FRAME 38.2 “Paper Pills: A Medical Humanities Issue”
‘Body horror,’ a subgenre devoted to corporeal transgressions, is undergoing a rebirth with films like Coralie Fargeat’s The Substance (2024)—a cautionary tale challenging the beauty industry and the gendered double standards of ageing. This emerging biopolitical discourse concerned with body dysmorphia, loss of control, abjection, susceptibility to illness and mutation is not limited to film. From classics like Frankenstein to Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, the Grand Guignol ghastly extends its arms to the literary sphere with emerging works like Mona Awad’s Rouge or Jeff Vandermeer’s Annihilation.