Transnational Horror Cinema

Bodies of Excess and the Global Grotesque

This book broadens the frameworks by which horror is generally addressed. Rather than being constrained by psychoanalytical models of repression and castration, the volume embraces M.M. Bakhtin’s theory of the grotesque body. For Bakhtin, the grotesque body is always a political body, one that exceeds the boundaries and borders that seek to contain it, to make it behave and conform. This vital theoretical intervention allows Transnational Horror Cinema to widen its scope to the social and cultural work of these global bodies of excess and the economy of their grotesque exchanges. With this in mind, the authors consider these bodies’ potentials to explore and perhaps to explode rigid cultural scripts of embodiment, including gender, race, and ability.