Thesis
The New Flesh: Materialism and Body Anxiety in Film
Master of Arts (MA), Washington State University
05/2026
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.7273/000008727
Abstract
In this thesis, I interrogate the mind/body split that has been perpetuated by the western philosophical tradition. Through Julia Kristeva’s abjection concept and Deleuze and Guattari’s body without organs, I analyze body horror as a genre indicative of a dualism that attempts to ignore the primacy of the body. I take David Lynch’s Lost Highway and Mulholland Drive as examples of the mind assuming willful primacy. I then study Coralie Fargeat’s The Substance as an example of hyperregulation of the body. Finally, I turn to David Cronenberg’s Videodrome and Crimes of the Future and find, in the latter film, a Deleuzian instance of allowing the body to transform in relation to a changing environment. Cronenberg’s vision of body horror subverts the genre by locating futurity in the changing body. What emerges is both engaged with and critical of posthumanism: a novel suggestion for the relationship between body, mind, and world.
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Details
- Title
- The New Flesh
- Creators
- Mathilda Blevins
- Contributors
- Jon Hegglund (Chair)Donna Campbell (Committee Member)Roger Whitson (Committee Member)
- Awarding Institution
- Washington State University
- Academic Unit
- Department of English
- Theses and Dissertations
- Master of Arts (MA), Washington State University
- Number of pages
- 81
- Identifiers
- 99901391462401842
- Language
- English
- Resource Type
- Thesis