squalid queen

"you want this to happen"

"they were just waiting for this to happen"

"my body was an open wound... i'm healing"

kinda felt like they forgot (or cut) the scene where beth finds out martin is literally 5 years old??? which like, idk, i feel like there's different things to take from this but it's definitely weird. his maturity level seems kinda unclear, like generally he feels like a young adult just lacking socialization, but then there's bits like him jumping on the bed that suggest like, he is still a child. can this be part of the trans reading? what in the text is accelerated development might be read as arrested development, which is to say he's in some ways 20 and in some ways 5, as transness often involves being stuck at some particular age, read as like, kinda the inverse of eli in ltroi. martin has physically/externally matured to adulthood, but underneath he's still a child. alright so there's that. so then, in what ways is his metamorphosis first puberty, and in what ways is it second puberty? idk we'll come back to that.

another thought is, following histories of the transgender child, how does plasticity / racialization / eugenics / intersex / etc fit in here? thinking of embodied plasticity and volatility re: bartok's desire to control "the form and function of all life on earth," he misunderstands that the body and embodied plasticity have their own agency and cannot be so easily corraled [sic], to his ultimate comeuppance / ironic punishment. his motives are almost explicitly eugenic, if not like, explicitly explicit (his whole thing about being god lol).

ok next, martin's whiteness makes him valuable, hence he is given at least the facade of care / family / agency / trust / etc. he could've been kept in specimens with the dog, but was instead given birthday cakes, told to consider bartok a father, given a "job" (do they pay him??), even given placebo injections for his peace of mind. ok so intersex stuff. martin is born ambiguous, if you will, and out of the goopy pod thing the doctors produce a normal looking (read: white) baby. martin is misled about the nature of his "condition" and subjected to extensive medicalization. eventually the truth becomes clear thru the transformation of his body, and he learns that not only was he misled, but that this was his value to bartok in the first place - he is not a son but an experiment.

so then where does this leave us? martin tries to escape his body's true nature but is unable to do so, and eventually accepts it ("i'm healing"), but on his own terms rather than bartok's. as such, he maintains lucidity in bug mode and leverages his metamorphosis to enact vengeance on bartok and co. this ultimately allows him to be born a 3rd time, again in human form, presumably "cured" (why is he still an adult rather than a small child? bc handwave i guess).

idk i feel like there's a lot we could take from all of this. i do think the ending is kinda unfortunate in its emphasis on cure - in order to become fully human, martin must attain normative chromosomal structures and stuff. in one sense i like him being reborn as an adult bc again, trans stuff, but i think storytelling-wise him being a baby again at the end would've been more effective. :shrug:

how do u get to the point of recognizing like, "yes the thought of X turns me on, and that's not what i want irl bc i care about my own wellbeing" or whatever? i guess i've conceived of this before? like ok yes i fantasize about being kidnapped and tortured, and i can recognize that this is not something i'd want to actually really experience irl with someone who doesn't actually care about keeping me (relatively) safe?? ok so why?? how can i want a scar or bruise as a souvenir without it turning into "this is hot bc my body is evil and i want it to be destroyed"?? how do we make it like, this shows that i had this experience with this person, that i belong to them, etc, as a point of pride without also = i am worthless and my body is worthless.

okay hm. i guess maybe first let's accept/acknowledge/allow something we know, which is that my body being damaged is hot. first let's separate hot from like, morally imperative. damaging my body is not cosmically reparative for the universe as a whole. i'm just one small creature of countless. damaging my body does not necessarily make the world a better place or ease anyone else's suffering. ok, let's accept this. my body allows me to do some things i enjoy, such as: riding my bike, cuddling, even bleeding or experiencing pain. if my body were fully destroyed i wouldn't be able to do these things. my body is not the cause of my suffering, and ok even if/where it is, it is not a conscious agent, it did not do this to me on purpose. ok so where are we? at this point we can say that it's hot for my body to be damaged, and my body does not deserve damage/pain/etc as cosmic punishment or penance or etc.

can we prioritize the erotic/sensual over the symbolic/destructive/punitive? idk tho, the symbolic is so central to bdsm, i'm not sure if that's the way to frame it. what if it's just like, "i like being hurt" as opposed to "i deserve to be hurt"? but the deserving is also erotic!

can the deserving be part of the fantasy, rather than part of the reality?

like okay, think of the caring/affectionate sadist dom fantasy. what can this tell us? how do they see me? not deserving of pain, but too cute/precious to not hurt. they hurt me out of affection, playfulness, care, for their pleasure as well as mine. they know i like it and want it, they say it's for my own good, not bc i deserve punishment or am pure evil and corruption, just bc it's fun and sexy.

2 general categories of body horror: penetration (from without) and manifestation (from within) - thinking of body horror in terms of transformation as opposed to just like, bodily harm? something uniquely terrifying / abject / grotesque / erotic about the transformation sequence - whether witnessed by self and/or others - the nakedest of nakedness - something is wrong and it can't be hidden or denied or ignored by any party involved. a truth of the body/self is revealed and made flesh. what is this if not the unveiling of some previously-held illusion, the revelation and consummation of the true self, the flesh taking the literal form of the true self for all to see. the unwilling transformation, screaming in horror and protest, "something rejected from which one does not part."

the weird anxiety when ppl are taller than me but not that much taller, the desperate fear and precarity that it'll be revealed upon closer inspection that actually they're not taller than me, actually we're the same height, no actually i'm taller, etc. needing other ppl to acknowledge explicitly that they're taller than me or else i'll believe it's some trick of my perception/self-deception. what is this?

i mean[,] the years of slowly getting taller than ppl, of wanting it to stop, yes it did stop eventually and a long time ago at this point but like? how do u rly know? how do u trust yr body to make sense after everything? how do u expect it to follow an expected or predictable path? [...] the growth, the years of knowing it was happening but never when or to what extent or at what rate, etc. ppl making comments, relatives saying how tall you've gotten, over and over and over. every time being a lil closer until suddenly yr taller than them and you don't know when or how or why, everyone's specific combination of polite surprise (bc they're used to thinking of u as a child) and complete lack thereof (bc children grow) and?? enthusiasm? as if it's a good thing? as if it's so normal and good actually and u should be so excited and happy and proud that it's happened and happening and keeps happening??[...]

the simultaneous horror and fantasy for it to go wrong in some horrible way, like begging the universe for other ppl to see something is wrong and stop pretending like it's normal!!!!

[...]

okay here's a scary part, are u the one growing or the one witnessing someone else's growth? i mean the answer was and is both, right[...] aside from the fantasy involving the catharsis of it happening all at once / visibly / in a way no one can treat as normal or expected / in a way u can acknowledge as frightening and confusing, it also kinda quietly involved: being a girl / this happening to you but at least you're a girl this time / yes this is abnormal but no one can say you're not a girl. like all these things have to be wrong for this one thing to be right.

the other thing about the fantasy is it involves on some level the understanding that you wanted this. you fantasized about this. you can act like you didn't but deep down you know you did. there's nowhere to hide the truth. pleading irl, i didn't actually want this. i didn't actually want this, pls make it stop, pls make it stop, pls make it stop, i'm sorry for having a weird fetish, i'm sorry for not being normal, pls make it stop.

and? okay, what is the reality? eventually it did stop. you are taller than you'd like and also not that tall as far as things go. you're a girl. you're a tall girl who tries to convince herself she's not tall while still fantasizing about being taller while still fearing that fantasizing about it will make it really happen.

re tetsuo

ok it’s been a few years since my rewatch so i may have forgotten some stuff but!!

first off, my introduction to tetsuo was the professor for my cyborg philosophy class offhandedly mentioning it at the end of the semester as something we may or may not be ready for. i rented it, and turns out i was NOT ready for it. it hit some nerve around my relationship to my body that i was still invested in actively avoiding at the time. very kristeva.

gradual bodily transformation is generally the most distressing body horror trope for me, tldr puberty stuff. the reminder that you don’t control your body; that it can and will change around you without your consent; that it is at every moment Continually Engaged in a process of transformation, the final result of which you cannot know.

ok but the movie right

why does it play sexy jazz for the car crash scene?? bc this is a meet-cute, these are lovers crossing paths for the first time, becoming parts of each other’s lives and remaking each other in the process

what of the metal fetishist?? subverts ‘clean and proper body’ - penetrates own flesh with metal - feminized - maggots suggest organic matter - the fetishist tries to transcend the human body but is thus far unable to do so - the car crash actualizes this transcendence: the organic body subsumed by metal

tetsuo - introduced as str8 normie businessman - he too is shaped and molded by technology but in ways that are culturally sanctioned and therefore rendered invisible - he facilitates the fetishist’s transcendence and is thus himself awakened - as such he experiences the bodily transformation the fetishist longed for

the other scary thing about the Gradual Bodily Transformation is the idea that it’s not actually a transformation at all, so much as it’s a Consummation or an Uncovering, the emergence and reveal of the true self, that which was inside you all along, what you really were but were too afraid to acknowledge

“it was not this but the waiting for this that was perverse” (gary j shipley, terminal park)

tetsuo the businessman and the fetishist are different arrangements of the same parts. the fetishist represents what is made possible in the rejection of the Symbolic Order. the body without organs. he is both the subject and the object of tetsuo’s buried (homo)sexual desire.

the other other scary thing about the Gradual Bodily Transformation is the idea that You Secretly Want It To Happen. it’s the thing you actually want but are too afraid to admit to yourself. it’s the inevitable physical emergence of your suppressed desire.

tetsuo’s drill dick - probably the most upsetting part of the movie lol - again pointing to the inability to control the body - eruption of repressed sexuality - impossibility of hiding forever - fear of yr body being dangerous to those around you on some fundamental level - fear of desire as inherently destructive

tetsuo and the fetishist merging into one body / “our love can destroy this entire fucking world”

(not to be overly precious but this is me returning to this movie like a decade later and having a great time, bc i made peace with the parts of myself it made me look at)

tetsuo stops running from the truth of his body and accepts it, he becomes one with the fetishist, and together they head out to have lots of gay sex and overthrow capitalism. the end.

“the end of the world is no more than the end of the world’s conformity to our cognizance of it” (gary j shipley, terminal park)