In Powers of Horror, Julia Kristeva describes the abject as that which “disturbs identity, system and order... [and] does not respect borders, positions, rules.” It is “that which defines what is fully human from what is not.” By this, Kristeva is referring to that which threatens us by transgressing the bodily boundaries between self and other, challenging our bodily identity. Most of what is abject centers around the body – shit, piss, vomit, blood, saliva, filth, waste, pus, bodily fluids, and open wounds – those substances which are disturbing because they turn our insides out, dissolving the acceptable perimeters between inner/outer, living/dead, human/animal, male/female, clean/defiled, natural/supernatural.

The films of Canadian director, David Cronenberg, challenge us by incorporating the abject (body horror) by displaying the body as disfigured, deformed, diseased, infiltrated, mutated and transformed. Kristeva says we feel repulsion and horror when confronted by images of the abject because of their ambiguity, whether the other is external or internal, a part of ourselves. We define ourselves in opposition to that repulsive body that disgusts us, and it is that slippage between us and them that threatens to dehumanize us because it is so close to ourselves. In Cronenberg’s films, it is the human animal who becomes the monster by transgressing taboos of the flesh.

In Shivers (1976), Cronenberg embarks on his first journey into his obsession with ‘body horror’ by infecting the inhabitants of a remote island with disease: a parasitic virus that is injected into a young girl by a deranged doctor. Soon, the virus spreads through sexual encounters (this before the advent of AIDS) and the whole island becomes infected. The theme of an infectious virus colonizing a living body and transforming it into the abject is a recurring one in many of Cronenberg’s films. In many ways the director identifies more with the virus than the humans in his stories.

In an interview with David Cronenberg in Mondo (2000), he states,

Although Shivers is one of the first of Cronenberg’s films to tap into our fear of the diseased or deformed body, the director takes this idea to a whole new level in The Brood, The Fly, Naked Lunch and Videodrome.

The parasites in both The Fly (1986) and Naked Lunch (1991) are insects – those vile creatures that trigger reactions of disgust and fear, because they remind us of our body’s decay and eventual death. These creatures are the most loathsome; the fly because it colonizes and feeds from our dead flesh and excrement, and the cockroach because it invades our homes feeding off our food waste.

In Naked Lunch and Videodrome (1983), the parasite takes on a psychological manifestation as well, by metaphorically linking the addiction to drugs and sadomasochistic porn (snuff videos) to the main characters’ neurosis. Here, it is the mind that becomes diseased, through the deterioration and defilement of the body. In Videodrome the body rebels against the mind by transforming into a killing machine, its physical manifestation, the abject open wound that appears on Max Renn’s (James Woods) stomach that both swallows and vomits objects like a mouth. The body’s orifices, including the mouth, are objects of the abject – the anus and vagina, both reminding us of our visceral nature and the boundaries of the flesh.

In The Brood (1979), the main character’s rage is manifested physically with the abject in the form of sores and open wounds. Nola Carveth (Samantha Eggar), a psychiatric patient, undergoes a new treatment called ‘psychoplasmics’ which gives a tangible shape to her anger in the form of mutant children. This ‘brood’, birthed from a gruesome sac growth on her ribs, are neither dead or alive. They are deformed monstrosities who exist in a liminal state, an abject state on the boundaries of the sacred and profane. The open wounds and birthing sac are similar to the body’s orifices, and produce in us the same kind of horror and revulsion.

The Monstrous-Feminine

Kristeva further categorizes the abject as food, bodily wastes, the mutated or mutilated body, the female body and the sexual body. Barbara Creed, in her essay “Horror and the Monstrous-Feminine: An Imaginary Abjection”, uses Kristeva’s concept of the abject and traces it to representations of the mother (the monstrous-feminine) in her analysis of gender and the horror film. According to Creed, the uncanny nature of the feminine is characterized by abjection in her body through her sexuality and reproductive functions whose transgressions and deviations undermines the social order. Both sexually alluring and physically disgusting, the female body is most threatening because it represents man’s desire, disgust and fears, as well as reminding him both of his birth and death.

In The Brood, Nola is the ’monstrous womb’ giving birth to these terrible creatures. In one scene, she is shown licking the birthing fluid from one of her newborn monsters like a feral animal. This image disgusts the viewer because she is crossing a boundary – she is not quite human, but nor is she animal. She is a monstrous creature somewhere in-between. And, her children, who are of the same flesh, “in a sense... the double of the mother... horrify because they testify to the power of the mother, through her uncanny womb, to give birth to a diminutive double of herself.” (Quoted from Barbara Creed, Baby Bitches from Hell: Monstrous-Little Women in Film)

In Crash (1996), both the abject and the monstrous-feminine are manifested and fetishized in the wounds of a car crash victim, Gabrielle, played by actress Rosanna Arquette. Transformed by modern technology and prosthetic limbs, Gabrielle is a modern embodiment of the Frankenstein monster. Although horribly disfigured by the car crash, Gabrielle’s wounds and scarred body become objects of fetishistic desire, as do the wounds of other victims throughout the film. Fuelled by their perverse obsession with bodies deformed by motor-vehicle accidents, the characters’ transgress into a territory that both repels and attracts, simultaneously. Just as we cannot look away from a real-life car crash, we cannot unglue our eyes from the deviant sexuality portrayed onscreen.

In Dead Ringers (1988), the concept of the ’monstrous womb’ is taken to the ultimate extreme when gynecologist Beverly Mantle (Jeremy Irons) – the feminine half of the Mantle twins – examines his patient’s womb, Claire Niveau (Geneviève Bujold). He discovers that her womb is severely deformed, containing three cervixes. Claire, like other stereotypical women portrayed in horror film, leads Beverly into a path of self-destruction which ultimately results in his own death. As Beverly becomes increasingly dependant on drugs and delusional, he designs specialized gynecological tools, which look more like torture devices, to cure all of his patients’ reproductive deformities. These ‘tools’, which he later claims are used for separating Siamese twins, eventually become the weapons that he uses to kill his identical twin, Elliott.

Cartesian Dualism

In Dead Ringers, Cronenberg also explores the Cartesian concept of the mind/body schism, a recurring theme that has preoccupied him throughout his career. In each of his films, the characters must deal with their rebellious body that confronts the autonomy of the mind – a battle in which the intellect eventually looses as it surrenders to madness.

Cronenberg’s films invade the space of the viewer by forcing us explore the both physical and mental manifestations of our existence as human animals. Although, at times his plots seem surreal, there is an element of truth in each that horrifies us, because it shows how we are vulnerable to outer and inner forces that we cannot control. Forces that threaten the boundaries of the self and transgress social boundaries. Forces that portray us fallible, temporal and corporeal. We are not immune to disease or death.