MERMAIDS IN MANHOLES WITH EBOLA SYNDROME, OR, POLITICAL (IN)CORRECTNESS ORIENTAL STYLE
The article investigates the notion of PC in Asia, or to be more precise in Asian popular culture. Although there are, no doubt, those who would be willing to suggest that lack of PC in Asian countries is a result of the shortcomings of political/social systems frequently deemed by the Politically Correct West as non-democratic and obsessively traditional, the Asian case serves very well to demonstrate that PC perversely reinforces power structures it was originally meant to defy. This article focuses mainly on contemporary Asian cinema, in particular popular cinema of China/HK, Japan and South Korea, seen as the most dynamically developing Asian film centres. By Western standards, the films under discussion here would be classified not only as politically incorrect but offensive to absolutely anybody. At the same time, although the films in question are rather extreme examples, they can be seen as representative of quite a significant part of contemporary HK, Japanese and Korean film industry. For the sake of clarity I have chosen to designate China/HK as the core of my argument, though many of the conclusions reached can equally well apply to Japan and South Korea. Since the article treats PC as a Western phenomenon it distinguishes between Asian communities in the West and Asians in Asia.
Published in Political Correctness: Mouth Wide Shut? Eds. W. Kalaga, J. Mydla and K. Ancuta. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2009.
HORROR BODIES. HORROR INSPIRATIONS IN CONTEMPORARY ART
The article discuses the work of several controversial contemporary artists and the body-related images and techniques they employ. The artists in question represent quite diverse areas of art, and although they all have been critically recognised and have enjoyed the popularity with the audience and the art critics alike, their works have been known to cause uproar on a par with admiration. The selection of artists includes the notorious YBAs Jake and Dinos Chapman, the American photographer Cindy Sherman, the French Carnal Artist Orlan, the Italian Body Artist Franko B, the American sado-masochistic performance/multimedia artists Ron Athey and Bob Flanagan, the Australian artist Stelarc, and the German anatomist and plastination expert Gunther von Hagens. To complete the picture, the article refers to the work of a few less known artists and people for whom body art has become a way of life.
Published in The (Trans)Human: Bodies, Spaces, Virtualities. Eds. W. Kalaga and T. Rachwal. Katowice: Wydawnictwo US, 2005.
MEAT HOOKS, CHAINSAWS AND THE MEATAPHYSICS OF HORROR
The article reconsiders contemporary Horror in terms of a MEATaphor, i.e., a metaphor of meat. The article draws on Modern Horror’s fascination with such themes as the body, flesh, carnality, physicality, monstrosity, mutation, bio-technology and others, all of which can in fact be brought down to the representation of meat. The argument is divided into three parts discussing the notions of meat as food, meat as flesh, and meat as the abject female body respectively. The first part is concerned with meat consumption and centres on a number of cannibalistic themes of both explicit and implicit nature. The second part touches on the questions of carnality and sexuality, as well as anatomy and bodily transformations, and generally refers to the sphere of human biology. Finally, the third part concentrates on the images of the female body as the abject territory for both men and women. It evaluates Modern Horror texts from a gender perspective discussing the notion of the monstrous feminine and deconstructing anorexia nervosa.
Published in Feeding Culture: The Pleasures and Perils of Appetite. Eds. W. Kalaga and T. Rachwal. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2004.
Translated and edited as "Krajobraz z rzeznia w tle. Horror czyli sztuka miesa." Published in ER(R)GO nr 4(I/2002). Katowice: Slask, 2002.