupies an anxious corner in so much of film and literature that it more or less forms a tradition all its own. Folklore and myth are littered with metamorphosis—Daphne twisting into a bay tree, Alice in Wonderland with her Eat Me’s and Drink Me’s—and its impact is frequently an unsettling one. It is a fairy-tale punishment, a warning to naughty children, a reminder of the body’s unreliability.
[…] I think that writing about women goes hand in hand with horror writing. The female body is a nexus of pain almost by design, but it is also potentially monstrous—an object traditionally subjugated, both for its presumed weakness and its perceived threat. The mutations and transformations of horror writing are uniquely qualified to evoke this: the difficulty and unreliability of the female body, its duality as an object both to be feared for and to fear.
When Daphne transforms into a bay tree, the moment is one of both horror and deliverance. She is no longer what she once was, but the metamorphosis frees her from the unwanted attention of Apollo. This duality of horror and emancipation sits, I think, at the core of female transformation. Within the horror genre (and arguably everywhere else), bodies read as female are always subject to pain, and to the threat of violation. Becoming something else—a tree, a freak, a monster—preempts this pain and reduces the risk of harm. It may even, if the transformation is the right one, allow you to cause harm in return.
— Julia Armfield, “On Body Horror and the Female Body”
Books, and sometimes movies… can be mutually appreciated, but the specific reasons for loving them cannot satisfactorily be shared… you can never exactly imitate someone else’s love of a movie or book.
John Irving
Riz Ahmed giving Edmund’s ‘Stand up for bastards’ speech from King Lear (Act I, Scene II)
