My, what lovely insides you have...

After extensive True Blooding and experiencing ambivalence towards the sexual content I keep returning to a couple of scenes. Really beautiful scenes. Really visceral scenes. And having missed the tactile quality of special effects ardently for many years I wanted to wax nostalgic over guts of glory and how they go all over the place. Below is a list of the holy entrails... and in no particular order, just appearing as they fall out. 

TRUE BLOOD

Impressive return to the sticky substances in HBO uber popular vampire romp. Unlike the conventions that the televisual medium has developed of vamps evaporating into dust, True Blood gets in your face, your hair and even your cleavage. 

The first vampire slaying takes place on top of Sookie Stackhouse. She has just been attacked by Longshadow and Bill stakes him from behind. He erupts. Spewing blood and coating Sookie before imploding. His sticky remains splashing to the ground. The gelatinous mess insultingly splatters Sookie, who is completely bathed in blood. There hasn't been quite such a proudly scarlet woman since Carrie went to the prom. 

True Blood is a truly joyous change in vampire slayage. 

HELLRAISER

The resurrection scene has never been equalled.  The reverse animation is a clunky, gooey delight. The timing is perfect. It's horrifically, unjustly long. Slowly liquescence seeps through the floor boards in the attic. It pools and gathers gradually gaining form. The anticipation mounts as the liquids turns to substance, the substance solidifies and the solid mass begins to build a body. The physical form  is ambiguous for a while, just dripping body junk. The figure is rising. Your spine tingles and your tendons twinge. Your body physically trying to comprehend the reconstituting body before your eyes. Until finally we have glorious skinless meat. This scene raises hell and the hairs on your arms. 

WIZARD OF GORE

Hershell Gordon Lewis pioneered the effects of splatter cinema. Low low low budget and low low low brow, his ketchup and sausage approach to guts is the happy antecedent of many contemporary mess makers like Tom Savini. When the wizard drills through the centre of his glamourous assistant her collapsing torso spills an impossibly thick substance. He then proceeds to fondle the spaghetti stand-in for intestinal strands whilst the offal of some unfortunate beast literally sits on her obviously unscathed stomach. Wizard of Gore is crude by todays shiny standards of simulation effects but that is its appeal. The absurdity stands out, but there is also the sense of discovery in watching HGL films as you realise that this was the moment when body based horror cinema realised its own disgusting potential. 

PLANET TERROR 

Robert Rodriguez's homage to 'grindhouse' cinema is perfectly putrid. It's an insane and exceptional addition to the saturated  zombie genre. It is incredibly self-aware and relentless in its violence. Memorable scene's include Tommy's death. The doctor Block's son shoots himself in the face with the gun his mother has given him, after the stern warning 'you could blow your head off!'. Cue the release of his brain matter across the screen and dash. It's not often you get to see kids die and it's timed so perfectly that its that awkward combination of pleasure that horror plays with. You knew it was going to happen, it had all been set up, but you know its morally dubious. The scenario gratifies your anticipation and then makes you deal with it. 

The stand out and recurring theme however is slime. Everything oozes in Planet Terror. Everyone is just a huge pustule waiting to pop. The badass Dr Block takes a hit to the face, slime from his patient smears his glasses, drips dangerously towards his mouth and refuses to move. It's the kind of tacky gore that won't quit. It strings and sticks everywhere, evoking these beautiful disgusting words from Sartre: 

'the slimy appears as already the outline of a fusion of the world with myself... Only at the very moment when I believe that I possess it, behold by a curious reversal, it possesses me... I open my hands, I want to let go of the slimy and it sticks to me, it draws me, it sucks at me... That sucking of the slimy that I feel on my hands outlines a kind of continuity of the slimy substance in myself. These long, soft strings of substance which fall from me to the slime body (when, for example, I plunge my hand into it and then pull and then pull it put again) symbolize a rolling off of myself in the slime'. Sartre 

Planet Terror is a mess that you can't get off of your skin our out of your head. Simply remarkable interiors. 

EVENT HORIZON 

Aside from being genuinely compelling science fiction, Event Horizon provides some wicked gorey motifs. Whilst I want to rant regarding time paradoxes, sexual space bending and FUCKING HELL!!!! I'll just stick to the subject. The are two outstanding visceral images for me. Firstly the ghost ships beautiful bodily decoration that would make Ed Gein weep. The deck is hung with skeletal remains and draped with organs. The effects is hauntingly beautiful. 

Secondly, Enucleation has never really been in vogue but is horrifically stunning in Event Horizon. The crew are haunted by ghosts with no eyes. It's so subtle but effective. They open their empty sockets and you can glean into their bloody heads and beyond to the absence of their souls. 

DRAG ME TO HELL 

Sam Raimi's much awaited return to horror comedy is hard to swallow. It is incredibly cinesthetic working on the disgust provoked by the ingestion of perceptibly foul things. Main protagonist Christine suffers a strew of oral abuse. She is macked by a slobbering old witch, swallows a fly, is vomited on with insects, pukes blood, just to name a few. The idea being that we physically respond to the presentation of gross ingestion and projection with our own senses. We are able to imagine these substances entering or exiting ourselves and it's massively effective in its massive quantities.  

xoxo Final Girl 

... this topic will continue as I revisit my favourite body horrors. 

Legions of the Avatarial Undead

Avatars are really fucking obviously zombies. Evidence to follow. Thank you. 

 

Lets define the undead, boring but necessary task. For Zizek the undead are the 'inbetween', they are neither concretely living or dead, hence the middle term 'living dead'. These are creatures that exhibit the markers of life, walking or talking, yet have returned from the beyond of death. Vampires and Zombies fit into this 'non-category' but it may also be the best term for discussing the nature of the avatar. The simulated representational body on the screen indicates life through body form, motion and speech without ever being more than a computer generated object. It is not definitely living or dead and so falls under the type of undead. Aside from the ontological issues the avatars purpose in the game often further determines their undead status. Avatar death is something of a regular fixture in games, occuring when the avatar sustains too much damage but there is an internal mechanic for dealing with avatarial death - the extra life. The avatar can always respawn at one point in the game. Avatars die and are resurrected. In games death is certain but its finality is not and so the respawn or continuance becomes part of the undead discourse of the avatar. 

 

The undead being an indefinite category to which the avatar fits, has further sub-categories into which its figures may sit. In light of the avatars indefinite title the puppet metaphor as well as the player’s relationship to the avatar might be nuanced to assume the roles of zombie and necromancer respectively.  Ewan Kirkland concludes his pronunciation of ‘dead’ game bodies with an illuminating statement; ‘the zombie may be a metaphor for the process of videogame engagement, representing the avatar without player, the computer-controlled figure, without the human soul to make it truly alive.’ (Kirkland: 2009). By way of unpicking this statement the avatar will be constructed as zombie (or zombi) in two ways; firstly, through a physical and behavioural resemblance that pertains to media representation and secondly in metaphorical terms determined by a history of folklore.  

Zombies Behaving Badly 

Perhaps the most notable and popularized depiction of the zombie comes from the visual style of George A Romero, a style that has been repeated and elaborated on since his zombie debut Night of the Living Dead (1968). These zombies are distinct creatures, slow and shambling, unable to negotiate obstacles, bent in posture with arms upraised, glazed emotionless eyes, the zombies are soulless beings motoring on primitive instinct alone. Such behavioural qualities can be seen in avatarial animation in games.

Consider the motion of avatars in the gamespace produced by remote input by the player. The directional controls (analogue stick, wii mote, six-axis or arrow keys) do not produce fluid movement when provoked. Even directing your mini-ninja, lego character or avatarial camera down a straight trajectory can produce jagged movement when trying to align. wobbling and jerking down a path appears illogical, like a zombie uncertain of its motivation. 

In Zombie Zone, whatever avatar is selected, the poor rendering and control design produce zombie-like effects in the execution of certain moves. For instance the 'jump attack' requires precision and control and its direction is inalterable after the command has be executed. The speed with which this attack needs to be performed against numerous enemies often sees the avatar hopelessly jumping and slashing at the bare floor, hitting nothing like the zombie hoards banging at the door of potential prey in Night of the Living Dead. 

Romero invented the contemporary principles of zombie’s destruction as a blow to the head. Horror films often have carnage riddled depictions of zombie slaughter, with their bodies suffering massive violence without halting them.  The zombies physical threshold for damage is reflected in the health meter of games. This facility allows a certain amount of harm on the avatar before a game life is lost, it is a system disproportionate to expected biological norms. Zombie Zone’s avatars have a particularly high damage threshold, signified by the health meter in the lower left corner of the screen. When an avatar takes a hit the screen is splattered with red representational blood and the avatar is stunned momentarily, briefly freezing the controls. the only evidence of the depleting health of the avatar is blood on their body that can be rinsed off with ‘cleansing gems’ that rejuvenate the avatars health also. The persistence of the avatar’s body despite representational harm is a behaviour like the zombies of Return of the Living Dead part II, in which shooting or stabbing them has no effect on their animation, they keep on moving. Even severed limbs and heads don’t stop these zombies they slither and crawl, like so many hits that do not stop these avatars.  

The first-person shooter BioShock, as well as many others, features zombie maneuverings although they are perceived from a different perspective. The mazelike design of the game requires turns in motion often, the sensitivity of the controls however produced jerked movement that often passes the intended point. Couple this directional severity with motion and the commands may produce an unintentional diagonal straif or direct the avatarial camera directly into a wall. Once the avatarial camera is confronted with the wall there a two ways to right the positioning that appear awkward and illogical; the avatarial camera can be motioned backwards gradually creating space for the avatarial camera to be directed elsewhere, or by pressing forward the avatarial camera will slide down the wall until reaching its end. Crashing into things and awkward movement is reminiscent of the zombies irrational motion, ‘twitchers’ thrashing in fountains in Dawn of the Dead (2004). 

In Metroid Prime 3: Corruption (2007) is anther first-person shooter in which the characters hands serve as the only physical presence in the game.  Collecting items, viewing computer log data, and activating buttons are a common feature I the game that utilize the avatarial hands. If the distance from the object is too great or the angle off the hands will swipe fruitlessly in the direction of the object. The repeated attempt to hit the target produces an affect not unlike a zombie grappling for flesh. 

Zombiisms 

The second aspect in determining the metaphor of the zombie avatar pertains to a specific folklore, descending for Haiti. The zombie has evolved in fictional depictions but the zombi traditions of Haitian voodoo represent the nature of the avatar as well as the relationship between player and avatar.

Boon continues to divide the zombie into seven types that might better assert the avatars analogy to the zombie. The zombie invokes many types and has numerous connotations, and the zombie that the avatar is best likened to is a specific model – the zombie drone. This zombie differs somewhat from the popularized ‘zombie ghoul' represented in contemporary horror and defined by the films of George A Romero. This is the earliest type of zombie to enter into western folklore, dating from the American occupation of Haiti from 1915-1934. Tales circulated of bodies raised from the dead to serve in labour. This reanimation is performed in with Haitian voodoo practices. William Seabrook defines their appearance, conjuring and purpose in Dead Men Working in the Cane Fields:

The zombie… is a soulless human corpse, still dead, but taken from the grave and endowed by sorcery with a mechanical semblance of life – it is a dead body which is made to walk and act and move as if it were alive. People who have the power to do this go to a fresh grave, dig up the body before it has had time to rot, galvnize it into movement and then make it a servant or slave, occasionally for the commission of some crime, more often simply as a drudge around the habitation or the farm, setting it dull heavy tasks, and beating it like a dumb beast if it slackens.

(Seabrook in Boon: 38)

The zombie as worker shares function with the avatar. Like the drone the avatar is mechanized. Coded with finite capacities, animations that simulate life and numerous predetermined actions that would constitute their labours. The avatar is put to work in the game by command of a remote control, performing the tasks it is commanded to. The avatar is enslaved in that it cannot disobey, it has no volition of its own to go against the input of the player. A glitch is not disobedience as that would endow the avatar with consciousness, nor could the ‘idling’ poses and cut-scenes of a videogame constitute actual volition as they are predetermined animations. When the avatar performs badly in a game, or ‘slackens’ - regardless of player culpability - they receive corporal punishment. This may take the form of gibs, dismemberment or even temporary life loss to be brought back into the game and the same zombified state.

Peter Dendle’s (2007) cultural analysis of the zombie also concentrates on the zombie drone, though without recourse to the term coined by Boon.  Dendle’s essay The Zombie As a Barometer of Cultural Anxiety, considers the zombie as tied up in a metaphor for the economies of labour, beginning with the Haitian lore and progressing through to consumer capitalism. Essentially Dendle sees the zombie engaged in themes of subservience, from the othering of ethnicity in White Zombie, the dominated women in The Stepford Wives to the mindlessly consuming mallrats of Dawn of the Dead – ‘the zombie is a soul-less hulk mindlessly working at the bidding of another… the essence of the ‘zombie’ at the most abstract level is supplanted, stolen, or effaced consciousness; it casts allegorically the appropriation of one person’s will by that of another.’ (Dendle: 2007, 46-47). What seems to be key to this particular zombie type is the control that is assumed over the undead body. This is reified in the relationship between player and avatar as the player commands (x,o, up, down on the keypad) and the avatar responds. The way in which the control over the avatar is performed might best explain the relationship at work between player and avatar. Taking the puppeteering analogy with a nuanced perspective relating to Haitian zombification lore, the player can metaphorically become the necromancer.

xoxo Final Girl 

CandyGothic

My attraction to the 'gothic cute' has always felt like personal even defining interest. Blythe dolls, Gothlolita attire and games like Gregory Horror Show are constructed of converse stuff, exhibiting more aesthetic sweetness than is safe to consume and at the same time are haunted by typically bleak and morbid gothic tropes. Their curious compatibility is alluring and subject of today's post. As to the title I have pouched the term 'CandyGothic' from fred Botting for repurposing, as the obvious connotations are unacknowledged in his definition. Here the CandyGothic is about the melding of cute and creepy into objects designed purely for mass mass consumption. Yes this is more apt. 

The doll as object always belongs in some respect to the gothic. It is the empty and cold shell of a beautiful body that is at once life-like and dead. Blythe dolls are the quintessential gothic cute, however you dress them up. Blythe dolls encourage customization. Their eyes, hair and cladding is entirely changeable. The wide-eyed Blythe is always so obliging in the horrific scenes of costume change, popping her eyes out to replace with a dazzling emerald, ripping off her wig to implant another tone. This is the element of play offered by the Blythe doll. As a piece explicitly for exhibition play occurs in the inbetween acts of creating gothic identities for the dolls that might be finalized in ironic narrative photography. Gina Garan re-popularized this practice with a series of photographs that capture the gothic in their bodies irrespective of the context. The film captures not only the 'dead moment' synonymous with its medium, but the deadness of these sweet bodies. 

There is little attempt in the design of the doll to approach realism. Their features are, according to S. Masubuchi, definitively cute with their huge eyes and disproportionate bodies that connote naivety and innocence. Their figures are a slew of paradoxes, tiny and large, innocent and sexual, sweet and creepy, all positioned for photographs in live environments that foreground their rigid or reposed bodies.  In many ways the Blythe doll suffers the inverse crisis of the cyborg, not emitting the signs of uncanny life but of empty identity. 

Blythe dolls represent the commodification of the gothic culture, offering ownership over a sub-cultural form that predicates itself on 'not belonging'. Like the punks of Returning of the Living Dead this sub-culture comes to belong absolutely.  Yet there is a production element to these toys and themes that allows the consumer to create identities through making practices. The making of clothes and accessories is a large part of the doll ideal and while the identities imposed onto the doll and reinforced in the practitioner are essential bought, they are worked for at the same time. And through this production the purchasing is sutured over. 

Gothic Lolita fashion extends the gothic doll discourse as well as the commerce. The culture of gothlolita is grounded in an advanced level of making for the purpose of wearing. A premium is set on the appearance of what is produced. Magazines and blogs share patterns and perpetuate the craft of the sub-culture. One applies the doll dress to their own bodies producing an uncomfortable appearance of cuteness on the developing female form. The soft white meringues that flutter around the body, the luxurious black velvets and the complicated knots, buckles, twists and metals that garnish the typical outfit are young with a disturbing edge of age inappropriateness. Projecting what is perhaps a female gaze onto the gothlolita one is struck by the uncanny spoke of by Helen Cixous. Speaking against Freud's interpretation of ETA Hoffmann's The Sandman, Cixous claims that female terror in the story is derived from the idea of becoming a doll. The figure of Olympia represents the objectified woman. Yet the gothlolita girl quite consciously operates within this frame. Beholding the girl of a certain age that has willingly become the doll, however gothic the resonance and willingly transgressed to good ideas of innocence unable to shed the sexuality, is inherently confusing and converse.  

This is probably a draft. 

xoxo Final Girl