Abstract
This chapter, considers the largest organ of the body which is the interface between us and the world, simultaneously the “home” of the self but also the site of greatest vulnerability to invasion and dissolution of that same self. As such, the skin is the focus of the ongoing battle between purity (the self) and pollution (contagion). Here purity then signifies the healthy self, whereas contagion becomes the polluted other. This chapter then looks at the vampiric, infectious, results of when the skin itself is the polluted other.
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Notes
- 1.
This follows part of the outbreak narrative described in the Introduction where outside (colonial) intrusion causes the release and transmission of deadly diseases across the world; the most obvious example being the Ebola outbreak in 2014–2016.
- 2.
Cronenberg supposedly wanted his vampire to be “biologically correct” rather than of the supernatural kind (Edwards and Grauland 2013, 58).
- 3.
This is suggestive of a parasitic creature such as certain types of worms that live within human bodies. This idea is reinforced by the victims not remembering what has occurred and the site of the “bite” being numb in the way that some insect bites are—Cronenberg had originally called the film “Mosquito.” The idea of a human-mosquito hybrid with implied vampiric tendencies has appeared in a couple of films such as Mosquito Man: A New Breed of Predator (Takács: 2005), and Sucker [aka Mosquito Man] (Manasseri: 2013).
- 4.
Rose (Laura Vandervoort) in the later adaptation follows the more traditional vampire narrative of trying to eat raw meat, and the blood that issues from it, herself before vomiting it out seeing her undergoing a different kind of transformation than Cronenberg’s version.
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Bacon, S. (2023). Skin. In: Contagion and the Vampire. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-39202-3_3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-39202-3_3
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